What Does Revelation 16:17 Mean?
The seventh messenger pours out his bowl into the air, and a great voice comes out of the temple, from the throne, saying, It is done.
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 seventh angel poured out his vial into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, from the throne, saying, It is done.THE KEY
The throne’s “It is done” means “it has come to pass”: the pending event has arrived as reality.
THE MEANING
This scene places you at the instant the seventh outpouring reaches the air: a great voice comes from heaven’s temple and throne and announces that the event has come to pass. The Greek perfect form presents the completion as arrived and standing in effect, no longer merely pending.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that the final word is still only future: the voice speaks from the throne as the completion already arrived.
THE ROOT
Γέγονεν
gegone
GROWS FROM
γιν-/γεν-/γον- (stem forms of γίνομαι)
To become, happen, or come to pass.
“It is done” in this verse is gegone. The Greek verb here presents completion as something that has happened and now stands as reality. Its word family holds happening and becoming together, so “done” carries the sense of an event arriving, not only a task reaching its end.
ALSO GROWS
ginomai: Become, happen, come to pass
γίνομαι
This is the verb’s lexical form; the verse uses its perfect form to announce an arrival that has taken place.
genesis: Origin, birth, coming into being
γένεσις
This related form shows the family’s connection between an event happening and something coming into being.
THE PATTERN
The divine voice names appointed realities as they arrive.
And he says to me, It has come to be. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the one who thirsts I will give from the spring of the waters of life, as a gift.So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but shall do what I delight in, and shall break through in the thing to which I sent it.And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light.THE THREAD
And he says to me, It has come to be. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the one who thirsts I will give from the spring of the waters of life, as a gift.The same verb family underlies “It is done” in both verses: here it marks the seventh outpouring’s arrival, while there it accompanies the gift of the water of life. The shared wording links the end of this judgment with the beginning that follows.
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