What Does Acts 18:1 Mean?
After these things, Paul parted from Athens and came to Corinth.
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
After these things Paul departed from Athens, and came to Corinth;THE KEY
The Greek word for departing here shares its root with the question of whether anything can separate you from Christ’s love.
THE MEANING
When you enter a new place, the movement includes a real leaving; arrival and separation belong to the same crossing. The verse gives departure its own weight before it names arrival, so the space between places is not erased.
THE ROOT
χωρισθείς
chōristheis
GROWS FROM
χωρ
chōr
The stem carries the sense of space or place; in χωρίζω (chōrizō), it means to separate or set apart.
“parted” in this verse is chōristheis. The form χωρισθείς (chōristheis, “having separated”) comes from χωρίζω (chōrizō, “to separate”). That same verb can name physical parting and relational severance, joining a journey away from one place to the question of what can be separated from love.
ALSO GROWS
chōris: apart, without
χωρίς
This related form makes the spatial idea explicit: separation is a relation of being apart.
chōra: region, place
χώρα
This related form names the space itself, keeping place and parting within the same word family.
THE PATTERN
Movement is a joined passage: going out of one place and coming into another.
And the LORD said to Abram, Go away from your land, from your land of birth, and from your father's house, to the land I will let you see.The LORD watches over your going out and your coming in, from now and to the ages.He let go of Judea, and went away again into Galilee.THE THREAD
Who will separate us from the love of the Anointed One? Will pressure, or the narrow place, or pursuit, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?Acts uses χωρίζω (chōrizō, “separate”) for departure from a city; Romans uses the same verb to ask whether anything can sever you from Christ’s love. The shared root carries separation from physical space into the question of whether love can be broken.
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