What Does Acts 19:27 Mean?
So that not only is our part in danger of being spoken down, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis should be counted as nothing, and her greatness taken down, whom all Asia and the inhabited earth hold in awe.
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
So that not only this our craft is in danger to be set at nought; but also that the temple of the great goddess Diana should be despised, and her magnificence should be destroyed, whom all Asia and the world worshippeth.THE KEY
A thing’s public sacredness and the livelihood built around it can rise or fall on the same act of collective valuation.
THE MEANING
Here, livelihood and public reverence move together: when the temple is counted as nothing, the craft tied to it appears endangered by the same loss of standing. Even magnificence honored across a world is described as something that can be brought down.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that universal reverence makes something untouchable; the verse places the whole world’s worship beside the possibility that the temple is counted as nothing.
THE ROOT
λογισθῆναι
logisthēnai
GROWS FROM
λογίζομαι (logizomai), λογ-
Reckon, count, account.
“counted as nothing” in this verse is logisthēnai. The phrase carries an accounting image: the temple is reckoned as nothing. The threat is a public judgment of worth, placed beside the threatened livelihood of the craft.
ALSO GROWS
logizomai: Reckon, count, consider.
λογίζομαι
This verb makes the temple’s dismissal a judgment of value: it is accounted as nothing.
logismos: Reckoning, calculation, thought.
λογισμός
The same word family can name a reckoning or a thought, showing how the threat takes shape as an assessment of worth.
καθαιρεῖσθαι
kathaireisthai
GROWS FROM
καθαιρέω
kathaireō
Take down, overthrow, demolish.
The magnificence is pictured as something that can be taken down. The same Greek verb describes lowering the mighty and pulling down strongholds, linking public greatness with the possibility of its removal.
ALSO GROWS
katheilen: Put down, brought low; a form of καθαιρέω (kathaireō).
καθεῖλεν
Luke 1:52 uses this form for putting the mighty down from their seats, echoing the threatened lowering of the goddess’s magnificence.
kathairesis: Pulling down, demolition.
καθαίρεσις
In 2 Corinthians 10:4, this related noun describes the pulling down of strongholds, carrying the same removal image into another kind of structure.
THE PATTERN
What a crowd magnifies can still be counted as nothing or brought down.
The LORD strips, and makes rich; he lays low, and lifts high.He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.For the weapons of our campaign are not of the flesh, but mighty through God for the pulling down of strongholds.THE THREAD
He has pulled the mighty down from their seats, and lifted up the low.Acts 19:27 uses καθαιρεῖσθαι (kathaireisthai, “to be taken down”) for the threatened destruction of the goddess’s magnificence; Luke 1:52 uses καθεῖλεν (katheilen, “put down”), a form of the same verb καθαιρέω (kathaireō, “take down”). The shared root makes the lowering of public greatness a recurring image, and Luke states that descent directly.
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