What Does Revelation 11:5 Mean in the King James?
And if any man will hurt them, fire proceedeth out of their mouth, and devoureth their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed.
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 witnesses’ mouths become the source of lethal force against anyone who harms them.
THE MEANING
When anyone seeks to harm the witnesses, fire proceeds from their mouths and consumes their enemies. The threatened ones are not powerless in this image; their mouths become the source of force. The verse names the outcome plainly: the attacker is killed in the same manner.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It overturns the belief that a witness’s voice is powerless when someone attacks them.
THE ROOT
ἀδικῆσαι
adikēsai
GROWS FROM
ἀδικ- / δικ- (adik- / dik-)
The word is built around δίκη (dikē, justice or what is right); ἀδικ- names the violation of what is right.
English “hurt” can suggest damage without moral quality; this verb carries the sense of doing wrong or acting unjustly. Its repetition makes the attack the condition for the answer, placing the scene in the word family of justice and alignment while preserving the severity of the killing.
ALSO GROWS
adikia: Injustice or wrongdoing.
ἀδικία
This branch names the wrong carried in the act translated “hurt.”
dikaios: Just; in alignment with what is right.
δίκαιος
The contrast with injustice reveals the moral force carried by the word translated “hurt.”
THE PATTERN
What comes from the mouth can carry destructive force, consuming or cutting through what opposes it.
Wherefore thus saith the LORD God of hosts, Because ye speak this word, behold, I will make my words in thy mouth fire, and this people wood, and it shall devour them.And he had in his right hand seven stars: and out of his mouth went a sharp twoedged sword: and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.THE THREAD
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.The verb translated “hurt” in both verses comes from ἀδικέω (adikeō, to do wrong or harm unjustly). In Revelation 6:6 harm is restrained; here the same word names the act that triggers fire and death.
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