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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 19:1, hallelujah over the fall of the wicked
The first hallelujah may echo the last line of Psalm 104, where the psalm ends with hallelujah once sinners are gone from the earth.
Revelation 19:1; Revelation 19:3, in every translation this tool compares.
A crowd that bursts into an old hymn at a victory parade is borrowing the hymn's mood as well as its words. Hallelujah is a Hebrew shout that means praise the Lord. It appears only here in the New Testament, four times in a row. Beale thinks John may be recalling Psalm 104, which ends with that same shout after the wicked are swept away. Here the shout greets the end of Babylon.
The word hallelujah (halleloyia in John's Greek), and the reason for it. In Psalm 104:35 the shout follows the prayer that sinners vanish from the earth. In Revelation 19:1-3 it follows the judgment of Babylon.
Psalm 104 closes a song about creation with one hallelujah. John has a heavenly crowd shout it again and again, in a scene of judgment. Hallelujah is common in the Psalms, so the word alone cannot point to one psalm. Beale also notes a proposal that John has the Hallel psalms, 113 to 118, in view. No source settles which psalm John means.
The praise is for a verdict. God has judged the city that corrupted the earth and killed his servants. The crowd sings the old temple shout because the old hope has come true: the wicked are gone, as the psalm prayed.
Not a word John invented. Hallelujah was already a fixed shout of worship, at home in the Psalms and in Jewish praise. The echo, if there is one, lies in the setting.
Beale names two views. Johnson, as Beale reports, hears the Hallel psalms (113 to 118, especially 113:1 and 115:13), which recall the exodus and which Jewish writings tied to the final defeat of the wicked. Beale thinks Psalm 104:35 more likely, because there the hallelujah answers the end of sinners, and rabbinic texts read that verse of the last judgment. He adds that Tobit 13 has the streets of the end-time Jerusalem cry hallelujah, a link to the bride-city of 21:2. The CSB Study Bible's cross-references give Psalm 104:35 and 106:1, 48. The ESV Study Bible notes the word is Hebrew for praise Yahweh, frequent in Psalms 113 to 118. The grade is possible, as Beale's own phrase is the possibility of allusion.
Johnson, as Beale reports him, points to the Hallel psalms; Beale prefers Psalm 104:35. The ESV Study Bible names Psalms 113 to 118 only as where the word is common, without calling it an echo. Keener treats hallelujah as a general call to worship found across the Psalms.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 19:1
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 19:1-2
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 19:1
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 19:1
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 19:1
