What Does Acts 3:19 Mean?
Turn around, then, and turn back, so that your shortcomings may be wiped away, and the times of breathing again may come from the face of the LORD.
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
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;THE KEY
The paired turns lead to an erasure: the misses are wiped away, and refreshing comes from the Lord’s presence.
THE MEANING
Turning is both a reorientation and a return, and what misses the mark is wiped away. The verse locates refreshing in the Lord’s presence. Release and renewal belong to the same movement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a missed mark becomes an indelible identity: the verse describes these misses as something that can be wiped away.
THE ROOT
ἁμαρτίας
hamartias
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτάνω
hamartanō
To miss, err, or fail to reach.
“shortcomings” in this verse is hamartias. English “sins” can land as a fixed moral label, while hamartia names a miss. Here the misses are the very things wiped away, rather than a permanent name for the reader.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: To miss, err, or fail to reach.
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb names the action behind the noun: missing.
hamartēma: A miss, error, or failure.
ἁμάρτημα
This related noun keeps the focus on what has gone wrong as an act or result, rather than as an identity.
ἐπιστρέψατε
epistrepsate
GROWS FROM
στρέφω
strephō
To turn or turn around.
The Greek verb names a turn back, giving “be converted” the movement of return. Beside the verse’s first turning verb, it makes the response a reorientation and a return before the misses are wiped away.
ALSO GROWS
epistrophē: Return or turning back.
ἐπιστροφή
The related noun makes the return movement explicit.
apostrephō: Turn away or turn back.
ἀποστρέφω
Its compound uses the same turning root, showing how direction changes while the core movement remains turning.
ἐξαλειφθῆναι
exaleiphthēnai
GROWS FROM
ἀλείφω
aleiphō
To rub, smear, or apply; in the compound with ex-, to wipe away or erase.
The word carries the image of a trace being wiped away. The verse sets that erasure beside return and locates refreshing in the Lord’s presence.
ALSO GROWS
aleiphō: To anoint, rub, or apply oil.
ἀλείφω
This base verb preserves a physical rubbing sense beneath the English phrase “blotted out.”
exaleipsis: Wiping away or erasure.
ἐξάλειψις
This related noun names the removal itself, making the image of a mark erased explicit.
THE PATTERN
Scripture joins a turn toward God with the release of what has gone wrong and the arrival of renewal.
I have wiped away your rebellions like a thick cloud, and your missed marks like a cloud. Turn back to me, for I have bought you back.Or do you look down upon the fullness of his kindness, and the holding back, and the slowness to heat, not perceiving that the kindness of God leads you to turning?And he rose and came to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him, and his inward parts were moved, and he ran and fell upon his neck and kissed him.THE THREAD
I have wiped away your rebellions like a thick cloud, and your missed marks like a cloud. Turn back to me, for I have bought you back.In the Greek Septuagint, Isaiah uses the same word families for “blotted out” and “return” that Acts uses, and it names the objects as “sins” with the same hamartia word. Isaiah’s line makes the shared movement visible: return, wiping away, and redemption.
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