What Does Acts 16:3 Mean?
Paul wanted him to go forth with him, and took him and circumcised him, because of the Jews in those places, for they all knew that his father was a Greek.
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
Him would Paul have to go forth with him; and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters: for they knew all that his father was a Greek.THE KEY
The cut is made because the community knows Timothy’s father is Greek: here a person’s publicly read identity shapes what happens to his body.
THE MEANING
The verse names the Greekness of Timothy’s father as the reason Paul circumcises him. The bodily mark is not abstract here: it is an action taken in response to what the surrounding Jewish community knows about Timothy’s family.
THE ROOT
περιέτεμεν
perietemen
GROWS FROM
τέμνω (temnō), with περί (peri, around)
τέμνω (temnō) means to cut; περί (peri) means around. Together, περιτέμνω (peritemnō) means to cut around.
“circumcised him” in this verse is perietemen. English can make circumcision sound like a settled category, while the Greek verb keeps the physical action in view: a cutting around. That concreteness makes the verse’s stated reason sharper, the community’s knowledge leads to an act upon Timothy’s body.
ALSO GROWS
peritomē: circumcision; a cutting around
περιτομή
This noun comes from the same compound and names the bodily mark as an act of cutting around.
apotemnō: cut off
ἀποτέμνω
This compound uses the same cutting root with ἀπό (apo, off or away), showing how the root retains the physical act of cutting across different compounds.
tomē: a cut or incision
τομή
This related noun keeps the cut itself visible beneath the more familiar religious term.
THE PATTERN
A bodily sign can mark a covenant without becoming the measure of a person’s standing.
And you shall cut the flesh of your foreskin, and it shall be a mark of the covenant between me and you.Was anyone called while circumcised? Let him not draw the skin back over. Was anyone called uncut? Let him not be circumcised.For in Jesus, the Anointed One, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any strength, but trust that works through love.THE THREAD
And some men who came down from Judea taught the brethren, saying, Unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you cannot be delivered.Acts 15:1 uses the same Greek cutting word and makes circumcision a condition for deliverance; here, Paul acts because the local Jewish community knows Timothy’s father is Greek. The shared root brings the difference into view: the same bodily act can be demanded as a gateway or taken up in response to a social boundary.
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