What Does Acts 5:14 Mean?
More and more were added, those who lean their weight on the Lord, multitudes of both men and women.
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 believers were the more added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women.)THE KEY
Trust here is not a label people wear; it is the movement by which a growing multitude is joined to the Lord.
THE MEANING
You are named here not as an isolated believer but within a multitude of women and men joined to the Lord. Trust is a living attachment, and belonging takes shape among others.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that trust leaves you alone is undone here: believers are described as a growing multitude joined to the Lord.
THE ROOT
προσετίθεντο
prosetithento
GROWS FROM
τίθημι
tithēmi
To set or place; with προσ- (pros-, toward or in addition), to add or place toward.
The word for “added” grows from the idea of setting or placing, so the verse presents belonging as more than an increase in numbers. People are being placed in relation to the Lord.
ALSO GROWS
prosthekē: Something added.
προσθήκη
This branch makes visible the shared root behind the verse’s language of people being added.
epitithēmi: To place something on or upon something else.
ἐπιτίθημι
The same seed of setting or placing helps reveal the relational movement carried by “added to the Lord.”
πιστεύοντες
pisteuontes
GROWS FROM
πείθω
peithō
To persuade or convince; to be persuaded and come to trust.
“those who lean their weight on” in this verse is pisteuontes. The Greek describes people as trusting, not merely as members of a category or holders of an opinion. That trust becomes visible as they are joined to the Lord.
ALSO GROWS
pistis: Trust or reliance.
πίστις
This is the noun from the same word family: the trust that the people in the verse are living.
pistos: Describes one who can be trusted or relied upon.
πιστός
This branch shows the family’s movement between trusting and being worthy of trust.
THE PATTERN
The Lord’s people grow as people from many places are joined to him and gathered among one another.
Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the assembly each day those who were being delivered.And many nations will cling to the LORD in that day, and they will be my people, and I will pitch my tent in the midst of you, and you will know that the LORD of hosts sent me to you.But now God has set the limbs, each one of them, in the body, as he willed.THE THREAD
Praising God, and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to the assembly each day those who were being delivered.Both verses use the same verb family, προστίθημι (prostithēmi, add or place toward). Acts 2:47 says the Lord adds people to the assembly; Acts 5:14 says people are being added to the Lord, revealing the shared movement of gathering and belonging.
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