What Does Acts 14:8 Mean?
And there sat a certain man in Lystra, powerless in his feet, lame from his mother's womb, who had never walked.
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 there sat a certain man at Lystra, impotent in his feet, being a cripple from his mother’s womb, who never had walked:THE KEY
The Greek calls him “not able” in his feet, naming a specific incapacity rather than his whole identity.
THE MEANING
The verse makes a lifelong physical reality unmistakable: this man’s feet cannot support walking, and he has never taken a step. His condition reaches back to the womb, yet the verse does not declare that this history is the final measure of what can happen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that what has never been possible must remain impossible.
THE ROOT
ἀδύνατος
adynatos
GROWS FROM
δύναμαι
dynamai
To be able; to have capacity or power.
“powerless in his feet” in this verse is adynatos. The Greek describes him as unable specifically in his feet; it names a bodily limit rather than a complete identity. The same word family also names ability and power, keeping capacity in view even as this sentence names its absence.
ALSO GROWS
dynatos: Able, capable, or powerful.
δυνατός
This related word makes clear that the sentence is naming the absence of ability in his feet.
dynamis: Power or capacity.
δύναμις
The word for power grows from the same family as “unable,” linking the man’s condition to the language of capacity.
περιεπάτησεν
periepatēsen
GROWS FROM
πατέω
pateō
To tread or step; with περι-, to walk about.
“had never walked” in this verse is periepatēsen. This is an actual history of bodily motion: he has never walked. The same word can also describe how someone conducts their life, but here the literal meaning lands with force because the sentence has already located the limitation in his feet.
ALSO GROWS
pateō: Tread or step on.
πατέω
It names movement through contact with the ground; this verse says he has never taken such a step.
katapateō: Trample or tread down.
καταπατέω
This compound keeps the same stepping root while showing how Greek can shape it into other actions of the feet.
peripateō: Walk about; also, conduct oneself.
περιπατέω
The verb can describe bodily walking or a way of life; this verse anchors it in the movement his feet have never made.
THE PATTERN
Restoration becomes visible when a body long held in immobility enters movement.
Then the limping one leaps like a hart, and the tongue of the mute rings out. For waters split open in the wilderness, and streams in the desert plain.Straightway the man became whole, and lifted up his mat, and walked. And that same day was the Sabbath.And leaping up, he stood and walked, and he entered the temple with them, walking and leaping and praising God.THE THREAD
And a certain man, lame from his mother's womb, was carried, and each day they laid him at the gate of the temple called Beautiful, to ask for gifts from those entering the temple.Acts 3:2 uses the same Greek wording for a man “lame from his mother’s womb,” making this more than a thematic echo. In Acts 3, the once-lame man leaps and walks; that shared wording lets his restoration illuminate the lifelong condition named here.
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