What Does Acts 5:5 Mean?
And Ananias, hearing these words, fell down and breathed out his living soul. And great fear came upon all who heard these things.
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 Ananias hearing these words fell down, and gave up the ghost: and great fear came on all them that heard these things.THE KEY
The Greek names Ananias’s death as the ending of life itself, and that death turns one person’s collapse into communal fear.
THE MEANING
You see Ananias hear the words, fall, and die; the verse does not soften his death into a metaphor. His death reaches every hearer as great fear, binding one person’s collapse to the whole community’s response.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a sacred appearance can make deliberate deceit harmless.
THE ROOT
ἐξέψυξεν
exepsyxen
GROWS FROM
ψυχ-
psych-
Living soul; life
“breathed out his living soul” in this verse is exepsyxen. The familiar phrase carries a concrete root: the Greek verb is formed from ψυχή (psychē, “living soul; life”) and speaks of that life expiring. The same root names life still present in Acts 20:10, holding life and its ending in one seed.
ALSO GROWS
ekpsychō: Expire; give up life
ἐκψύχω
This is the verb behind “gave up the ghost,” naming Ananias’s death as the end of living life.
psychē: Living soul; life
ψυχή
Acts 20:10 uses this same word for the life still in a fallen man, revealing the root’s link to life present and life ended.
THE PATTERN
When danger or divine power becomes public, fear can spread from one event through an entire community.
And great fear came upon the whole assembly, and upon all who heard these things.And this was known to all the Jews and Greeks also settled at Ephesus, and awe fell on them all, and the nature of the Lord Jesus was made great.And he took a yoke of oxen and cut them in pieces, and sent them through all the borders of Israel by the hand of messengers, saying, Whoever does not come out after Saul and after Samuel, so shall it be done to his oxen. And the awe of the LORD fell on the people, and they came out as one man.THE THREAD
And Paul came down and fell upon him, and enfolding him, said, "Do not make an uproar, for his living soul is in him."Both verses use the ψυχ- (psych-, “living soul; life”) root: here Ananias’s life expires, while there the fallen man’s life is still in him. The shared root makes the contrast between death and life unmistakable.
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