What Does Acts 13:49 Mean?
And the word of the Lord was carried through all the region.
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 word of the Lord was published throughout all the region.THE KEY
The word of the Lord is pictured as something borne across the land: its reach grows as it moves from place to place.
THE MEANING
The Lord’s word moves through the whole region, carried from one place into another. Its reach is not confined to where it first lands; it continues outward through the places and people it touches.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the Lord’s word is confined to the place where it is first heard.
THE ROOT
διεφέρετο
diephereto
GROWS FROM
φέρω
pherō
to carry or bear
The Greek verb carries the image of the Lord’s word being borne through the region. Its spread is movement across space: what is carried reaches beyond the place where it began.
ALSO GROWS
diapherō: to carry through or across; to spread or convey
διαφέρω
This is the verb family behind “published”: the word is carried through the region.
metapherō: to transfer or carry over
μεταφέρω
It makes the shared root’s movement clear: what is borne goes from one place to another.
THE PATTERN
The Lord’s word expands by moving outward through the world and multiplying beyond its starting place.
He sends his utterance upon the earth; his word runs very swiftly.But the word of God kept growing and multiplying.For from you the word of the Lord has echoed out, not only in Macedonia and in Achaia, but in every place your full weight leaning toward God has gone out, so that we have no need to speak anything.THE THREAD
Who, being the radiance of his weight and the exact stamp of his foundation, carrying all things by the word of his power, when he had made the cleansing of shortcomings, sat down at the right hand of the Greatness on high.The Greek word behind “upholding” is φέρων (pherōn), from the same φέρω (pherō, carry or bear) root as the verb in Acts. Here the word is borne through a region; in Hebrews, all things are borne by the word of his power.
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