What Does Mark 13:24 Mean?
But in those days, after that pressure, the sun will be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But in those days, after that tribulation, the sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light,THE KEY
After tribulation, even the lights that order the visible world go dark; the upheaval reaches the cosmos itself.
THE MEANING
After tribulation, the sun is darkened and the moon withholds her brightness; the disturbance reaches the lights that order the visible world. The verse speaks to the reader in a threshold where the ordeal is past, yet familiar certainty has not returned.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The assumption that the world’s regular lights guarantee stability is undone here: after tribulation, even the sun and moon cease to offer their usual light.
THE ROOT
σκοτισθήσεται
skotisthēsetai
GROWS FROM
σκοτ- (skot-), from σκότος (skotos)
darkness; the dark state
“darkened” in this verse is skotisthēsetai. English makes this sound like an event of reduced brightness; the Greek verb grows from the same root as the word for darkness, naming the condition entering the scene. The sun changes state, and the moon’s withheld radiance makes that loss visible across both great lights.
ALSO GROWS
skotia: darkness
σκοτία
This noun carries the same root into a named condition, connecting the sun’s darkening with darkness itself.
skoteinos: dark, full of darkness
σκοτεινός
This adjective uses the same root to describe a dark condition, showing the family’s movement from darkness as a state to something characterized by it.
θλῖψις
thlipsis
GROWS FROM
θλιβ- (thlib-), from θλίβω (thlibō)
to press or squeeze
The Greek noun holds the image of pressure inside what English calls tribulation. The verse marks what follows that pressure as a distinct threshold: its passing does not immediately restore familiar light.
ALSO GROWS
thlibō: press, squeeze, afflict
θλίβω
The verb preserves the physical image beneath tribulation, so the word carries pressure rather than hardship as an abstraction.
thlibomenoi: being pressed, afflicted
θλιβόμενοι
This form shows people undergoing the same pressure named by the verse’s noun.
THE PATTERN
Scripture portrays upheaval as reaching the heavens themselves, with the sun and moon losing their expected light.
For the stars of the heavens and their constellations will not give their light; the sun will go dark as it comes out, and the moon will not make its light shine.Before them the earth trembles, the heavens quake, the sun and the moon go dark, and the stars gather in their brightness.And I see when he opens the sixth seal, and a great shaking comes, and the sun becomes black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon becomes as blood.THE THREAD
Immediately after the pressure of those days, the sun is darkened, and the moon does not give its glow, and the stars fall from the heavens, and the strength of the heavens is shaken.Matthew repeats Mark’s phrase about the sun being darkened, using the same Greek root for darkness. It extends the image to falling stars and shaken heavenly powers, showing that the signs reach the whole visible order.
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