What Does Revelation 11:8 Mean in the King James?
And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
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 city that crucifies the Lord is named by the nature it embodies: Sodom’s corruption and Egypt’s constriction.
THE MEANING
The verse names the great city’s inner nature as Sodom and Egypt: corruption and constriction meet where the Lord is crucified. Its dead bodies lie openly in the public way, so the city’s violence is visible in ordinary civic life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a city’s greatness gives it a righteous nature is undone: its treatment of the Lord reveals what it is.
THE ROOT
πνευματικῶς
pneumatikōs
GROWS FROM
πνεῦμα (pneuma), from πνευ- (pneu-)
Breath; the same word also names wind and what English renders as spirit.
“Spiritually” grows from the word for breath, so the city’s name is read through its animating nature. Sodom and Egypt describe the breath of its public life: corruption and constriction.
ALSO GROWS
pneuma: Breath; also rendered wind or spirit.
πνεῦμα
It reveals that “spiritually” is rooted in the breath that animates and moves.
pneumatikos: Pertaining to breath or spirit; spiritual.
πνευματικός
This adjective shares the same root as the verse’s “spiritually,” linking the city’s name to its inward character.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names a public order by the nature its actions embody, not only by its outward identity.
Hear the word of the LORD, ye rulers of Sodom; give ear unto the law of our God, ye people of Gomorrah.I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.And upon her forehead was a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.THE THREAD
The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.The Greek word pneuma appears here as both “wind” and “Spirit”; it is the root beneath “spiritually” in Revelation 11:8. The shared breath-word opens the city’s spiritual name as a reading of its animating nature.
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