What Does Revelation 18:5 Mean?
For her shortcomings have clung as high as heaven, and God has remembered her crookedness.
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 her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.THE KEY
The Greek verb translated “have reached” can also mean “have been joined or stuck fast,” picturing her sins accumulating as a mass that rises to heaven.
THE MEANING
The verse speaks now of wrongdoing as something that does not remain scattered: her misses join together and reach heaven, and God remembers her acts of injustice. What accumulates is held in God’s present regard.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that a powerful order’s wrongdoing can remain beyond God’s notice dissolves here: what adheres and accumulates reaches heaven, and God remembers it.
THE ROOT
ἐκολλήθησαν
ekollēthēsan
GROWS FROM
κολλ- (κολλάω, kolláō)
To glue, join, or cling fast.
“clung as high as heaven” in this verse is ekollēthēsan. The verb behind “reached” also carries the image of sticking or joining. The verse pictures her sins as joined together as they rise, so what might seem like separate acts becomes an accumulation.
ALSO GROWS
kólla: Glue or adhesive.
κόλλα
This noun gives the verb its image of things held together.
proskolláō: To attach oneself or cleave.
προσκολλάω
This related verb makes the sense of clinging explicit: what joins can remain fastened.
ἁμαρτίαι
hamartíai
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτ-
hamart-
To miss or err; a failure to hit the mark.
“shortcomings” in this verse is hamartíai. The word names misses, not a separate substance. Here those misses do not remain isolated: they are the very things pictured as joined together and reaching heaven.
ALSO GROWS
hamartánō: To miss, err, or do wrong.
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb shows the action carried by the noun: missing or going wrong.
hamartōlós: One who misses or errs; a sinner.
ἁμαρτωλός
This related word applies the same root to a person marked by missing.
ἀδικήματα
adikḗmata
GROWS FROM
ἀδικ- (adik-, from ἀδικέω, adikéō)
Wrongdoing or acting unjustly.
“crookedness” in this verse is adikḗmata. The word points to unjust acts, concrete wrongs held in remembrance. It keeps the verse’s charge specific: what God remembers is what has been done.
ALSO GROWS
adikía: Injustice or wrongdoing.
ἀδικία
The noun names the condition behind the unjust acts remembered here.
adikéō: To act unjustly or do wrong.
ἀδικέω
This verb makes the root’s focus on actual wrongdoing clear.
THE PATTERN
What wrongdoing accumulates beneath human power rises into God’s hearing and remembrance.
And the LORD said, Because the outcry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and because their falling short is very heavy.And God heard and responded to their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.Look, the wages of the workers who mowed your fields, stripped away by your fraud, cry out, and the cries of those who reaped have gone into the ears of the LORD of hosts.THE THREAD
Even the very dust of your city that clings to us, we wipe off against you. Yet know this, that the governance of God has drawn near to you.The Greek verb κολλάω (kolláō, “stick fast” or “join”) is behind both “cleaveth” here and the verb translated “have reached” in Revelation. In Luke, dust clings to feet and is wiped away; in Revelation, her wrongdoing is pictured as joined and accumulated all the way to heaven.
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