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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 12:7-8, the dragon was not strong enough
John describes the dragon's defeat with Daniel's words for the horn that made war on the saints and won, turned around, and adds Daniel 2's line that no place was found for them.
Revelation 12:7-8, in every translation this tool compares.
A comedian can retell a rival's boast word for word and make it the punch line. Daniel 7 says the horn made war with the holy ones and was stronger than they were. John takes the same words for the dragon's war in heaven, and says he was not strong enough. Then he adds a line from Daniel 2, where the broken kingdoms vanish and no place is found for them. The words of the enemy's victory now tell of his defeat.
Make war with, polemos and meta, and ischyo, to be strong. These come from the Greek of Daniel 7:21. No place was found for them, topos ouch heurethe autois, is the Greek of Daniel 2:35, which John repeats almost exactly.
In Daniel the horn makes war on the saints and overpowers them. In John, Michael makes war on the dragon, and the dragon does not prevail. John adds a not, and swaps who fights whom. In Daniel 2 no place is found for the shattered statue's dust; John uses it for the dragon and his angels in heaven.
Beale calls this polemical irony. God defeats the enemy with the very language that told how the enemy began to defeat God's people. The devil is mocked by a parody of his own triumph. The same reversal of Daniel 7:21 returns in 17:14.
Not a loose memory of Daniel. Beale argues John keeps Daniel's wording on purpose, even where it makes his Greek awkward, so the reader will notice.
In his introduction Beale gives this as a model inverted use: Daniel 7:21 applied in reverse to Satan's overthrow, as a fitting punishment that matches the crime. He shows the parallel with the Greek of Daniel 7:21 (Theodotion) and Daniel 10:20, make war with the ruler of Persia. He says the odd infinitive in 12:7 and the not strong enough in 12:8 both keep Daniel's wording. Verse 8b, he adds, rests on the nearly identical words of Daniel 2:35, where the stone strikes the kingdoms; 20:11 repeats it at the last judgment. The vault's Greek of Daniel 7:21 reads the horn made war with the holy ones and prevailed against them. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible makes the same contrast with Daniel 7:21. The grade is drawn here: Beale calls the reverse use intentional, shown by the verbal likeness.
The sources that discuss this verse agree it reverses Daniel 7:21. They differ on its timing: Beale ties it to Christ's resurrection, while futurists place it in a future tribulation, as the ESV Study Bible reports. MacArthur says Satan, thrown out at his first rebellion, has kept access to heaven; in the tribulation that access ends and he is barred for good.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 12:7 and 12:8, and introduction, Inverted Uses
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 12:8
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 12:7
- Septuagint, Daniel 7:21 and 2:35, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 12:7-8
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 12:9
