What Does Acts 7:14 Mean?
Then Joseph sent and called his father Jacob to himself, and all his kin, seventy-five living souls.
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 sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls.THE KEY
Here “souls” means the living people themselves, so the verse holds family as a count of persons gathered within reach.
THE MEANING
A call gathers a family into presence as living souls, each person held within the kinship. Belonging takes shape among real lives.
THE ROOT
ψυχαῖς
psychais
GROWS FROM
ψυχ-
psych-
Living soul, the whole living self.
The Greek word counts the people themselves, holding each person inside the number. “Souls” here names a gathered household of living selves.
ALSO GROWS
psychē: Living soul
ψυχή
This is the singular form behind the verse’s plural, naming each person as a whole living self.
psychikos: Natural, belonging to the living self
ψυχικός
The shared stem carries the person as a living being, reinforcing that this count refers to people gathered together.
συγγένειαν
syngeneian
GROWS FROM
γεν-
gen-
Birth, descent, shared origin.
“kin” in this verse is syngeneian. The word for kindred carries the idea of people joined through a common origin. The verse’s count grows from that shared belonging into particular living persons.
ALSO GROWS
syngenēs: Relative, one of the same family
συγγενής
This related form makes the shared descent in “kindred” concrete: a person bound to another by family origin.
genesis: Birth, origin
γένεσις
The same root points back to coming into being, placing family in a shared beginning.
יוֹסֵף
Yosef
GROWS FROM
יסף
y-s-f
Add, increase.
Joseph’s name carries the root of adding, and the verse places his father and kindred within reach as a household of living persons. The name’s echo of increase lands in a concrete gathering.
ALSO GROWS
Yosef: He adds; may he add
יוֹסֵף
The name itself carries addition, an echo beside the gathering of Joseph’s kin.
lehosif: To add, to increase
לְהוֹסִיף
This verb makes the name’s root active: something is brought alongside and added.
THE PATTERN
Scripture counts a people by living souls, keeping each person present inside the number.
All the living souls that came with Jacob into Egypt, who came out of his thigh, apart from the wives of Jacob's sons, were threescore and six.Then those who gladly took his word in were immersed, and that day about three thousand living souls were added to them.who once refused to yield, while the slowness to heat of God waited in the days of Noah, as the ark was being built, in which few, eight living souls, were delivered through water.THE THREAD
Then those who gladly took his word in were immersed, and that day about three thousand living souls were added to them.Acts 2:41 uses the same Greek word, ψυχαί (psychai), for a counted gathering. In both verses, “souls” names the living persons within the number.
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