Revelation 11:13, seven thousand people were killed

In 1 Kings the seven thousand are the faithful who survive. In John seven thousand are killed and most of the city survives. Elijah's number marks a remnant kept by God; John's marks a tenth that falls. No wording beyond the number is shared.

The sources take the reversal two ways. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, on the line Bauckham argues, says a tenth dies and most turn to God. Beale, with Caird, reads a penalty to fit the crime. As the faithful witnesses were killed, so seven thousand persecutors die. The rest are terrified but not converted.

Beale reports Caird's suggestion that the two witnesses are implicitly linked with the seven thousand faithful of Elijah's time, so that seven thousand killed is a matching penalty. Keener says some commentators see Israel's remnant here (1 Kings 19:18), and that seven thousand as a tenth fits Jerusalem better than Rome. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says the number could stand for a remnant (1 Kings 19:18) and that prophets limited the surviving remnant to a tenth (Isaiah 6:13; Amos 5:3), while here the tenth dies. Wright recalls Elijah's seven thousand and the ten righteous Abraham asked for in Sodom. Beale also hears Daniel 4:34, 37, where Nebuchadnezzar gives glory to the King of heaven, and Jonah 1:9-16, where sailors fear the God of heaven, in his reading without true conversion. The vault's Septuagint of 1 Kings 19:18 has hepta chiliadas andron. The grade is possible: four sources raise the number, but only the number is shared.