Revelation 16:5

From Textus Receptus

Revelation 16:5 And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, O Lord, which art, and wast, and shalt be, because thou hast judged thus.

• 1395 [And the thridde aungel... seide,] Just art thou, Lord, that art, and that were hooli, that demest these thingis; (Wycliffe)

• 1526 And I herde an angell saye: lorde which arte and wast thou arte ryghteous and holy because thou hast geve soche iudgmentes (Tyndale)

• 1535 And I herde an angel saye: LORDE which art and wast, thou art righteous and holy, because thou hast geue soche iudgmentes, (Coverdale)

• 1557 And I heard the Angel of the waters say, Lord, thou art iust, Which art, and Which wast: and Holy, because thou hast iudged these things. (Geneva)

• 1568 And I hearde the angell of the waters say: Lorde, which art, and wast, thou art ryghteous & holy, because thou hast geuen such iudgementes: (Bishop’s)

Contents 1 Textus Receptus 2 Other Greek 3 Critical 4 External Links

Textus Receptus

• 1550 καὶ ἤκουσα τοῦ ἀγγέλου τῶν ὑδάτων λέγοντος Δίκαιος Κύριε, εἶ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ὅσιος ὅτι ταῦτα ἔκρινας (Stephanus)
• 1598 καὶ ἤκουσα τοῦ ἀγγέλου τῶν ὑδάτων λέγοντος, Δίκαιος, Κύριε, εἶ ὁ ὢν καὶ ὁ ἦν καὶ ὁ ἐσόμενος, ὅτι ταῦτα ἔκρινας· (Beza)

Other Greek

Beza himself comments on this change in a marginal note of his Greek New Testament:

"And shall be": The usual publication is "holy one," which shows a division, contrary to the whole phrase which is foolish, distorting what is put forth in scripture. The Vulgate, however, whether it is articulately correct or not, is not proper in making the change to "holy," since a section (of the text) has worn away the part after "and," which would be absolutely necessary in connecting "righteous" and "holy one." But with John there remains a completeness where the name of Jehovah (the Lord) is used, just as we have said before, 1:4; he always uses the three closely together, therefore it is certainly "and shall be," for why would he pass over it in this place? And so without doubting the genuine writing in this ancient manuscript, I faithfully restored in the good book what was certainly there, "shall be." So why not truthfully, with good reason, write "which is to come" as before in four other places, namely 1:4 and 8; likewise in 4:3 and 11:17, because the point is the just Christ shall come away from there and bring them into being: in this way he will in fact appear setting in judgment and exercising his just and eternal decrees.

(Theodore Beza, Nouum Sive Nouum Foedus Iesu Christi, 1589. Translated into English from the Latin footnote.)

D. A. Waite says that modern English versions are theologically deficient at Revelation 16:5 for the removal of "and shalt be" (Defending the KJB, p. 170). Waite wrote: “The removal of ‘and shalt be’ puts in doubt the eternal future of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is certainly a matter of doctrine and theology” (p. 170).

Critical

According to Edward F. Hills, this KJV rendering “shalt be” came from a conjectural emendation interjected into the Greek text by Beza (Believing Bible Study, pp. 205-206). Hills again acknowledged that Theodore Beza introduced a few conjectural emendations in his edition of the Textus Receptus with two of them kept in the KJV, one of them at Revelation 16:5 shalt be instead of holy (KJV Defended, p. 208). Edward Hills identified the KJV reading at Revelation 16:5 as “certainly erroneous” and as a “conjectural emendation by Beza” (Believing Bible Study, p. 83).

William W. Combs maintained: “Beza simply speculated (guessed), without any evidence whatsoever, that the correct reading was ‘shall be’ instead of ‘holy one’” (Detroit Baptist Seminary Journal, Fall, 1999, p. 156).

J. I. Mombert listed Revelation 16:5 as one of the places where he maintained that “the reading of the A. V. is supported by no known Greek manuscript whatever, but rests on an error of Erasmus or Beza” (Hand-book, p. 389).

Bullinger indicated that 1624 edition of the Elzevirs’ Greek text has “the holy one” at this verse (Lexicon, p. 689). In his commentary on the book of Revelation, Walter Scott asserted that the KJV’s rendering “shalt be” was an unnecessary interpolation and that the KJV omitted the title “holy One” (p. 326).

External Links

• Revelation 16:5 by Will Kinney
• Revelation 16:5
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