What Does Acts 7:8 Mean in the King James?
And he gave him the covenant of circumcision: and so Abraham begat Isaac, and circumcised him the eighth day; and Isaac begat Jacob; and Jacob begat the twelve patriarchs.
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 covenant’s continuity is both bodily and generational: it is marked by a cut, then carried in a line of births.
THE MEANING
You encounter covenant here as something given a bodily mark and carried through a living chain of births. The cut names the sign; the repeated “begat” carries the line from Abraham through Isaac and Jacob to the twelve patriarchs.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This dissolves the belief that covenant is only an invisible promise or a private possession.
THE ROOT
περιέτεμεν
perietemen
GROWS FROM
τέμνω
temnō
To cut, make an incision.
“circumcised” in this verse is perietemen. The Greek form comes from περιτέμνω (peritemnō), “to cut around”; the root’s wider word family includes cutting off. The covenant sign carries removal in its own word-shape: it marks the body by taking something away.
ALSO GROWS
peritomē: A cutting around; circumcision.
περιτομή
This noun names the covenant’s bodily sign, tying covenant directly to a cut.
apotomia: A cutting off; severity.
ἀποτομία
The same cut-family can name removal, echoing the bodily subtraction that marks Abraham’s household.
ἐγέννησεν
egennēsen
GROWS FROM
γεν-
gen-
Birth, begetting, coming into being.
The verse repeats “begat” across Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, so the covenant is narrated through successive births rather than left as a private possession. The same γεν- family appears in words for origin and generation, linking each birth to the unfolding family line.
ALSO GROWS
genesis: Coming into being; birth.
γένεσις
Each begetting becomes a beginning within the covenant line.
genea: A generation or lineage.
γενεά
The chain from Abraham through Jacob to the twelve patriarchs shows the line continuing across generations.
THE PATTERN
A covenant sign can mark the body while its meaning reaches beyond the body’s boundary.
And ye shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskin; and it shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you.And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also:In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:THE THREAD
In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ:Both verses use περιτομή (peritomē, circumcision): Acts names the bodily mark as Abraham’s covenant sign, while Colossians describes a circumcision made without hands as a putting off. The shared word lets the bodily cut in Acts illuminate this wider image of removal.
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