What Does Acts 21:22 Mean in the King James?
What is it therefore? the multitude must needs come together: for they will hear that thou art come.
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 Greek uses the same verb for “come together” and “art come”: the crowd’s gathering is the arrival spreading outward.
THE MEANING
Once word reaches others that you have arrived, the crowd’s gathering is already in motion. Hearing does not stay private here; it carries the fact of your presence outward until people come together.
THE ROOT
συνελθεῖν
synelthein
GROWS FROM
ἔρχομαι
erchomai
To come, go, or arrive.
“come together” in this verse is synelthein. English separates the crowd’s gathering from the news of your arrival. Greek repeats the root ἔρχομαι (erchomai): συνέρχομαι (sunerchomai) adds “together” to coming, while ἐλήλυθας (elēlythas) names an arrival already completed; the crowd’s convergence follows that arrival.
ALSO GROWS
sunerchomai: To come together; assemble.
συνέρχομαι
The prefix συν- (syn, “together”) turns individual coming into the crowd’s shared movement.
elēlythas: You have come; you have arrived.
ἐλήλυθας
This perfect form of ἔρχομαι describes a completed arrival whose presence still matters now.
erchomenos: Coming; the one who comes.
ἐρχόμενος
This form keeps the same root’s sense of movement toward arrival.
THE PATTERN
Hearing and gathering draw people into a shared encounter.
Gather the people together, men, and women, and children, and thy stranger that is within thy gates, that they may hear, and that they may learn, and fear the LORD your God, and observe to do all the words of this law:Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.THE THREAD
Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because that every man heard them speak in his own language.The Greek phrase “came together” here uses the same verb, συνέρχομαι (sunerchomai), rooted in ἔρχομαι (erchomai), as “come together” in Acts 21:22. Both verses show hearing linked to a multitude gathering.
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