What Does Acts 7:47 Mean?
But Solomon built him a 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
But Solomon built him an house.THE KEY
The house built for God is real, but the One it honors is never contained by human walls.
THE MEANING
A house gives reverence a visible place, but it does not enclose the One it honors. This line holds that tension: a dwelling is built for God, while God’s presence exceeds the dwelling.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
God’s presence cannot be possessed or contained by a structure people build.
THE ROOT
οἶκον
oikon
GROWS FROM
οἰκ- (oik-), the οἶκος word family
House, dwelling, household
“built” in this verse is oikon. English “house” suggests a single building, but the Greek word family also reaches to the people within a home and even the inhabited world. The word opens outward beyond walls, matching the surrounding claim that God is not confined to a human-made dwelling.
ALSO GROWS
oikia: House, home
οἰκία
This related word keeps the sense of a dwelling, while allowing for the home as a lived-in place rather than just a structure.
oikonomia: Household management, stewardship
οἰκονομία
The same word family extends from the house itself to the ordering and care of what belongs within it.
oikoumenē: The inhabited world
οἰκουμένη
The word family stretches from one house to the broad world people inhabit, carrying the idea of dwelling beyond the building Solomon made.
THE PATTERN
A dwelling can mark divine nearness, but it cannot contain the presence it points toward.
But will God truly settle on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heavens of the heavens cannot hold you; how much less this house that I have built?Yet the Highest does not settle in what is made by hands, as the prophet says.And the word became flesh and pitched a tent among us, and we beheld his weight, the weight as of the only-born from the Father, full of favor and truth.THE THREAD
But will God truly settle on the earth? Behold, the heavens and the heavens of the heavens cannot hold you; how much less this house that I have built?Solomon’s own words name the limit inside Acts 7:47: a house can be built for God, but cannot contain God. The structure can mark reverence without enclosing the presence it honors.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us