What Does Acts 23:13 Mean?
And they were more than forty who had made this twisting together.
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 they were more than forty which had made this conspiracy.THE KEY
More than forty conspirators are not merely gathered in one place: the Greek pictures them as having turned together toward a shared end.
THE MEANING
You see more than forty people joined in a conspiracy; their number makes the coordination impossible to miss. The verse holds their shared threat plainly in view, without softening it.
THE ROOT
συστραφέντες
systraphentes
GROWS FROM
στρεφ- (streph-, from στρέφω, strephō)
Turn or twist; joined with συν (syn, together), the word carries the sense of gathering together.
“twisting together” in this verse is systraphentes. The Greek συστραφέντες (systraphentes, those gathered together) is built on στρέφω (strephō, turn) with συν (syn, together). The word makes the verse’s number more than arithmetic: these people have turned into a coordinated group around one purpose.
ALSO GROWS
systrophē: A gathering or conspiracy.
συστροφή
This related noun appears in Acts 23:12, linking the conspiracy here to the group’s act of banding together there.
epistrephō: Turn back, return.
ἐπιστρέφω
It shows the same turning root can describe a change of direction; here the turn is collective and hostile.
THE PATTERN
Shared hostility gathers separate people into a coordinated force.
And when they saw him from afar, before he came near to them, they laid a snare against him to slay him.The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers sit down together against the LORD and against his anointed one, saying,For in truth, in this city, against your set-apart servant Jesus, whom you anointed, Herod and Pontius Pilate were gathered together with the nations and the peoples of Israel,THE THREAD
When day came, certain of the Jews twisted themselves together and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink until they had lifted Paul out of the way.Acts 23:12 uses συστροφή (systrophē, gathering or conspiracy), from the same συν (syn, together) and στρέφω (strephō, turn) family as συστραφέντες (systraphentes, those gathered together) here. That verse reveals the gathering’s stated aim: they bind themselves to neither eat nor drink until Paul is killed.
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