What Does Acts 7:20 Mean?
In that season Moses was born, and was fair to God, and was fed three months in his father's house.
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
In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father’s house three months:THE KEY
The Greek word for “nourished up” grows from a root of nourishment, while Moses’s name remembers being drawn out: his beginning holds both sustaining care and rescue.
THE MEANING
Your life is being formed through the care that sustains it, even before its larger shape is visible. Moses’s name carries the other side of this beginning: he is the one drawn out. The verse places nurture and deliverance together at the start of a life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A life is not defined only by the danger around its beginning; this verse also names the care that sustains it.
THE ROOT
ἀνετράφη
anetraphē
GROWS FROM
τρέφω
τρέφω (trephō) means to nourish, rear, and bring to growth.
“fed” in this verse is anetraphē. The Greek verb carries the sense of being reared through nourishment, not merely kept alive. Its root makes growth something received through sustaining care, here within the father’s house.
ALSO GROWS
trophē: food, nourishment
τροφή
This noun shares the root’s consonants and shows the sustenance contained in being reared.
trophos: a nurse or nurturer
τροφός
This word shares the root’s consonants and names the one who provides the care expressed by “nourished up.”
מֹשֶׁה
Mōsheh
GROWS FROM
משׁה
משׁה (māšāh) means to draw out, especially from water.
Moses’s Hebrew name is linked in Exodus to being drawn out of the water. His name holds rescue inside the story of his beginning, beside the nourishment this verse describes.
ALSO GROWS
māšāh: to draw out
מָשָׁה
This verb shares the name’s consonants and expresses the action associated with Moses’s name.
mĕšîtihû: I drew him out
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This form in Exodus 2:10 shares the same consonantal family and gives the name’s meaning as an act of rescue.
ἐγεννήθη
egennēthē
GROWS FROM
γεν-
γεν- (gen-) carries the sense of begetting, coming into being, and birth.
The word for being born belongs to a family that also names kindred and generations. Birth here opens a life that is held within a household and a lineage.
ALSO GROWS
genos: family, kind, offspring
γένος
It shares the γεν- consonantal family and links birth with kinship.
genea: generation, family line
γενεά
It shares the γεν- consonantal family and extends birth into the generations that follow.
THE PATTERN
A life’s growth is sustained through care before its larger purpose is visible.
And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Lead this child away, and suckle him for me, and I will give you your wages. And the woman took the child, and suckled him.By trust Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was fair, and they did not fear the king's decree.And the child grew, and grew strong in breath, being filled with wisdom, and the favor of God was upon him.THE THREAD
And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses, the one drawn out, and she said, Because from the waters I drew him out.Exodus connects Moses’s name with the Hebrew verb מָשָׁה (māšāh), “to draw out.” The name keeps the memory of rescue within the same beginning that Acts describes as being nourished in his father’s house.
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