What Does Revelation 20:14 Mean?
And death and the unseen are thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death.
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 death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.THE KEY
The verse does not only show people facing death; it shows death itself being thrown into the second death.
THE MEANING
Death and the realm of the dead are cast into the lake of fire; even they do not remain beyond this judgment. The phrase “the second death” names death’s own end. The KJV word “hell” here translates ᾅδης (hadēs), the realm of the dead.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that death is the final power from which nothing can be released: here, death itself is cast away.
THE ROOT
θάνατος
thanatos
GROWS FROM
θαν-/θνῃσκ- (than-/thnēsk-)
The Greek word-family for death and dying.
The verse names death twice: first as something cast into the lake of fire, then as “the second death.” Death is not only what happens to others here; it is itself subject to an end.
ALSO GROWS
thnēskō: to die
θνῄσκω
The verb for dying belongs to the same word-family as the death that this verse says does not have the last word.
thnētos: mortal
θνητός
The word-family includes mortality, while this verse depicts death’s reach as bounded.
thanatoō: to put to death
θανατόω
The family includes the act of putting to death; here, death itself is on the receiving end of the action.
ἐβλήθησαν
eblēthēsan
GROWS FROM
βαλλ-
ball-
To throw or hurl.
The verb is passive: death and Hades receive the action. What appears to hold others is itself thrown into the lake of fire.
ALSO GROWS
ekballō: to cast out
ἐκβάλλω
This compound makes the throwing outward explicit, echoing the image of powers being expelled from their former place.
kataballō: to throw down, lay low
καταβάλλω
The same throwing-root can describe being brought down; here death and Hades are no longer in command of the scene.
THE PATTERN
Death’s reach has an end: scripture depicts death itself as overcome and absent.
He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears from all faces, and he will remove the taunt of his people from all the earth, for the LORD has spoken.The last enemy to be made idle is death.And God wipes away every tear from their eyes, and there is no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain, for the first things have gone away.THE THREAD
The last enemy to be made idle is death.Both verses use θάνατος (thanatos, death). Revelation pictures death being cast into the second death; Corinthians names death as the last enemy to be destroyed.
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