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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 20:11, no place was found for them
Earth and heaven flee and no place is found for them, the words Daniel 2:35 uses when the wind blows away the broken statue of the empires.
Revelation 20:11, in every translation this tool compares.
A demolition crew can leave a lot so clean that you cannot tell a building stood there. In Daniel 2 a stone smashes the great statue of the empires. The pieces blow away like chaff, and no place is found for them. John uses the same words for the whole old world. Earth and sky flee from the face of the one on the throne, and no place is found for them.
The words topos ouch heurethe autois, no place was found for them. They are the same in the Greek of Daniel 2:35 and in Revelation 20:11.
In Daniel the words describe the broken pieces of a statue that stands for four empires. John applies them to earth and heaven. Daniel's pieces are blown away by wind; John's world flees from God's face. John used the same words in 12:8 for the dragon and his angels thrown out of heaven.
Daniel's stone ends the empires and becomes a mountain filling the earth. John widens the scene to the end of the whole evil world order, making room for the new heaven and new earth of 21:1. Beale says this probably, though not necessarily, includes the material world.
Not a picture invented for this scene. The words are Daniel's, as Beale shows, and John has already used them once in 12:8.
Beale says the phrase is from Daniel 2:35 in the version called Theodotion, used there of the end-time destruction of the wicked kingdoms; 12:8 uses it of the devil's defeat at the cross, and here it covers the complete destruction of the evil world system. The vault's Greek Daniel (the same version) reads kai topos ouch heurethe autois, and John has kai topos ouch heurethe autois, word for word. The Aramaic is vechol atar la hishtechach lehon, and no trace at all was found of them. Beale notes almost identical language for the last judgment in 6:14 and 16:20 and ties the flight of heaven and earth to Psalm 102:25-27, Isaiah 51:6 and 2 Peter 3. The ESV Study Bible and the CSB Study Bible link the passing away to 21:1 and Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22. The grade is drawn here: the wording is identical.
Is the old creation destroyed or renewed? Beale says the flight probably, not necessarily, includes the material cosmos, and leaves the literal question to 6:12-15. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible reads the flight as sinners fleeing the face no mortal can see. The ESV Study Bible ties it to the shaking foretold in Haggai 2:6. MacArthur reads the flight as the old universe going out of existence before God makes a new one.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 20:11
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:11
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:11-15
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:11
- Septuagint, Daniel 2:35, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Aramaic text of Daniel 2:35, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 20:11
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 20:11
