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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 10:7, the mystery of God, announced to his servants the prophets
The mystery God announced to his servants the prophets joins Amos 3:7, where God reveals his secret to his servants the prophets, to Daniel's word for a mystery God reveals.
Revelation 10:7, in every translation this tool compares.
A company that promised a launch years ago can finally say, we told you this was coming. Amos says the Lord does nothing without first showing his secret to his servants the prophets. Daniel calls God's plan a mystery that God reveals. John joins them. At the seventh trumpet God's mystery will be finished, just as he told his servants the prophets long ago.
His servants the prophets: Amos 3:7 in Greek has tous doulous autou tous prophetas, and John has tous heautou doulous tous prophetas. And mystery (mysterion), the word Daniel 2:28 uses for what the God in heaven reveals.
Amos says God reveals his secret before he acts; John says the mystery will be finished. John's verb is euangelizo, announced as good news, which Amos lacks. Amos's Hebrew word is sod, secret counsel, which the Greek translation turned into paideia, instruction. John's mystery is closer to the Hebrew sense, a point drawn here. The word mystery itself is Daniel's.
Beale reads the mystery as God's plan in Daniel, now opening because Christ has begun the last days. Part of the secret, he says, is how it comes true: God wins through his people's apparent defeat, as Christ did. The CSB Study Bible says the prophets here are probably both Old and New Testament ones.
Not an esoteric secret for insiders. In Daniel and in Paul a mystery is God's plan made known, as Beale and the ESV Study Bible stress.
Beale calls 10:7 a clear allusion to Amos 3:7, combined with the mystery idea from Daniel, and notes the same Daniel and Amos pairing at Qumran (1QpHab 7.4-5). Amos 3:4-8 also has the lion's roar and the trumpet of Revelation 10. Mysterion has a latter-day sense in the Greek Old Testament only in Daniel (2:19, 27-30, 47), and the phrase his servants the prophets introduces Daniel 9 twice. The Hebrew of Amos 3:7 reads ki im gala sodo el avadav hanneviim, unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets; the vault's Septuagint has apokalypse paideian, reveals instruction. The CSB Study Bible says the phrase echoes the same wording in Amos 3:7, and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the ESV Study Bible cite Amos 3:7. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible counts the formula nearly twenty times in the Old Testament (on 11:18). The grade is Beale's: a clear allusion.
What is the mystery? Beale says God's plan from Christ's exaltation to the end, carried out through the saints' suffering. The ESV Study Bible says God's plan to unite all things under Christ, including the wrath of the bowls. Kraft, as Beale reports, limits it to the resurrection of the dead, which Beale counts as only part of it. MacArthur reads the close of all things, when God judges sinners and sets up his just kingdom on the earth.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 10:7, Special Questions in 10:7
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 10:5-7
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 10:7
- ESV Study Bible, notes on Revelation 10:1-3 and 10:5-7
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 11:18
- Septuagint, Amos 3:7 and Daniel 2:28, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Hebrew text of Amos 3:7, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 10:7
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 10:7
