What Does Acts 15:29 Mean?
That you hold off from things sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication, from which if you keep yourselves, you shall do well. Be strong.
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
That ye abstain from meats offered to idols, and from blood, and from things strangled, and from fornication: from which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well. Fare ye well.THE KEY
Here, restraint is a way of keeping yourself: the verse moves from holding away from certain things to guarding your own well-being.
THE MEANING
This word addresses you with concrete boundaries around food offered to idols, blood, strangled meat, and sexual immorality. It links keeping yourself from these things with doing well, then closes with a wish for your well-being.
THE ROOT
ἀπέχεσθαι
apechesthai
GROWS FROM
ἔχω (echō), in the compound ἀπό (apo, away from) + ἔχω (echō)
Have, hold; in this compound, hold away from.
“hold off” in this verse is apechesthai. “Abstain” carries the image of holding yourself at a distance. The verse’s boundaries are therefore expressed as an active form of keeping yourself, a connection made explicit in its closing phrase.
ALSO GROWS
apechō: Be distant; hold away.
ἀπέχω
This closely related verb makes the spatial sense of abstaining visible: it is a chosen distance.
apochē: Abstinence; holding back.
ἀποχή
The related noun gives a name to the same act of holding away that the verse asks of you.
διατηροῦντες ἑαυτούς
diatērountes heautous
GROWS FROM
τηρέω (tēreō), with διά (dia, through)
Keep, watch, guard; with διά, preserve or keep through.
“keep yourselves” in this verse is diatērountes heautous. The phrase for keeping yourself draws on language of guarding and preserving. Beside “abstain,” it shows restraint not as mere absence, but as maintained self-keeping.
ALSO GROWS
tēreō: Keep, guard, observe.
τηρέω
This base verb brings watchfulness into the verse’s description of keeping yourself.
tērēsis: Keeping; observance.
τήρησις
The related noun carries the idea of guarding into an ongoing practice.
THE PATTERN
Life is guarded through deliberate distance from what threatens its integrity.
Above every watch you keep, guard your heart, for from it flow the springs of life.Keep yourselves away from every shape of evil.Beloved, I urge you as those dwelling alongside, to hold yourselves away from the fleshly cravings, which march against your living soul.THE THREAD
Beloved, I urge you as those dwelling alongside, to hold yourselves away from the fleshly cravings, which march against your living soul.Both verses use ἀπέχομαι (apechomai), meaning to hold oneself away. Acts names concrete boundaries; Peter uses the same verb for desires that war against the soul, revealing abstention as a form of self-keeping.
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