What Does Daniel 10:6 Mean in the King James?
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 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 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.
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.
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 it came to pass on the third day in the morning, that there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud; so that all the people that was in the camp trembled.And when they went, I heard the noise of their wings, like the noise of great waters, as the voice of the Almighty, the voice of speech, as the noise of an host: when they stood, they let down their wings.And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.THE THREAD
And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as 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.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us