What Does Revelation 6:13 Mean?
And the stars of heaven fall to the earth, as a fig tree throws its green figs, shaken by a great wind.
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 stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.THE KEY
The stars fall like unripe fruit shaken from a tree: even what seems fixed in heaven can be brought down.
THE MEANING
You are shown a world where even the lights overhead fall to earth under a great shaking. The image makes the collapse abrupt and tangible, like late figs cast from a tree by a powerful wind.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that what appears fixed and high is beyond collapse.
THE ROOT
σειομένη
seiómenē
GROWS FROM
σει-
to shake, rock, or move to and fro
The same verb, σείω (seíō, to shake), describes the heavens being shaken in Hebrews 12:26. Here, the wind’s shaking is what sends the tree’s fruit loose, making the falling part of a larger image of instability.
ALSO GROWS
seismós: earthquake
σεισμός
The word names shaking on a scale that moves the ground, extending the verse’s image of disturbance beyond the tree.
anaseíō: stir up, agitate
ἀνασείω
This related verb shows the same root’s force as disturbance that unsettles what had been at rest.
βάλλει
bállei
GROWS FROM
βαλ-
to throw or cast
“casteth” in this verse is bállei. The figs are described with a verb of casting, while the stars use a verb meaning to fall. That difference makes the comparison vivid: the shaken tree actively flings its fruit loose, giving the stars’ descent the force of something cast down.
ALSO GROWS
ekbállō: cast out, drive out
ἐκβάλλω
The added prefix sharpens the root’s sense of forceful expulsion, echoing how the figs are shaken from the tree.
apobállō: throw away, cast off
ἀποβάλλω
This branch makes visible the root’s movement of something being thrown away from where it was held.
THE PATTERN
When heaven is shaken, what appears fixed can fall, and the image makes that collapse visible on earth.
All the host of heaven wastes away, and the heavens are rolled up like a scroll. All their host withers, as a leaf falls from the vine, as a fig drops from the fig tree.Immediately after the pressure of those days, the sun is darkened, and the moon does not give its glow, and the stars fall from the heavens, and the strength of the heavens is shaken.whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”THE THREAD
whose voice then shook the earth, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”Hebrews uses σείω (seíō, to shake), the same Greek verb behind “shaken” here. Revelation shows that shaking through a tree losing its fruit; Hebrews names the reach of the same motion: earth and heaven.
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