What Does Matthew 24:7 Mean?
Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in place after place.
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
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.THE KEY
The Greek verb translated “rise” also belongs to Matthew’s word-family for raising the dead, so English hides that the same word can describe peoples roused against one another and bodies raised from death.
THE MEANING
Upheaval reaches from peoples and kingdoms into food, health, and the earth underfoot. You are shown instability spreading through the conditions that hold ordinary life together, across many places.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that catastrophe stays confined to politics dissolves here: scarcity, disease, and earthquakes enter the same field of upheaval.
THE ROOT
ἐγερθήσεται
egerthēsetai
GROWS FROM
ἐγείρω
egeirō
to wake, raise, or get up
“will rise” in this verse is egerthēsetai. The verb translated “rise” belongs to a word-family that also means to wake or raise. Here “against” turns that rising toward conflict; elsewhere in Matthew, the same root describes the dead being raised.
ALSO GROWS
ēgerthēsan: A form of the same verb, used of the bodies that arose in Matthew 27:52.
ἠγέρθησαν
It shows that the Greek verb can describe bodies being raised as well as peoples rising against one another.
egersis: A related noun for raising, used for Jesus’ resurrection in Matthew 27:53.
ἔγερσις
The noun carries the same raising-up movement into Matthew’s resurrection language.
σεισμοί
seismoi
GROWS FROM
σείω
seio
to shake or cause to tremble
“earthquakes” in this verse is seismoi. The Greek word keeps the action of shaking inside the word for an earthquake. Matthew uses the same word-family for the ground shaking at Jesus’ death and at the opened tomb, connecting these scenes through physical shaking.
ALSO GROWS
eseisthē: A form of the verb meaning “was shaken” or “quaked.”
ἐσείσθη
Matthew 27:51 uses it for the earth shaking at Jesus’ death.
seismos: The related noun for an earthquake.
σεισμός
Matthew 28:2 uses it for the great earthquake at the tomb.
THE PATTERN
When conflict becomes systemic, instability reaches material survival and the physical ground alongside public order.
The earth is shattered, shattered; the earth is broken, broken; the earth totters, totters.Then he said to them, Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. And there will be great shakings of the earth in place after place, and hunger, and plague, and frightening sights, and great signs from heaven.And I hear a voice in the midst of the four living creatures, saying, A measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius, and do not harm the oil and the wine.THE THREAD
The tombs were opened, and many bodies of the set-apart ones who had fallen asleep were raised.Matthew uses ἠγέρθησαν (ēgerthēsan, “they arose / were raised”) for the bodies of the dead here, from the same root as ἐγερθήσεται (egerthēsetai, “shall rise”) in the current verse. The verb can describe peoples roused against one another or the dead being raised; the surrounding words show which rising is in view.
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