What Does Acts 28:20 Mean?
For this cause therefore I have urged you, to see you and to speak with you, because of the hope of Israel I am encircled by this chain.
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
For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain.THE KEY
The chain is not proof that hope has failed; here, hope is named as the very reason the chain is there.
THE MEANING
Your present hope and your present confinement can both be real. The hope of Israel remains weighty enough to shape the conversation you seek, even while the chain is named without disguise.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that real hope must first make visible constraints disappear; here, hope and binding occupy the same sentence.
THE ROOT
ἐλπίς
elpís
GROWS FROM
ἐλπ-
elp-
expectation; what is awaited
The Greek word carries expectation, not merely a private wish. Its word family includes hoping and hoping beforehand, showing hope as an orientation toward what is awaited while the present remains unfinished.
ALSO GROWS
elpízō: to hope, to expect
ἐλπίζω
This verb makes hope an active expectation, illuminating why it can shape the speaker’s appeal even while he is bound.
proelpízō: to hope beforehand
προελπίζω
This related verb names expectation that precedes fulfillment, matching the verse’s hope held alongside present constraint.
THE PATTERN
Scriptural hope can orient present life while its fulfillment remains unseen.
For you are the cord I am stretched toward, my Lord, the LORD; you are the one I lean on from my youth.For in hope we have been delivered; but hope that is seen is not hope, for why would anyone still hope for what he sees?This hope we hold as an anchor of the living soul, both unstumbling and firm, and it goes in to what lies within the curtain.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."This verse joins hope to the resurrection of the dead, giving the hope of Israel a concrete horizon. The hope named here is the same hope that stands beside the chain in Acts 28:20.
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