What Does Acts 7:29 Mean in the King James?
Then fled Moses at this saying, and was a stranger in the land of Madian, where he begat two sons.
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
Flight and fatherhood occupy the same sentence: displacement does not prevent life from taking root.
THE MEANING
A saying can send you out of the familiar, and you can find yourself dwelling beside a home that does not yet feel yours. Being a stranger does not make life stop taking root; new life can unfold even where belonging is unsettled. The verse holds flight and fatherhood together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that leaving the familiar ends the possibility of a future. Strangerhood does not mean life has stopped taking root.
THE ROOT
ἔφυγεν
ephugen
GROWS FROM
φεύγ-
to flee or escape
“fled” in this verse is ephugen. The Greek word belongs to the same root family as words for flight and fugitive. It marks movement away from danger; it does not say that the life following that movement is finished.
ALSO GROWS
phygē: flight
φυγή
The noun gives a name to the movement carried by the verb in this verse.
phygas: fugitive, one who flees
φυγάς
This branch names the person shaped by that movement, showing how flight can become a condition of life.
מֹשֶׁה
Mosheh
GROWS FROM
מָשָׁה
to draw out, especially from water
Moses’s name carries the sense of being drawn out. The verse places the one whose name bears that nature in flight again, then shows him becoming a father in the land where he is a stranger.
ALSO GROWS
māšâ: to draw out
מָשָׁה
This verb is the root associated with the name Moses.
mĕšîtihû: I drew him out
מְשִׁיתִהוּ
This form supplies the name’s wordplay in Exodus 2:10: Moses is named in relation to being drawn from the water.
πάροικος
paroikos
GROWS FROM
οἰκ-
house, household, dwelling
The Greek word for stranger is built around the language of dwelling: a πάροικος lives beside a home without fully belonging to it. The verse holds that unsettled belonging together with the formation of a family.
ALSO GROWS
oikos: house, home
οἶκος
This is the dwelling at the center of the word’s construction.
oikeō: to dwell, inhabit
οἰκέω
This related verb makes clear that the stranger is still someone who dwells, even when the place is not fully home.
THE PATTERN
Being a stranger in a place does not prevent life from growing into a future.
And thou shalt speak and say before the LORD thy God, A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous:These all died in faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;THE THREAD
And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.The same Greek root φευγ- (pheug-, “flee”) carries the movement in both verses. Matthew makes the danger to the child explicit; Acts pairs Moses’s flight with a saying, then follows him into life as a stranger. The shared root connects the departures while each verse reveals what follows.
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