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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 13:4, who is like the beast?
The crowd's cry who is like the beast? copies Israel's song after the Red Sea, who is like you, O Lord?, and turns praise of God into praise of his enemy.
Revelation 13:4, in every translation this tool compares.
Singing a hymn tune with new words for a dictator is worse than silence. After the Red Sea, Israel sang: who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? The question praised God as beyond comparison. In John the world worships the beast with the same question: who is like the beast, and who can fight it? The praise that belongs to God is given to the enemy.
The question who is like, tis homoios. These are the opening words of the Greek of Exodus 15:11, followed by the one praised.
Exodus asks which of the gods is like the Lord. John's crowd asks who is like the beast, and who can make war with it. The answer the song expects is no one but God; the crowd says no one but the beast. John adds the war, which Beale ties to the horn's war on the saints in Daniel 7.
Beale calls this an ironic use of the Old Testament's words for God's incomparability: the devil imitating God. In those texts God is set against false gods, so the beast's worshipers commit the worst blasphemy. And the question has an answer already in 12:7-8: Michael fought the dragon and won.
Not a harmless compliment. The sources read the words as worship, given to a creature in place of God.
Beale calls the expression an ironic use of phrasing applied to Yahweh (Exodus 8:10; 15:11; Deuteronomy 3:24; Isaiah 40:18, 25; 46:5; Psalms 35:10; 89:8; 113:5; Micah 7:18). In his introduction he lists Exodus 8:10 and 15:11 among John's retributive ironies. He cites the Talmud using such texts against Titus after the temple's fall. Keener, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and the ESV Study Bible all point to Exodus 15:11; the CSB Study Bible cross-references Exodus 15:11 and Isaiah 46:5; the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible adds Psalm 113:5. The ESV Study Bible notes that such cries greeted Caesar entering a city. The grade is drawn here: the question is the song's, and the sources agree on it.
The sources agree on Exodus 15:11. They differ on how wide the echo is: Beale gives a long list of incomparability texts, while the study Bibles name one or two.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 13:4, and introduction, Inverted Uses
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 13:4
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 13:4
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 13:4
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 13:4
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 13:4
- Septuagint, Exodus 15:11, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 13:4
