Revelation 18:17 — meaning, Hebrew and Greek word study, commentary
Revelation 18:17
For in one hour so great riches is come to nought. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off,
to lay waste (literally or figuratively) · verb — aorist passive indicative, 3rd person singular
And
ΚαὶKai
G2532
and · conjunction
every
πᾶςpas
G3956
all · adjective — nominative singular masculine
shipmaster
κυβερνήτηςkubernētēs
G2942
helmsman · noun — nominative singular masculine
and
καὶkai
G2532
and · conjunction
all
πᾶςpas
G3956
all · adjective — nominative singular masculine
company
ὅμιλοςhomilos
G3658
association together · noun — nominative singular masculine
in
ἐπὶepi
G1909
properly · preposition
ships
πλοῖονploîon
G4143
a sailer
and
καὶkai
G2532
and · conjunction
sailors
ναῦταιnautai
G3492
a boatman · noun — nominative plural masculine
and
καὶkai
G2532
and · conjunction
as
ὅσοιhosoi
G3745
as (much · correlative pronoun — nominative plural masculine
by
ἐργάζονταιergazontai
G2038
to toil (as a task · verb — present middle or passive deponent indicative, 3rd person plural
sea
θάλασσανthalassan
G2281
the sea (genitive case or specially) · noun — accusative singular feminine
stood
ἔστησανestēsan
G2476
to stand (transitively or intransitively) · verb — second aorist active indicative, 3rd person plural
afar
μακρόθενmakrothen
G3113
from a distance or afar · adverb
off
ἀπὸapo
G575
"off · preposition
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance (James Strong, 1890/1894), public domain; digitized by Open Scriptures (CC BY-SA). KJV word tagging: eBible.org (public domain). Original-language text, parsing and brief lexicon: STEPBible.org data from Tyndale House, Cambridge (CC BY 4.0).
Cross-references
Isaiah 23:14 Howl, ye ships of Tarshish: for your strength is laid waste.
Ezekiel 27:27-36 Thy riches, and thy fairs, thy merchandise, thy mariners, and thy pilots, thy calkers, and the occupiers of thy merchandise, and all thy men…
Revelation 17:16 And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her fle…
Jeremiah 51:8 Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed: howl for her; take balm for her pain, if so be she may be healed.
Jonah 1:6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon…
Revelation 18:10-11 Standing afar off for the fear of her torment, saying, Alas, alas, that great city Babylon, that mighty city! for in one hour is thy judgmen…
Revelation 18:19 And they cast dust on their heads, and cried, weeping and wailing, saying, Alas, alas, that great city, wherein were made rich all that had…
Isaiah 47:9 But these two things shall come to thee in a moment in one day, the loss of children, and widowhood: they shall come upon thee in their perf…
Cross-references from OpenBible.info (CC BY), in the lineage of the Treasury of Scripture Knowledge (public domain).
Commentary
Matthew Henry on Revelation 18:9–end
Here we have,
I. A doleful lamentation made by Babylon's friends for her fall; and here observe,
1. Who are the mourners, namely, those who had been bewitched by her fornication, those who had been sharers in her sensual pleasures, and those who had been gainers by her wealth and trade - the kings and the merchants of the earth: the kings of the earth, whom she had flattered into idolatry by allowing them to be arbitrary and tyrannical over their subjects, while they were obsequious to her; and the merchants, that is, those who trafficked with her for indulgences, pardons, dispensations, and preferments; these will mourn, because by this craft they got their wealth.
2. What was the manner of…
is come to naught--Greek, "is desolated."
shipmaster--Greek, "steersman," or "pilot."
all the company in ships--A, C, Vulgate, and Syriac read, "Every one who saileth to a place" (B has ". . . to the place"), every voyager. Vessels were freighted with pilgrims to various shrines, so that in one month (A.D. 1300) two hundred thousand pilgrims were counted in Rome [D'AAUBIGNE, Histoire de la Reformation]: a source of gain, not only to the Papal see, but to shipmasters, merchants, pilots, &c. These latter, however, are not restricted to those literally "shipmasters," &c., but mainly refer, in the mystical sense, to all who share in the spiritual traffic of apostate Christendom.
Adam Clarke on Revelation 18:17
Every shipmaster - Captains of vessels; some think pilots are meant, and this is most likely to be the meaning of the original word κυβερνητης. This description appears to be at least partly taken from Eze 27:26-28.
And all the company in ships - Και πας επι των πλοιων ὁ ὁμιλος· The crowd or passengers aboard. But the best MSS, and versions have και πας ὁ επι τοπον πλεων, those who sail from place to place, or such as stop at particular places on the coast, without performing the whole voyage. This sufficiently marks the traffic on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Some might debark (in sailing from Rome) at the island of Sicily, others at different ports in Greece; some at Corinth, oth…
And every shipmaster, and all the sailors stood afar off, etc. Can all who sail the sea be present to see the burning of the city? But he means all the worshipers and workers of the world fear for themselves, seeing the ruin of their hope.
"They threw dust on their heads." This means that they reproached their leaders by whom they were led astray and so were lost.… "They wept and mourned." … To be sure, we know that many are often stricken by such contrition, and so it is not false to refer to the person these distances from which they are removed. That is, they will stand afar off and cry out when they see the smoke of its burning, since to stand afar off is not to fall with those who are lost but rather to acquire a stability from submitting to conversion. For "before one's own master does one stand or fall." One ought not understand this standing in a bodily sense but as the conversion of a firm soul in faith, so that when they are said to weep over others who are perishing, they are themselves understood to be making a fruitful penance. For this reason the apostle says, "When you were dead through trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived in the passions of the flesh, following the desires of the flesh and mind, and so we were by nature children of wrath like the rest," or things like this. According to these words of the apostle, I think that this passage can be rightly referred to the persons who convert. For no one can be found to be good who was not formerly evil. Therefore, the psalm says, "I have reckoned all the sinners of the earth as transgressors."
The Church Fathers: public-domain translations (Ante-Nicene and Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers), verse-indexed by SermonIndex (CC BY 4.0).
Dictionary and topics
Commerce · Illustrative of intercourse with the apostasy — Illustrative of intercourse with the apostasy
Riches · Described as: Fleeting — Described as: Fleeting
Dictionary: Easton's (1897) and Smith's (1863), public domain. Topics: Nave's Topical Bible (1896) and Torrey's Topical Textbook (1897), public domain. Both as parsed by NEUU (CC BY 4.0).
John Gill on Revelation 18:17
For in one hour so great riches is come to nought,.... That is, in a very short time, expressing the suddenness and speediness of Rome's destruction, the quick dispatch and expedition that will be made in it, by the instruments of it, as in Revelation 18:10. Rome was always famous for its great wealth and riches; the Jews have a saying (l), that if ten kabs of riches descend into the world, the ancient Romans take nine of them, and the other the whole world:
and every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, stood afar off; the lamentation of the kings and merchants of the earth being ended, masters of ships, sailors, and seafaring men begin theirs…
all the captains: Seafarers sing the third lament (see study note on 18:9-19). Their mourning focuses on the breakdown of communication and transportation. During the reign of Julius Caesar, the Mediterranean was cleared of pirates and trade blossomed under the region’s Roman law enforcement. The swift loss of Roman authority would upset the system of trade.
