SIL Translator’s Notes on Revelation 16:18

16:18a–b

And there were flashes of lightning, and rumblings, and peals of thunder, and a great earthquake: The Greek clause is literally “lightning, noises, peals of thunder, and a great earthquake occurred.” Here the word “noises” probably refers to the sound of distant thunder. The New Living Translation (2004) translates this as:

the thunder crashed and rolled, and lightning flashed. And a great earthquake struck…

See how you translated this in 11:19.

great earthquake: This word refers to when the ground shakes strongly.

16:18c–d

the likes of which had not occurred since men were upon the earth—so mighty was the great quake: These words compare this earthquake to all other earthquakes. It says that this earthquake was the worst one. Other ways to translate these words are:

such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth, so violent was that earthquake (New Revised Standard Version)
-or-
the worst since people were placed on the earth (New Living Translation (2004))
-or-
There has never been such a powerful earthquake since humans have been on earth (God’s Word)

men: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as men refers to people in general. For example:

mankind (Phillips’ New Testament in Modern English)

mighty: This word means “big” or “great.” The earthquake caused the earth to shake a lot.

© 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.

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