What Does Acts 2:15 Mean?
For these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day.
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 these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.THE KEY
The hour itself becomes evidence that interrupts a confident misreading.
THE MEANING
The crowd’s label meets a fact that unsettles it: it is the third hour of the day. For you, the verse shows how a confident reading can outrun the evidence, while one concrete detail opens another way to understand what is happening.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Strange or unfamiliar speech must mean drunkenness; the verse unsettles that conclusion by setting it beside the time of day.
THE ROOT
ὑπολαμβάνετε
hypolambanete
GROWS FROM
λαμβάνω
lambanō
To take or receive.
The word rendered “suppose” belongs to the family of taking and receiving: an interpretation is something the mind takes up. The verse exposes the accusation as an interpretation, then places it beside a concrete detail that can unsettle it.
ALSO GROWS
paralambanō: Receive; take along.
παραλαμβάνω
Its sense of receiving illuminates how the crowd takes up an explanation for what it sees.
antilambanomai: Take hold of; help.
ἀντιλαμβάνομαι
This branch makes the act of taking hold concrete: the crowd grasps one explanation, while the stated hour challenges that grasp.
THE PATTERN
An outward appearance can invite a false reading that a fuller account or concrete detail unsettles.
And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord. I am a woman of hard breath. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have poured out my living soul before the LORD.The Son of Man has come eating and drinking, and you say, Look, a gluttonous man and a wine drinker, a friend of tax collectors and of those who miss the mark!Do not judge by what the eye sees, but judge the judgment of alignment.THE THREAD
And it will come to pass in the last days, God says, I will pour out my breath upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams.The next verse names what the accusation misses: God’s breath is being poured out, and prophecy, visions, and dreams follow. It turns the denial in verse 15 into a hinge between the crowd’s outward reading and the event’s disclosed meaning.
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