What Does Acts 17:26 Mean in the King James?
And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;
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
Every nation’s boundary sits inside a deeper fact: all peoples share one blood and inhabit times and places already marked out.
THE MEANING
Every people belongs to the same human life; no nation is a separate kind. The times in which people live and the places they inhabit have bounds within God’s ordering.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The idea that a people’s difference makes its humanity separate from everyone else dissolves here: all nations share one blood.
THE ROOT
ὥρισεν
hōrisen
GROWS FROM
ὅρος
horos
Boundary, limit, or landmark; the word family carries the sense of marking something out.
English “determined” can sound like a choice made inwardly; this word family carries the image of marking something out by a limit. The verse pairs marked times with habitation boundaries, making history and place two edges of the same setting-out.
ALSO GROWS
horizō: To mark out, determine, or designate.
ὁρίζω
It shows how the verse’s “determined” carries the sense of setting out a limit.
proorizō: To determine or appoint beforehand.
προορίζω
Its “beforehand” sense echoes the times appointed for human life.
αἷμα
haima
GROWS FROM
αἱμ-
haim-
Blood, the living fluid in the body.
The phrase “one blood” makes shared human origin bodily and concrete. The same root appears in words for blood flowing and blood being shed, keeping that shared life vulnerable and physical.
ALSO GROWS
haimorrhoeō: To suffer a flow of blood.
αἱμορροέω
It keeps “blood” tied to a living body and its flow.
haimatekchysia: The shedding or pouring out of blood.
αἱματεκχυσία
It shows the same shared substance can also be lost.
κατοικίας
katoikias
GROWS FROM
οἰκ-
oik-
House, household, or dwelling.
The word family behind “habitation” links house and dwelling with the inhabited world. People are described as inhabitants of the earth, living within bounds rather than as abstract populations.
ALSO GROWS
oikeō: To dwell or live in a place.
οἰκέω
It brings the habitation back to the act of dwelling.
oikoumenē: The inhabited world.
οἰκουμένη
It widens the image from each people’s dwelling to the earth as a whole inhabited place.
THE PATTERN
Peoples, times, and dwelling places are set within limits, while human life remains bound to a common source.
When the most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.Seeing his days are determined, the number of his months are with thee, thou hast appointed his bounds that he cannot pass;Again, he limiteth a certain day, saying in David, To day, after so long a time; as it is said, To day if ye will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.THE THREAD
And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead:The verb rendered “determined” here is the same verb rendered “declared” in Romans 1:4. In both verses it carries the sense of marking out or designating: Acts applies that language to times and bounds, while Romans applies it to the Son of God.
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