What Does Revelation 16:6 Mean?
For they have poured out the blood of the set-apart ones and the prophets, and you have given them blood to drink, for they are worthy.
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
For they have shed the blood of saints and prophets, and thou hast given them blood to drink; for they are worthy.THE KEY
The judgment answers bloodshed with blood itself: those who pour it out are given it as their drink.
THE MEANING
Bloodshed does not vanish when its victims are silenced; it remains before God. Judgment returns the violence in its own substance, as blood poured out becomes the drink assigned to those who shed it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that once a victim is gone, the violence is over: the blood remains present before God and is answered.
THE ROOT
αἷμα
haima
GROWS FROM
αἱματ-
haimat-
Blood: the blood flowing in a living body or poured out from it.
The Greek keeps the blood itself in view, both as what a body loses and as what violence spills. The victims’ bodily blood becomes the perpetrators’ drink; the verse does not let the violence become abstract.
ALSO GROWS
haimatekchysia: Blood-shedding; the pouring out of blood.
αἱματεκχυσία
This compound names the act of blood being poured out, keeping the bodily substance present in the word for the violence.
haimorrhoeō: To have blood flow or discharge from the body.
αἱμορροέω
Used of a person with an issue of blood in Matthew 9:20, this word links public bloodshed to blood leaving an individual body.
ἐκχέω
ekcheō
GROWS FROM
χέω
cheō
To pour; with ἐκ (ek, “out”), to pour out or shed.
“poured out” in this verse is ekcheō. The verb for shedding is built on the concrete act of pouring, with ἐκ (ek, “out”) marking the flow away from the body. The same root can describe care for a wound as well as violence against a body; here it names blood made to flow by violence.
ALSO GROWS
ekcheō: To pour out, spill, or shed.
ἐκχέω
This is the verb behind “shed the blood,” so the act is expressed as blood poured out from a body.
epicheō: To pour upon.
ἐπιχέω
Luke 10:34 uses this compound for oil and wine poured onto wounds; the shared root describes a concrete flow that can tend a body or, in this verse, mark violence against one.
δέδωκας
dedōkas
GROWS FROM
δίδωμι (didōmi; stem δο-/δω-, do-/dō-)
To give, grant, or place.
“given” in this verse is dedōkas. This verb belongs to the same Greek word family as terms for a gift, but its setting is judgment: the blood is a portion assigned, not a random consequence. The sentence places that giving with God.
ALSO GROWS
dōron: A gift or present.
δῶρον
This related noun makes the giving-family visible; in this verse, what is assigned is blood to drink.
dōrea: A gift or freely given thing.
δωρεά
The shared family emphasizes that the cup is actively given to them, not merely encountered by chance.
THE PATTERN
Violence leaves a trace that persists and returns to its source.
Whoever pours out the blood of man, by man his blood shall be poured out, for in the shape of God he made man.So that upon you may come all the aligned blood poured out upon the earth, from the blood of the aligned Abel to the blood of Zacharias son of Barachias, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of the set-apart ones, and of all who were slaughtered on the ground.THE THREAD
And I perceive the woman drunk with the blood of the set-apart ones and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, and when I perceive her, I gaze at her in great wonder.The same blood of the set-apart ones appears here as the woman’s intoxicating drink. Revelation 16:6 turns that image onto the blood-shedders: the substance they spilled becomes the drink assigned to them.
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