What Does Acts 16:16 Mean in the King James?
And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with a spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying:
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
What speaks through her becomes a revenue stream for the people who own her.
THE MEANING
A slave girl’s divining is made into someone else’s livelihood: her masters collect the gain. The verse holds the spiritual claim and its commercial use in the same frame, naming who profits from her voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The person whose voice produces the income is the one who benefits from it.
THE ROOT
ἐργασίαν
ergasian
GROWS FROM
ἐργ-
erg-
work, activity, or business
The word rendered “gain” is ἐργασία (ergasia), meaning work, activity, or business. The verse makes the divining into an enterprise, and says that the wealth flows to her masters.
ALSO GROWS
ergon: work or deed
ἔργον
This related word keeps labor in view beneath the masters’ gain.
ergatēs: worker or laborer
ἐργάτης
The worker branch sharpens the verse’s division between the girl whose divining produces income and the masters who receive it.
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνε-/πνέω (pne-/pneō)
to blow or breathe; breath
The word behind “spirit” is πνεῦμα (pneuma), whose concrete sense is breath; its word family also carries the motion of blowing. That breath-word appears here in a scene where a person’s divining voice is tied to her masters’ income.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: to blow or breathe
πνέω
Its verb form shows the movement beneath the word used for the force accompanying her divining.
pnoē: breath or breeze
πνοή
This related word keeps the concrete sense of breath audible beneath the KJV’s “spirit.”
THE PATTERN
Claims about the unseen can be drawn into commerce, with material gain flowing to those who control the exchange.
And the elders of Moab and the elders of Midian departed with the rewards of divination in their hand; and they came unto Balaam, and spake unto him the words of Balak.For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen;And through covetousness shall they with feigned words make merchandise of you: whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not.THE THREAD
And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her. And he came out the same hour.The same Greek word πνεῦμα (pneuma, breath) appears in both verses: here it accompanies the divining that earns her masters money, and next the command addresses it directly. The command comes in Jesus’ name, in his nature; Jesus (Ἰησοῦς, Iēsous) corresponds to Yeshua (יֵשׁוּעַ, Yeshua), deliverance from constriction into spaciousness.
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