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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 13:7, war on the saints
The beast is allowed to make war on the saints and conquer them, as Daniel's horn made war with the holy ones and prevailed.
Revelation 13:7, in every translation this tool compares.
A hard winter that was forecast is no less cold, but it does not catch you by surprise. In Daniel 7 the little horn fights the holy ones and wins. Then God, the old judge on the throne, comes and gives the kingdom to the saints. John says the beast was permitted to fight the saints and defeat them. Daniel's war on the holy ones returns in John's vision.
Make war with the saints, poiesai polemon meta ton hagion, the phrase of the Greek of Daniel 7:21. In both the persecutor wins for a time.
Daniel says the horn prevailed; John says the beast conquered, nikesai, the verb Revelation uses for the faithful who overcome. John adds that it was given to the beast, a reminder that God allows it. Beale notes the same words in 11:7, and the reverse in 12:7-8, where the dragon cannot win.
John takes Daniel's war on the holy ones and gives it to the beast. Beale says the war began with Christ's death and resurrection. Daniel promises that the persecutors will be judged and the saints will receive the kingdom, and John's readers are meant to remember the rest of the story.
Not defeat in the end. The ESV Study Bible notes the irony: the saints are conquered in body, yet in 12:11 and 15:2 they are the ones who conquer.
Beale says verse 7 returns to Daniel 7:8 in the Greek and 7:21, with the same wording as 11:7. After the mouth speaking great things, the Greek of 7:8 adds that the horn made war on the saints, and John follows the same order. The vault's Greek of Daniel 7:21 reads the horn made war with the holy ones and prevailed against them. Keener calls the figure of Daniel 7:21-22 antichristlike and applied first to Antiochus. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible point to Daniel 7:21. The grade is drawn here: the phrase is nearly word for word.
Heiser reads Daniel 7 beside the verse and says it is very clearly the source: the horn made war against the holy ones. He follows Beale and McDonough in tracing John's whole description back to Daniel 7.
The CSB Study Bible reads the saints as Gentile believers in a future tribulation; Beale reads them as the church throughout the age. Keener reads the horn as Antiochus first, then his successors. MacArthur reads the war as the Antichrist's slaughter of God's people in the tribulation.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 13:7a
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 13:7
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 13:7
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 13:7
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 13:7
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 13:5-7
- Septuagint, Daniel 7:21 and 7:8, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 13:7
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 13: The Two Beasts: From the Sea and the Earth, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 13:7
