What Does Acts 8:10 Mean?
To whom they all held fast, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.
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
To whom they all gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, This man is the great power of God.THE KEY
A crowd can lend a man God’s name through its attention without proving that the power comes from him.
THE MEANING
When power draws every eye, a claim about its source can spread from the least to the greatest until a person and God’s power seem inseparable. The verse shows how shared attention can make a claim feel certain without revealing where the power truly comes from.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that widespread admiration proves someone’s power is divine; a crowd can give God’s name to what it has not discerned.
THE ROOT
δύναμις
dýnamis
GROWS FROM
δύναμαι
dýnamai
Be able; have capacity to act.
The root carries the sense of ability or capacity, while the crowd’s words turn that power into a name for Simon. Their phrasing fuses a human figure with the power they attribute to God.
ALSO GROWS
dýnamai: Be able; have power.
δύναμαι
It shows the underlying idea of power as the capacity to act.
dynatós: Able, capable, powerful.
δυνατός
This related word describes someone or something as possessing ability, echoing the crowd’s identification of Simon with power.
προσεῖχον
proseichon
GROWS FROM
ἔχω (echō) with πρός (pros)
Hold toward; direct attention toward.
“held fast” in this verse is proseichon. The verb carries the image of holding oneself toward someone, and its imperfect form presents the crowd’s attention as ongoing. “From the least to the greatest” makes that attention broad in reach: the claim is held up by a whole crowd’s regard.
ALSO GROWS
echō: Have, hold.
ἔχω
This base verb brings a sense of holding into the act of paying attention.
prosechō: Attend to, pay attention to.
προσέχω
This is the compound behind the verse’s verb: the crowd keeps its attention directed toward Simon.
THE PATTERN
A supernatural sign or widespread claim does not by itself establish that its source is God.
If a prophet stands up in your midst, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives you a sign or a wonder, And the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, Let us walk after other gods, which you have not known, and let us serve them; You shall not hear and respond to the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams, for the LORD your God is testing you, to know whether you love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your living soul.Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your nature, and by it throw out demons, and in it do many works of strength? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you; withdraw from me, you who live without boundary.Beloved, do not lean your weight on every breath, but test the breaths, whether they come out of God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.THE THREAD
But you will take hold of power when the Set-Apart Breath comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and in Samaria, and to the farthest edge of the ground.Both verses use δύναμις (dýnamis, power); Acts 1:8 presents this power as received with the Set-Apart Breath and expressed in witness. That image separates the source of power from the human figure the crowd identifies with it.
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