What Does Acts 13:37 Mean?
But he whom God raised saw no decay.
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
But he, whom God raised again, saw no corruption.THE KEY
The verse reveals resurrection as a life over which decay has no claim.
THE MEANING
Here, God’s raising places the one raised beyond bodily decay’s reach. For you now, the verse presents resurrection as life whose final shape is not dictated by what decays.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that bodily death and decay have final authority over the one God raises.
THE ROOT
διαφθορά
diaphthora
GROWS FROM
φθείρω
phtheirō
to destroy, corrupt, or waste away
Here διαφθορά (diaphthora, decay or corruption) carries the concrete sense of bodily wasting and ruin. Its word family describes destruction and decay, so the verse’s claim reaches the body’s process of decay.
ALSO GROWS
phthora: decay, corruption, destruction
φθορά
This related noun names the wasting away that the raised one does not undergo.
diaphtheirō: to destroy, corrupt, or ruin
διαφθείρω
The related verb shows the root’s force as a process of deterioration and destruction.
ἤγειρεν
ēgeiren
GROWS FROM
ἐγερ-
eger-
to wake, rouse, or raise
“raised” in this verse is ēgeiren. The verb evokes waking and rousing into life. Beside the word for decay, God’s raising brings life into wakefulness without passing into ruin.
ALSO GROWS
egeirō: to wake, rouse, or raise
ἐγείρω
This is the verb family behind “raised,” carrying the sense of awakening into life.
egersis: rising, resurrection
ἔγερσις
This related noun makes the awakening sense explicit as a rising from the dead.
THE PATTERN
God’s raising carries life through death beyond decay’s claim.
For you do not leave my living soul to Sheol; you do not give your faithful one to see the pit.Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.So also is the rising of the dead. It is sown in decay; it is awakened in what does not decay.THE THREAD
Seeing this beforehand, he spoke of the Anointed One standing up, that his living soul was not left in the unseen, nor did his flesh see decay.Acts 2:31 uses the same Greek noun διαφθορά (diaphthora, decay or corruption), binding the verses through the word itself. It sets that word beside “resurrection,” making the claim precise: the one raised does not pass into decay.
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