What Does Acts 6:15 Mean?
And all who sat in the council, their eyes fixed on him, saw his face as if it were the face of a messenger.
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 all that sat in the council, looking stedfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.THE KEY
The messenger’s face carries the message before he speaks.
THE MEANING
A message can be visible before it is spoken: a face can bear what a person carries. Stephen’s face appears like the face of a messenger, making his presence part of the witness.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that witness begins only with spoken words dissolves here: a face can already bear the message.
THE ROOT
ἄγγελος
angelos
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ-
angel-
Messenger; one who carries or announces a message.
The Greek word translated “angel” names a messenger, and its word family also names a message and good news. The image links Stephen’s face with what he carries: the messenger is recognizable in his visible presence before his speech.
ALSO GROWS
angelia: Message, report, announcement.
ἀγγελία
This branch makes the link between messenger and message explicit: the face itself is read as conveying something.
euangelion: Good news, good message.
εὐαγγέλιον
The messenger’s word family can also name the message announced, tying the person who bears it to what is carried.
THE PATTERN
What a person bears can become visible in the face, making presence itself a witness.
And it came to be, when Moses went down from mount Sinai with the two tablets of testimony in Moses' hand, when he went down from the mountain, that Moses did not perceive that the skin of his face sent out horns while he spoke with him.And his shape was changed before them, and his face blazed as the sun, and his garments became white as the light.But we all, with uncovered faces, mirror the weight of the LORD, and are being reshaped into the same image, ever increasing in weight, even as from the breath of the LORD.THE THREAD
But he, being full of the Set-Apart Breath, stretched his gaze into heaven, and saw the weight of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God.The council looks steadfastly at Stephen, and Stephen then looks steadfastly toward heaven; both use ἀτενίζω (atenizō, “gaze intently”). The shared verb turns the gaze around: the face they examine belongs to one whose own attention is fixed beyond them.
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