What Does Acts 3:21 Mean?
Whom the heaven must take in until the times of setting upright again of all things, which God has spoken through the mouth of his set-apart prophets from the ages.
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
Whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.THE KEY
The verse’s “restitution” carries the image of all things being set back into place.
THE MEANING
The promise spoken through the prophets stands over your present: this period has a horizon, and heaven receives Jesus until the appointed times of restoration come. What appears disordered is not given the last word; the verse names the restoration’s scope as all things.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that present disorder is permanent loses its footing: the verse places all things within a promised restoration.
THE ROOT
ἀποκαταστάσεως
apokatastaseōs
GROWS FROM
ἀποκαθίστημι
apokathistēmi
Restore, re-establish, or bring back into place.
“setting upright again” in this verse is apokatastaseōs. The word translated “restitution” belongs to a verb family that describes restoring something to its place. The same family appears as an action in the promise to restore all things, giving this verse’s “all things” the sense of a restoration reaching its full scope.
ALSO GROWS
apokathistēmi: Restore or bring back to a former condition.
ἀποκαθίστημι
This verb names restoration as an action in Mark 9:12 and Acts 1:6.
kathistēmi: Set, appoint, or establish.
καθίστημι
As part of the compound word family, it adds the image of things being set into place.
αἰῶνος
aiōnos
GROWS FROM
αἰών
aiōn
An age, era, or span of time.
“from the ages” in this verse is aiōnos. The wording rendered “since the world began” uses the word for an age, with the sense “from of old” or “from the age.” It places the prophetic promise across a long span of time, while the restoration itself has appointed times.
ALSO GROWS
aiōnios: Age-related; belonging to or pertaining to an age.
αἰώνιος
This related form carries the age-language into descriptions of what belongs to an age.
aiōnes: Ages or spans of time.
αἰῶνες
The plural form makes the age-language visible as a sequence of time-spans.
THE PATTERN
God’s restoration reaches into what has been lost or disordered and brings it back toward wholeness.
And I will make whole for you the years that the locust has eaten, the lapper, the gnawer, and the shearer, my great army which I sent among you.And he answered and said to them, Elijah indeed comes first, and sets all things back in place. And how is it written of the Son of Man, that he must suffer many things and be made nothing?But the God of all favor, who called you into his weight of the ages in the Anointed One, after you have suffered for a little while, will himself mend you, steady you, strengthen you, and lay your foundation.THE THREAD
So when they had come together, they asked him, saying, Lord, will you at this time stand the governance back up for Israel?The same Greek verb family names the action in Acts 1:6 that this verse names as “restitution”: restoration is a setting back into place. Acts 1:6 makes the horizon concrete by asking what will be restored and when.
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