What Does Acts 22:15 Mean?
For you will be his witness to all humankind, of what you have seen and heard.
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
For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.THE KEY
A witness is not built from theory; it carries outward what has already been seen and heard.
THE MEANING
What you have truly seen and heard becomes testimony through you. That witness reaches beyond private experience, extending to all people. The verse holds receiving and bearing witness together.
THE ROOT
μάρτυς
martys
GROWS FROM
μαρτυρ-
martyr-
The Greek word family for witness and testimony: bearing evidence to what is known.
This word family connects the witness, the act of testifying, and the testimony itself. The verse grounds that witness in what has been seen and heard, then carries it outward to all people.
ALSO GROWS
martyreō: to testify, bear witness
μαρτυρέω
Shows witness as an act: what is received is spoken or demonstrated.
martyria: testimony, witness
μαρτυρία
Names the evidence that takes shape from the witness’s testimony.
THE PATTERN
What is received through seeing and hearing becomes testimony that can be carried outward.
You are my witnesses, says the LORD, and my servant, whom I have chosen, so that you may perceive and lean your weight on me, and understand that I AM. Before me no God was shaped, and behind me there shall be none.But you will take hold of power when the Set-Apart Breath comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the farthest edge of the ground.That which we have perceived and heard, we declare to you, so that you also may share in common with us. And truly our sharing in common is with the Father, and with his Son, Jesus, the Anointed One.THE THREAD
But you will take hold of power when the Set-Apart Breath comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the farthest edge of the ground.Acts 1:8 uses the same Greek witness word family, joining the witness’s identity with the reach of the testimony. Acts 22:15 names what grounds that witness: what has been seen and heard.
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