ὑμῖν (umin) in Revelation 22:16: P-2DP
ὑμῖν (umin) in Revelation 22:16
Textual Witness
The witnessed form is ὑμῖν in Revelation 22:16, with the text reading ἔπεμψα ... μαρτυρῆσαι ὑμῖν ταῦτα.
How The Form Affects Interpretation
The form highlights that the testimony is aimed at a group, shaping the verse as addressed communication rather than private reflection.
How To Communicate It
For readers, the pronoun should be heard as the intended audience of the message, while the surrounding sentence determines who that audience is.
What Not To Say
- Grammatical form should serve context, not override it.
- Plural dative here marks recipients, but it does not by itself define every detail of the audience.
- Do not turn grammatical number or case into a doctrinal claim beyond what the sentence supports.
What Does The Label Mean?
Pronoun: the form refers to persons already in view, rather than naming them with a noun.
Dative: the form normally marks an indirect object or a related beneficiary, recipient, or sphere in the clause.
Plural: the form addresses more than one person, so the reference is group-directed in this verse.
Common: this pronoun form does not carry a grammatical gender distinction here, and it should not be pressed into a theological gender claim.
What The Form Does In This Verse
μαρτυρῆσαι ὑμῖν
The dative is governed by the infinitive phrase and expresses the people for whom the testimony is intended.
It identifies the audience addressed by the witness about these things, namely the listeners who are to receive the message.
It does not name the speaker, and it does not by itself decide whether the group is the whole church, a local audience, or a broader set of hearers.
How Much The Form Matters Here
High: The pronoun identifies the recipients of Jesus' testimony at the close of Revelation.
Second-person plural dative pronoun with testimony language. marks the group to whom the testimony is directed. Attached to the infinitive phrase about testifying these things. Governed by Jesus' statement that he sent his angel to testify. The dative marks recipients; the surrounding sentence identifies Jesus as sender and the testimony as the content.
To whom is the testimony directed? It is directed to the addressed recipients as a group.
Direct: The form directly supports plural "to you" in the testimony statement.
The plural dative marks recipients, but the pronoun alone does not define the complete audience of the book.
Recipient pronoun settles audience: Do not make the pronoun alone decide the full ecclesial or canonical scope of the address.
How The Interpretation Is Derived
The witnessed form is ὑμῖν in Revelation 22:16, with the text reading ἔπεμψα ... μαρτυρῆσαι ὑμῖν ταῦτα.
The lemma is σύ, the second person pronoun, which can appear in singular or plural forms depending on context.
Here the plural dative fits the sending and witnessing language, marking those to whom the message is directed rather than the source of the message.
Jesus says he sent his angel to testify these things to you, so the form supports a direct address to a group of recipients.
Within Revelation, this kind of address keeps the vision communicative and public, oriented toward hearers who are meant to receive and heed the testimony.
In translation and teaching, the form is best conveyed as a plural 'you' or 'to you all,' if the target language makes that distinction clear.
Do not derive special authority, exclusivity, or a precise identity of the audience from the pronoun form alone.