What Does Revelation 20:1 Mean?
And I see a messenger come down from heaven, holding the key of the pit without floor and a great chain in his hand.
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 I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.THE KEY
The supposedly bottomless abyss is pictured with a key and chain in a messenger’s hand: its depth is real, but it is not sovereign.
THE MEANING
You meet the abyss here as a real depth, yet not as a self-ruling power: its key and great chain are in a messenger’s hand. What feels bottomless is still approached through a threshold, with access and restraint under authority.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the deepest darkness lies beyond every boundary: the scene places its key and chain in a messenger’s hand.
THE ROOT
κλεῖδα
kleída
GROWS FROM
κλει-
Shut, close.
The root centers on shutting, so the key carries authority to close a passage as well as open it. Beside the chain, it makes the abyss a controlled threshold.
ALSO GROWS
kleíō: To shut or close.
κλείω
The key’s root points to the power to close access to the abyss.
kleistós: Closed, shut.
κλειστός
This branch echoes the possibility of a passage being secured.
ἄβυσσος
ábyssos depth without
GROWS FROM
βυθ-
Depth, deep; the prefix ἀ- marks absence.
“pit without floor” in this verse is ábyssos depth without. Ἄβυσσος joins ἀ- (“without”) to the word for depth, presenting a depth without a bottom. Yet this verse gives that depth a key and a chain: “bottomless” describes its scale, not an absence of authority.
ALSO GROWS
bythós: Depth, the deep.
βυθός
It exposes the depth-word contained in the image of the abyss.
bythízō: To sink or plunge.
βυθίζω
This branch carries the motion of descending into depth, sharpening the abyss’s force as a real place of depth.
ἄγγελος
ángelos messenger
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ-
Message, report; one who carries a message.
The figure’s name describes a messenger, not an independent source of power. The key and chain are placed in a messenger’s hand, making delegated authority part of the image.
ALSO GROWS
angéllō: To announce or report.
ἀγγέλλω
The verb shows the message-bearing function within the messenger’s name.
euangélion: Good message, good news.
εὐαγγέλιον
This related word carries the same message-root, showing how broadly the messenger’s root branches.
THE PATTERN
The deep is not self-governing: its reach, access, and bounds are subject to authority.
When he sets for the sea its boundary, so the waters do not pass over his mouth; when he carves the foundations of the earth.And they urged him not to command them to go out into the bottomless deep.And the fifth messenger sounds, and I see a star that has fallen from heaven to the earth, and to him is given the key of the bottomless pit.THE THREAD
And the fifth messenger sounds, and I see a star that has fallen from heaven to the earth, and to him is given the key of the bottomless pit.Both verses use κλείς (kleís, “key”) and ἄβυσσος (ábyssos, “depth without a bottom”). Revelation 20:1 adds a great chain to that recurring image, bringing restraint alongside access.
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