What Does Acts 21:22 Mean?
What then is it? The crowd must come together, for they will hear that you have come.
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
What is it therefore? the multitude must needs come together: for they will hear that thou art come.THE KEY
The Greek uses the same verb for “come together” and “art come”: the crowd’s gathering is the arrival spreading outward.
THE MEANING
Once word reaches others that you have arrived, the crowd’s gathering is already in motion. Hearing does not stay private here; it carries the fact of your presence outward until people come together.
THE ROOT
συνελθεῖν
synelthein
GROWS FROM
ἔρχομαι
erchomai
To come, go, or arrive.
“come together” in this verse is synelthein. English separates the crowd’s gathering from the news of your arrival. Greek repeats the root ἔρχομαι (erchomai): συνέρχομαι (sunerchomai) adds “together” to coming, while ἐλήλυθας (elēlythas) names an arrival already completed; the crowd’s convergence follows that arrival.
ALSO GROWS
sunerchomai: To come together; assemble.
συνέρχομαι
The prefix συν- (syn, “together”) turns individual coming into the crowd’s shared movement.
elēlythas: You have come; you have arrived.
ἐλήλυθας
This perfect form of ἔρχομαι describes a completed arrival whose presence still matters now.
erchomenos: Coming; the one who comes.
ἐρχόμενος
This form keeps the same root’s sense of movement toward arrival.
THE PATTERN
Hearing and gathering draw people into a shared encounter.
Assemble the people, the men, the women, and the little ones, and the sojourner within your gates, so that they may hear and respond, and so that they may learn, and be struck with awe of the LORD your God, and guard to do all the words of this instruction;When this voice arose, the crowd came together and was poured into confusion, because each one heard them speaking in his own tongue.THE THREAD
When this voice arose, the crowd came together and was poured into confusion, because each one heard them speaking in his own tongue.The Greek phrase “came together” here uses the same verb, συνέρχομαι (sunerchomai), rooted in ἔρχομαι (erchomai), as “come together” in Acts 21:22. Both verses show hearing linked to a multitude gathering.
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