What Does Acts 7:21 Mean?
And when he was cast out, Pharaoh's daughter lifted him up and fed him as her own son.
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 when he was cast out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son.THE KEY
The verb translated “nourished” means to rear into growth, so the care here gives the child more than survival: it gives him belonging.
THE MEANING
Being cast outside does not define the whole of your belonging; care can receive you and sustain your growth as its own. Nourishment is more than bare survival: it is ongoing care that raises a life into kinship.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that being cast out makes you disposable or forever without a place to belong.
THE ROOT
ἀνεθρέψατο
anethrepsato
GROWS FROM
τρέφω
trephō
Nourish, rear, bring up.
“fed him” in this verse is anethrepsato. This verb points to rearing through nourishment, not a single act of feeding. Its word family connects nourishment with the ongoing work of bringing someone up, making “for her own son” a lived relationship of care.
ALSO GROWS
trophē: Food, nourishment.
τροφή
The same word family connects what sustains a life with the act of raising the child in this verse.
ektrephō: Nourish, rear, bring up.
ἐκτρέφω
This related verb describes sustained nurture, illuminating the care involved in raising someone as one’s own.
ἐκτεθέντος
ektethentos
GROWS FROM
τίθημι
tithēmi
Put, place, set.
The verb behind “cast out” is built on the idea of placing: the child is positioned outside, but that position is not his whole identity. The verse moves from that exposure to the work of rearing him into a place within a family.
ALSO GROWS
epitithēmi: Put or lay upon.
ἐπιτίθημι
This branch keeps the root’s concrete sense of placing, making the exposure in this verse a position rather than a nature.
paratithēmi: Set beside, entrust.
παρατίθημι
The same placing-family can describe entrusting something to another; here, the child who is set outside is taken into another’s care.
THE PATTERN
A life exposed to abandonment can be received into care that gives it belonging and helps it grow.
When my father and my mother let go of me, then the LORD gathers me in.And Naomi took the child and laid him in her lap, and became his steady nurse.But as many as took him in, he gave the right to become children of God, to those who trust in his nature.THE THREAD
For no one has ever hated his own flesh, but raises it and warms it, as the Lord does the assembly.The Greek verb translated “nourisheth” here is ἐκτρέφω (ektrephō, nourish or bring up), from the same root as “nourished” in Acts. The shared root links raising a child as one’s own with the sustained care given to what belongs to oneself.
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