What Does Acts 16:31 Mean?
And they said, Lean your weight on the Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, and you will be delivered, you and your house.
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 they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.THE KEY
The verse’s “believe” is trust placed on Jesus, whose name carries deliverance, and the promise’s horizon reaches beyond one person to the household.
THE MEANING
Trust in the Lord Jesus opens onto deliverance, and the verse holds the reader and their household within that horizon. The Greek word for house can mean the household itself, so the promise’s reach is relational: it extends through the people who share a home.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that trust is only a private inward matter is undone here: the verse’s horizon includes the people who share the reader’s home.
THE ROOT
πίστευσον
pisteuson
GROWS FROM
πιστ
pist: the consonantal family of trust, reliance, and steadiness.
“lean your weight on” in this verse is pisteuson. The command πίστευσον (pisteuson) is a form of πιστεύω (pisteuō), from the same family as πίστις (pistis, trust) and πιστός (pistos, firm or steady). The verse describes reliance on Jesus, not bare agreement, as the posture opening into deliverance.
ALSO GROWS
pistis: Trust, confidence
πίστις
The related noun shows that the command to believe belongs to a family of trust and reliance.
pistos: Firm, steady; trustworthy
πιστός
This adjective brings steadiness into the same family as the trust the verse calls for.
pisteuō: Trust, place confidence in
πιστεύω
This is the verb behind πίστευσον, showing that “believe” names an act of reliance.
יֵשׁוּעַ
Yeshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
yashaʿ: deliver, rescue, bring into safety and spaciousness.
“Jesus” in this verse is Yeshua. The Greek name here is Ἰησοῦν (Iēsoun), the accusative form of Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous); it carries Hebrew יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshua), from ישע (yashaʿ, deliver). The name holds the movement from constriction into spacious safety inside the person the verse names.
ALSO GROWS
yashaʿ: Deliver, rescue, bring into safety
יָשַׁע
This verb is the root behind the name Yeshua and names the movement the verse promises.
yeshuah: Deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun makes explicit the deliverance carried in the name of Jesus.
moshiaʿ: Deliverer
מוֹשִׁיעַ
This form names the one who brings deliverance, echoing the role of Jesus in the verse.
οἶκος
oikos
GROWS FROM
οἰκ
oik: house, household, dwelling.
οἶκος (oikos) can name the household itself, and its compounds carry that household sense into building and stewardship. “Thy house” therefore has relational scope: the people of a shared home, not only its walls.
ALSO GROWS
oikia: House, home, household
οἰκία
This related word also names both a dwelling and the people who belong to it.
oikodomeō: Build, build up
οἰκοδομέω
Its compound carries οἰκ (oik, house) into the act of building.
oikonomia: Household management, stewardship
οἰκονομία
This compound extends the household root into the ordering of shared life.
THE PATTERN
Trust in the Lord opens into deliverance, and its reach can extend beyond an isolated person to a household.
And the LORD helps them and slips them free from the wicked, and delivers them, for they shelter in him.That if you say the same with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be delivered.So the father knew that it was the same hour in which Jesus had said to him, Your son lives. And he himself trusted, and his whole house with him.THE THREAD
That if you say the same with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and trust in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be delivered.Acts uses πίστευσον (pisteuson) and Romans uses πιστεύσῃς (pisteusēs), forms from the same Greek family πιστεύω (pisteuō, trust), rooted in πιστ (pist). Romans pairs that trust with being saved, making explicit the trust-and-deliverance link Acts holds in one line.
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