What Does Acts 4:22 Mean?
For the man was more than forty years old, and this sign of healing had come to be upon 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
For the man was above forty years old, on whom this miracle of healing was shewed.THE KEY
The healed man himself becomes the sign: restoration is visible in the person it touches.
THE MEANING
The verse places the man’s age beside the healing shown on him, making the restoration concrete and visible. Healing here is not only reported; the person himself is where the sign can be seen.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that a visible condition is necessarily permanent.
THE ROOT
ἰάσεως
iaseōs
GROWS FROM
ἰα-
The Greek ἰα- word family centers on healing or curing.
The word translated “healing” is ἴασις (iasis, healing), from the same family as ἰάομαι (iaomai, to heal). English gives the restoration a noun, while the related verb shows the same root in action: healing is something that happens to a person, and here it becomes visible as a sign.
ALSO GROWS
iaomai: to heal, to cure
ἰάομαι
This verb names the healing action behind the noun in Acts 4:22.
iasis: healing, cure
ἴασις
This is the noun used in the verse, naming the restoration shown on the man.
THE PATTERN
When restoration becomes visible, the changed life itself can serve as a sign.
Then the limping one leaps like a hart, and the tongue of the mute rings out. For waters split open in the wilderness, and streams in the desert plain.And he said to him, Go, wash in the pool of Siloam, the Sent. So he went and washed, and came seeing.And by leaning full weight on his nature, his nature has made this man strong, whom you see and know. Yes, the full-weight leaning which comes through him has given him this complete wholeness in the face of you all.THE THREAD
And the crowds, when they knew it, followed him, and he received them, and spoke to them of the governance of God, and healed those who had need of healing.Luke 9:11 uses ἰάομαι (iaomai, to heal), from the same Greek word family as ἴασις (iasis, healing) in Acts 4:22. The noun names healing as a sign; the verb shows that same root in motion.
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