What Does Revelation 18:14 Mean?
And the fruit of the craving of your living soul has gone from you, and all the fattened and shining things have lost their way from you, and you will never find them again.
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 fruits that thy soul lusted after are departed from thee, and all things which were dainty and goodly are departed from thee, and thou shalt find them no more at all.THE KEY
The soul’s desired fruit can leave completely, so longing is no guarantee of keeping what it loves.
THE MEANING
You can desire the fruit, comfort, and brilliance of life and still find them gone. The verse names the loss without softening it: nothing can be found again.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that wanting something intensely, or making it yours, means it will remain available to you.
THE ROOT
ἐπιθυμίας
epithymias
GROWS FROM
θυμ-
thym-
Inward passion or heat; ἐπιθυμία means desire or longing.
“lusted after” in this verse is epithymias. The Greek phrase is “the fruit of the desire of your living soul,” so the desired thing carries the shape of an inward longing. The θυμ- (thym-) family gives that desire the force of passion or heat, and the verse shows its fruit gone.
ALSO GROWS
thymos: Passion, heat, or anger
θυμός
This related word preserves the sense of inward heat carried by the desire in the verse.
epithymeō: To desire or long for
ἐπιθυμέω
This verb form shows the same desire as an active longing directed toward something.
ἀπώλετο
apōleto
GROWS FROM
ἀπολλυ- (apolly-), from ἀπόλλυμι (apollymi)
To perish, be destroyed, or be lost.
“lost their way” in this verse is apōleto. English uses “departed” for two different verbs here: ἀπῆλθεν (apēlthen, went away) and ἀπώλετο (apōleto, perished or was lost). The second deepens the loss beyond mere departure, and “find them no more at all” makes that loss irretrievable.
ALSO GROWS
apollymi: To perish, destroy, or lose
ἀπόλλυμι
This is the verb behind “are departed” in the second clause, giving the disappearance the force of perishing or being lost.
apōleia: Ruin, destruction, or loss
ἀπώλεια
This related noun names the condition of loss and underscores the verse’s finality.
ψυχῆς
psychēs
GROWS FROM
ψυχ-
psych-
The living self: life or living soul.
Here ψυχή (psychē, living soul) belongs to the whole living person whose desire shapes what counts as fruit. The verse speaks of a living self whose longed-for things have vanished, not of desire detached from the life that holds it.
ALSO GROWS
psychē: Living soul
ψυχή
This is the noun in the verse: the desire belongs to the living soul.
psychikos: Natural, pertaining to the living self
ψυχικός
This related form keeps the same root tied to the living person and their creaturely life.
THE PATTERN
The fruit and splendor a person desires can pass out of reach, exposing the impermanence of what desire treats as secure.
Will you make your eyes take flight upon what is not? For riches surely make wings for themselves, and they fly away like an eagle toward the heavens.As he comes from his mother's womb, naked he turns back to go as he comes. He lifts nothing from his toil that he can go away with in his hand.And the world is passing away, and its craving with it, but the one who does the will of God remains for the ages.THE THREAD
And the world is passing away, and its craving with it, but the one who does the will of God remains for the ages.John uses ἐπιθυμία (epithymia, desire), the same Greek word behind “lusted after” here. Revelation shows the desired fruit leaving; John says desire itself passes with the world, exposing both the longing and its object as passing.
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