What Does Revelation 9:8 Mean in the King James?
And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as the teeth of lions.
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 terror is in the mismatch: a human-coded exterior is paired with a lion’s capacity to tear.
THE MEANING
You meet an image whose surface is familiar and whose mouth is predatory. The lion’s teeth make the threat bodily and immediate: this is a creature with the means to bite and tear.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the assumption that a recognizable appearance guarantees safety.
THE ROOT
ὀδόντες
odontes
GROWS FROM
ὀδοντ-
odont-
tooth
The Greek repeats the same tooth word in the comparison: their teeth are measured against lions’ teeth. That transfers a concrete instrument of biting and tearing to the swarm, making its threat more than an appearance.
ALSO GROWS
odous: tooth, singular form
ὀδούς
The singular form keeps the image anchored in a specific bodily instrument rather than an abstract danger.
odontophore: a tooth-bearing structure in some invertebrates
The scientific compound preserves the root’s focus on the physical structures that bear teeth, echoing the verse’s emphasis on the creatures’ capacity to bite.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes violence tangible by giving teeth the work of biting, tearing, and consuming.
For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.My soul is among lions: and I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword.There is a generation, whose teeth are as swords, and their jaw teeth as knives, to devour the poor from off the earth, and the needy from among men.THE THREAD
For a nation is come up upon my land, strong, and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion, and he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion.Joel gives a devouring swarm the teeth of a lion; Revelation gives lion’s teeth to its locust-like creatures. The repeated image lets the swarm’s threat be felt through a predator’s bite.
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