What Does Acts 7:1 Mean?
Then the chief priest said, Are these things so?
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
Then said the high priest, Are these things so?THE KEY
The question is whether the accusation holds as stated.
THE MEANING
A charge reaches you as a claim to be examined: do these things actually hold together? The question leaves space between hearing an accusation and accepting it, asking whether what is said stands as presented.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
An accusation is not true merely because an authority voices it; the claim still has to hold under examination.
THE ROOT
οὕτως ἔχει
houtōs echei
GROWS FROM
ἐχ
Hold, have; ἔχει (echei) means “holds” or “is the case.”
“Are these things so?” in this verse is houtōs echei. The Greek phrasing asks whether the matter “thus holds,” making the accusation something whose truth must stand up. The English question preserves the challenge, while the root adds the image of a claim being held to account.
ALSO GROWS
katechō: Hold fast, retain
κατέχω
This compound carries the same root into the act of keeping hold of what proves sound.
synechō: Hold together, constrain
συνέχω
This branch can describe what presses or holds something together, echoing the question of whether the account coheres.
THE PATTERN
What is true can be examined and established, and what proves sound can be held fast.
One witness shall not rise up against a man for any crookedness, or for any falling short, in it he misses the mark; upon the mouth of two witnesses, or upon the mouth of three witnesses, the word shall stand.Examine me, O LORD, and test me; refine my kidneys and my heart.Test everything, and hold fast to what is good.THE THREAD
But those on the good soil are the ones who, in a noble and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring forth fruit by remaining beneath the weight.The verb translated “keep” is κατέχω (katechō, hold fast), built from the same ἐχ (ech, hold) root as “are these things so?” One passage asks whether a claim holds; the other shows a heard word held fast and bearing fruit.
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