What Does Revelation 15:5 Mean?
After these things I perceive, and behold, the temple, the tent of the witness in heaven, is opened.
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 after that I looked, and, behold, the temple of the tabernacle of the testimony in heaven was opened:THE KEY
What opens in heaven is a dwelling whose defining center is witness.
THE MEANING
The verse places you before an opened heavenly dwelling whose center is testimony. What it holds comes into view, while the scene leaves the testimony itself unnamed.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Heaven is a sealed-off realm, with nothing there made visible to you.
THE ROOT
σκηνῆς
skēnēs
GROWS FROM
σκην-
skēn-
Tent, booth, or dwelling.
The verse layers “temple” with “tabernacle”: the sanctuary is named as a tent-dwelling. The same word-family supplies the verb translated “dwelt” in John 1:14, so the opened heaven reveals presence as dwelling, not distant architecture.
ALSO GROWS
skēnoō: To dwell in a tent; to tabernacle.
σκηνόω
In John 1:14 it is translated “dwelt,” linking the opened heavenly dwelling with presence among people.
skēnōma: A tent or dwelling.
σκηνώμα
The related noun shows the family can name a place of dwelling, not only the act of dwelling.
μαρτυρίου
martyriou
GROWS FROM
μαρτυρ-
martyr-
Witness; testimony or evidence that bears witness.
Testimony belongs to the same word-family as the witness who bears it. Since the witness-dwelling is what opens, the verse makes its disclosure itself a form of witnessing.
ALSO GROWS
martys: A witness, one who bears witness.
μάρτυς
It connects the testimony housed in the sanctuary with the one who gives witness.
martyreō: To bear witness; to testify.
μαρτυρέω
The active verb shows testimony as an act of making something known.
THE PATTERN
An opening turns what is hidden into something seen or accessible.
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.Uncover my eyes, that I may gaze upon the wonders from your instruction.Having therefore, brothers, open speech for entering the set-apart places by the blood of Jesus,THE THREAD
Our fathers had the tent of witness in the wilderness, just as the one who spoke to Moses arranged for him to make it according to the mold he had seen.Both verses pair σκηνή (skēnē, tent or tabernacle) with μαρτύριον (martyrion, testimony or witness). Acts names a tabernacle of witness; Revelation opens the heavenly dwelling of testimony, making the dwelling itself a clue to what the vision reveals.
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