What Does Acts 3:19 Mean in the King James?
Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord;
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 paired turns lead to an erasure: the misses are wiped away, and refreshing comes from the Lord’s presence.
THE MEANING
Turning is both a reorientation and a return, and what misses the mark is wiped away. The verse locates refreshing in the Lord’s presence. Release and renewal belong to the same movement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that a missed mark becomes an indelible identity: the verse describes these misses as something that can be wiped away.
THE ROOT
ἁμαρτίας
hamartias
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτάνω
hamartanō
To miss, err, or fail to reach.
English “sins” can land as a fixed moral label, while hamartia names a miss. Here the misses are the very things wiped away, rather than a permanent name for the reader.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: To miss, err, or fail to reach.
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb names the action behind the noun: missing.
hamartēma: A miss, error, or failure.
ἁμάρτημα
This related noun keeps the focus on what has gone wrong as an act or result, rather than as an identity.
ἐπιστρέψατε
epistrepsate
GROWS FROM
στρέφω
strephō
To turn or turn around.
The Greek verb names a turn back, giving “be converted” the movement of return. Beside the verse’s first turning verb, it makes the response a reorientation and a return before the misses are wiped away.
ALSO GROWS
epistrophē: Return or turning back.
ἐπιστροφή
The related noun makes the return movement explicit.
apostrephō: Turn away or turn back.
ἀποστρέφω
Its compound uses the same turning root, showing how direction changes while the core movement remains turning.
ἐξαλειφθῆναι
exaleiphthēnai
GROWS FROM
ἀλείφω
aleiphō
To rub, smear, or apply; in the compound with ex-, to wipe away or erase.
“blotted out” in this verse is exaleiphthēnai. The word carries the image of a trace being wiped away. The verse sets that erasure beside return and locates refreshing in the Lord’s presence.
ALSO GROWS
aleiphō: To anoint, rub, or apply oil.
ἀλείφω
This base verb preserves a physical rubbing sense beneath the English phrase “blotted out.”
exaleipsis: Wiping away or erasure.
ἐξάλειψις
This related noun names the removal itself, making the image of a mark erased explicit.
THE PATTERN
Scripture joins a turn toward God with the release of what has gone wrong and the arrival of renewal.
I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.Or despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?And he arose, and came to his father. But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.THE THREAD
I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me; for I have redeemed thee.In the Greek Septuagint, Isaiah uses the same word families for “blotted out” and “return” that Acts uses, and it names the objects as “sins” with the same hamartia word. Isaiah’s line makes the shared movement visible: return, wiping away, and redemption.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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