What Does Acts 14:9 Mean?
This one heard Paul speaking, and stretching his gaze upon him, saw that he had trust to be delivered.
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
The same heard Paul speak: who stedfastly beholding him, and perceiving that he had faith to be healed,THE KEY
Before the man’s body changes, Paul sees in his trust an openness to deliverance.
THE MEANING
Your visible condition does not contain the whole truth of you; trust can be present before change becomes visible. Here, healing is held within the wider movement of being brought through into wholeness. The verse lets Paul’s focused gaze notice what the man’s condition alone cannot show.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a visible bodily limitation proves that trust or the possibility of healing is absent.
THE ROOT
σωθῆναι
sōthēnai
GROWS FROM
σῴζω
sōzō
To deliver, rescue, preserve, or bring safely through; the same verb can also describe healing.
“delivered” in this verse is sōthēnai. The form translated “healed” comes from sōzō, a word that also means to deliver or bring out. Bodily healing remains in view, while the word also carries the wider movement from a confining condition toward restored wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
sōtēr: deliverer, savior
σωτήρ
This related word names the one who brings someone through, echoing the deliverance held within the man’s healing.
sōtēria: deliverance, salvation
σωτηρία
This noun makes clear that the verb’s reach includes being brought out of danger, with bodily restoration as one expression of that deliverance.
πίστιν
pistin
GROWS FROM
πείθω
peithō
To persuade or convince; by extension, to trust and place confidence.
Pistis carries trust and confidence, not merely agreement with an idea. Here that trust is directed toward deliverance: the man leans toward being brought through into wholeness.
ALSO GROWS
peithō: persuade, convince
πείθω
The root links trust with confidence that has taken hold, clarifying the force of the man’s faith.
pepoithēsis: confidence, trust
πεποίθησις
This related noun names the settled confidence that resonates with the man’s trust in being healed.
THE PATTERN
Healing is portrayed as deliverance into wholeness, with trust named as part of that movement.
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.Jesus said to him, Go on your way; your full weight leaning has delivered you. At once he looked up again and followed Jesus on the way.THE THREAD
And by leaning full weight on his nature, his nature has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the full-weight leaning which comes through him has given him this complete wholeness in the face of you all.Acts 3:16 repeats pistis, the word for trust, and pairs it with “perfect soundness,” joining trust to visible bodily restoration. “Faith in his name” also carries trust in his nature, making the confidence relational rather than an impersonal force.
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