What Does Acts 2:17 Mean?
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.
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 it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:THE KEY
God’s breath is poured across all human flesh, appearing through women and men, young and old, not reserved for a single kind of person.
THE MEANING
God’s breath reaches all human flesh; it is expressed through sons and daughters speaking, young people seeing, and old people dreaming. No sex or generation holds a monopoly on these forms of perception.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that God’s voice belongs only to men, elders, or a chosen few gives way: the verse names daughters and young people among those who speak and see.
THE ROOT
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνευ-
pneu-
The word family of breathing and blowing; πνεῦμα can mean breath, wind, or spirit.
English separates what Greek holds in one word: the breath poured out is also the Spirit. The verse says this breath reaches all flesh and takes expression in speech, visions, and dreams.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: to blow or breathe
πνέω
This verb makes the movement inside pneuma audible: the Spirit is named with the language of breath and wind.
pnoē: breath or a blowing
πνοή
Acts 2:2 uses this related word for the rushing wind, linking the breath of Acts 2:17 to the wind that fills the house.
σάρκα
sarka
GROWS FROM
σαρκ-
sark-
Flesh: bodily human life.
The breath rests upon sarx, the word for flesh, not a separate spiritual class. The verse then names different bodies and life stages as recipients and speakers.
ALSO GROWS
sarkinos: made of flesh
σάρκινος
This related form keeps the material, embodied sense of flesh in view.
sarkikos: fleshly or pertaining to flesh
σαρκικός
Its shared stem makes clear that the verse’s ‘all flesh’ concerns human life in its bodily condition.
προφητεύσουσιν
prophēteusousin
GROWS FROM
προφητ-
prophēt-
The Greek word family for prophetic speaking or declaration.
“will prophesy” in this verse is prophēteusousin. The promise does not describe the sons and daughters only as receivers: they themselves speak. In the same word family, the action, the prophet, and prophecy belong together.
ALSO GROWS
prophētēs: prophet
προφήτης
The related noun names the person who speaks prophetically, including the sons and daughters named here.
prophēteia: prophecy
προφητεία
This noun names the prophetic speech itself, the expression the verse says comes through many people.
THE PATTERN
When God gives the breath, it crosses boundaries of status and people and becomes visible through many voices.
And Moses said to him, "Are you burning for my sake? Would that all the LORD's people were prophets, and that the LORD would set his breath upon them!"And it shall be afterward, that I will pour out my breath upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your elders will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.And those of the circumcision who trusted were beside themselves, as many as came with Peter, because the gift of the Set-Apart Breath had been poured out upon the Gentiles also.THE THREAD
And when he had said this, he breathed into them, and said to them, Take in the Set-Apart Breath.Acts names the gift pneuma, the same Greek word that carries the meanings breath, wind, and spirit. John makes that connection visible as Jesus breathes on them and names the gift as the Holy Ghost.
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