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Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 1:7, coming with the clouds
John weaves Daniel's son of man coming with the clouds into Zechariah's mourning for the one who was pierced, and widens the mourners from Israel's tribes to all the earth's.
Revelation 1:7, in every translation this tool compares.
A song can join two famous tunes so smoothly that the crowd hears one melody. John does that here. He takes the one who comes with the clouds from Daniel 7. He joins it to Zechariah 12, where people look on the one they pierced and mourn. Then he widens the mourners. In Zechariah they are Israel's tribes. In John they are all the tribes of the earth.
From Daniel 7:13, coming with the clouds, word for word in the Greek (meta ton nephelon). From Zechariah 12:10, those who pierced him, and they will mourn over him (kopsontai ep' auton). From Zechariah 12:12, the tribes who mourn.
John weaves two prophets into one line. He adds every eye and of the earth, so the mourning is no longer Israel's alone. For pierced, John agrees with the Hebrew of Zechariah; the Greek translation has a different word there, treated with scorn. In Zechariah God says they will look on me. John has see him, and the one pierced is Jesus.
Two prophecies meet in one man. Daniel's figure is given rule over every nation. Zechariah's pierced one is mourned at last. John says both are Jesus, the one the world rejected. Beale reads the mourning as repentance spreading to the nations, and the coming as a process through history that ends in a final coming.
Not two quotations side by side. John never names either prophet. He blends their words into his own sentence, as Matthew 24:30 also does.
Beale calls the verse two Old Testament citations. Daniel 7:13 supplies coming with the clouds; the Aramaic has im ananei shemaya, with the clouds, and the Greek of Daniel in the vault's interlinear (the version called Theodotion) has meta ton nephelon, as John does. Zechariah 12:10 supplies the pierced one and the mourning; the Hebrew is asher daqaru, whom they pierced, while the Greek translation reads katorchesanto, they treated despitefully. John's exekentesan follows the Hebrew sense, as John 19:37 does. Beale shows two additions that widen the text: every eye, and of the earth after all the tribes, which he traces to Zechariah 14:17 and the peoples and tribes of Daniel 7:14. He calls it universalization, the same move as Exodus 19:6 in 1:6. Matthew 24:30 already joins Daniel 7 and Zechariah 12, and Beale thinks it may have shaped John. Unseen Realm adds that coming on the clouds was a title of the god Baal, and that the Old Testament gives it to Yahweh. The grade is drawn here; Beale calls the verse citations.
Heiser's lecture reads 1:7 for its first line. Coming with the clouds, he says, was a stock title of Baal, the rider of the clouds. The Hebrew Bible uses the picture five times: four of Yahweh (Deuteronomy 33:26; Psalm 68:33; Psalm 104:3; Isaiah 19:1) and the fifth of the son of man in Daniel 7:13. So Daniel shows two divine figures, which he links to the early Jewish idea of two powers in heaven. He does not discuss Zechariah 12:10 in this lecture.
Is the mourning repentance or terror? Beale and the CSB Study Bible read it as saving repentance, since the mourners grieve over him, not over themselves. The ESV Study Bible says most scholars read it as a reaction to judgment, and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible leaves both open. MacArthur reads the coming as Christ's return with God's glory cloud fully seen, and splits the mourners. Those who pierced him are the Jews who bore the blame for his death, named in Zechariah 12:10 as David's house and Jerusalem's people, and they will one day repent in truth. The mourning of the earth's other peoples he reads as guilt and fear of punishment. On Zechariah itself, the Jewish Study Bible notes the Hebrew is unclear about who is pierced and reads it as someone from the nations; the Talmud applies it to a messiah from the house of Joseph.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 1:7, and introduction, Universalization
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 1:7
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 1:7
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 1:7-8
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 1:7
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 1:7
- Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, ch. 29, The Rider of the Clouds
- The Jewish Study Bible, note on Zechariah 12:10
- Septuagint, Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10-12, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Hebrew and Aramaic text of Daniel 7:13 and Zechariah 12:10, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 1: The Revelation of Jesus Christ and the Glorified Son of Man, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 1:7
