What Does Acts 13:29 Mean?
And when they had brought all that was written of him to its end, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre.THE KEY
The written account reaches its goal in the body being taken from the wood and placed in a memorial tomb.
THE MEANING
The verse keeps fulfillment bodily: what is written concerning him reaches completion through his removal from the tree and burial. It holds the reader’s attention on both movements, the body is taken down, then placed in a tomb.
THE ROOT
ἐτέλεσαν
etelesan
GROWS FROM
τελ-
tel-
To reach an end or goal; to bring something to completion.
“fulfilled” in this verse is etelesan. ἐτέλεσαν (etelesan, “they completed”) comes from τελέω (teleō, “bring to completion”), from τελ- (tel-, “end or goal”). What is written concerning him reaches its goal in the physical actions that follow, rather than remaining a prediction detached from the body.
ALSO GROWS
telos: End, goal, outcome.
τέλος
It shares the tel- stem and shows that completion can mean arrival at a goal.
teleios: Complete, mature, full-grown.
τέλειος
The same word family can describe fullness or maturity, giving “fulfilled” the sense of reaching completion.
ξύλου
xylou
GROWS FROM
ξυλ-
xyl-
Wood or timber; also a tree as the source of wood.
The KJV’s “tree” can sound purely botanical, while ξύλον (xylon, “wood or tree”) names the wood itself and can also name stocks. The same word holds the execution wood and a wooden restraint within one material image as the body is taken down.
ALSO GROWS
xylon: Wood, tree; also a wooden stock or restraint.
ξύλον
The same noun names the stocks in Acts 16:24, joining the tree and the instrument of confinement through their shared material.
xylinos: Wooden, made of wood.
ξύλινος
This related adjective preserves the material sense beneath “tree”: the word points to wood itself.
μνημεῖον
mnēmeion
GROWS FROM
μνημ-
mnēm-
Memory or remembrance.
μνημεῖον (mnēmeion, “tomb or memorial”) belongs to a word family of remembering. The verse ends with the body placed in a tomb whose name also carries the sense of remembrance.
ALSO GROWS
mnēmē: Memory, remembrance.
μνήμη
It makes the remembrance within the tomb’s name explicit.
mnēmosynon: Memorial, reminder.
μνημόσυνον
This branch shows how the same family names something that keeps a person or event in memory.
THE PATTERN
The written account carries death through the body’s actual passage from exposure on wood to burial.
His corpse does not lodge on the tree through the night, but you surely bury him on that day, for the hanged one is a curse of God; so that your ground, which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance, is not defiled.He set his grave among the wicked, and with the rich in his death, because he had done no violence, and no deceit was in his mouth.And that he was buried, and that he has been awakened on the third day according to the writings.THE THREAD
The Anointed One bought us out of the curse of instruction, becoming a curse for us, for it stands written, Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.Galatians uses the same Greek word ξύλον (xylon, “wood or tree”) for what Acts says he is taken down from. Galatians names the curse attached to hanging on the tree; Acts keeps the next bodily movement in view, removal and burial.
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