What Does Acts 7:28 Mean in the King James?
Wilt thou kill me, as thou diddest the Egyptian yesterday?
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 question shows how yesterday’s killing becomes today’s feared repetition.
THE MEANING
The verse holds a killing close enough to be named as an immediate threat: the speaker asks whether the same hand will take another life. What happened yesterday remains active now because another person still fears its repetition.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that a violent act becomes finished just because the moment has passed. Here, “yesterday” is still shaping what may happen next.
THE ROOT
ἀνελεῖν
anelein
GROWS FROM
αἱρέω, in the compound ἀναιρέω
αἱρέω (haireō) means “take” or “choose”; with ἀνά (ana), the compound carries the sense “take away,” and also means “kill.”
The verb for “kill” belongs to a word family built around taking or removing. In this question, the feared taking-away is not abstract: “as thou diddest” makes it a possible repetition of the act already named.
ALSO GROWS
haireō: take, seize, choose
αἱρέω
The base verb keeps the sense of deliberate taking within the family behind “kill.”
anáiresis: taking away; putting to death
ἀναίρεσις
This related noun shows the compound’s range from removal to killing, echoing the life taken in the verse.
THE PATTERN
Violence sets a consequence that can return to the one who deals it.
His mischief shall return upon his own head, and his violent dealing shall come down upon his own pate.Then said Jesus unto him, Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.THE THREAD
And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known.Exodus contains the same question, setting the killing of the Egyptian beside the possibility of killing the speaker. The echoed words make the danger concrete: the earlier act is now named as a threat that could be repeated.
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