What Does Acts 3:10 Mean?
And they knew that it was he who sat for gifts at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, and they were filled with wonder and beside themselves at what had happened to him.
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 they knew that it was he which sat for alms at the Beautiful gate of the temple: and they were filled with wonder and amazement at that which had happened unto him.THE KEY
The astonishing part is that the healed man is still unmistakably the person they knew at the gate.
THE MEANING
The people recognize the man by where he sat, and that same familiar person now confronts them with a change they cannot explain away. His past condition remains part of what they know, but it does not contain all that is true of him now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
You can only ever be known as the need or limitation others remember.
THE ROOT
ἐπεγίνωσκον
epeginōskon
GROWS FROM
γινώσκω
ginōskō
To know or recognize through acquaintance and perception.
“knew, recognized” in this verse is epeginōskon. The verb carries the sense of recognizing someone they already know, not merely noticing a stranger. Their memory of him at the gate meets the person standing before them now.
ALSO GROWS
ginōskō: Know, perceive.
γινώσκω
This is the underlying verb: their recognition rests on knowing the man from before.
gnōsis: Knowledge, knowing.
γνῶσις
It shares the same word family, linking recognition to knowledge gained through contact.
epignōsis: Recognition, fuller knowledge.
ἐπίγνωσις
This related form echoes the moment when what they know of him meets the new reality they see.
ἐκστάσεως
ekstaseōs
GROWS FROM
ἵστημι
histēmi
Stand; with ἐκ (ek), the compound evokes standing outside or being displaced from one’s usual position.
“beside themselves” in this verse is ekstaseōs. The Greek word for amazement carries an image of being thrown out of one’s ordinary stance. The crowd’s familiar picture of the man can no longer hold what they are seeing.
ALSO GROWS
histēmi: Stand, set in place.
ἵστημι
This is the verbal root within the word’s image of a position being unsettled.
existēmi: Displace; amaze or be beside oneself.
ἐξίστημι
This related verb shows the movement from an established position into astonishment.
stasis: A standing, position.
στάσις
It makes the word’s image concrete: their settled understanding is displaced by what has happened.
THE PATTERN
A changed condition becomes undeniable when others recognize the same person beyond the state by which they knew them.
And it was, when all who had known him before saw that he prophesied among the prophets, that the people said to one another, "What is this that has come to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?"So the neighbors, and those who had seen him before as one who was blind, said, Is this not the one who sat and begged? Some said, This is he. Others said, He is like him. But he said, I am he.Then they went out to see what had happened, and came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and whole in his mind, and they were afraid.THE THREAD
Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and grasped that they were unlettered and ordinary men, they marveled, and they knew them, that they had been with Jesus.Acts 4:13 uses the same Greek verb, ἐπιγινώσκω (epiginōskō): the council recognizes Peter and John by their association with Jesus. Here the crowd recognizes the healed man against the memory of his place at the gate; in both scenes, recognition joins familiar sight to a newly visible truth.
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