What Does Acts 21:26 Mean in the King James?
Then Paul took the men, and the next day purifying himself with them entered into the temple, to signify the accomplishment of the days of purification, until that an offering should be offered for every one of them.
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 one purity-root for both being purified and the days of purification, making the rite a process with a marked completion.
THE MEANING
Purity here is a shared passage with a measured span: the days reach their end, and an offering marks completion for each person. The temple is where that completion becomes visible. Cleansing has a threshold and a public form.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that purity is merely a private state: here it unfolds with others across a span and reaches visible completion.
THE ROOT
ἁγνισθείς
hagnistheis
GROWS FROM
ἁγν-
hagn-
Purity or cleanness; freedom from defilement.
“purifying” in this verse is hagnistheis. English uses a verb for the act and a noun for the days, but Greek gives both the same ἁγν- (hagn-) seed. The shared root joins a person’s purification with the measured span in which it reaches completion.
ALSO GROWS
hagnismos: The act or state of purification.
ἁγνισμός
This is the verse’s own word for the days, repeating the root used for the act of purification.
hagnos: Pure or clean, whether ritually or morally.
ἁγνός
It names the state toward which the purification moves.
hagneia: Purity or chastity.
ἁγνεία
It shows how the same root can name a continuing state, as well as an act or period of purification.
προσφορά
prosphora
GROWS FROM
φέρ- (pher-, carry or bear), with πρός (pros-, toward)
The word is formed from προσφέρω (prospherō), to bring toward or offer; its base φέρω (pherō) means carry or bear.
The offering is something brought forward. It gives the completion of purification a concrete marker for each person.
ALSO GROWS
prospherō: To bring toward or present.
προσφέρω
This verb shares the offering’s word-family and makes the act of presentation audible in the noun.
pherō: To carry or bear.
φέρω
This base gives the offering the sense of something carried forward and presented.
THE PATTERN
Purification marks a passage out of uncleanness and makes restored approach or shared life visible.
And the priest shall offer the sin offering, and make an atonement for him that is to be cleansed from his uncleanness; and afterward he shall kill the burnt offering:Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water.But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.THE THREAD
Whereupon certain Jews from Asia found me purified in the temple, neither with multitude, nor with tumult.Acts 24:18 uses another form of ἁγνίζω (hagnizō, purify) for being purified in the temple. That shared seed links this verse’s days of purification to the completed state named in the second verse.
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