What Does Acts 25:12 Mean?
Then Festus, after speaking together with the council, answered, Have you called upon Caesar? To Caesar you shall go away.
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
Then Festus, when he had conferred with the council, answered, Hast thou appealed unto Cæsar? unto Cæsar shalt thou go.THE KEY
The Greek word for “appealed” means “called upon”: Caesar is both the one Paul calls upon and the destination Festus names.
THE MEANING
An appeal places a matter before the authority it names. Here, the call and its consequence meet: the authority invoked becomes the destination.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that an appeal is only a protest that cannot redirect where a case goes.
THE ROOT
ἐπικαλέσῃ
epikalēsē
GROWS FROM
καλέω
kaleō
To call or summon; with ἐπί (epi, “upon”), the verb means to call upon someone.
“Appealed” carries the image of calling upon a named authority. Festus echoes that call with “unto Cæsar,” making the one invoked the place Paul must go.
ALSO GROWS
klētos: called, invited
κλητός
This branch describes someone called or summoned; here, the appeal is directed toward the authority being called upon.
parakaleō: comfort, urge
παρακαλέω
The same calling root appears in words for urging or comforting; in this verse, the call takes the form of a formal appeal.
THE PATTERN
A call directed to an authority is joined to a consequence that follows from addressing that authority.
Then Festus, after speaking together with the council, answered, Have you called upon Caesar? To Caesar you shall go away.Call upon me in the day of the narrow place, and I draw you out, and you give me weight.For everyone who calls upon the nature of the LORD will be delivered.THE THREAD
For if I am acting out of alignment, and have done anything equal in weight to death, I do not turn aside from dying; but if there is none of these things of which these accuse me, no one may hand me over to them as a favor. I call upon Caesar.Paul’s appeal appears here first as his own declaration. The next verse echoes that call and makes its direction explicit: he is sent to the authority he appealed to.
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