What Does Revelation 11:10 Mean?
And those who settle on the earth rejoice over them and celebrate, and they send gifts to one another, because these two prophets torment those who settle on the earth.
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
And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.THE KEY
The crowd’s celebration exposes its relief: the witnesses’ silencing feels like joy because their testimony has been torment.
THE MEANING
This verse names a joy with its cause still attached: people celebrate the prophets’ deaths because the prophets’ witness has been torment to them. Gifts pass from one to another, making the relief shared and public. Silencing a witness can feel like gladness when what that witness says remains unbearable.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that relief after a truth-teller is silenced proves the truth-teller was the problem.
THE ROOT
ἐβασάνισαν
ebasanisan from basanizō
GROWS FROM
βασαν-
The word family reaches back to the touchstone used to test metal, and also names painful examination and torment.
The touchstone history opens an image of testing, while the verse’s word means torment. The witnesses’ testimony has become an ordeal for the crowd; its celebration reveals the relief of silencing what unsettles it.
ALSO GROWS
basanos: Touchstone; also a test or torment
βάσανος
This related word preserves the testing image beneath the verse’s language of torment.
basanistēs: Torturer, one who inflicts torment
βασανιστής
The related agent noun makes the word family’s violence concrete: the prophets are experienced as tormentors by those who hear them.
THE PATTERN
Truth that exposes what people defend can be experienced as torment, and its messenger treated as the threat.
And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, There is yet one man, Micaiah son of Imlah, by whom we may inquire of the LORD. But I hate him, for he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil. And Jehoshaphat said, Let not the king say so.For everyone who does worthless things hates the light, and does not come to the light, so that their deeds would not be exposed.Then they cried out with a loud voice, and held shut their ears, and rushed upon him with one passion.THE THREAD
And he himself drinks from the wine of the seething of God, poured out undiluted into the cup of his swelling. And he is tormented in fire and sulfur before the face of the set-apart messengers, and before the face of the Lamb.The same Greek verb for “tormented” appears here. Revelation uses it first for the witnesses’ effect on the earth-dwellers and later for the beast-worshipper’s torment, making the crowd’s celebration feel less like a final escape.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us