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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 16:2, painful sores on those with the mark
The first bowl brings Egypt's plague of boils, described in the words Deuteronomy uses, on everyone who took the beast's mark.
Revelation 16:2, in every translation this tool compares.
A judge who sentences graffiti vandals to scrub walls makes the punishment match the crime. In Egypt, Moses threw soot in the air and painful boils broke out on both people and cattle. Moses later warned Israel that unfaithfulness would bring the same evil sores on them. John's first bowl brings evil, painful sores on those who took the beast's mark. Those who chose one mark now receive another.
Sores that break out on people as a plague from God. The Greek of Exodus 9:9-10 has sores (helke) on people and animals. Deuteronomy 28:35 in Greek has the Lord striking with an evil sore (helkei ponero). Revelation 16:2 has a bad and evil sore (helkos kakon kai poneron).
Exodus strikes the Egyptians and their animals. John strikes only those who bear the beast's mark and worship its image. The word evil (poneron) comes from Deuteronomy's summary, not from Exodus. John drops the soot and the furnace. Beale reads the sore as a picture of suffering, like the torment of the fifth trumpet, more than a skin disease.
Heiser and Beale both see the irony: the mark of the beast is answered by a mark from God. Egypt's plague now falls on everyone who sides with the beast, wherever they live. The ESV Study Bible notes that this bowl hits people, not the land, unlike the first trumpet.
Not a new kind of plague. The sore is the one that struck Egypt, now aimed only at those who bear the beast's mark.
Beale says the bowl's effect rests on the literal plague of boils in Egypt (Exodus 9:9-11), which Deuteronomy 28:27, 35 sums up as an evil sore. The punishment fits the crime: an idolatrous mark is met by a penal one. Jewish retellings stress the torment of the boils: Josephus (Antiquities 2.304) and Philo (Life of Moses 1.127-28) say the Egyptians suffered in soul as much as in body, and Pesikta Rabbati says the plague would come again on Rome. Beale rejects Job 2 as the background, since Job suffered for righteousness. Keener calls the sores the sixth plague of Exodus 9:10. The ESV Study Bible, the CSB Study Bible and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cite Exodus 9:8-12 and Deuteronomy 28:27, 35. The grade is drawn here: the plague is plainly Egypt's, and John's adjective matches the Greek of Deuteronomy.
Heiser calls the plague of boils on Egypt the immediate point of reference and stresses an ironic reversal. In Egypt the Egyptians got the boils; now those who take the beast's idolatrous mark are marked with boils by God. He thinks John wants readers to catch it: you took the mark, so God marks you.
The sources agree on Egypt. Wall, as Beale reports, reads the sore against Job 2:7, and Beale rejects that. The CSB Study Bible's cross-references add Job 2:7 and Isaiah 1:6 beside Exodus and Deuteronomy. MacArthur notes that the Greek Old Testament uses the same word for Egypt's boils and for Job's, and Luke uses it for the sores of Lazarus. He reads the bowl as real open sores on the beast's worshipers all over the world. Beale reads the sore as a picture of suffering more than a skin disease.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 16:2
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 16:2
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 16:2
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 16:2 and cross-references at 16:2
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 16:2
- Septuagint, Exodus 9:9-10 and Deuteronomy 28:35, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 16:2
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 15-16: The Seven Angels, Seven Plagues, Seven Bowls of God's Wrath, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 16:2
