What Does Acts 8:7 Mean?
For unclean breaths, crying out with a loud voice, came out of many who were held by them, and many loosened at the side, and the lame, were healed.
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
For unclean spirits, crying with loud voice, came out of many that were possessed with them: and many taken with palsies, and that were lame, were healed.THE KEY
The word translated “spirits” belongs to the same Greek word family as breath and wind, and its exit stands beside bodies returning to movement.
THE MEANING
The verse holds two forms of release in the same scene: unclean spirits come out of people, and people with paralysis or lameness are healed. The Greek word behind “spirits” also carries the sense of breath, while the verse gives it a loud voice and an exit. Movement returns where paralysis and lameness had held it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a disabling condition or an overpowering presence must define a person’s lasting state.
THE ROOT
πνεύματα
pneumata
GROWS FROM
πνέω
pneō
To breathe or blow; from this verb, πνεῦμα carries the sense of breath or wind.
“unclean breaths” in this verse is pneumata. The Greek word family holds breath and wind within the same range as the word KJV renders “spirits.” Here that word cries aloud and comes out of people, keeping breath, sound, and exit together in the scene.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: Breathe, blow.
πνέω
This is the verb behind the word for breath, showing the physical sense present in the verse’s “spirits.”
pnoē: Breath, blowing, or a gust of wind.
πνοή
Acts 2:2 uses this related word for the sound like a rushing mighty wind, showing the breath-and-wind range of the same family.
ἐθεραπεύθησαν
etherapeuthēsan
GROWS FROM
θεραπευ-
To attend, serve, or treat; in this verb, to heal.
“were healed” in this verse is etherapeuthēsan. The Greek verb names healing while retaining the sense of attending to or treating. The verse places that care for impaired bodies beside the departure of what had seized many people.
ALSO GROWS
therapeia: Care, treatment, or healing.
θεραπεία
This related noun retains the care and treatment strand within the verse’s word for healing.
therapōn: Attendant or servant.
θεράπων
This related word shows the service strand in the word family, adding the sense of tending to what is impaired.
THE PATTERN
Release becomes visible in restored bodies, voices, and freedom for those held.
He sends his word and heals them, and slips them free from their pits.Then the limping one leaps like a hart, and the tongue of the mute rings out. For waters split open in the wilderness, and streams in the desert plain.The breath of the LORD is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the emptied. He has sent me to heal the shattered in heart, to herald release to the captives, and the return of sight for the blind, to send the crushed away into release.THE THREAD
When Jesus saw that the crowd came running together, he rebuked the unclean breath, saying to it, You mute and deaf breath, I command you, come out of him, and enter him no more.Mark uses the same Greek word for “spirit” and the same verb for coming out. It places deafness and voicelessness beside the command to exit, sharpening Acts’ picture of release alongside restored bodies and a loud voice.
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