What Does Acts 28:20 Mean in the King James?

For this cause therefore have I called for you, to see you, and to speak with you: because that for the hope of Israel I am bound with this chain.

Acts 28:20 · KJV

The analysis reads the King James wording.

King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.

This verse in the Selah Decoded Version

THE KEY

The chain is not proof that hope has failed; here, hope is named as the very reason the chain is there.

THE MEANING

Your present hope and your present confinement can both be real. The hope of Israel remains weighty enough to shape the conversation you seek, even while the chain is named without disguise.

WHAT THIS UNDOES

The lie is that real hope must first make visible constraints disappear; here, hope and binding occupy the same sentence.

THE ROOT

ἐλπίς

elpís

GROWS FROM

ἐλπ-

elp-

expectation; what is awaited

The Greek word carries expectation, not merely a private wish. Its word family includes hoping and hoping beforehand, showing hope as an orientation toward what is awaited while the present remains unfinished.

ALSO GROWS

elpízō: to hope, to expect

ἐλπίζω

This verb makes hope an active expectation, illuminating why it can shape the speaker’s appeal even while he is bound.

proelpízō: to hope beforehand

προελπίζω

This related verb names expectation that precedes fulfillment, matching the verse’s hope held alongside present constraint.

THE PATTERN

Scriptural hope can orient present life while its fulfillment remains unseen.

For thou art my hope, O Lord GOD: thou art my trust from my youth.

Psalm 71:5 · KJVHope is named as a present ground of trust, not only a feeling about what may come.

For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?

Romans 8:24 · KJVHope remains directed toward what is not yet visible.

Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast, and which entereth into that within the veil;

Hebrews 6:19 · KJVHope holds a person steady in the present while reaching toward what is still ahead.

THE THREAD

But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.

Acts 23:6 · KJV

This verse joins hope to the resurrection of the dead, giving the hope of Israel a concrete horizon. The hope named here is the same hope that stands beside the chain in Acts 28:20.

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