What Does Acts 22:7 Mean?
And I fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to me, Saul, Saul, why do you pursue me?
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 I fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?THE KEY
The voice Saul is pursuing identifies itself as the one being pursued.
THE MEANING
The verse places the reader in a direct encounter: the one being pursued is not separate from the voice speaking. What is done to the pursued reaches the speaker personally, in the force of the word “me.” The question makes that relationship present and immediate.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that harm can be aimed at someone without reaching the one who identifies with them is undone.
THE ROOT
διώκεις
diōkeis
GROWS FROM
διώκω
diōkō
To pursue or chase; in a hostile context, to persecute.
“pursue” in this verse is diōkeis. English “persecute” can sound like a fixed category of harm, while the Greek keeps the motion of pursuit audible. The same word family names the pursuit itself and the pursuer, placing both the action and its agent inside the voice’s question.
ALSO GROWS
diōgmos: Pursuit; persecution.
διωγμός
This names the pursuit itself, making persecution part of the same word family as the act Saul is carrying out.
diōktēs: Pursuer; persecutor.
διώκτης
This names the agent of the pursuit, linking the pursuer to the same root as the action.
THE PATTERN
The one who speaks identifies with those being harmed, so what is done to them is addressed as harm to the speaker.
For thus says the LORD of hosts. After the weight, he has sent me to the nations that plundered you, for whoever touches you touches the pupil of his eye.And the King answers and says to them, Truly, I say to you, Whatever you did to one of the least of these my brothers, you did to me.And he fell to the ground, and heard a voice saying to him, Saul, Saul, why do you pursue me?THE THREAD
Flourishing are you when they revile you, and pursue you, and speak every evil word against you, lying, for my sake.The verb translated “persecute” in both passages belongs to the same Greek root, διώκω (diōkō), meaning “to pursue or chase.” Matthew names that pursuit as being “for my sake”; Acts 22:7 reveals the closeness in that phrase when the voice calls the pursued “me.”
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