What Does Acts 7:6 Mean in the King James?
And God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years.
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 Greek calls the seed a dweller beside another’s household: the people are already in the land, yet not at home in it.
THE MEANING
This verse gives you language for a people living on land that belongs to another, then being forced into bondage and harmed. Its four hundred years carries the condition across generations. The verse names the people as sojourners and their treatment as harm, without making coercion sound like home.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a long stay makes imposed displacement into belonging: the verse still names the descendants as sojourners and their treatment as harm.
THE ROOT
πάροικον
paroikon
GROWS FROM
οἰκ- (oik-), joined with παρά (para)
οἶκος (oikos) means house or household, and παρά (para) means beside; πάροικος (paroikos) describes someone dwelling as a resident alien.
English “sojourn” can sound like a passing visit, while this Greek word carries the image of dwelling beside another household. The verse places the seed in the land, yet outside its belonging, before naming the bondage and harm that follow.
ALSO GROWS
oikos: House or household; its root idea makes the sojourner’s relation to home visible in the verse.
οἶκος
The seed lives in the land without belonging to its household.
oikeō: To dwell or inhabit; the verb names actual residence.
οἰκέω
The sojourner is living there, not merely passing through.
ἀλλοτρίᾳ
allotria
GROWS FROM
ἀλλοτρι- (allotri-), from ἄλλος (allos)
Another’s, belonging to someone else; ἄλλος (allos) means another or other.
The word for “strange” points beyond unfamiliarity to land belonging to someone else. Beside πάροικον (paroikon), it makes the seed’s unsettled place in the land both relational and material.
ALSO GROWS
allos: Another, or something other; this is the root idea behind belonging to someone else.
ἄλλος
The land is marked as another’s, rather than simply unfamiliar to the seed.
allotrios: Foreign or belonging to another; this is the form behind ἀλλοτρίᾳ (allotria) in the verse.
ἀλλότριος
It ties the strangeness of the land to who it belongs to.
σπέρμα
sperma
GROWS FROM
σπειρ- (speir-), in σπείρω (speirō)
To sow or scatter seed; σπέρμα (sperma) means seed and can refer to descendants as a continuing lineage.
The Greek singular σπέρμα holds the descendants together as one continuing seed. The four-hundred-year span gives their bondage and harm a generational scale.
ALSO GROWS
speirō: To sow; the verb from which σπέρμα (sperma) is formed.
σπείρω
The word keeps the image of seed and growing lineage beneath the reference to descendants.
spora: Sowing or seed; a related word from the same seed-sowing family.
σπορά
It echoes the passage’s picture of a lineage continuing across generations.
THE PATTERN
Scripture uses sojourner language for people who dwell in a place while their belonging remains unsettled.
And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years;By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:Dearly beloved, I beseech you as strangers and pilgrims, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul;THE THREAD
By faith he sojourned in the land of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise:Acts uses πάροικον (paroikon, a resident alien or sojourner), while Hebrews uses παρῴκησεν (parōkēsen, dwelt as a stranger), from the same Greek word-family. The shared root ties sojourning to dwelling where belonging remains unsettled; Acts names the bondage and harm that follow.
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