What Does Acts 16:7 Mean in the King James?
After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia: but the Spirit suffered them not.
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 that moves the journey can also close a road.
THE MEANING
You can be moving toward a real purpose and still find this next road closed. The refusal names this route, not the travelers’ entire journey.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A closed route means the whole journey has been rejected.
THE ROOT
πνεῦμα
pneuma
GROWS FROM
πνέω
pneō
To breathe or blow.
The Greek word carries the sense of breath and wind as well as spirit, joining what English can make sound separate. Here, the Spirit’s presence includes both movement and restraint: the route is withheld by the same living breath that accompanies the journey.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: To breathe, blow.
πνέω
This verb gives the family its motion: breath is something moving, like the journey whose route is being limited.
pnoē: Breath, breeze, or wind.
πνοή
Acts 2:2 uses this related word for the sound of a rushing wind, showing how the same word family holds breath and moving air together.
THE PATTERN
Direction can be disclosed through a road being withheld as well as through one being opened.
And it came to pass, when Pharaoh had let the people go, that God led them not through the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near; for God said, Lest peradventure the people repent when they see war, and they return to Egypt:A man’s heart deviseth his way: but the LORD directeth his steps.Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia,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.The Greek uses the same word, πνεῦμα (pneuma), for “wind” and “Spirit.” That shared word lets this verse show the Spirit as living movement whose course is not fully visible or controlled.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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