What Does Revelation 11:19 Mean?
And the temple of God in heaven is opened, and the ark of his covenant is perceived in his temple, and there are flashes, and voices, and thunders, and a shaking, and great hail.
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 the temple of God was opened in heaven, and there was seen in his temple the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.THE KEY
The heavenly sanctuary opens so its covenant center, the ark, can be seen.
THE MEANING
God’s temple in heaven opens before you, and the ark of the covenant comes into view. Lightning, voices, thunder, an earthquake, and great hail accompany the unveiling; what becomes visible carries force through the whole scene.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The sacred center must stay hidden and out of reach.
THE ROOT
ναός
naos
GROWS FROM
ναίω
naíō
Dwell, inhabit.
The word names a sanctuary as a dwelling-place, not merely a sacred building. The same noun calls the reader’s body God’s temple in 1 Corinthians 6:19, so the opening of heaven’s dwelling also touches the language of God’s presence within embodied life.
ALSO GROWS
naos: sanctuary, inner shrine
ναός
This is the word used for God’s temple in the verse; it gives the opening the sense of an inhabited inner space being revealed.
naietáō: dwell, inhabit
ναιετάω
This related verb keeps the sanctuary connected to the act of dwelling, the presence that makes it a dwelling-place.
διαθήκης
diathēkēs
GROWS FROM
διατίθεμαι (diatithemai), from τίθημι (tithēmi)
Set out, put in place, arrange.
Here “testament” is διαθήκη, a covenantal arrangement; its word family carries the sense of setting something in place. The ark’s appearance brings that established bond into view at the center of God’s dwelling.
ALSO GROWS
diatithemai: arrange, establish a covenant
διατίθεμαι
This verb shows the ordering sense that underlies the covenant named in the verse.
diathesis: arrangement, disposition
διάθεσις
This related noun makes the covenant’s sense of an established arrangement audible beneath the English word “testament.”
THE PATTERN
Opening the sanctuary discloses the covenant’s hidden center, and that disclosure moves through the whole created scene.
And there I meet with you, and I speak with you from above the covering, from between the two cherubim that are upon the ark of the witness, all that I command you to the children of Israel.Which holds the golden censer and the ark of the covenant, covered on every side with gold, and in it the golden jar holding the manna, Aaron's rod that sprouted, and the flat stones of the covenant.After these things I perceive, and behold, the temple, the tent of the witness in heaven, is opened.THE THREAD
Or have you not seen that your body is a temple of the Set-Apart Breath within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own?The Greek word translated “temple” here is ναός (naos), meaning sanctuary or inner shrine; 1 Corinthians uses that same word for the reader’s body as God’s temple. The shared word lets the opened sanctuary in heaven echo in the reader’s embodied dwelling.
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