What Does Acts 5:17 Mean in the King James?
Then the high priest rose up, and all they that were with him, (which is the sect of the Sadducees,) and were filled with indignation,
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
“Indignation” is zēlos, a Greek word for zeal or jealousy: fervor can turn into rivalry when authority feels challenged.
THE MEANING
When a voice threatens a place you guard, indignation can rise as a shared heat of rivalry. The Greek word ζῆλος (zēlos, zeal or jealousy) carries more than irritation: here it binds the high priest’s circle against a competing voice. The verse exposes how conviction and a threatened position can share the same fervor.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that intense conviction is automatically pure: ζῆλος (zēlos, zeal or jealousy) can name either, so intensity alone does not reveal what is driving it.
THE ROOT
ζήλου
zēlou
GROWS FROM
ζηλ-
zēl-
Zeal, ardor, or jealousy: intense fervor that may be devoted or competitive.
The word translated “indignation” is the genitive form of ζῆλος (zēlos, zeal or jealousy). Its word family carries both eager devotion and envy, so the verse’s fervor has a relational direction, not just intensity.
ALSO GROWS
zēloō: To be zealous, eager, or jealous.
ζηλόω
The same fervor can describe strong commitment or rivalry, revealing what the English word “indignation” can hold.
zēlōtēs: A zealous one; a zealot.
ζηλωτής
This branch names a person through that fervor, showing how an intense feeling can become a defining allegiance.
THE PATTERN
When zeal becomes rivalry, it moves people into opposition and disorder.
Wrath is cruel, and anger is outrageous; but who is able to stand before envy?But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.For where envying and strife is, there is confusion and every evil work.THE THREAD
But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with envy, and spake against those things which were spoken by Paul, contradicting and blaspheming.Acts 13:45 uses the same Greek noun, ζῆλος (zēlos, zeal or jealousy), and the same phrase “filled with,” though the KJV renders it “envy.” The parallel reveals the rivalry that “indignation” can contain when a message draws people away from an established center.
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