What Does Revelation 17:7 Mean in the King James?
And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.
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
What looks like an impossible spectacle is not left opaque: its hidden structure can be spoken.
THE MEANING
The verse does not leave your wonder without an answer: the messenger says the hidden meaning can be told. The woman is carried by the beast, and the seven heads and ten horns belong to that beast; their relationship is what is being opened to view.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Strangeness is not proof that a vision is unknowable; the verse says its mystery can be disclosed.
THE ROOT
ἄγγελος
angelos
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ-
angel-
To announce or report; by extension, a message and the one who carries it.
The figure called an angel is named by its work: a messenger. Here it says it will tell the mystery, so the word itself points to the verse’s movement from bewilderment toward a message that makes the image legible.
ALSO GROWS
angelia: Message, report
ἀγγελία
The message is what turns the vision from something merely marvelous into something that can be told.
euangelion: Good message, good news
εὐαγγέλιον
The same message-family appears in the word for good news, linking a messenger’s work with what is announced.
THE PATTERN
What is hidden becomes readable when it is disclosed.
But there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets, and maketh known to the king Nebuchadnezzar what shall be in the latter days. Thy dream, and the visions of thy head upon thy bed, are these;Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets.And he said unto them, Unto you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of God: but unto them that are without, all these things are done in parables:THE THREAD
How that by revelation he made known unto me the mystery; (as I wrote afore in few words,Both passages use μυστήριον (mystērion, a hidden matter made known): Revelation’s messenger promises to tell it, while Ephesians names revelation as the way it becomes known. The shared word links the two verses through the movement from hiddenness into disclosure.
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