What Does Acts 16:16 Mean?
And as we went toward prayer, a servant girl held by a breath of divination met us, who brought her masters much gain by divining.
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 it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying:THE KEY
What speaks through her becomes a revenue stream for the people who own her.
THE MEANING
A slave girl’s divining is made into someone else’s livelihood: her masters collect the gain. The verse holds the spiritual claim and its commercial use in the same frame, naming who profits from her voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The person whose voice produces the income is the one who benefits from it.
THE ROOT
ἐργασίαν
ergasian
GROWS FROM
ἐργ-
erg-
work, activity, or business
The word rendered “gain” is ἐργασία (ergasia), meaning work, activity, or business. The verse makes the divining into an enterprise, and says that the wealth flows to her masters.
ALSO GROWS
ergon: work or deed
ἔργον
This related word keeps labor in view beneath the masters’ gain.
ergatēs: worker or laborer
ἐργάτης
The worker branch sharpens the verse’s division between the girl whose divining produces income and the masters who receive it.
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνε-/πνέω (pne-/pneō)
to blow or breathe; breath
“breath of divination” in this verse is pneuma. The word behind “spirit” is πνεῦμα (pneuma), whose concrete sense is breath; its word family also carries the motion of blowing. That breath-word appears here in a scene where a person’s divining voice is tied to her masters’ income.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: to blow or breathe
πνέω
Its verb form shows the movement beneath the word used for the force accompanying her divining.
pnoē: breath or breeze
πνοή
This related word keeps the concrete sense of breath audible beneath the KJV’s “spirit.”
THE PATTERN
Claims about the unseen can be drawn into commerce, with material gain flowing to those who control the exchange.
And the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian went with the rewards of divination in their hands, and came to Balaam, and spoke to him the words of Balak.For a certain man named Demetrius, a silver-beater, who made silver shrines for Artemis, provided the craftsmen with no small gain.And in grasping for more, they trade you with molded words. Their judgment from of old does not idle, and their perishing does not nod.THE THREAD
She did this for many days. But Paul, worn through with pain, turned and said to the breath, I command you in the nature of Jesus the Anointed One, to come out of her. And it came out that very hour.The same Greek word πνεῦμα (pneuma, breath) appears in both verses: here it accompanies the divining that earns her masters money, and next the command addresses it directly. The command comes in Jesus’ name, in his nature; Jesus (Ἰησοῦς, Iēsous) corresponds to Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ, Yeshua), deliverance from constriction into spaciousness.
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