What Does Revelation 11:8 Mean?
And their fallen bodies lie in the broad street of the great city, which in the breath is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.
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 their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.THE KEY
The city that crucifies the Lord is named by the nature it embodies: Sodom’s corruption and Egypt’s constriction.
THE MEANING
The verse names the great city’s inner nature as Sodom and Egypt: corruption and constriction meet where the Lord is crucified. Its dead bodies lie openly in the public way, so the city’s violence is visible in ordinary civic life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a city’s greatness gives it a righteous nature is undone: its treatment of the Lord reveals what it is.
THE ROOT
πνευματικῶς
pneumatikōs
GROWS FROM
πνεῦμα (pneuma), from πνευ- (pneu-)
Breath; the same word also names wind and what English renders as spirit.
“in the breath” in this verse is pneumatikōs. “Spiritually” grows from the word for breath, so the city’s name is read through its animating nature. Sodom and Egypt describe the breath of its public life: corruption and constriction.
ALSO GROWS
pneuma: Breath; also rendered wind or spirit.
πνεῦμα
It reveals that “spiritually” is rooted in the breath that animates and moves.
pneumatikos: Pertaining to breath or spirit; spiritual.
πνευματικός
This adjective shares the same root as the verse’s “spiritually,” linking the city’s name to its inward character.
THE PATTERN
Scripture names a public order by the nature its actions embody, not only by its outward identity.
Hear and respond to the word of the LORD, you rulers of Sodom. Bend your ear to the instruction of our God, you people of Gomorrah.I have seen a shuddering thing among the prophets of Jerusalem. They commit adultery and walk in lies; they strengthen the hands of those who do harm, so that none turns back from his harm. They have all become to me as Sodom, and those who settle in her as Gomorrah.And on her forehead is written a name, MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND OF THE STENCHES OF THE EARTH.THE THREAD
The breath blows where it wills, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes; so is everyone who is born of breath.The Greek word pneuma appears here as both “wind” and “Spirit”; it is the root beneath “spiritually” in Revelation 11:8. The shared breath-word opens the city’s spiritual name as a reading of its animating nature.
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