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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, all the nations will come and worship
The hope that every nation will come and bow before God is taken from Psalm 86:9-10, almost word for word in the Greek.
Revelation 15:4, in every translation this tool compares.
A school that paints its founder's prayer on the new gym wall is saying the prayer is coming true. Psalm 86 hopes that every nation God made will come, bow before him and honor his name, because he alone is God. The singers in Revelation use nearly the same words. Every nation, they sing, will arrive and kneel in God's presence, because he alone is holy. A lonely man's prayer becomes a victory song.
The Greek follows the psalm closely: all the nations (panta ta ethne) will come (hexousin) and worship (proskynesousin) before you (enopion sou), as in Psalm 86:9 in the Greek translation. Both join this to glorifying God's name. Both give a reason built on God standing alone. The psalm says alone God (86:10); John says alone holy (15:4).
John drops the psalm's words about the nations God made and its address, O Lord. He splits the psalm: glorifying God's name comes first, inside his question, and the coming of the nations second. The psalm's you alone are God becomes you alone are holy. The psalmist prays in trouble; John's singers stand after the victory.
In the psalm one troubled man hopes the nations will someday honor God. John puts that hope in the mouths of people who have already won. Beale reads all the nations as many from every nation, not every person: some come willingly, others are made to admit God's glory.
Not Psalm 86 word for word. John drops the psalm's nations whom God made and its address to the Lord. He changes you alone are God to you alone are holy.
Beale says most of the language of verse 4 rests on Psalm 86:9-10, and that the psalm's words great and marvelous may already lie behind verse 3. He adds the psalm's formula there is none like you among the gods (86:8) and suggests Isaiah 2:2 as a further echo. The theme of the nations streaming to Zion runs through the prophets (Isaiah 2:3; 49:22-23; 60:14; 66:23; Micah 4:2; Zechariah 8:20-22; 14:16). Later Jewish writings (Midrash on Psalms 66.1) link Psalm 86:9-10 to Exodus 15, which Beale thinks may reflect an older tradition, though John may have been first. In the Greek translation the psalm reads panta ta ethne hosa epoiesas hexousi kai proskynesousin enopion sou; John has panta ta ethne hexousin kai proskynesousin enopion sou. Keener, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, the ESV Study Bible and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible all point to Psalm 86:9, and the CSB Study Bible's cross-references list it. The grade is drawn here: the wording is nearly the psalm's own.
Bauckham, as Beale reports, argues that John shifts the new exodus toward the nations coming to know the true God. Caird, also reported by Beale, says the point is only the nations' conversion. Beale holds that judgment and salvation both remain: all will acknowledge God, some willingly and some by force. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible stresses that God, not the beast, receives the worldwide worship. MacArthur places the worship after God's judgment is complete, when Christ's thousand-year kingdom is set up on earth and the chosen from every nation come to worship him.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 15:4a-b and 15:4c
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 15:3-4
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 15:3-4
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 15:3-4
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 15:4
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 15:4
- Septuagint, Psalm 86:9-10, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 15:4
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 15:4
