What Does Acts 27:18 Mean in the King James?
And we being exceedingly tossed with a tempest, the next day they lightened the ship;
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 says they made a casting out: the ship grows lighter through what leaves it, while the storm still rages.
THE MEANING
You can be in a storm that keeps throwing you about, with no calm in sight. Here the first change is not the weather easing but cargo going overboard: the vessel gains room to endure by carrying less. The verse speaks to the moment when preserving the vessel means its load must go.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that surviving a storm means holding on to everything you carry; here, the vessel is lightened by casting its load out.
THE ROOT
ἐκβολήν
ekbolēn
GROWS FROM
βάλλω
ballō
to throw or cast
English says “lightened,” but the Greek phrase means “they were making a casting out.” The word grows from βάλλω (ballō), “to throw or cast”: the ship is lightened by cargo going out. The verse gives subtraction a concrete form, the vessel’s continued passage may depend on what it no longer carries.
ALSO GROWS
ekballō: to cast out, drive out
ἐκβάλλω
The “out” direction makes visible how the ship is lightened: its load is thrown beyond the vessel.
kataballō: to cast down, lay down
καταβάλλω
This compound keeps the same casting root, showing how the root describes physical movement; here, the movement carries the load away from the ship.
THE PATTERN
When weight obstructs what a vessel must carry, removing it restores the capacity to continue.
Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.Take away the dross from the silver, and there shall come forth a vessel for the finer.Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us,THE THREAD
Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.Jonah shows the same shipboard response: threatened sailors cast goods into the sea to lighten the vessel. The parallel makes the action in Acts feel like the literal arithmetic of a ship trying to survive a storm.
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