What Does Acts 15:31 Mean?
Which when they had read, they rejoiced for the comfort.
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 they had read, they rejoiced for the consolation.THE KEY
Consolation is encouragement that can turn what you hear into joy.
THE MEANING
When words bring you comfort and encouragement, joy can rise in you. The consolation here is more than a soothing feeling: it is a message that steadies you and calls you forward.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This verse undoes the belief that comfort is only passive sympathy; a word of encouragement can change how you receive what lies before you.
THE ROOT
παρακλήσει
paraklēsei
GROWS FROM
καλέω
kaleō
To call or summon; combined with παρά (para, beside or near), it forms a word for comfort, encouragement, or appeal.
English “consolation” can sound like passive soothing, but παράκλησις (paraklēsis, comfort or encouragement) belongs to a word family that also expresses comforting and urging. What they read gives them an encouragement they can receive as joy.
ALSO GROWS
parakaleō: To comfort, encourage, urge, or appeal.
παρακαλέω
This verb shows the active force within consolation: words can steady someone and move them forward.
paraklētos: Helper or advocate; one who brings aid.
παράκλητος
This related word shows how the same family of comfort and appeal can describe help that meets a person in need.
THE PATTERN
Words of comfort make hope and joy reachable when people receive them.
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.For whatever was written before was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and through the comfort of the writings we might hold hope.Who comforts us in all our pressure, so that we are able to comfort those in every pressure, through the same comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.THE THREAD
Then the assemblies had wholeness throughout all Judaea and Galilee and Samaria, and were built up. And walking in the awe of the LORD and in the comfort of the Set-Apart Breath, they were multiplied.“Comfort” here is the same Greek word family as “consolation” in Acts 15:31. One passage shows comfort received in a message; the other shows a community sustained and growing within that comfort.
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