What Does Acts 3:23 Mean?
And it will be that every living soul, who will not hear and respond to that prophet, will be destroyed from among the people.
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 it shall come to pass, that every soul, which will not hear that prophet, shall be destroyed from among the people.THE KEY
The Greek says “out” twice: refusal to hear meets a threat of utter removal from among the people.
THE MEANING
This verse addresses you as a whole living person: refusing to hear the prophet carries the stated consequence of utter destruction and removal from among the people. The sentence holds that threat in full view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a person can refuse the prophet and remain untouched among the people; the verse names destruction and removal.
THE ROOT
ἐξολεθρευθήσεται
exolethreuthēsetai
GROWS FROM
ὀλοθρευ-
olothreu-
To ruin or destroy utterly; the verb begins with a prefix meaning “out.”
“destroyed” in this verse is exolethreuthēsetai. The verb carries an out-prefix, and the sentence immediately says the person is removed from among the people. That repeated direction makes the warning’s end point explicit: utter destruction with separation from the people.
ALSO GROWS
olethros: Ruin, destruction
ὄλεθρος
This related noun gives the verse’s consequence the weight of ruin.
olothreuō: Destroy utterly
ὀλοθρεύω
This verb shares the base action carried into the verse’s future passive form.
ἀκούσῃ
akousē
GROWS FROM
ἀκου-
akou-
To hear, listen, or heed.
“hear and respond to” in this verse is akousē. The word family reaches from hearing and report to heeding and obeying, so hearing here is bound to response. Refusal to hear the prophet is more than sound failing to reach the ear; it is refusal of the spoken word.
ALSO GROWS
akoē: Hearing; a report or message
ἀκοή
The shared root links hearing with the message a person receives.
hypakouō: Heed, obey
ὑπακούω
This related verb carries the hearing-root into response, illuminating what refusal to hear entails.
ψυχή
psychē
GROWS FROM
ψυχ-
psych-
Life, the living self, or person.
“living soul” in this verse is psychē. Here “every soul” reaches every living person, keeping life and self together in the phrase. Each person is named individually and placed within the people from whom the verse says refusal cuts them off.
ALSO GROWS
psychikos: Natural; pertaining to the living self
ψυχικός
This related form helps show the word’s range around the living person, not only an inner abstraction.
oligopsychos: Fainthearted; literally, small-souled
ὀλιγόψυχος
This compound treats the living self as the whole person whose state can be described.
THE PATTERN
Refusing a prophetic word carries consequences that reach beyond private belief into a person’s standing before the people.
And it shall be that whoever does not hear and respond to my words, which he speaks in my nature, I myself seek it from him.The one who sets me aside and does not take in my words has the one who judges him. That same word I have spoken will judge him in the last day.How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a deliverance? It first began to be spoken through the Lord, and was made firm to us by those who heard him.THE THREAD
For Moses truly said to the fathers, The LORD your God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like me. You shall hear and respond to him in all things, whatever he says to you.The line just before names Moses’ promised prophet and says, “him shall ye hear.” The same Greek hear-root becomes the dividing point in the next verse, where refusal carries the threat of removal.
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