What Does Acts 5:16 Mean?
And a crowd also gathered from the cities all around to Jerusalem, bringing the sick and those pressed upon by unclean breaths, and every one of them was healed.
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
There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one.THE KEY
The word translated “spirits” is pneuma, the same Greek word whose range includes breath and wind, placing unseen affliction close to the language of embodied life.
THE MEANING
The scene meets you now with people arriving from surrounding towns carrying illness and what the verse calls unclean spirits, and every one is healed. Its word for “spirits,” pneuma, also means breath and wind, holding unseen distress within the language of breath itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person’s condition puts them beyond reach: every person brought in this scene is healed.
THE ROOT
πνευμάτων
pneumatōn
GROWS FROM
πνευ-
Breath, blowing, or wind.
“unclean breaths” in this verse is pneumatōn. The word translated “spirits” shares its Greek root with words for breathing and breath. Its range keeps breath, wind, and spirit together in a single word, where English separates them.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: to blow or breathe
πνέω
This branch makes the breath and wind within pneuma audible in the word itself.
pnoē: breath or blowing
πνοή
This related word for breath shows how closely pneuma belongs to the language of breathing.
ἐθεραπεύοντο
etherapeuonto
GROWS FROM
θεραπευ-
To attend to, serve, treat, or heal.
The verb gathers healing together with attending and service. The verse emphasizes the reach of that care: every person brought from the surrounding towns is healed.
ALSO GROWS
therapeia: care or healing
θεραπεία
This branch names healing as care, illuminating the attentive reach of the verb in the verse.
therapōn: attendant or servant
θεράπων
This related word keeps the root’s sense of attendance and service beside its sense of healing.
THE PATTERN
Healing reaches across kinds of affliction, attending to bodily illness, wounds, and inward distress.
He mends the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.For I will bring up healing for you, and I will heal you of your wounds, declares the LORD, for they called you the driven away, saying, This is Zion, no one seeks her.And the sound of him went out through all Syria, and they carried to him all who were ill, held by many-colored sicknesses and torments, and those gripped by demons, and those struck by the moon, and those who were paralyzed, and he healed them.THE THREAD
And the sound of him went out through all Syria, and they carried to him all who were ill, held by many-colored sicknesses and torments, and those gripped by demons, and those struck by the moon, and those who were paralyzed, and he healed them.Matthew’s “healed” and Acts’ “healed” come from the same Greek verb, θεραπεύω (therapeuō), meaning to attend to, treat, or heal. Matthew’s list of diverse afflictions opens the scope of that care; Acts makes its reach explicit with “every one.”
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