What Does Acts 13:44 Mean?
On the next sabbath nearly the whole city came together to hear the word of God.
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 the next sabbath day came almost the whole city together to hear the word of God.THE KEY
A city becomes one audience when hearing the word is its shared center.
THE MEANING
Nearly the whole city gathers around one message. The verse speaks now wherever God’s word brings people into shared attention, making hearing a public encounter as well as a private one. In that gathering, the city is not only present; it is listening together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that hearing God’s word belongs only to private devotion; here, a city gathers to listen.
THE ROOT
συνήχθη
synēchthē
GROWS FROM
συνάγω (synagō), from σύν (syn, together) + ἄγω (agō, bring or lead)
Gather or bring together.
“came together” in this verse is synēchthē. The Greek says the city “was gathered together,” placing the assembly at the center of the scene. The same word family gives συναγωγή (synagōgē), “assembly”; the city is gathered into a shared act of listening.
ALSO GROWS
synagōgē: Assembly or gathering.
συναγωγή
The same word family names a gathered community, echoing the city’s collective arrival.
prosagō: Bring near or lead toward.
προσάγω
This compound uses the same ἄγω (agō), “bring or lead,” root and shows how gathering can involve bringing people near.
ἀκοῦσαι
akousai
GROWS FROM
ἀκούω
akouō
Hear or listen.
The Greek word for “hear” belongs to a family that can mean both hearing and heeding. The verse names listening; the wider family reveals how hearing can open into response without making that response explicit here.
ALSO GROWS
akoē: Hearing, or a report that is heard.
ἀκοή
The same family can name not just the act of hearing but what reaches someone as a report.
hypakouō: Listen to, heed, obey.
ὑπακούω
This compound shows the possible movement from receiving sound to responding to what is heard.
THE PATTERN
God’s word forms a people through shared hearing, and that hearing carries the message forward.
Assemble the people, the men, the women, and the little ones, and the sojourner within your gates, so that they may hear and respond, and so that they may learn, and be struck with awe of the LORD your God, and guard to do all the words of this instruction;And all the people gathered as one man into the broad place before the waters gate, and they said to Ezra the writer to bring the scroll of the instruction of Moses, which the LORD had commanded Israel.So then trust comes out of hearing, and hearing comes through the word of God.THE THREAD
So then trust comes out of hearing, and hearing comes through the word of God.Acts’ ἀκοῦσαι (akousai, “to hear”) and Romans’ ἀκοῆς (akoēs, “hearing”) belong to the ἀκούω (akouō) word family. The connection opens the city’s gathering as more than a crowd listening: hearing is where trust takes root.
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