Bible Strands
Acts 15:20
Instead, we should write and tell them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood.
Berean Standard Bible
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Study note
Setting — James addresses the Jerusalem council and Gentile believers during the debate over Mosaic law requirements. He delivers this judgment immediately after observing that Moses is already read in synagogues every Sabbath.
The words — ἐπιστεῖλαι (episteilai) means "to write," and ἀπέχεσθαι (apechesthai) means "to abstain from." These verbs establish the directive as a formal written instruction requiring deliberate avoidance.
The thread — The identical four prohibitions reappear in Acts 15:29, while Revelation 2:14 and 2:20 apply the same warnings against idol food and sexual immorality to the churches of Pergamum and Thyatira.
Why it lands — The text commands a specific written list of abstentions rather than the full Mosaic law. It requires readers to enforce practical boundaries around idolatry, sexual conduct, and ritual purity without adding further burdens.
Drafted by a language model from the text, its original words and its cross-references, then checked against them. It can still be wrong: open the verse in the app to report it.
The Greek words
King James Version
But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and from fornication, and from things strangled, and from blood.
Cross-references
- Acts 15:29 You must abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.
- Revelation 2:20 But I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads My servants to be sexually immoral and to eat food sacrificed to idols.
- Revelation 2:14 But I have a few things against you, because some of you hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to place a stumbling block before the Israelites so they would eat food sacrificed to idols and commit sexual immorality.
- Genesis 9:4 But you must not eat meat with its lifeblood still in it.
- Leviticus 3:17 This is a permanent statute for the generations to come, wherever you live: You must not eat any fat or any blood.”
- Acts 21:25 As for the Gentile believers, we have written to them our decision that they must abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals, and from sexual immorality.”
- 1 Corinthians 8:4 So about eating food sacrificed to idols: We know that an idol is nothing at all in the world, and that there is no God but one.
- Leviticus 17:10 If anyone from the house of Israel or a foreigner living among them eats any blood, I will set My face against that person and cut him off from among his people.
- 1 Corinthians 6:9 Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who submit to or perform homosexual acts,
- 1 Corinthians 6:18 Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a man can commit is outside his body, but he who sins sexually sins against his own body.