What Does Acts 17:8 Mean?
And they stirred the crowd and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things.
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 troubled the people and the rulers of the city, when they heard these things.THE KEY
The heard claim crosses rank: it unsettles the governed and their rulers in the same moment.
THE MEANING
What you hear can unsettle shared life: the people and those who govern them are shaken together. The disturbance reaches beyond private feeling and touches the whole city. The verse shows that authority is not insulated from the force of what it hears.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse loosens the belief that only ordinary people are vulnerable to disturbance: the rulers are unsettled too.
THE ROOT
ταράσσω
tarassō
GROWS FROM
ταρασσ-
tarass-
To stir, agitate, or throw into disturbance.
English “troubled” can sound like a private mood; the Greek verb carries the force of being stirred into turmoil. Here that stirring reaches the public realm, affecting both the people and their rulers.
ALSO GROWS
etaraxan: They stirred or troubled.
ἐτάραξαν
This is the form used in Acts 17:8: the disturbance reaches the people and rulers together.
tarassesthō: Let be troubled.
ταρασσέσθω
The same verb appears in John 14:1, where the stirring is felt in the heart; together, the verses show the root at public and personal scale.
ἀκούω
akouō
GROWS FROM
ἀκου-
akou-
To hear, listen, or receive what is said.
The sentence links hearing directly to public disturbance: what enters as a report has an effect across the city. This word family also includes ἀκοή (akoē, hearing or report) and ὑπακοή (hypakoē, obedience or responsive listening); here, the response to what is heard is agitation.
ALSO GROWS
akoē: Hearing; a report or message received.
ἀκοή
It shows how hearing can refer not only to sound but also to the report that reaches a listener.
hypakoē: Obedience; responsive listening.
ὑπακοή
This branch joins hearing with response, illuminating how the verse’s report becomes more than passing information.
THE PATTERN
Agitation can spread across scales, appearing in public upheaval, a troubled heart, and restless waters.
When Herod the king heard these things, he was shaken, and all Jerusalem with him.Let not your heart be stirred. You lean your full weight on God; lean your full weight on me also.But the wicked are like the driven sea, which cannot be still, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.THE THREAD
Let not your heart be stirred. You lean your full weight on God; lean your full weight on me also.The same Greek verb ταράσσω (tarassō, to stir or trouble) appears in both verses. Acts shows the stirring across a city; John names it in the heart, holding public disturbance and inward disturbance together.
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