What Does Acts 2:15 Mean in the King James?
For these are not drunken, as ye suppose, seeing it is but the third hour of the day.
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 hour itself becomes evidence that interrupts a confident misreading.
THE MEANING
The crowd’s label meets a fact that unsettles it: it is the third hour of the day. For you, the verse shows how a confident reading can outrun the evidence, while one concrete detail opens another way to understand what is happening.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Strange or unfamiliar speech must mean drunkenness; the verse unsettles that conclusion by setting it beside the time of day.
THE ROOT
ὑπολαμβάνετε
hypolambanete
GROWS FROM
λαμβάνω
lambanō
To take or receive.
The word rendered “suppose” belongs to the family of taking and receiving: an interpretation is something the mind takes up. The verse exposes the accusation as an interpretation, then places it beside a concrete detail that can unsettle it.
ALSO GROWS
paralambanō: Receive; take along.
παραλαμβάνω
Its sense of receiving illuminates how the crowd takes up an explanation for what it sees.
antilambanomai: Take hold of; help.
ἀντιλαμβάνομαι
This branch makes the act of taking hold concrete: the crowd grasps one explanation, while the stated hour challenges that grasp.
THE PATTERN
An outward appearance can invite a false reading that a fuller account or concrete detail unsettles.
And Hannah answered and said, No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit: I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the LORD.The Son of man is come eating and drinking; and ye say, Behold a gluttonous man, and a winebibber, a friend of publicans and sinners!Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.THE THREAD
And it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out of my Spirit upon all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:The next verse names what the accusation misses: God’s breath is being poured out, and prophecy, visions, and dreams follow. It turns the denial in verse 15 into a hinge between the crowd’s outward reading and the event’s disclosed meaning.
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