What Does Romans 2:22 Mean?
You who say not to commit adultery, do you commit adultery? You who recoil from idols, do you plunder what is set apart?
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery? thou that abhorrest idols, dost thou commit sacrilege?THE KEY
You can despise the idol’s image while still plundering what is sacred.
THE MEANING
You can name a boundary clearly and still cross it yourself: the same voice says adultery must not be done, then faces the charge of doing it. The verse holds two gestures together, loathing an idol’s image and plundering sacred things. What you condemn aloud does not by itself determine what your actions honor.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that recognizing or despising a wrong proves you stand outside it dissolves here; your conduct can contradict the judgment your mouth makes.
THE ROOT
ἱεροσυλεῖς
hierosyleis
GROWS FROM
ἱερο- + συλ- (hieros + syl-)
To plunder a temple or rob what is sacred.
“plunder what is set apart” in this verse is hierosyleis. The Greek verb carries the concrete sense of robbing a temple. The verse sets that act beside the speaker’s loathing of idols: rejecting an image does not prevent someone from taking what belongs to the sacred.
ALSO GROWS
hieros: sacred, consecrated
ἱερός
This supplies the sacred element in the compound.
sylaō: to rob, plunder
συλάω
This supplies the action: the sacrilege is a plundering of what is sacred.
εἴδωλα
eidōla
GROWS FROM
εἰδ- (from εἶδος, eidos)
Form, appearance, visible shape.
The word translated “idols” names images or visible forms. The verse puts contempt for those forms beside the act of robbing sacred things, showing that rejecting a false image can coexist with violating what is sacred.
ALSO GROWS
eidos: form, appearance
εἶδος
This is the word family’s sense of visible form.
eidōlon: image, likeness, idol
εἴδωλον
This singular form is the source of the verse’s plural εἴδωλα.
μοιχεύεις
moicheueis
GROWS FROM
μοιχ- / μοιχευ- (moich- / moicheu-)
Adultery; violation of marital fidelity.
The prohibition and accusation use the same Greek verb: “do not commit adultery” is followed by “you commit adultery?” The action named in the rule is turned directly back onto the speaker.
ALSO GROWS
moichos: adulterer
μοιχός
The same word family names the person who commits adultery.
moicheia: adultery
μοιχεία
This noun names the act that the verb in the verse charges the speaker with committing.
THE PATTERN
A person’s stated standard is exposed by the actions that obey or contradict it.
But to the wicked, God says, What is it to you, to recount my statutes, or to lift my covenant upon your mouth? And you hate straightening, and throw my words behind you. When you see a thief, you take pleasure in him, and your portion is with adulterers.So whatever they tell you to guard, guard and do; but do not do according to their works, for they say and do not.Why do you call me, Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?THE THREAD
For you have led these men here, who are neither temple-robbers nor those who speak harm against your goddess.Romans uses ἱεροσυλεῖς (hierosyleis), while Acts uses the related form ἱεροσύλους (hierosylous), from the same temple-robbery word family. That family makes the charge concrete: “sacrilege” names plundering a sacred place.
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