What Does Acts 4:25 Mean in the King James?
Who by the mouth of thy servant David hast said, Why did the heathen rage, and the people imagine vain things?
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
Here, “imagine” is a people’s repeated rehearsal of emptiness, not a passing picture in the mind.
THE MEANING
The verse lets you hear a crowd turning an empty plan over together until their inward rehearsal becomes shared speech. Even as that voice gathers, the words spoken through David expose the plan’s lack of substance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a plan becomes substantial because many people repeat it dissolves here: shared rehearsal can still be empty.
THE ROOT
ἐμελέτησαν
emelētēsan
GROWS FROM
μελετ-
melet-
To attend to repeatedly, practice, meditate, or devise.
English “imagine” can sound like a passing private picture, while μελετάω (meletaō, “meditate, practice”) carries the force of sustained attention or rehearsal. The Hebrew wording of the quoted psalm uses יֶהְגּוּ (yehgu), from הָגָה (hagah, “mutter, utter, meditate”): the peoples turn the matter over and give it voice.
ALSO GROWS
meletē: Practice, exercise, or meditation.
μελέτη
This related noun makes the connection between thought and repeated practice visible: what is imagined here is something kept in rehearsal.
meleta: Meditate on or practice; an imperative form of the verb.
μελέτα
This form appears in 1 Timothy 4:15, where the same kind of sustained attention is directed toward teaching rather than emptiness.
κενά
kena
GROWS FROM
κεν-
ken-
Empty, without substance or fullness.
“Vain” here carries the image of something hollow, not merely mistaken. The root shows the gap between the crowd’s forceful rehearsal and the emptiness of what they rehearse.
ALSO GROWS
kenoō: To empty or make void.
κενόω
This verb shows the root’s concrete sense of emptiness: the “vain things” lack substance rather than simply being unpopular.
kenodoxia: Empty glory or vainglory.
κενοδοξία
This compound joins emptiness with the pursuit of glory, showing how something hollow can still attract collective desire.
THE PATTERN
A crowd can rehearse resistance together while its scheme remains empty against what God speaks.
The LORD bringeth the counsel of the heathen to nought: he maketh the devices of the people of none effect.Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God is with us.For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent.THE THREAD
Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all.The same Greek verb μελετάω (meletaō, “meditate, practice”) appears here as μελέτα (meleta) and in Acts as ἐμελέτησαν (emelētēsan). In Timothy it is directed toward these teachings; in Acts, toward emptiness, the shared root reveals the repeated rehearsal, while its object changes.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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