What Does Acts 26:8 Mean in the King James?
Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you, that God should raise the dead?
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 word “raise” also means “wake”: death is a state God can rouse someone from.
THE MEANING
The question places the human limit of death beside God’s agency: your inability to reverse death does not define God’s reach. It asks whether what seems impossible within human power must also be impossible for God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that God can act only within the limits of what you have already seen happen.
THE ROOT
ἐγείρει
egeirei
GROWS FROM
ἐγερ-
eger-
to wake, rouse, or raise up
The word translated “raise” also means “wake” or “rouse.” It lets the verse picture the dead not as beyond God’s reach, but as able to be awakened by God.
ALSO GROWS
egersis: rising, raising, resurrection
ἔγερσις
This noun shares the same root and makes the “waking” sense explicit in words for rising from death.
synegeirō: raise together
συνεγείρω
This compound keeps the same raising root and shows it can describe people being brought up together.
ἄπιστον
apiston
GROWS FROM
πιστ-
pist-
trust, rely on; be trustworthy
The word translated “incredible” is built from the trust-word with a negating prefix: it marks the raising as something deemed unbelievable. The hidden tension is about whether God’s agency can be trusted beyond what human experience has seen.
ALSO GROWS
pistis: trust
πίστις
This is the same word family; the verse’s “incredible” describes what seems impossible to trust or believe.
pistos: trustworthy, steady
πιστός
This related form names what can be relied on, echoing the question of whether raising the dead can be credited to God.
THE PATTERN
What humans call final, God’s life-giving power can bring into life.
Therefore prophesy and say unto them, Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel.For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.THE THREAD
And he took the damsel by the hand, and said unto her, Talitha cumi; which is, being interpreted, Damsel, I say unto thee, arise.The Greek word translated “arise” here is from the same root as “raise” in Acts 26:8. In one verse the word appears as a command to a girl who has died; in the other, it names what God can do for the dead.
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