What Does Acts 5:30 Mean?
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom you put to death by hand and hanged on a tree.
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
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.THE KEY
The same line names human hands as agents of death and God as the one who raises: violence is real, but it cannot have the last word.
THE MEANING
The verse places the human act of killing beside God’s act of raising Jesus. You meet a reality where violence is real, but it does not hold final authority over the one God raises.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that whoever can kill also decides the final meaning and end of the life they take.
THE ROOT
ἤγειρεν
ēgeiren
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω
egeirō
To rouse from sleep or inactivity; to awaken or raise.
The word translated “raised” carries the sense of rousing someone into life or standing. The verse presents God’s act as more than an answer to death: it is a raising that death cannot prevent.
ALSO GROWS
egersis: A raising or resurrection.
ἔγερσις
This noun makes the raising in the verse visible as a movement from death into life.
exegeirō: To raise up or stir up.
ἐξεγείρω
This compound preserves the root’s force of rousing and raising, extending the same action into other settings.
διεχειρίσασθε
diecheirisasthe
GROWS FROM
χείρ
cheir
Hand; the means or agency by which someone acts.
“put to death by hand” in this verse is diecheirisasthe. The Greek verb translated “slew” is built on the word for hand, making the killing an act carried out by human agency. Beside God’s raising, that agency is named clearly but shown not to be final.
ALSO GROWS
cheiropoiētos: Made by hand.
χειροποίητος
The same hand-root can name human making; here it marks human action that takes life.
cheiragōgeō: To lead or guide by the hand.
χειραγωγέω
This branch shows the hand as an instrument of directed action, sharpening the contrast with the hands that kill.
ξύλου
xylou
GROWS FROM
ξύλον
xylon
Wood or timber; a tree or an object made of wood.
“a tree” in this verse is xylou. The word translated “tree” can also name wood as material or a wooden object. The verse holds the execution on wood and God’s raising of the one executed within the same sentence.
ALSO GROWS
xylinos: Wooden; made of wood.
ξύλινος
This branch names wood as material, keeping the instrument of execution concrete.
xylourgos: A woodworker or carpenter.
ξυλουργός
This branch shows the same wood-root in human craft, while the verse names wood as the place of a killing.
THE PATTERN
God’s raising can carry life beyond the violence that brings it down.
The LORD kills, and makes alive; he brings down to the grave, and brings up.O LORD, you brought up my living soul from Sheol. You kept me alive from those who go down into the pit.Jesus answered and said to them, Unbind this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.THE THREAD
This one, handed over by the marked-out counsel and foreknowing of God, you nailed to the cross by the hands of the unbounded, and you killed him.Acts 2:23 names the human agency with the same hand-root: “by wicked hands.” That shared root brings the force of “slew” into focus as an act carried out by people, while Acts 5:30 sets God’s raising against it.
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