What Does Acts 19:19 Mean in the King James?

Many of them also which used curious arts brought their books together, and burned them before all men: and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver.

Acts 19:19 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The price is counted even as the books are burned, so letting go does not depend on pretending they were worthless.

THE MEANING

This verse holds together a changed allegiance and an honest account of its cost: the books are relinquished, and their value is still named. What is let go does not first have to be called worthless.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

It undoes the belief that real change requires the thing left behind to have had no value: the price is counted, and the books still burn.

THE ROOT

συμψηφίσαντες

sympsēphisantes

GROWS FROM

ψηφ

Pebble; the seed of a word for reckoning by pebbles.

The verb translated “counted” carries the pebble-root for reckoning: the price is totaled, not left as an unmeasured gesture. The count makes the cost legible while the public burning makes the break visible.

ALSO GROWS

psēphos: Pebble; also a ballot or vote.

ψῆφος

The pebble is the concrete image beneath this family’s language of counting.

psēphizō: To count or calculate.

ψηφίζω

This is the related verb used in Luke 14:28 for counting the cost.

τιμάς

timas

GROWS FROM

τιμ

Worth, value, honor.

The passage keeps the books’ economic worth in view even as they are destroyed. In this word-family, price and honor share a root of value, so what is relinquished is not treated as worthless.

ALSO GROWS

timaō: To honor or value.

τιμάω

It shares the root of ⁨τιμή⁩, the word translated “price.”

timios: Precious or costly.

τίμιος

It shows the same root describing something as valuable.

THE PATTERN

A changed allegiance becomes visible when what once carried value is openly relinquished.

And he took the calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and ground it to powder, and strawed it upon the water, and made the children of Israel drink of it.

Exodus 32:20 · KJVThe calf is destroyed and reduced to powder, making the break with a former object of devotion concrete.

Ye shall defile also the covering of thy graven images of silver, and the ornament of thy molten images of gold: thou shalt cast them away as a menstruous cloth; thou shalt say unto it, Get thee hence.

Isaiah 30:22 · KJVThe images are cast away, and the words “Get thee hence” make the relinquishment visible and spoken.

And Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.

Luke 19:8 · KJVZacchaeus names what he gives and restores, letting a changed relation to wealth show in a concrete transfer.

THE THREAD

For which of you, intending to build a tower, sitteth not down first, and counteth the cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it?

Luke 14:28 · KJV

The verb rendered “counted” here (⁨συμψηφίζω⁩, sympsēphizō) shares the counting root ⁨ψηφίζω⁩ (psēphizō) with Luke’s “counteth”; both grow from ⁨ψῆφος⁩ (psēphos), pebble. Luke places the reckoning before building begins, while Acts gives the total alongside the burning, making the cost visible at both the threshold and the act of relinquishment.

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