What Does Acts 2:47 Mean?
Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the assembly each day those who were being delivered.
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
Praising God, and having favour with all the people. And the Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.THE KEY
Deliverance here is not a private escape: the Lord keeps placing those being brought out into a shared life.
THE MEANING
Praise and favor surround an ongoing movement: the Lord adds to the assembly those being delivered, day after day. Deliverance is not pictured as a solitary status; it unfolds within a gathered life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It dissolves the idea that deliverance can only be private or solitary: here, the ones being delivered are also gathered into the assembly.
THE ROOT
προσετίθει
prosetithei
GROWS FROM
τίθημι
tithēmi
to put, place, or set
“added” in this verse is prosetithei. The verb combines a prefix meaning “toward” or “to” with a root meaning “put” or “place,” so addition also carries the sense of placement into a relation. The Lord’s daily adding is more than a growing number: the people being delivered are set among the assembly.
ALSO GROWS
tithēmi: put, place, set
τίθημι
This root makes the act of adding visible as placing people within a shared gathering.
epitithēmi: put upon, lay upon
ἐπιτίθημι
This related compound keeps the same placing-root, echoing the verse’s concrete sense of people being set into a larger whole.
σωζομένους
sōzomenous
GROWS FROM
σώζω
sōzō
to deliver, rescue, preserve
The Greek form presents people in the process of being delivered. Beside the verb for adding or placing, it shows deliverance unfolding as people are gathered into the assembly.
ALSO GROWS
sōtēria: deliverance, rescue
σωτηρία
This noun names the deliverance that is unfolding in the people described here.
sōtēr: deliverer, rescuer
σωτήρ
This related word names the one who brings about deliverance, highlighting the Lord’s action in the verse.
THE PATTERN
God’s deliverance gathers people into shared life, setting them within a community.
God settles the lone ones into households; he brings out the bound ones in chains; but the ones who turn away dwell in a parched land.Then those who gladly took his word in were immersed, and that day about three thousand living souls were added to them.But now God has set the limbs, each one of them, in the body, as he willed.THE THREAD
But now God has set the limbs, each one of them, in the body, as he willed.The word translated “set” shares the same Greek placing-root found in “added.” Together, the verses reveal addition as God placing people within a living body.
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