What Does Acts 14:14 Mean?
But when the sent ones, Barnabas and Paul, heard of it, they tore their garments and leapt into the crowd, crying out,
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
Which when the apostles, Barnabas and Paul, heard of, they rent their clothes, and ran in among the people, crying out,THE KEY
The garment is torn to interrupt the crowd’s attempt to dress human beings in divinity.
THE MEANING
A crowd’s praise can turn people into gods in the mind; here, the response tears that image open. Barnabas and Paul rend their clothes and rush into the crowd, making their refusal visible and urgent. The scene speaks now: human beings remain human, even when others project divinity onto them.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that acclaim can make a human being more than human.
THE ROOT
διαρρήξαντες
diarrhēxantes
GROWS FROM
ῥηγνυμι
rhēgnumi
To break, burst, or tear apart.
“rent” in this verse is diarrhēxantes. The word for tearing their garments belongs to the same word family used when wineskins burst. That wider range makes the gesture a rupture of the scene taking shape around them: the crowd’s false picture of these men cannot remain intact.
ALSO GROWS
diarrhēgnumi: To tear apart or rend.
διαρρήγνυμι
This compound form describes the forceful tear of the garments in this verse.
rhēgma: A break, rent, or rupture.
ῥῆγμα
The related noun makes the word’s image of a split or break explicit.
ἱμάτια
himatia
GROWS FROM
ἱματι-
himati-
The Greek word for garments or outer clothing.
“clothes” in this verse is himatia. The torn object is the garment people can see: their response becomes public rather than remaining an inward objection. Their clothing marks the break in the crowd’s spectacle.
ALSO GROWS
himation: A garment or outer cloak.
ἱμάτιον
This singular form names the kind of clothing torn in the verse.
himatismos: Clothing or apparel.
ἱματισμός
This related word extends the garment word-family to clothing as a whole.
THE PATTERN
A rupture makes visible when an existing frame cannot hold what is breaking into view.
Oh that you would tear the heavens and come down, and the mountains would flow down before your face.No one pours new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine bursts the skins, the wine is poured out, and the skins perish. But new wine must be put into new skins.And when they had done this, they shut in a great multitude of fish, and their nets were tearing apart.THE THREAD
No one pours new wine into old wineskins, or else the new wine bursts the skins, the wine is poured out, and the skins perish. But new wine must be put into new skins.The Greek word family used for the garments being torn is also used for wineskins bursting. In both verses, a visible rupture shows that the frame in place cannot continue unchanged; here, it breaks the crowd’s picture of Barnabas and Paul as gods.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us