What Does Acts 4:30 Mean?
By stretching out your hand to heal, and by signs and wonders coming to be through the nature of your set-apart servant Jesus."
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
By stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus.THE KEY
A stretched hand makes Jesus’ nature visible: deliverance takes form as healing.
THE MEANING
God’s hand reaches toward healing, and signs and wonders take shape through Jesus’ nature. Restoration and revelation move together here: healing makes deliverance visible.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that a sign is spectacle detached from restoration: here, healing and signs arise through the same nature of Jesus.
THE ROOT
ὄνομα
onoma
GROWS FROM
ὀνομα-
Name; by extension, identity or recognized character.
The verse says signs come through the name, the identity and authority represented by Jesus. His Greek name Ἰησοῦς (Iēsous, Jesus) reflects Hebrew יֵשׁוּעַ (Yeshua, deliverance), from יָשַׁע (yasha, to deliver); the name’s nature is deliverance reaching the body.
ALSO GROWS
onomazō: To name or designate.
ὀνομάζω
The same name-family extends from the name itself to the act of naming.
epōnymia: A name or title.
ἐπωνυμία
This related form keeps the focus on the identity carried by a name.
ἐκτείνειν
ekteinein
GROWS FROM
τειν-
Stretch or extend.
“stretching out” in this verse is ekteinein. The hand is not passive: the verb pictures extension toward the need before the healing. Restoration appears as an active reaching, not a distant idea.
ALSO GROWS
teinō: To stretch or extend.
τείνω
This verb shares the root’s basic image of reaching outward.
ektasis: Extension or stretching.
ἔκτασις
This related noun carries the same movement into extended form.
ἴασιν
iasin
GROWS FROM
ἰα-
Healing or curing.
“heal” in this verse is iasin. The hand is stretched toward healing as its destination. The word-family keeps the act of healing beside the healer, showing that the sign accompanies concrete restoration.
ALSO GROWS
iaomai: To heal or cure.
ἰάομαι
The verb names the healing action that the outstretched hand serves.
iatros: Physician or healer.
ἰατρός
The related word names one who carries out the healing.
THE PATTERN
God’s healing reaches into embodied need, and its restoration becomes visible through divine action.
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.And when he had looked around at them with swelling anger, pained together over the stoniness of their hearts, he said to the man, Stretch out your hand. And he stretched it out, and his hand was set back in place, whole as the other.THE THREAD
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.Acts 3:16 says strength and full soundness come through the name of Jesus. The same Greek word, ὄνομα (onoma, name), appears in both verses: the nature carried by the name becomes visible as healing.
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