What Does Revelation 16:18 Mean in the King James?
And there were voices, and thunders, and lightnings; and there was a great earthquake, such as was not since men were upon the earth, so mighty an earthquake, and so great.
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 verse makes upheaval total: sound, lightning, and the earth all break into motion at once.
THE MEANING
Voices, thunder, lightning, and the shaking ground arrive together, so no part of the scene remains untouched. The earthquake is named twice, and its force is measured against all human experience on earth. The verse gives the reader no familiar scale by which to contain the rupture.
THE ROOT
σεισμός
seismos
GROWS FROM
σείω
seio
To shake or move by shaking.
Greek names the event with σεισμός, from σείω: the central image is shaking itself. The same verb root describes a whole city as “moved” in Matthew 21:10, linking the earthquake with the collective stirring of a community; here, the noun is repeated to make the shaking itself the measure.
ALSO GROWS
seismos: A shaking; an earthquake.
σεισμός
The verse uses this noun twice, making shaking itself the central event and repeating its scale.
eseisthe: Was shaken; was stirred.
ἐσείσθη
The same verb root describes the whole city as “moved” in Matthew 21:10, showing how Greek uses shaking for collective disturbance as well as an earthquake.
THE PATTERN
Scripture depicts decisive upheaval as a shaking that reaches beyond one place or layer of creation.
And mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the LORD descended upon it in fire: and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly.For thus saith the LORD of hosts; Yet once, it is a little while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;THE THREAD
And when he was come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, Who is this?The city is “moved” by ἐσείσθη, from the same root σείω that gives Revelation its σεισμός, “earthquake.” The shared word lets the shaking reach from the ground itself to the collective disturbance of an entire city.
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