What Does Acts 10:15 Mean in the King James?
And the voice spake unto him again the second time, What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
The verse makes your label answer to God’s act: cleansing comes first, and “common” cannot be the verdict afterward.
THE MEANING
God’s cleansing stands now as the decisive condition: what God has made clean is not common by your judgment. The verse exposes the human impulse to reinstate an old category after God has removed it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that human judgment can undo what God has cleansed.
THE ROOT
καθαρίζω
katharizō
GROWS FROM
καθαρ-
kathar-
Clean; cleanse or purify.
The verb behind “cleansed” belongs to the same word family as “clean” and “cleansing”: God’s act establishes a changed condition, not merely a label. The sentence places that act beside a prohibition against reclassifying what God has made clean.
ALSO GROWS
katharos: Clean, pure.
καθαρός
This adjective shares the stem and names the condition produced by cleansing.
katharismos: Cleansing, purification.
καθαρισμός
This noun names the cleansing process or result, keeping the verse’s focus on what God has done.
κοινόω
koinoō
GROWS FROM
κοινο-
koino-
Common or shared; to make common, and by extension to treat as profane.
“Common” belongs to the family of κοινός, meaning shared or ordinary, and κοινωνία, meaning sharing in common. Here the command forbids placing in that ordinary or excluded category what God has cleansed.
ALSO GROWS
koinos: Common, shared, ordinary.
κοινός
This adjective is the source of the verb’s sense of making something common or treating it as common.
koinōnia: Sharing in common, participation.
κοινωνία
This related word makes the shared sense visible: “common” belongs to the language of what is held or shared in common.
THE PATTERN
When God cleanses, the former impurity no longer defines what has been made clean.
Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.THE THREAD
And he said unto them, Ye know how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or come unto one of another nation; but God hath shewed me that I should not call any man common or unclean.The same κοινός (koinos, common or shared) word appears, now attached explicitly to “any man.” The command reaches beyond what is on the table to the people you place in an excluded category.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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