What Does Revelation 21:21 Mean?
And the twelve gates are twelve pearls, each gate of one pearl, and the wide way of the city is clean gold, like clear glass.
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 twelve gates were twelve pearls; every several gate was of one pearl: and the street of the city was pure gold, as it were transparent glass.THE KEY
The city’s threshold and its shared way are precious in themselves, with nothing opaque about the passage through.
THE MEANING
You are shown a city where every gate is a single pearl and the street is pure gold, clear as glass. Its beauty reaches the way in and the way through; access is not separate from the city’s abundance.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that preciousness begins only after entry: the threshold and the shared way are precious too.
THE ROOT
πλατεῖα
plateia
GROWS FROM
πλατ-
plat-
Broad, wide, spread out.
“wide way” in this verse is plateia. The Greek word translated “street” belongs to the family of πλατύς (platys), meaning “broad” or “wide.” The city’s way is pictured not only as a place to walk but as spacious; that same word family can describe a heart made wide.
ALSO GROWS
platys: Broad, wide.
πλατύς
This adjective gives the street its sense of width and spaciousness.
platyno: To make broad, widen, enlarge.
πλατύνω
In 2 Corinthians 6:11, a form of this verb describes an enlarged heart, connecting the city’s spacious way with inward expansiveness.
THE PATTERN
The movement into wholeness opens constricted space into a large, accessible way.
From the narrow place I call out to the LORD, and the LORD answers me in a wide place.Therefore your gates shall be open continually. They shall not be shut, day nor night, so that they may bring to you the strength of the nations, and their kings may be led in.You are not narrowed in us, but you are narrowed in your own inward parts.THE THREAD
O Corinthians, our mouth is open toward you, our heart is widened.The Greek word translated “enlarged” is πεπλάτυνται (peplatyntai), from the same πλατ- root as “street” here. The spaciousness of the city’s way also names an inward widening of the heart.
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