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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 11:13, a great earthquake
The great earthquake that follows the witnesses' rising takes its wording from Ezekiel 38:19, where a great earthquake marks God's judgment on Gog after Israel's revival.
Revelation 11:13, in every translation this tool compares.
When a storyteller follows a revival with a final battle, readers who know the old tale expect the ending. Ezekiel 37 brings dry bones to life. Ezekiel 38 follows with Gog's attack on restored Israel, and God answers with a great quake on Israel's soil. John keeps the same order. The witnesses rise, and in that hour a great earthquake strikes the city.
A great earthquake (seismos megas) as God's judgment. Ezekiel 38:19 in Greek says there will be a great earthquake on the land of Israel; John has egeneto seismos megas.
Ezekiel's quake shakes the land as Gog attacks; John's brings down a tenth of the city and kills seven thousand. John has no Gog here; he saves Gog and Magog for 20:8. The phrase also occurs in Ezekiel 3:12 and Jeremiah 10:22, Beale notes, so it is the order of Ezekiel 37-38 that tips the link.
Beale reads the quake as the start of the final judgment. It is completed at the seventh trumpet, where an earthquake comes again (11:19). By following Ezekiel 37 with 38, Beale says, John sets the witnesses' rising at the end of history. He uses Ezekiel 38-39 that way again in 19:17 and 20:8-9.
Not Gog's war retold. John takes Ezekiel's great earthquake and its place after the rising, but he saves Gog for 20:8.
Beale says the wording actually comes from Ezekiel 38:19, where seismos megas is used of the final judgment of Gog when he tries to wipe out restored Israel. The link is natural, he says, since Ezekiel 37 pictures Israel's restoration as resurrection, and John follows the same order in 11:11-13. The phrase occurs otherwise only in Ezekiel 3:12 and Jeremiah 10:22. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible says the earthquake alludes to Ezekiel 38:19, and the CSB Study Bible lists Isaiah 29:6 and Ezekiel 38:19. Walton calls Ezekiel's quake a cosmic earthquake like those of Exodus 19 and Judges 5:4-5. The vault's Septuagint of Ezekiel 38:19 reads estai seismos megas epi ges Israel. The grade is drawn here: the phrase is common, but the sequence after Ezekiel 37 is unique to that book.
When and where is the quake? Beale reads the start of the final judgment, tied to the quakes of 6:12 and 16:18 and completed at 11:19. MacArthur reads a real quake in Jerusalem that marks the prophets' going up, its dead perhaps mostly leaders of the Antichrist's forces.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 11:13
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 11:13
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references on Revelation 11:13
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Ezekiel 38:19
- Septuagint, Ezekiel 38:19, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 11:13
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 11:13
