What Does Acts 4:23 Mean in the King James?
And being let go, they went to their own company, and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said unto 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
Release is an unbinding that carries the story back into belonging, where the whole account can be heard.
THE MEANING
You are not released into isolation: release carries you back toward your own people, where what happened can be spoken whole. The words spoken over you do not have to remain the only account; they become something your community can hear and hold together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that being released means the experience is over and should stay unspoken: the whole account is carried back into shared life.
THE ROOT
ἀπολυθέντες
apolythentes
GROWS FROM
λύω
lyō
To loosen, untie, or release.
The phrase translated “being let go” comes from a verb built on loosening. Here that release does not sever the speakers from their people; it opens the way back to them with the story intact.
ALSO GROWS
lyō: Loosen, untie, release.
λύω
The root holds release as the undoing of a restraint.
apolyō: Release, dismiss, let go.
ἀπολύω
This is the verb behind “being let go,” making the verse’s release concrete.
katalyō: Loosen down, dissolve, tear down.
καταλύω
The same word-family can describe something being dismantled, echoing release as the loosening of what holds.
ἀπήγγειλαν
apēngeilan
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ-
angel-
Message, messenger, or announcing.
“reported” in this verse is apēngeilan. The verb for reporting belongs to the same word-family as the word for messenger. The released people return carrying a message: what they heard from the authorities is brought into their own community.
ALSO GROWS
angelos: Messenger.
ἄγγελος
The shared root links their report to the work of carrying a message.
euangelion: Good message, gospel.
εὐαγγέλιον
The same message-family can name a proclamation, showing how speech carries meaning into a community.
THE PATTERN
Release opens a path from constraint back into shared life, where the account can be spoken.
And Moses told his father in law all that the LORD had done unto Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, and all the travail that had come upon them by the way, and how the LORD delivered them.Let the redeemed of the LORD say so, whom he hath redeemed from the hand of the enemy;And they went out of the prison, and entered into the house of Lydia: and when they had seen the brethren, they comforted them, and departed.THE THREAD
And when it was day, the magistrates sent the serjeants, saying, Let those men go.“Let those men go” translates ἀπολύω (apolyō), the same release verb behind “being let go” in this verse. The shared root ties release to what follows: a return to the brethren, where the experience enters shared life.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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