What Does Acts 5:20 Mean in the King James?
Go, stand and speak in the temple to the people all the words of this life.
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 life named here has a voice: it is spoken openly where people gather.
THE MEANING
The verse places the words of this life among people, in the shared space of the temple. The movement from going, to standing, to speaking gives that life a public voice.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that living truth belongs only to inward experience; the words of this life are spoken openly among people.
THE ROOT
ζωῆς
zōēs
GROWS FROM
ζάω
zaō
To live; to be alive.
The phrase calls these words “of this life,” tying what is spoken to ζωή (zōē, life) as a living reality. This word family also reaches from being alive to making alive, giving the phrase a generative quality.
ALSO GROWS
zōn: Living; alive.
ζῶν
This branch makes clear that the root describes a state of being alive, not life as a detached idea.
zōopoieō: To make alive; to give life.
ζωοποιέω
This compound shows the family can name life becoming active in another.
THE PATTERN
Words from God sustain life and make it present among people.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.This is my comfort in my affliction: for thy word hath quickened me.It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.THE THREAD
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.John sets ῥήματα (rhēmata, utterances) beside ζωή (zōē, life), the same Greek word family that frames this verse. That makes the connection explicit: the spoken words are named as life itself.
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