What Does Revelation 11:14 Mean?
The second woe has gone. Look, the third woe comes swiftly.
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
The second woe is past; and, behold, the third woe cometh quickly.THE KEY
The same Greek movement-root describes one woe going away and the next one coming.
THE MEANING
The second woe is past, and the third is already approaching swiftly. One devastation recedes while another advances; the verse holds the ending of one and the arrival of the next together.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that when one devastation ends, all danger must be over.
THE ROOT
ἀπῆλθεν
apēlthen
GROWS FROM
ἔρχομαι
erchomai
to come or go; to arrive or depart according to direction
“past / cometh” in this verse is apēlthen. Both halves draw on the same movement-root: the second woe goes away, while the third comes. English separates those movements, but Greek makes the transition audible in the word-family itself.
ALSO GROWS
aperchomai: depart, go away
ἀπέρχομαι
The prefix marks movement away, as the second woe passes.
eiserchomai: enter, come in
εἰσέρχομαι
The same root can describe arrival into a place, echoing the third woe as it comes.
exerchomai: go out, leave
ἐξέρχομαι
This branch makes departure explicit, illuminating the movement of the woe that is past.
THE PATTERN
The vision marks each woe as a passing stage within a larger sequence, with the next stage already in motion.
And I see, and I hear one eagle flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a great voice, Woe, woe, woe, to those who settle upon the earth, from the remaining voices of the trumpet of the three messengers who are about to sound!One woe has gone; and behold, two more woes come after these.And the seventh messenger blows the trumpet, and great voices sound in heaven, saying, The governance of the world becomes the governance of our Lord and of his Anointed One, and he reigns into the ages of the ages.THE THREAD
One woe has gone; and behold, two more woes come after these.The Greek uses the same departure verb for “is past” in both verses. Revelation 9:12 makes the sequence explicit: one woe goes away while others are still coming.
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