What Does Acts 7:6 Mean?
God spoke in this way, that his seed would dwell alongside in a land not theirs, and that they would bring them into slavery and mistreat them for four hundred years.
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 God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years.THE KEY
The Greek calls the seed a dweller beside another’s household: the people are already in the land, yet not at home in it.
THE MEANING
This verse gives you language for a people living on land that belongs to another, then being forced into bondage and harmed. Its four hundred years carries the condition across generations. The verse names the people as sojourners and their treatment as harm, without making coercion sound like home.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a long stay makes imposed displacement into belonging: the verse still names the descendants as sojourners and their treatment as harm.
THE ROOT
πάροικον
paroikon
GROWS FROM
οἰκ- (oik-), joined with παρά (para)
οἶκος (oikos) means house or household, and παρά (para) means beside; πάροικος (paroikos) describes someone dwelling as a resident alien.
“dwell alongside” in this verse is paroikon. English “sojourn” can sound like a passing visit, while this Greek word carries the image of dwelling beside another household. The verse places the seed in the land, yet outside its belonging, before naming the bondage and harm that follow.
ALSO GROWS
oikos: House or household; its root idea makes the sojourner’s relation to home visible in the verse.
οἶκος
The seed lives in the land without belonging to its household.
oikeō: To dwell or inhabit; the verb names actual residence.
οἰκέω
The sojourner is living there, not merely passing through.
ἀλλοτρίᾳ
allotria
GROWS FROM
ἀλλοτρι- (allotri-), from ἄλλος (allos)
Another’s, belonging to someone else; ἄλλος (allos) means another or other.
“land not theirs” in this verse is allotria. The word for “strange” points beyond unfamiliarity to land belonging to someone else. Beside πάροικον (paroikon), it makes the seed’s unsettled place in the land both relational and material.
ALSO GROWS
allos: Another, or something other; this is the root idea behind belonging to someone else.
ἄλλος
The land is marked as another’s, rather than simply unfamiliar to the seed.
allotrios: Foreign or belonging to another; this is the form behind ἀλλοτρίᾳ (allotria) in the verse.
ἀλλότριος
It ties the strangeness of the land to who it belongs to.
σπέρμα
sperma
GROWS FROM
σπειρ- (speir-), in σπείρω (speirō)
To sow or scatter seed; σπέρμα (sperma) means seed and can refer to descendants as a continuing lineage.
The Greek singular σπέρμα holds the descendants together as one continuing seed. The four-hundred-year span gives their bondage and harm a generational scale.
ALSO GROWS
speirō: To sow; the verb from which σπέρμα (sperma) is formed.
σπείρω
The word keeps the image of seed and growing lineage beneath the reference to descendants.
spora: Sowing or seed; a related word from the same seed-sowing family.
σπορά
It echoes the passage’s picture of a lineage continuing across generations.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses sojourner language for people who dwell in a place while their belonging remains unsettled.
And he said to Abram, Perceive this surely. Your seed will be a sojourner in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will bend them low four hundred years.By trust he dwelt alongside in the land of promise, as in another's land, settling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise.Beloved, I urge you as those dwelling alongside, to hold yourselves away from the fleshly cravings, which march against your living soul.THE THREAD
By trust he dwelt alongside in the land of promise, as in another's land, settling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, co-heirs of the same promise.Acts uses πάροικον (paroikon, a resident alien or sojourner), while Hebrews uses παρῴκησεν (parōkēsen, dwelt as a stranger), from the same Greek word-family. The shared root ties sojourning to dwelling where belonging remains unsettled; Acts names the bondage and harm that follow.
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