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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 11:9, no one may bury their bodies
Leaving the witnesses' bodies unburied echoes Psalm 79, where the nations defile the temple, kill God's servants around Jerusalem and leave no one to bury them.
Revelation 11:9, in every translation this tool compares.
A team that leaves its fallen players on the field to be mocked has lost more than a game. Psalm 79 mourns a disaster. The nations have defiled God's temple and ruined Jerusalem. They have left the bodies of God's servants to birds and beasts, and no one buries them. John's witnesses lie in the street three and a half days, and onlookers from every nation refuse them a tomb.
God's faithful killed and left unburied while the nations look on. Psalm 79:3 in Greek says there was no one burying them (ouk en ho thapton); John says they do not let the bodies be put in a tomb (mnema).
The psalm's dead are many Israelites around Jerusalem; John's are the two witnesses in the great city's street. The psalm has birds and wild beasts (theria) eating the bodies; John has a beast (therion) that killed them. The psalm prays for revenge; John answers with resurrection in 11:11. The wording is close only in idea.
Beale finds the psalm's whole pattern in chapter 11: nations defile the temple, trample Jerusalem, kill God's servants, leave them unburied and mock them, and God is asked to repay. Revelation 6:10 already borrowed the psalm's cry, how long. For Beale that makes the witnesses a community. Their shame is about to be reversed.
Not a detail about burial customs alone. Keener notes that refusing burial was the worst cruelty, but Beale and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible tie the scene to Psalm 79.
Beale says the picture may come from Psalm 79:3b (78:3 in Greek), and that the parallels with the psalm cannot be accidental: the nations defiled the temple and laid Jerusalem in ruins (79:1), gave the bodies of God's servants to the birds and the beasts (79:2), poured out their blood around Jerusalem with none to bury them (79:3), and mocked the survivors (79:4). The psalm's cry for vengeance (79:5, 10) lies behind 6:10. 1 Maccabees 7:16-17 quotes Psalm 79:2-3 for the slaughter of godly Israelites, and 4Q176 applies it to the end time. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible compares Psalm 79:1-4. The vault's Septuagint of Psalm 79:2-3 has tois theriois tes ges and kai ouk en ho thapton. The grade is drawn here, following Beale's argument from the pattern; the wording is not close.
Who lies unburied? Beale reads the whole pattern of Psalm 79 as a sign that the witnesses are a community of God's servants. MacArthur reads two dead prophets whose bodies the whole world watches for three and a half days, while the earth-dwellers celebrate their death.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 11:9
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 11:9
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 11:8
- Septuagint, Psalm 79:2-3, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 11:9
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), notes on Revelation 11:9 and 11:10
