What Does Acts 5:24 Mean?
Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these things, they had no way across concerning them, asking where this would come to.
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
Now when the high priest and the captain of the temple and the chief priests heard these things, they doubted of them whereunto this would grow.THE KEY
Their authority reaches its limit at a question they cannot answer: what will this become?
THE MEANING
When an event resists your settled explanations, even people accustomed to interpreting and directing events can be left at a loss. Their question is what this may become. The verse leaves that future unresolved.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The claim that authority always knows what an event will become dissolves here: these leaders hear the report and cannot see its outcome.
THE ROOT
διηπόρουν
diēporoun
GROWS FROM
πορ (por-, from πόρος)
Passage, a way through.
“had no way across” in this verse is diēporoun. The word carries more than uncertainty: its family pictures the absence of a passage, an impasse. Their bewilderment centers on what the event will become, as they struggle to find a way through what they cannot explain.
ALSO GROWS
poros: Passage, crossing, or way through.
πόρος
It gives the word family its image of a route that can be found, or blocked.
aporia: Perplexity; an impasse or lack of a way through.
ἀπορία
It makes clear that their uncertainty is an inability to find a path through the question.
diaporeō: To be thoroughly perplexed or at a loss.
διαπορέω
This is the verb behind their response: they cannot discern where the event leads.
γένοιτο
genoito
GROWS FROM
γεν/γιν (gen-/gin-, from γίνομαι)
Become, come into being.
“where this would come to” in this verse is genoito. The question concerns what may come to be. That brings the unknown outcome into focus: they cannot yet tell what this event will become.
ALSO GROWS
ginomai: To become, happen, or come into being.
γίνομαι
It is the verb behind the question about the event’s possible outcome.
genesis: Birth, origin, or coming into being.
γένεσις
It echoes the focus on what is coming into existence.
genos: Kind, stock, or lineage.
γένος
It names what something becomes part of or belongs to as it takes shape.
THE PATTERN
When an event exceeds the available path of explanation, even established authority is left asking what can come of it.
And they were all beside themselves and had no way through, saying to one another, What does this mean?And it happened, while they had no way through about this, and see, two men stood beside them in garments flashing like lightning.He carries away the heart of the heads of the people of the earth, and makes them wander in a wilderness where there is no way.THE THREAD
And they were all beside themselves and had no way through, saying to one another, What does this mean?The crowd uses the same Greek verb for being at a loss: in both verses, people confront an event they cannot yet make sense of. Acts 5 sharpens the question from what does this mean to what will this become?
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