What Does Acts 5:16 Mean in the King James?
There came also a multitude out of the cities round about unto Jerusalem, bringing sick folks, and them which were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed every one.
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 word translated “spirits” is pneuma, the same Greek word whose range includes breath and wind, placing unseen affliction close to the language of embodied life.
THE MEANING
The scene meets you now with people arriving from surrounding towns carrying illness and what the verse calls unclean spirits, and every one is healed. Its word for “spirits,” pneuma, also means breath and wind, holding unseen distress within the language of breath itself.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a person’s condition puts them beyond reach: every person brought in this scene is healed.
THE ROOT
πνευμάτων
pneumatōn
GROWS FROM
πνευ-
Breath, blowing, or wind.
The word translated “spirits” shares its Greek root with words for breathing and breath. Its range keeps breath, wind, and spirit together in a single word, where English separates them.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: to blow or breathe
πνέω
This branch makes the breath and wind within pneuma audible in the word itself.
pnoē: breath or blowing
πνοή
This related word for breath shows how closely pneuma belongs to the language of breathing.
ἐθεραπεύοντο
etherapeuonto
GROWS FROM
θεραπευ-
To attend to, serve, treat, or heal.
The verb gathers healing together with attending and service. The verse emphasizes the reach of that care: every person brought from the surrounding towns is healed.
ALSO GROWS
therapeia: care or healing
θεραπεία
This branch names healing as care, illuminating the attentive reach of the verb in the verse.
therapōn: attendant or servant
θεράπων
This related word keeps the root’s sense of attendance and service beside its sense of healing.
THE PATTERN
Healing reaches across kinds of affliction, attending to bodily illness, wounds, and inward distress.
He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.For I will restore health unto thee, and I will heal thee of thy wounds, saith the LORD; because they called thee an Outcast, saying, This is Zion, whom no man seeketh after.And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.THE THREAD
And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatick, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them.Matthew’s “healed” and Acts’ “healed” come from the same Greek verb, θεραπεύω (therapeuō), meaning to attend to, treat, or heal. Matthew’s list of diverse afflictions opens the scope of that care; Acts makes its reach explicit with “every one.”
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