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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 20:14, the second death
The second death, the lake of fire, may come from the end of Isaiah, with its undying worm and unquenched fire for the rebels, as the old Aramaic paraphrase of Isaiah read it.
Revelation 20:14, in every translation this tool compares.
A phrase from an old sermon can stay in a family long after the sermon is forgotten. Isaiah ends with the new heavens and new earth. Then come the bodies of the rebels, whose worm never dies and whose fire is never put out. The Aramaic paraphrase read in synagogues spoke there of a second death. John uses that name for the lake of fire, two verses before his own new heaven and earth.
A fiery punishment of the wicked that does not end, set right next to the promise of a new heaven and earth. Isaiah 66:24 has a fire that will not be quenched (to pyr auton ou sbesthesetai); John has the lake of fire.
The Hebrew and Greek of Isaiah never say second death. That phrase comes from the Aramaic paraphrase of Isaiah 65, as Beale reports McNamara. Isaiah shows corpses outside the city; John speaks of death and Hades themselves thrown into the lake.
The new creation of chapter 21 has an outside. As in Isaiah, the last word about the rebels comes beside the promise of a world made new. Death and Hades, which held the dead, are themselves ended.
Not a phrase from the Hebrew Bible. Second death appears in the Aramaic paraphrase, not in Isaiah's Hebrew or Greek; the link is through that reading.
Beale agrees with McNamara that the phrase is derived from Isaiah 65:14-18 and 66:22-24 and their targumic tradition, not from a general Jewish idea. He notes that two verses later John alludes to the new creation of Isaiah 65:17 and 66:22 (21:1), that the Targum of Isaiah 65:6 and 15 names the second death just before the new creation prophecy, and that the Targum of 66:24 says the spirits of the ungodly live on in a fire that stays lit. The Greek of 66:24 reads ho gar skolex auton ou teleutesei, kai to pyr auton ou sbesthesetai. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible cites Isaiah 66:24 and Mark 9:47-48. Keener notes that some Jewish texts used the phrase second death for the fate of the wicked. The grade is possible: the phrase is not in the Hebrew or Greek text, and the echo runs through the Targum.
Heiser, reading Justin Bass, says fiery punishment in the afterlife may begin in Deuteronomy 32:22 and shows most clearly in Isaiah 33:14 and 66:24. He reads Isaiah 66:22-24 aloud, the new heavens and earth and then the worm that does not die, and notes Jesus uses that language for Gehenna. These are data points, he says, for an idea developed later. He leaves the second death open between endless dying and annihilation.
Does the second death mean endless torment or final destruction? Beale holds the Isaiah background supports endless suffering, though he grants the Targum of 66:24 may set a limit. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible reads it as eternal conscious torment. Heiser keeps both views open, asking how death can go on if death is no more (21:4).
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 20:14
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:14
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 20:5-6
- Septuagint, Isaiah 66:24, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 20:14
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 20: Satan's Final Defeat and the Great White Throne Judgment, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
