What Does Acts 5:10 Mean?
At once she fell at his feet and breathed out her living soul. And the young men came in and found her dead, and carrying her out, they buried her beside her husband.
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
Then fell she down straightway at his feet, and yielded up the ghost: and the young men came in, and found her dead, and, carrying her forth, buried her by her husband.THE KEY
The Greek verb translated “yielded up the ghost” belongs to the word-family of the living soul, so the verse names life departing and shows death in the body carried to burial.
THE MEANING
The scene reaches the reader in an unsoftened sequence: she falls at his feet, is found dead, is carried out, and is buried beside her husband. The Greek verb behind “yielded up the ghost” belongs to the word-family of ψυχή (psychē), “living soul,” while the rest of the verse keeps death physical and final.
THE ROOT
ἐξέψυξεν
exepsychen
GROWS FROM
ψυχ-
psych-
The ψυχ- word-family carries the sense of life or the living soul; the verb here means “expire, die.”
The verb ἐξέψυξεν (exepsychen), “expired, died,” belongs to the same word-family as ψυχή (psychē), “living soul.” “Ghost” can suggest an apparition, while this Greek family keeps the verse’s language close to life departing and the body being buried.
ALSO GROWS
psychē: Living soul; life.
ψυχή
This related noun makes the life-sense of the verb visible; the Septuagint uses it in Genesis 35:18 as Rachel’s soul departs.
psychikos: Natural; belonging to the living-soul life.
ψυχικός
This adjective from the same family appears as “natural” in 1 Corinthians 2:14, showing the family reaches beyond a word for dying.
THE PATTERN
Scripture speaks of life departing or returning in relation to the body while leaving bodily death plainly named.
And it came to pass, as her living soul was going out, for she died, that she called his name Benoni, son of my bowing low. And his father called him Benjamin, son of the right hand.And he stretched himself over the child three times, and cried out to the LORD, and said, O LORD my God, I pray you, let the living soul of this child return into him.For as the body without breath is dead, so trust without works is dead also.THE THREAD
And it came to pass, as her living soul was going out, for she died, that she called his name Benoni, son of my bowing low. And his father called him Benjamin, son of the right hand.The Greek Septuagint of Genesis uses ψυχή (psychē), “living soul,” where the KJV says “soul”, the noun at the center of the ψυχ- family behind ἐξέψυξεν. Rachel’s departing soul and Sapphira’s death meet in the same language for life, while both verses keep death concrete.
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