What Does Acts 26:10 Mean?
This I also did in Jerusalem. And many of the set-apart ones I shut in the guardhouse, having taken authority from the chief priests. And when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them.
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
Which thing I also did in Jerusalem: and many of the saints did I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I gave my voice against them.THE KEY
The Greek word rendered “voice” means a pebble and, by extension, a vote, making the speaker’s assent part of the machinery by which people are put to death.
THE MEANING
When authority reaches your hands, your choices remain yours: shutting people away and speaking for their death are actions you own. Here permission, confinement, and a vote against them form one chain; the institution does not absorb the person acting within it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that an authorized act belongs only to the authority that approved it.
THE ROOT
ψῆφον
psēphon
GROWS FROM
ψηφ-
psēph-
Pebble; by extension, the pebble used as a ballot or vote.
ψῆφος is not merely a sound: it names a pebble used as a ballot, and here the KJV’s “voice” carries the sense of a vote against the people being killed. The language places the speaker’s assent inside the act, rather than leaving it as commentary from the sidelines.
ALSO GROWS
psēphizō: Count, reckon, or vote.
ψηφίζω
This verb shares the pebble-and-voting root; it makes the “voice” in the verse legible as a decision with force.
psēphisma: Decree or formal decision.
ψήφισμα
This branch shows how a vote can become an official decision, connecting personal assent with institutional action.
ἐξουσίαν
exousian
GROWS FROM
ἐξουσι- (exousi-), related to ἔξεστιν (exestin)
Permission, right, or jurisdiction: what is allowed or within someone’s power.
The verse says this authority is received from the chief priests, while the imprisonment and vote remain the speaker’s actions. The word’s sense of permission shows how an institution’s authorization and a person’s choices meet in the same chain.
ALSO GROWS
exestin: It is permitted; it is possible or lawful.
ἔξεστιν
This related form makes the permission inside “authority” visible: authorization is given, while someone still acts with it.
exousiazō: Exercise authority over; have power over.
ἐξουσιάζω
This verb shows permission in action over others, as the verse moves from received authority to confinement and a vote.
κατέκλεισα
katékleisa
GROWS FROM
κλει- (klei-), from κλείω (kleiō)
Shut or close.
“shut in” in this verse is katékleisa. The verb makes confinement an action performed on people, not a condition that simply happens to them. Its related forms carry the same closing movement into shutting out or enclosing.
ALSO GROWS
apokleiō: Shut out; close off.
ἀποκλείω
This branch shows the same closing root used to exclude, illuminating what it means to shut people away.
synkleiō: Shut in; enclose.
συγκλείω
This branch makes the enclosing sense explicit, echoing the confinement named in the verse.
THE PATTERN
A human voice can move death from intention into public action.
Death and life are in the hand of the tongue, and those who love it eat its fruit.And letters were sent by the hand of the runners to all the king's provinces, to destroy, to kill, and to make perish all the Jews, young and old, little ones and women, on one day, the thirteenth day of the twelfth month, the month Adar, and to plunder their goods.But they cried out, Lift him away, lift him away, crucify him! Pilate said to them, Shall I crucify your King? The chief priests answered, We have no king but Caesar.THE THREAD
The one who has an ear, let him hear and respond to what the breath says to the assemblies. To the one who overcomes I will give to eat from the hidden manna, and I will give him a white pebble, and upon the pebble a new name written, which no one knows except the one who takes it.The same Greek word, ψῆφος, names the vote in Acts and the white stone in Revelation. Here the stone carries a hidden name to the one who receives it; that shared image makes the vote in Acts tangible, while Revelation’s stone is received rather than cast against another.
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