What Does Acts 27:5 Mean?
And when we had sailed across the sea of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came down to Myra, a city of Lycia.
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 when we had sailed over the sea of Cilicia and Pamphylia, we came to Myra, a city of Lycia.THE KEY
The Greek says they came down to Myra, giving the arrival a direction that the English “came to” leaves unseen.
THE MEANING
The route has direction before arrival: a crossing happens, then a specific place is reached. When you are still in transit, the movement is already underway and carrying you somewhere.
THE ROOT
κατήλθομεν
katēlthomen
GROWS FROM
ἔρχομαι
To come or go; with κατά (katá, “down”), this form means “came down.”
“came down to” in this verse is katēlthomen. The KJV gives the destination but leaves out the downward motion in the Greek verb. The arrival is not just reaching Myra; it is described as coming down to it.
ALSO GROWS
eisérchomai: to enter, go in
εἰσέρχομαι
The same coming-and-going root, with εἰς (eis, “into”), marks movement into a place; here κατά (katá, “down”) gives the arrival its direction.
exérchomai: to go out, depart
ἐξέρχομαι
With ἐκ (ek, “out of”), the same root marks departure; its direction changes with the prefix.
διαπλεύσαντες
diapleusantes
GROWS FROM
πλέω
To sail; διά (diá, “through” or “across”) marks passage across.
“sailed across” in this verse is diapleusantes. The Greek holds together sailing and crossing: the sea is something they sail through. The same sailing root appears in words for a ship and a voyage, keeping the movement itself in view.
ALSO GROWS
ploíon: ship, boat
πλοῖον
A ship is the vessel that carries the action of sailing named by πλέω (pléō).
ploûs: voyage, sailing
πλοῦς
This word names the sailing journey itself, the movement expressed in “sailed over.”
THE PATTERN
A crossing through water is marked by the place reached on its far side.
And the children of Israel came into the midst of the sea on the dry ground, and the waters were a wall to them, on their right hand and on their left.And when they had crossed over, they came onto the land of Gennesaret.THE THREAD
Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and heralded the Anointed One to them.Acts 8:5 uses the same Greek verb, κατέρχομαι (katérchomai, “come down”), that appears in Acts 27:5. Here the KJV preserves the descent explicitly as “went down,” opening the directional sense hidden in “came to.”
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