What Does Acts 26:6 Mean?
And now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made by God to our fathers.
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 now I stand and am judged for the hope of the promise made of God unto our fathers:THE KEY
The word for standing trial shares a root family with resurrection, binding present standing and promised rising together.
THE MEANING
Judgment and hope occupy the same present: scrutiny can surround you while God’s promised future remains your ground. What is spoken to the fathers still reaches you as living hope.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that being judged means the promise has failed: here, the hope of God’s promise is precisely what stands under judgment.
THE ROOT
ἕστηκα
hestēka
GROWS FROM
στα-/στη- (sta-/stē-), from ἵστημι (histēmi)
To stand, set, or place firmly.
The word translated “stand” is ἕστηκα (hestēka, “I stand”), from ἵστημι (histēmi, “stand, set”). The same root family forms ἀνάστασις (anastasis, “rising, resurrection”): this verse places standing under judgment beside the promised rising from death.
ALSO GROWS
anastasis: A rising or standing up; the Greek word used for resurrection.
ἀνάστασις
It shares the standing root and makes the hope in this verse more than an undefined future.
anistēmi: To rise or cause someone to stand up.
ἀνίστημι
This related verb gives the promise a bodily shape: what is hoped for is a rising.
ἐπαγγελία
epangelia
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ- (angel-), through ἐπαγγέλλομαι (epangellomai)
To announce, report, or make known.
The Greek word for promise belongs to the language of announcing and declaring. The hope has an object and a speaker: it rests on a future God has spoken.
ALSO GROWS
angellō: To announce or make a message known.
ἀγγέλλω
The promise carries the force of a declared word, not an unspoken wish.
angelos: One who carries or delivers a message.
ἄγγελος
This related word shows the announcement root moving through a messenger; here the promise is made by God.
THE PATTERN
God’s promise carries hope across generations and holds its future open under present pressure.
And I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse, and in you all the families of the ground will be blessed.He did not split in two at the promise of God through not leaning his full weight, but was made strong in trust, giving weight to God.In this, God, desiring all the more to point out to the heirs of the promise the unshifting of his purpose, placed himself in the middle with an oath.THE THREAD
But when Paul perceived that one portion was Sadducees and the other the separated ones, he cried out in the seated council, "Men and brothers, I am one of the separated ones, a son of the separated ones. Concerning hope and the standing up from the dead, I am being judged."Acts 23:6 names this hope as resurrection: ἀνάστασις (anastasis, “rising, resurrection”) shares the στα-/στη- root with ἕστηκα (hestēka, “I stand”) in Acts 26:6. Present standing under judgment and the promised rising belong to one movement.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us