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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 15:4, your righteous acts have been revealed
The song's last line may recall Psalm 98:2, where God shows his righteousness before the nations after a new song for his victory.
Revelation 15:4, in every translation this tool compares.
A news alert that says the verdict is in uses different words from the court clerk, but reports the same event. Psalm 98 sings that the Lord has made his saving help known and shown his justice before the nations. The song in Revelation ends the same way. The nations come because God's just acts are now in plain view. The psalm also opens with a new song and harps after a victory, like the scene John sees.
God's justice made public before the nations. Psalm 98:2 has the nations, God's righteousness and the verb revealed. Revelation 15:4 has the nations, God's righteous acts (dikaiomata) and the verb made manifest. Both the psalm and Revelation begin with a new song and harps (Psalm 98:1, 5; Revelation 15:2-3).
The Greek words differ. The psalm has righteousness (dikaiosyne) and revealed (apekalypse); John has righteous acts or verdicts and made manifest (ephanerothesan). In the psalm God shows his saving help for Israel. In Revelation the acts are verdicts of judgment, Beale says. The likeness lies in the thought more than the words, so this is only a possible echo.
Psalm 98 ends with God coming to judge the world. Beale finds the same movement here: the song of the first exodus becomes the pattern for the last judgment. The singers praise God because his verdicts are now open for everyone to see.
Not a word-for-word borrowing. The vocabulary is different. The link rests on the same order of ideas: a new song, a victory, and justice shown to the nations.
Beale calls the end of verse 4 another reminiscence of the exodus, from Psalm 98:2, and sets the two side by side. He notes that the psalm's second verse follows an opening that recalls Exodus 15:1, 6, 12, that the psalm calls for harps (98:5), and that it ends with God judging the world in righteousness (98:9). He reads the righteous acts as God's vindication of his people by condemning their opponents, an answer to the prayer of 6:9-10, and notes that the word group in the Greek Old Testament can mean either vindication or just condemnation. The ESV Study Bible cites Psalm 98:2 for the righteous acts of judgment, and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible lists it among the psalms behind the song. Wright recalls Psalms 96 and 98, where creation sings because God is coming to judge the earth. The grade is drawn here: several sources name the psalm, but the wording differs.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 15:4c
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 15:3-4
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 15:3-4
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 15:1-8
- Septuagint, Psalm 98:2, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 15:4
