What Does Acts 2:26 Mean?
So my heart rejoiced, and my tongue was glad, and my flesh will settle in hope.
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
Therefore did my heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad; moreover also my flesh shall rest in hope:THE KEY
Hope is not only what the heart feels; it is where the flesh is given a place to dwell.
THE MEANING
Your heart has joy, your tongue gives that joy voice, and your flesh has a future resting upon hope. The whole person, inner life, speech, and body, is included in that expectation.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Hope belongs only to the inner life, while the body has no share in it.
THE ROOT
κατασκηνώσει
kataskēnōsei
GROWS FROM
σκην-
skēn-
Tent, dwelling, or making a place to stay.
“settle” in this verse is kataskēnōsei. The verb rendered “rest” also carries the image of settling or lodging, from the Greek tent-and-dwelling word family. The verse lets rest be more than cessation: the flesh itself takes up residence upon hope, an image the English word can leave hidden.
ALSO GROWS
skēnē: Tent, tabernacle
σκηνή
This branch makes dwelling concrete: the body’s rest is pictured as having a place to stay.
skēnos: Tent, dwelling
σκῆνος
This related word is used for the body’s earthly dwelling in 2 Corinthians 5:1, where its tent imagery opens this verse further.
THE PATTERN
Hope reaches the body itself, making embodied life part of its promised future.
Therefore my heart is glad, and my weight leaps; my flesh also settles in leaning.And not only the creation, but we ourselves also, who hold the firstfruits of the breath, groan within ourselves, waiting for our placing as sons, the release of our body.Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus the Anointed One, who according to his great faithful love has birthed us again into a living hope through the rising of Jesus the Anointed One from the dead,THE THREAD
For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is taken down, we have a house built by God, not made by hands, of the ages, in the heavens.Acts uses κατασκηνώσει (kataskēnōsei, “shall dwell” or “pitch a tent”), from the σκην- (skēn-, “tent and dwelling”) word family; 2 Corinthians calls the earthly body a σκῆνος (skēnos, “tent” or “dwelling”). The shared image makes the flesh’s rest in hope sound like a habitation, not merely a pause.
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