What Does Acts 9:39 Mean?
Then Peter stood up and went with them. When he had come, they led him up into the upper room, and all the widows stood beside him, weeping, and showing the tunics and cloaks which Dorcas made while she was with them.
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
Then Peter arose and went with them. When he was come, they brought him into the upper chamber: and all the widows stood by him weeping, and shewing the coats and garments which Dorcas made, while she was with them.THE KEY
The garments make grief visible: Dorcas’s care is still in the room through what her hands made.
THE MEANING
A person’s care remains touchable in what they make for others. The widows’ tears and the garments they hold place absence and presence together: Dorcas is gone from the room, yet her work remains among the people she served.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a person’s care vanishes when they are gone is undone by garments that remain as touchable evidence of her work.
THE ROOT
ἐποίει
epoiei
GROWS FROM
ποιέω
poiéō
to do, make, bring about
“made” in this verse is epoiei. The Greek says Dorcas was making these things as a repeated activity, and the garments remain as its visible trace. The word family reaches beyond producing an object to doing and bringing something about: her care takes material form in the lives around her.
ALSO GROWS
poiēma: a thing made; workmanship
ποίημα
Ephesians calls people God’s workmanship with this word, linking Dorcas’s making to the wider idea of work that gives care a tangible form.
poiētēs: a doer; maker
ποιητής
James uses this word for someone who does the word; it echoes how Dorcas’s care is known through what she does.
THE PATTERN
Care becomes visible in work that remains among the people it serves.
Give her from the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.For we are his making, created in the Anointed One, Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that in them we might walk.Remembering without a gap your work of trust, your toil of love, and your remaining under of hope in our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, before the face of God and our Father.THE THREAD
For we are his making, created in the Anointed One, Jesus, for good works, which God prepared beforehand, so that in them we might walk.The word for “workmanship,” ποίημα (poiēma), shares its root with “made,” ἐποίει (epoiei), here. Acts shows Dorcas’s work made visible among others; Ephesians extends the same word family to a life formed for good works.
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