A Word Coined for the Uncountable

Revelation 9:16 · Rare or unique word · 2026-08-03

καὶ ὁ ἀριθμὸς τῶν στρατευμάτων τοῦ ἱππικοῦ δισμυριάδες μυριάδων ἤκουσα τὸν ἀριθμὸν αὐτῶν

And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand: and I heard the number of them.

The English reader sees 'two hundred thousand thousand' and takes it as an ordinary, if enormous, tally — the kind of number an army census might produce.

The Greek does not simply multiply a normal number. It uses δισμυριάς (dismurias) — a compound word built from 'dis' (twice) plus 'murias,' myriad, the largest standard unit in Greek reckoning (ten thousand). This exact word, δισμυριάδες, occurs nowhere else in the entire New Testament. John does not reach for an existing term and stack numerals after it, as translations imply; he reaches for a word that barely exists in ordinary Greek usage at all, then immediately doubles it again with 'muriadon' (of myriads) — myriads of double-myriads. It is language straining at its own edge.

A hapax-like word signals that the writer has left the territory of describable quantity. John isn't reporting a headcount he expects readers to picture regiment by regiment. He is manufacturing vocabulary because the vision has outrun normal speech — and then he adds, almost helplessly, 'I heard the number of them,' as if to certify: this was not exaggeration, I actually heard this said.

A God whose judgments require the invention of new words to hold them is not a God contained by our categories of measurement. We are comfortable with numbers we can visualize — a stadium, a nation, a war. Scripture here refuses us that comfort on purpose. The vastness is not decorative; it is theological. It tells us that the reckoning of the nations, the scale of what has been permitted to unfold in history, exceeds every frame we bring to it — and yet none of it exceeds God's knowledge, His naming, His number. He who holds the stars by name holds this multitude too. That should not terrify the worshiper; it should silence us, the way a word too large for its own language silences a reader mid-sentence, before it turns to trust.

Today

Before your prayers today, sit for one full minute in silence at the thought of a number you cannot picture — then let that silence become the opening word of your prayer, not information to skip past.