What Does Revelation 6:12 Mean in the King James?
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 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 seal opens into a world where even the lights that order its days lose their familiar form.
THE MEANING
You see the ground lose its steadiness, while the sun darkens and the moon takes on the color of blood. The signs that usually make the world feel ordered change too, carrying the rupture from beneath your feet to the sky above.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that the world’s visible order is unshakable dissolves here: the ground and the lights above it all change.
THE ROOT
σεισμός
seismós
GROWS FROM
σει- (sei-), the σείω (seíō) word family
Shake; move to and fro
Greek names the earthquake as a shaking, σεισμός (seismós), in the family of σείω (seíō), “to shake.” The verb returns in the next verse when a tree is shaken and stars fall like fruit, carrying the upheaval from earth into heaven.
ALSO GROWS
seíō: To shake or move to and fro
σείω
The next verse uses this verb for the fig tree shaken by wind, carrying the same shaking into the image of falling stars.
seismós: A shaking; an earthquake
σεισμός
This is the noun translated “earthquake”; the word family makes shaking itself the center of the image.
αἷμα
haima
GROWS FROM
αἱματ- (haimat-), the αἷμα (haima) word family
Blood
The verse makes an explicit comparison: the moon becomes “as blood.” The αἷμα (haima) family also names bloodshed and blood flow, carrying blood’s imagery of shedding and flow into the sky.
ALSO GROWS
haimatekchysía: Shedding or pouring out of blood
αἱματεκχυσία
This compound appears in Hebrews 9:22; it carries the image of blood being shed beneath the moon’s blood-colored appearance.
haimorrhoéō: To flow with blood
αἱμορροέω
A form of this compound describes the flow of blood in Matthew 9:20, placing the same word family in a bodily image.
THE PATTERN
In visions of rupture, the shaken earth and darkened lights show upheaval reaching from the ground into the heavens.
The earth shall quake before them; the heavens shall tremble: the sun and the moon shall be dark, and the stars shall withdraw their shining:For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light: the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine.Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken:THE THREAD
And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.The Greek verb σείω (seíō, “to shake”) underlies both this verse’s σεισμός (seismós, “earthquake”) and the tree “shaken” in the next verse. The image carries the shaking from earth into the heavens: stars fall as fruit when their tree is shaken.
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