What Does Acts 16:24 Mean?
He, having received such a charge, threw them into the inner prison and fastened their feet in the wood.
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
Who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fast in the stocks.THE KEY
The wooden stocks and the tree where Jesus is hanged share one Greek word, so the verse names its restraint with the same word scripture uses for the tree of execution.
THE MEANING
Confinement here is physical and severe: the space closes to the inner prison, and the feet are secured. The verse gives the reader language for constraint that reaches the body and takes away movement. The word behind “stocks” also means wood or tree, keeping the material of restraint in view.
THE ROOT
ξύλον
xylon
GROWS FROM
ξύλον
xylon
Wood; a tree, or an object made of wood.
“wood” in this verse is xylon. The Greek word rendered “stocks” names the wooden instrument fastening their feet. The same noun can mean “tree,” including the tree where Jesus is hanged, so the word holds the material of restraint and execution together.
ALSO GROWS
xylinos: Wooden; made of wood.
ξύλινος
This related form appears in “vessels of wood” (2 Timothy 2:20), showing the root naming ordinary objects made from the same material.
xylon: Tree; wood.
ξύλον
In Acts 5:30, the same noun is rendered “tree” for where Jesus is hanged, connecting this verse’s wooden stocks to another scene of bodily restraint.
THE PATTERN
Bodily bonds can be real and severe without becoming the final boundary of praise, release, or the word.
In the middle of the night Paul and Silas prayed and sang praise to God, and the prisoners listened to them.In this I bear ill, even unto bonds, as one who works ill; but the word of God is not bound.He brings them out of darkness and the valley of deepest darkness, and tears their bonds apart.THE THREAD
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you put to death by hand and hanged on a tree.The Greek noun ξύλον (xylon, “wood” or “tree”) names the stocks here and the tree in Acts 5:30. English renders them with different words, while the shared Greek word keeps the material of both scenes visible.
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