What Does Acts 15:36 Mean?
And after some days Paul said to Barnabas, Let us turn back and look upon our brethren in every city where we have announced the word of the Lord, and see how they do.
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 some days after Paul said unto Barnabas, Let us go again and visit our brethren in every city where we have preached the word of the Lord, and see how they do.THE KEY
The Greek word for “visit” carries the sense of turning attention toward someone and attending to their condition.
THE MEANING
A spoken word stays joined to the people who receive it. The verse holds proclamation together with returning attention, asking how those people are doing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that speaking the message completes the work; the people who receive it still matter afterward.
THE ROOT
ἐπισκεψώμεθα
episkepsōmetha
GROWS FROM
σκεπ- / σκοπ- (skep- / skop-)
Look upon attentively; consider or keep watch.
“look upon” in this verse is episkepsōmetha. This verb holds looking upon together with coming to attend to someone. Its relatives name this attention as oversight (ἐπισκοπή, episkopē) and the one who oversees (ἐπίσκοπος, episkopos), so the return includes noticing the people’s condition.
ALSO GROWS
episkopē: Visitation, oversight
ἐπισκοπή
The same family names the act of attending to people as oversight.
episkopos: Overseer, one who watches over
ἐπίσκοπος
This related word describes a person whose attention is directed toward others.
THE PATTERN
Visitation is attention that turns toward someone’s lived condition.
And Joseph said to his brothers, "I die. God will surely visit you, and bring you up from this land to the land he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob."Let the LORD God of Israel be spoken well of, for he has looked upon and redeemed his people,Clean and unstained service before God and Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widowed in their being pressed, and to keep oneself unspotted from the world.THE THREAD
Naked, and you clothed me; I was weak, and you visited me; I was in prison, and you came to me.Matthew uses the same Greek verb-family for visiting the sick. The shared word makes the visit concrete: attention turns toward a person’s condition and remains close to it.
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