What Does Acts 7:45 Mean in the King James?
Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David;
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 land enters one people’s possession in the same sentence that names another people being thrust out.
THE MEANING
You cannot hear “possession” here without also hearing the people driven out before it. The sentence holds the fathers’ arrival and the nations’ expulsion in one frame, so gain carries the weight of what it displaces. That force still speaks whenever inheritance is told as if no one had to leave.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the idea that inheritance is only what someone receives: here, possession arrives alongside the people pushed out before it.
THE ROOT
ἐξῶσεν
exōsen
GROWS FROM
ὠθέω
to push or thrust
“drave out” in this verse is exōsen. The Greek verb belongs to the ὠθέω family: pushing or thrusting, here outward. The same root appears in words for thrusting away or rejecting, keeping the force of expulsion audible beside the word “possession.”
ALSO GROWS
ōtheō: push, thrust
ὠθέω
This is the base verb whose force the compound in the verse carries.
exōtheō: thrust out, expel
ἐξωθέω
The verse’s verb is a form of this compound, with ἐξ- giving the push its outward direction.
apōtheō: push away, reject
ἀπωθέω
This related compound carries the same force from physical expulsion into rejection.
יְהוֹשֻׁעַ
Yehoshua
GROWS FROM
י־שׁ־ע
deliver, bring out into spaciousness
The Greek name Ἰησοῦς in this verse is the name used for Joshua as well as Jesus; Joshua’s Hebrew name is Yehoshua, carrying the root of deliverance. The name stands beside a scene of entry into possession, while the sentence also names those thrust out before the entrants.
ALSO GROWS
yasha: deliver, rescue
יָשַׁע
This verb gives the name its root sense of deliverance.
yeshuah: deliverance
יְשׁוּעָה
This noun makes explicit the deliverance carried within the name.
Yeshua: Yeshua; a name formed from the same deliverance root
יֵשׁוּעַ
This related name shows the same root continuing in the name form familiar from the Gospels.
κατασχέσει
kataschesei
GROWS FROM
ἔχω
to have, hold
The word for possession is built from the family of ἔχω, “have” or “hold,” with the compound κατα- adding the sense of holding or occupying. Here, that holding ground appears alongside the forceful verb for pushing others out.
ALSO GROWS
echō: have, hold
ἔχω
This is the base verb behind the possession word.
katechō: hold fast, occupy, possess
κατέχω
This compound shares the stem and gives the sense of holding or occupying ground.
metechō: share in, partake
μετέχω
This related compound shows the same root extending from holding something to having a share in it.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places the gaining of possession beside the expulsion or displacement that makes room for it.
Speak not thou in thine heart, after that the LORD thy God hath cast them out from before thee, saying, For my righteousness the LORD hath brought me in to possess this land: but for the wickedness of these nations the LORD doth drive them out from before thee.How thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them; how thou didst afflict the people, and cast them out.And when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Chanaan, he divided their land to them by lot.THE THREAD
I say then, Hath God cast away his people? God forbid. For I also am an Israelite, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin.Acts uses ἐξῶσεν, from the ὠθέω family of pushing or thrusting out; Romans asks whether God has ἀπώσατο, from the related ἀπωθέω, pushed away his people. The shared root carries the language of expulsion into a sharp question about rejection.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us