What Does Acts 16:25 Mean?
In the middle of the night Paul and Silas prayed and sang praise to God, and the prisoners listened to them.
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 at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God: and the prisoners heard them.THE KEY
The song reaches people the verse names as bound while they are still listening inside the cell.
THE MEANING
Confinement does not make your prayer and praise private; the sound can reach people bound near you while the doors remain shut. The listening happens in the midnight itself, before the scene changes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a confined season makes your voice meaningless because nobody can hear it.
THE ROOT
ἐπηκροῶντο
epēkroōnto
GROWS FROM
ἐπακροάομαι
epakroaomai
to listen, to give ear attentively
“listened” in this verse is epēkroōnto. English heard can sound as though the prisoners merely caught a noise, but this verb describes them listening. Their bonds remain in place, yet the song is received: confinement marks where they are, not what can reach them.
ALSO GROWS
akroatēs: hearer, listener
ἀκροατής
This related word names someone who listens, bringing out the attention implied by the prisoners’ response.
akroasis: hearing, listening
ἀκρόασις
This related noun describes the act of listening, showing that the verse depicts more than sound passing by.
δέσμιοι
desmioi
GROWS FROM
δέω
deō
to bind, fasten
“prisoners” in this verse is desmioi. The Greek noun pictures these people as bound ones, making their constraint explicit. Still, their moment is not only one of bonds: they are listening while the bonds remain.
ALSO GROWS
desmos: bond, chain
δεσμός
The shared binding idea makes the prisoners’ condition concrete: they listen while still bound.
desmōtērion: prison, place of confinement
δεσμωτήριον
This related word names the place of binding, linking the people who listen to the confinement around them.
THE PATTERN
Prayer and song can remain present in the night and pass from one person into another.
But no one says, Where is God, my maker, who gives songs in the night?In the daytime the LORD commands his faithful love, and in the night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life.Let the word of the Anointed One settle in you richly, in all wisdom, teaching and admonishing one another, in plucked songs, in hymns, and in songs of breath, singing with favor in your hearts to God.THE THREAD
Speaking to yourselves in psalms and hymns and songs of breath, singing and plucking the strings in your heart to the Lord.The word translated sang praises in Acts belongs to the same Greek word family as hymns here. Ephesians makes the shared nature of the sound explicit: songs move among people, as the prisoners’ listening shows.
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