What Does Acts 19:24 Mean in the King James?
For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen;
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 silver shrine turns devotion into a workshop’s livelihood.
THE MEANING
Whenever a sacred image becomes someone’s product, devotion keeps a workshop busy. The silver temple carries religious meaning for its buyers and livelihood for its makers. The gain is woven into the shrine’s making, not separate from it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that devotion and material self-interest must be separate: the shrine’s sacred meaning and the craftsmen’s livelihood feed the same enterprise.
THE ROOT
ἐργασία
ergasía
GROWS FROM
ἐργ-
erg-
Work, action, labor; by extension, business or occupation.
English gives the result as “gain,” while the Greek names ἐργασία (ergasía, work or business): Demetrius supplies the craftsmen with a substantial stream of work. Its word family links business back to labor, showing how the shrine’s manufacture becomes the source of the craftsmen’s prosperity.
ALSO GROWS
ergon: Work, deed
ἔργον
The income here grows out of the work invested in making the silver shrines.
ergazomai: To work, labor
ἐργάζομαι
The business Demetrius provides is ongoing labor for the craftsmen, not an abstract gain detached from their hands.
THE PATTERN
A crafted image can gather devotion around the human work and commerce that sustain it.
And he received them at their hand, and fashioned it with a graving tool, after he had made it a molten calf: and they said, These be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt.What profiteth the graven image that the maker thereof hath graven it; the molten image, and a teacher of lies, that the maker of his work trusteth therein, to make dumb idols?God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;THE THREAD
God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;Both verses use ναός (naos, temple) and forms of ποιέω (poieō, make): Demetrius makes silver temples, while this verse says God does not dwell in temples made with human hands. The shared words expose the limit of the crafted shrine: it can sustain a market, but it cannot contain the maker of all things.
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