What Does Acts 11:28 Mean in the King James?
And there stood up one of them named Agabus, and signified by the Spirit that there should be great dearth throughout all the world: which came to pass in the days of Claudius Cæsar.
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 breath makes approaching scarcity perceptible before it becomes bodily hunger.
THE MEANING
What is still ahead can become perceptible before its consequences fill the shared world. The warning concerns material need: what is disclosed is not abstract, and the sign meets bodies and shared provision.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a warning has no reality until its consequences are visible: the sign comes before the hunger.
THE ROOT
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνε- / πνέω (pne- / pneō)
Breathe or blow; breath, moving air.
Beneath the KJV word “Spirit” is πνεῦμα (pneuma, breath and wind), a word that holds those senses together. Here, that breath carries a signal that makes approaching scarcity perceptible before it arrives.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: Breathe, blow.
πνέω
The verb names the movement inside the noun: breath is air in motion, as wind and as breath.
pnoē: Breath, blast of wind.
πνοή
This related word appears in Acts 2:2 for a rushing mighty wind, carrying the same breath-and-wind sense into a sound that can be heard.
ἐσήμανεν
esēmanen
GROWS FROM
σημ- / σημαίνω (sēm- / sēmainō)
Mark or signal; indicate by a sign.
“signified” in this verse is esēmanen. The verb carries the sense of giving a sign, so the famine is made legible ahead of time. The verse joins perception to material consequence: the sign arrives before hunger does.
ALSO GROWS
sēma: Sign, token, mark.
σῆμα
This noun makes visible the marking carried in the verb: what is coming receives a sign before it arrives.
sēmeion: Sign, indication, marker.
σημεῖον
This related word names an observable sign, echoing the verse’s movement from an unseen future to something made perceptible.
THE PATTERN
A coming event can be disclosed before it becomes visible, joining foresight to material consequence.
Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt; and the famine shall consume the land;Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come.THE THREAD
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.John uses πνεῦμα (pneuma, breath and wind) for both the wind and what the KJV calls “the Spirit.” The same word appears in Acts 11:28, where the breath carries the sign of a famine that has not yet arrived.
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