What Does Acts 15:20 Mean?
But that we write to them to hold off from the stains of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
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
But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.THE KEY
One verb gathers the whole list: belonging takes shape by actively holding distance from what is named.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks in concrete boundaries: idol pollution, fornication, strangled things, and blood are all named. Its central verb pictures active distance, bringing worship, sexual conduct, and consumption together as parts of embodied life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the belief that inward allegiance can stay separate from what a person joins with the body or takes in.
THE ROOT
ἀπέχεσθαι
apechesthai
GROWS FROM
ἔχω (echō), with ἀπό (apo)
ἔχω means hold or have; ἀπό means away from. Together they form the picture of holding oneself away.
“hold off” in this verse is apechesthai. The verb combines ἀπό (apo, away from) with ἔχω (echō, hold or have): abstention is actively holding oneself at a distance. That makes the four items one kind of boundary, with specified forms of participation kept outside one’s life.
ALSO GROWS
apechō: keep away, hold at a distance
ἀπέχω
This related verb carries the same movement of maintaining distance.
apochē: abstinence, restraint
ἀποχή
This noun gives that act of holding away a name.
echō: have, hold
ἔχω
The underlying image is a kind of holding, which makes abstaining more than mere absence.
εἰδώλων
eidōlōn
GROWS FROM
εἶδος
eidos
Form, appearance; that which is seen.
The word translated “idols” is εἴδωλον (eidōlon, image or likeness), from the family of εἶδος (eidos, form or appearance). The phrase names a visible representation and the concrete practices associated with it, not only an inward belief.
ALSO GROWS
eidōlon: image, likeness, idol
εἴδωλον
This is the singular form behind the verse’s “idols,” making visible representation part of the boundary.
eidos: form, appearance
εἶδος
This related word shows the image’s connection to visible form.
eidōlolatria: idolatry, service of images
εἰδωλολατρία
This compound names the practice organized around the image.
THE PATTERN
The body’s boundaries make allegiance visible in what is worshiped, joined, and consumed.
But flesh in its living soul, its blood, you shall not eat.So, my beloved, flee from the service of images.THE THREAD
For this is the will of God, your setting apart, that you hold yourselves away from sexual immorality.The same verb, ἀπέχεσθαι (apechesthai, to hold oneself away), appears here with sexual conduct. In Acts it gathers that boundary with three others, tracing one movement of deliberate distance across worship, sexuality, and consumption.
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