What Does Revelation 9:19 Mean?
For their power is in their mouth, and in their tails; for their tails are like serpents, and have heads, and with them they do hurt.
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 their power is in their mouth, and in their tails: for their tails were like unto serpents, and had heads, and with them they do hurt.THE KEY
The word translated “do hurt” also carries the sense of doing wrong, so the verse joins bodily injury to injustice.
THE MEANING
The verse confronts you with creatures whose power is carried in both mouth and tail. Their tails are like serpents, bear heads, and inflict injury; the verb for what they do also carries the sense of doing wrong. Injury and violation stay joined in the image.
THE ROOT
ἀδικοῦσιν
adikousin
GROWS FROM
δικ-
dik-
Right, justice, and what is rightly ordered.
The verb translated “do hurt” can mean both to injure and to do wrong. Its family also names justice and the just, joining bodily harm to a violation of what is right.
ALSO GROWS
adikéō: To do wrong; to injure.
ἀδικέω
This verb family carries both the physical harm in the verse and the sense of wrongdoing.
adikía: Injustice; wrongdoing.
ἀδικία
This branch shows the moral edge carried by the harm the creatures inflict.
díkaios: Just; right; aligned.
δίκαιος
Its sense of what is rightly aligned illuminates the violation implied by ἀδικέω.
THE PATTERN
Harm can be carried both by speech and by a serpent’s strike.
They whet their tongues like a serpent, and the venom of adders is under their lips. Selah.But the tongue no one is able to tame; it is an evil that will not stand still, full of death-bearing venom.Death and life are in the hand of the tongue, and those who love it eat its fruit.THE THREAD
But you bend out of alignment and strip, and this against your brothers.The Greek verbs rendered “do hurt” here and “do wrong” in this verse share the δικ- family. That shared root joins bodily injury to injustice while the serpent image retains its full force.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us