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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 14:14, one like a son of man on a cloud
The crowned figure seated on a white cloud, one like a son of man, is Daniel 7:13's figure, come now to reap the earth.
Revelation 14:14, in every translation this tool compares.
A judge's robe tells you who will hand down the verdict. In Daniel 7 a human figure comes with the clouds before God, the Ancient of Days, and is given the kingdom. John sees a figure like a son of man seated on a white cloud, with a gold crown and a sharp sickle. The same figure who walked among the lampstands in chapter 1 now comes to harvest the earth.
One like a son of man and the clouds. John's homoion huion anthropou is the phrase of 1:13, from Daniel 7:13, with the same odd case in Greek.
In Daniel the figure comes with the clouds to receive the kingdom. In John he sits on a single white cloud, wears a gold crown and holds a sickle. Daniel's figure is presented to God; John's carries out the judgment. Beale says the context leaves only the role of judge in view here.
The son of man of Daniel 7, whom Revelation 1 showed as the divine Christ, now comes to judge. Beale ties it to Jesus' sayings about his own return with the clouds. The crown marks him as king, and the sickle as the one who reaps.
Not one more angel among many. Beale, the CSB Study Bible and Heiser read the figure as Christ, though the next angel speaks to him.
Beale calls the figure an allusion to Daniel 7:13, in the tradition of Matthew 24:30. He notes seven heavenly beings in 14:6-20 and grants that some read the son of man as an angel, but answers that 1:13 uses the same words for the divine Christ and that the son of man on the clouds is always Christ in the Gospels. He reads the out-of-place nominative having as a stylistic flag pointing back to Daniel and to 1:13-16. The vault's Greek of Daniel 7:13 reads with the clouds of heaven, as a son of man. The CSB Study Bible calls it a clear allusion to Daniel 7:13; the ESV Study Bible and Wright also cite Daniel 7. The grade is drawn here: the phrase is Daniel's word for word.
Heiser reads Aune: seated on a cloud may join Psalm 110:1, sitting at God's right hand, to Daniel 7:13, as Jesus did at his trial in Mark 14:62. With Beale, he takes the figure as Christ. Even if it were angelic language, he says, that would not lower Christ, since in the Old Testament Yahweh appears as the angel of the Lord.
Keener says one like a son of man could mean only a human-looking figure, and that Christ would not take orders from an angel. Kiddle and Muller, as Beale reports, read an angel. Beale, the CSB Study Bible and Heiser read Christ, with the angel only passing on God's timing.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 14:14 and 14:15-16
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 14:14-16
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 14:14-20
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 14:14
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 14:14-20
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 14:14-20
- Septuagint, Daniel 7:13, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 14:14
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 14: The Lamb, the 144,000, and the Harvest of the Earth, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
