What Does Acts 17:20 Mean?
For you carry certain foreign things into our ears, so we want to know what these things intend to be.
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
For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean.THE KEY
What sounds strange reaches your ears as a stranger: its foreignness names its relation to you, not its meaning.
THE MEANING
Something unfamiliar arrives at your ears before you can place it. The gap between hearing and understanding becomes a question: what is present in these words?
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Strange to me means meaningless or must be dismissed.
THE ROOT
ξενίζοντα
xenizonta
GROWS FROM
ξεν-
Stranger, foreigner, guest; someone outside the familiar.
The word translated “strange” comes from a family that names the stranger or foreign guest, so the unfamiliarity belongs to the meeting between the teaching and its hearers. That same family appears in the word for hospitality, holding both foreignness and welcome within its reach.
ALSO GROWS
xenos: Stranger, foreigner, or guest.
ξένος
The teaching sounds foreign to the hearers, but “stranger” describes its relation to them, not what it means.
philoxenia: Hospitality; love of strangers.
φιλοξενία
The same word family can name receiving what comes from outside, opening a path from unfamiliarity toward understanding.
ἀκοάς
akoas
GROWS FROM
ἀκο-
Hearing, listening.
The Greek word translated “ears” can also name hearing or a report: the words enter the hearers’ reception before their meaning is settled. The verse places unfamiliarity at the threshold of perception, not beyond it.
ALSO GROWS
akouō: Hear or listen.
ἀκούω
It names the act by which the unfamiliar teaching first reaches the hearers.
akoē: Hearing, report, or message.
ἀκοή
It can name both hearing and what is heard, joining the arrival of the words to the question they awaken.
γνῶναι
gnōnai
GROWS FROM
γνω-
Know, recognize, perceive.
The hearers do not confuse hearing with knowing; they ask to perceive what the words are. English can make “know” sound like possession of a fact, while the verse shows it as the next movement after something has been heard.
ALSO GROWS
gnōsis: Knowledge or knowing.
γνῶσις
It names the understanding the hearers are seeking.
epiginōskō: Recognize or know.
ἐπιγινώσκω
It carries the same knowing root, emphasizing recognition of what has come before the hearer.
THE PATTERN
What arrives as unfamiliar can open into understanding when hearing becomes inquiry.
And when your son asks you tomorrow, saying, What are the testimonies, and the statutes, and the judgments, which the LORD our God has commanded you?Uncover my eyes, that I may gaze upon the wonders from your instruction.These were of nobler birth than those in Thessalonica, who received the word with all eagerness of heart, and sifted the writings daily, whether these things held so.THE THREAD
Beloved, do not think the burning that comes to test you foreign, as though something strange had befallen you.Acts calls the teaching strange as it reaches the hearers; 1 Peter uses the same Greek family behind “strange” for an event that seems foreign to the person meeting it. In both verses, strangeness describes the encounter, leaving its meaning open to be perceived.
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