What Does Acts 4:2 Mean?
They were worn through because they taught the people and announced in Jesus the standing up from the dead.
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
Being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead.THE KEY
Acts uses the word for a standing up when it names resurrection: death is a place the living can rise out of, not the final posture.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now wherever a life or future has been called finished: in Jesus, the dead are named as those who can stand again. It holds resistance alongside that announcement, showing how words that open new life can disturb the present order.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that death has the final word: the message here names a rising out from among the dead in Jesus.
THE ROOT
ἀνάστασιν
anastasin
GROWS FROM
στα
στα (sta): stand; be set upright.
The word carries the act of standing in its own form: resurrection is a standing up, not a vague survival. Paired with “from the dead,” it names a rising out from among the dead.
ALSO GROWS
anistēmi: to stand up, rise
ἀνίστημι
This verb shares the standing root and makes the movement inside “resurrection” visible.
stasis: a standing, position, or uprising
στάσις
This related form shows the same root describing a stance or rising.
יֵשׁוּעַ
Yeshua
GROWS FROM
ישע
ישע (yashaʿ): deliver; bring out of constriction into spaciousness.
The name Jesus comes through Greek from Hebrew Yeshua, built from the root of deliverance. The verse places resurrection within that name’s nature: standing up from among the dead is deliverance itself.
ALSO GROWS
yashaʿ: to deliver, rescue, bring out of distress
יָשַׁע
This verb shares the name’s root and shows the movement of deliverance carried in Yeshua.
yeshuʿah: deliverance, rescue
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun names the same root movement as an outcome, connecting the name to the resurrection announced here.
καταγγέλλειν
katangellein
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ
ἀγγελ (angel): announce; carry a report.
“announced” in this verse is katangellein. The verb for preaching belongs to the same word family as messenger and message: this is an announcement carried into public hearing. Its content here is resurrection, and its setting is Jesus.
ALSO GROWS
angéllō: to announce, report
ἀγγέλλω
This verb shares the root and shows that preaching is an act of announcement.
ángelos: messenger
ἄγγελος
This related noun names one who carries an announcement, illuminating the public proclamation in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Resurrection is pictured as a standing-up that carries the dead into renewed life.
So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood up upon their feet, a very great army.Truly, truly, I say to you, The hour is coming, and now it is, when the dead will hear and respond to the voice of the Son of God, and those who respond will live.So we were laid in the ground with him through immersion into death, that as the Anointed One was raised from the dead through the weight of the Father, so also we might walk in newness of life.THE THREAD
Jesus said to her, I am the rising, and the life. Whoever leans their weight into me, even if they die, will live.John uses the same Greek noun ἀνάστασις (anastasis, “standing up”) when Jesus names himself the resurrection. Acts names resurrection as the message proclaimed in Jesus; John joins the message and its source in the same word.
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