What Does Acts 20:9 Mean?
And a certain young man named Eutychus sat on the windowsill, borne down by a deep sleep as Paul talked on and on; sinking under the sleep, he fell from the third loft, and was lifted up dead.
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 there sat in a window a certain young man named Eutychus, being fallen into a deep sleep: and as Paul was long preaching, he sunk down with sleep, and fell down from the third loft, and was taken up dead.THE KEY
The Greek says sleep bears him down twice before he falls from the building: the collapse begins as a carrying before it becomes a fall.
THE MEANING
The verse keeps the body in full view: a young man sits at a window, is overcome by deep sleep during Paul’s extended speaking, falls from the third loft, and is taken up dead. Before the fall, the Greek describes him as borne down by sleep, then borne down out of sleep; the scene names the body’s collapse without explaining it away.
THE ROOT
καταφερόμενος
katapheromenos
GROWS FROM
φερ-
pher-
to bear, carry, or bring
“being fallen / sunk down” in this verse is katapheromenos. The Greek uses the same compound verb twice: first he is being carried down under sleep, then carried down out of sleep. The KJV renders these as “fallen into” and “sunk down with”; the repeated carrying image makes sleep itself a downward force before the final fall.
ALSO GROWS
pherō: bear, carry, bring
φέρω
This is the core verb beneath the image of the young man being borne down.
katapherō: carry down, bear down
καταφέρω
This compound appears in both descents in the Greek: sleep bears him down, and then he is borne down from sleep.
Εὔτυχος
Eutychos
GROWS FROM
τυχ-
tych-
fortune, chance, what happens; with εὖ (eu), “well,” the name means “fortunate” or “well-fated”
“Eutychus” in this verse is Eutychos. His name carries the sense of “fortunate” into a scene where he is taken up dead. The name and the event sit in sharp tension, though the verse does not explain the name as a prediction.
ALSO GROWS
tychē: fortune, chance
τύχη
This noun supplies the fortune element in Eutychus’s name.
tynchanō: happen, obtain, meet with
τυγχάνω
This related verb carries the sense of what happens or comes to someone, grounding the name’s language of fortune.
THE PATTERN
When a body lies at the edge of death, the story keeps life in view through a concrete return to bodily presence.
And the LORD heard and responded to the voice of Elijah, and the living soul of the child returned into him, and he lived.Then he returned, and walked back and forth in the house, and went up, and bent himself over him. And the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.And at once the little girl rose and walked, for she was twelve years old. And they were beside themselves beyond measure.THE THREAD
And Paul came down and fell upon him, and enfolding him, said, "Do not make an uproar, for his living soul is in him."The verb translated “fell” returns when Paul “fell on him”: both forms share the Greek root πίπτω (piptō), to fall. The repeated root makes the response bodily and immediate, while Paul’s words place life inside the body the preceding verse reports as dead.
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