What Does Acts 2:4 Mean?
And they were all filled with the Set-Apart Breath, and began to speak in other tongues, as the breath gave them to speak out.
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 they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and began to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance.THE KEY
“Holy Ghost” and “Spirit” translate the same Greek word, pneuma: the breath that fills them is the breath that gives them speech.
THE MEANING
The breath of God fills the gathered people and becomes speech through them. What they receive within moves outward as utterance, including words beyond the languages they already speak.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that divine presence must remain inward and wordless dissolves here: the breath is present in the speech it gives.
THE ROOT
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνέω
pnéō
To blow or breathe; pneuma means breath, wind, or spirit.
“Set-Apart Breath” in this verse is pneuma. The KJV renders the first πνεῦμα as “Holy Ghost” and the second as “Spirit,” but the Greek repeats one word. Its range lets the verse hold breath, wind, and spirit together: the same pneuma fills the people and gives their utterance.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: To blow or breathe.
πνέω
This verb reveals the breath and wind within pneuma, the word repeated in the verse.
pnoē: Breath or a blowing.
πνοή
In Acts 2:2, this related word describes the sound like a rushing mighty wind, echoing the breath that fills and gives speech here.
THE PATTERN
The divine breath fills people and becomes expression through them.
And the LORD came down in a cloud, and spoke with him, and took from the breath that was upon him and set it upon the seventy elders. And when the breath settled upon them, they prophesied and did not stop.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 when they had prayed, the place where they were gathered was shaken, and they were all filled with the Set-Apart Breath and spoke the word of God with boldness.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 same Greek word, πνεῦμα (pneuma, breath, wind, spirit), appears in both verses. Acts 2:17 opens the reach of that breath: it is poured out upon all flesh, and speech, vision, and dreaming emerge.
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