What Does Acts 13:28 Mean in the King James?
And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain.
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 demand for his death remains even after every cause for death has disappeared.
THE MEANING
This verse puts the gap between what is found and what is wanted in plain sight: no cause for death is found in him, yet death is still requested. Acknowledging innocence does not by itself end the pressure to remove the innocent. The contradiction remains visible beside the request.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that someone is safe once no valid charge can be found; a demand for harm can persist even after the grounds collapse.
THE ROOT
ἀναιρεθῆναι
anairethēnai
GROWS FROM
αἱρέω (hairéō; stem αἱρ-)
The base verb means to take or seize; its compound ἀναιρέω (anaireō) can mean to take up, remove, or put to death.
The Greek verb translated “slain” carries the sense of taking someone away. The same verb can describe receiving someone into care or removing a life, so the word holds a stark range that the single English rendering does not show.
ALSO GROWS
aneílato: Took him up and received him into care.
ἀνείλατο
This is the same compound verb in Acts 7:21, where Pharaoh’s daughter takes up Moses.
aneleîn: To kill or put to death.
ἀνελεῖν
This form of the same verb appears in Acts 23:21, where men seek to kill Paul; it makes the requested removal in this verse concrete.
αἰτίαν
aitían
GROWS FROM
αἴτιος (aítios; stem αἰτ-)
Cause, responsibility, or grounds for blame.
The word can name both a cause and a charge that makes someone liable. Here, no grounds for death are found, yet a demand for death follows; the verse exposes the distance between what the evidence supports and what is wanted.
ALSO GROWS
aítios: Liable or responsible; a cause or source.
αἴτιος
This branch makes the question of responsibility explicit: the verse finds no grounds that make him liable to death.
anaítios: Guiltless or not liable.
ἀναίτιος
This related word shows the family’s other side: the absence of a cause can be expressed as absence of guilt.
THE PATTERN
When judgment breaks from evidence, the innocent can still be sent toward death.
And there came in two men, children of Belial, and sat before him: and the men of Belial witnessed against him, even against Naboth, in the presence of the people, saying, Naboth did blaspheme God and the king. Then they carried him forth out of the city, and stoned him with stones, that he died.He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the LORD.And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go.THE THREAD
And when he was cast out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up, and nourished him for her own son.The Greek verb ἀναιρέω (anaireō, “take up,” “remove,” or “put to death”) appears here as ἀνείλατο (aneílato, “took him up”) when Pharaoh’s daughter receives Moses. The same verb used in Acts 13:28 for the requested removal of a life describes taking a child into care here; the English verbs conceal that shared thread.
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