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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 20:2, that ancient serpent
Calling the dragon the ancient serpent and stopping him from deceiving points back to the serpent of Eden, whose lie brought the first fall.
Revelation 20:2, in every translation this tool compares.
A detective who files a new arrest under an old case number is saying this is the same offender. John calls the dragon the ancient serpent, the same title he used in 12:9. That points back to the garden, where the serpent lied to Eve and Adam. Now the angel locks him up so he can no longer deceive the nations. The first deceiver is finally restrained.
The serpent (ophis) and the act of deceiving. In Genesis the serpent deceives the woman; in 20:3 and 20:8 the serpent is stopped from deceiving, then released to deceive again. The Greek of Genesis 3:1 uses the same word for serpent.
Genesis never calls the serpent the devil or Satan, and never calls it ancient. John adds those names and joins the serpent to the dragon. In Eden the serpent deceives two people. In John it deceives whole nations. The sources give no reason beyond the identification already made in 12:9.
Beale reads the restraint as a reversal of Eden. The serpent ruined the first human pair and their task of ruling the earth for God. Jesus, the last Adam, now holds back the deceiver so that the people of God can carry out that task among the nations.
Not a new enemy. The dragon of this chapter is the same figure as in chapter 12. John does not introduce a second devil for the end.
Beale says the name the ancient serpent in 20:2, with deception in 20:3, is an allusion to Genesis 3:1 and 3:14, as he argued on 12:9. In Genesis 3:4-5 the serpent says God's command is untrue and God's motive is selfish; the deception led to the fall. Beale argues that the binding restrains the serpent from repeating, among the nations, what he did in Eden. The CSB Study Bible lists Genesis 3:13 among its cross-references for deceive in 20:8. The ESV Study Bible links the titles to 12:9-17. In the Greek of Genesis 3:1 the serpent is ho ophis; John has ho ophis ho archaios. The grade is drawn here: the title and the act of deceiving point to one passage.
Beale reads the restraint as partial and present: the serpent is kept from blinding the nations to the gospel. Other readers of the binding, as the ESV Study Bible sets out, take it as a complete removal still to come. MacArthur reads it as a full removal in a future thousand-year kingdom, with the demons locked away too, so that their influence is gone from the world.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 20:1-3
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:1-3
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 20:8
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 20:2-3
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 20:2
