What Does Revelation 14:19 Mean in the King James?
And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God.
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 Greek uses the same verb for thrusting the sickle into the earth and casting the vine into the press, making harvest and judgment two strokes of one action.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks now through a severe image: the sickle enters the earth, its vine is harvested, and the gathered vine is thrown into God’s great winepress. It does not soften the violence; harvest, anger, and crushing are bound into one movement.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the picture of divine judgment as detached or bloodless: the verse names wrath and depicts it as a crushing press.
THE ROOT
ἔβαλεν
ebalen
GROWS FROM
βαλλ-
ball-
To throw or cast.
“thrust” in this verse is ebalen. The same Greek verb appears twice: the angel casts the sickle into the earth, then casts the harvested vine into the press. The two actions form a deliberate parallel that the different English renderings conceal.
ALSO GROWS
ekballō: Cast out or drive out.
ἐκβάλλω
This branch makes the force of casting explicit: what is gathered can also be driven out.
apoballō: Throw away or cast away.
ἀποβάλλω
It echoes the verse’s decisive casting of the harvested vine into the press.
θυμός
thymos
GROWS FROM
θυμ-
thym-
Anger, heat, or passionate intensity.
“wrath” in this verse is thymos. The press is described as belonging to God’s θυμός, a word for heated anger rather than a detached verdict. The image of crushing gives that anger its terrible force in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
thymoō: Make angry or become angry.
θυμόω
This verb keeps the root’s direct connection to anger visible.
epithymeō: Desire or long for.
ἐπιθυμέω
This related form shows the root’s range of intense inward impulse; here the context gives that intensity the form of anger.
ἄμπελος
ampelos
GROWS FROM
ἀμπελ-
ampel-
Vine.
The verse gathers the vine of the earth as a whole growth, not merely a handful of grapes. The same word family names the vineyard and the person who tends it, keeping the image connected to cultivation and harvest.
ALSO GROWS
ampelōn: Vineyard.
ἀμπελών
The vineyard branch places the vine within the cultivated field that produces it.
ampelourgos: Vinedresser or cultivator of a vineyard.
ἀμπελουργός
This branch evokes the work of tending a vine before its fruit is gathered.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays judgment as a ripe harvest whose winepress makes its violence visible.
Put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; for their wickedness is great.I have trodden the winepress alone; and of the people there was none with me: for I will tread them in mine anger, and trample them in my fury; and their blood shall be sprinkled upon my garments, and I will stain all my raiment.And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.THE THREAD
And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God.The Greek noun θυμός (thymos, heated anger) appears again in the phrase translated “fierceness and wrath,” and the winepress image returns with the treader named. Revelation 14:19 shows the vine cast into the press; this verse reveals the crushing action that completes that image.
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