| 14. Linguistic Exegesis The verse begins with the coordinated noun phrase kai ho thanatos kai ho hades {καὶ ὁ θάνατος καὶ ὁ ᾅδης | kaì ho thánatos kaì ho hádēs}, where the repeated kai links two articular nouns as joint subjects, presenting “death” and “Hades” as paired, almost personified powers. The finite verb eblethesan {ἐβλήθησαν | eblḗthēsan} is an aorist passive, summarizing their decisive, completed removal as a single event. The prepositional phrase eis ten limnen tou puros {εἰς τὴν λίμνην τοῦ πυρός | eis tēn límnēn tou pyrós} specifies the goal of this action: “into the lake of fire,” with the genitive tou puros functioning as a descriptive genitive that characterizes the lake by its fiery nature. The second clause begins with the demonstrative houtos {οὗτος | hoûtos} in the nominative, followed by the appositional phrase ho thanatos ho deuteros {ὁ θάνατος ὁ δεύτερός | ho thánatos ho deúteros}, literally “the death, the second,” where the repeated article marks “second” as an identifying epithet. The copula estin {ἐστιν | estin} links this nominative construction with the further nominative predicate he limne tou puros {ἡ λίμνη τοῦ πυρός | hē límnē tou pyrós}, resulting in an equation: the “second death” is identical with “the lake of fire.” The English renderings preserve this equation by using two parallel sentences that first narrate the casting of death and Hades and then state interpretively what the “second death” is. |