What Does Revelation 18:24 Mean in the King James?
And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.
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’s splendor has a hidden content: the blood of prophets, the set-apart, and every slain person.
THE MEANING
The verse lets you see her by what is found within her: the blood of prophets, those set apart, and all the slaughtered on earth. Her grandeur cannot make their deaths disappear; their blood remains as evidence within the place that contains it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a powerful city’s splendor can make its accumulated violence disappear.
THE ROOT
ἐσφαγμένων
esphagmenōn
GROWS FROM
σφαγ-
To slaughter.
English “slain” can sound like a neutral report; this word carries the sharper sense of slaughter. Its perfect passive form presents those who have been slaughtered as the ones whose blood is found within her.
ALSO GROWS
sphazō: To slaughter or kill.
σφάζω
This is the verb behind “slain,” naming the violence directly.
sphagē: Slaughter or massacre.
σφαγή
The related noun keeps the focus on killing as an act, not merely a death.
sphagion: A slaughtered victim, especially a sacrificial victim.
σφάγιον
This branch shows how the same word family can name the victim produced by slaughter.
αἷμα
haima
GROWS FROM
αἱματ-
Blood.
The word stays concrete: its family names blood being shed and blood flowing. Here the blood of the dead is found within the city, a trace of their killing that its grandeur cannot erase.
ALSO GROWS
haimatekchysia: Shedding of blood.
αἱματεκχυσία
This related word makes explicit the violence carried in blood found within her.
haimorrheō: To suffer a flow of blood.
αἱμορροέω
This branch keeps blood connected to physical loss and wounding, rather than reducing it to an abstraction.
ἁγίων
hagiōn
GROWS FROM
ἁγ-
Set apart.
“saints” in this verse is hagiōn. The Greek word carries the sense of those who are set apart. Their blood is named alongside the prophets’ and all who are slaughtered, placing the set-apart among the lives this city contains.
ALSO GROWS
hagiazō: To set apart or consecrate.
ἁγιάζω
This verb shows the action behind being set apart.
hagiasmos: Setting apart or consecration.
ἁγιασμός
This noun makes “saints” part of a wider family of words about being set apart.
THE PATTERN
Bloodshed remains before God as testimony against the violence that produced it.
And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth, from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?THE THREAD
And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:The same verb σφάζω (sphazō, “to slaughter”) describes those beneath the altar and the slaughtered whose blood is found in Babylon. The shared word joins their testimony to the blood disclosed within her: their deaths remain visible.
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