What Does Daniel 10:6 Mean?
His body also was like the beryl, and his face like the sight of lightning, and his eyes like torches of fire, and his arms and his feet like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the voice of his words like the roar of a multitude.
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
His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.THE KEY
The figure’s voice is one voice with the sound of a multitude inside it.
THE MEANING
You encounter the figure through every sense: a body like beryl, a face like lightning, burning eyes, limbs like polished brass, and a voice like a crowd. The final image expands one visible figure into sound with the density and force of many.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that one speaker must have a solitary sound: this voice is singular and multitudinous at once.
THE ROOT
הֲמוֹן
hamon
GROWS FROM
המה
h-m-h
To murmur, roar, or make a rushing sound.
“roar of a multitude” in this verse is hamon. The word for “multitude” carries the sound of a crowd as well as its number. The voice is not merely loud; it has the layered, surging quality of many voices together.
ALSO GROWS
hāmāh: To roar, murmur, or make a noise.
הָמָה
This verb gives the multitude an audible texture: a gathering that is heard as a collective sound.
hemiyyāh: A hum, murmur, or rumbling sound.
הֲמִיָּה
This related form makes the crowd’s shared resonance part of what the voice communicates.
מַרְאֵה
mar’eh
GROWS FROM
ראה
r-ʾ-h
To see or perceive.
“sight” in this verse is mar’eh. The word translated “appearance” belongs to the root of seeing: the lightning is how the face comes into view. Radiance is not an extra detail laid over the figure; it is the form in which you perceive it.
ALSO GROWS
ra’ah: To see, look at, or perceive.
רָאָה
The verb shows the seeing carried inside the word for appearance.
mar’ah: A mirror or reflecting surface.
מַרְאָה
A mirror makes appearance something seen through reflected light, echoing the flash that reveals the face.
THE PATTERN
Visionary descriptions make presence perceptible through converging sensory force: brilliance to the eye and overwhelming sound to the ear.
And on the third day, in the morning, there were thunders and flashes, and a heavy cloud upon the mount, and the sound of the ram's horn was very strong, so that all the people who were in the camp trembled.And when they walked, I heard the sound of their wings, like the sound of many waters, like the voice of the Almighty, like the voice of one speaking, like the din of a camp. When they stood, they let their wings drop.And his feet are like burnished bronze, as though they have been fired in a furnace, and his voice is like the sound of many waters.THE THREAD
And his feet are like burnished bronze, as though they have been fired in a furnace, and his voice is like the sound of many waters.The same portrait joins brass-like feet with a voice too vast for an ordinary speaker. That pairing lets Daniel’s image open into a recurring way of making a presence perceptible through both body and sound.
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