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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 20:4, they came to life
The last chapters of Revelation follow the order of Ezekiel's last chapters, and the word for came to life is the word Ezekiel uses when the dry bones live.
Revelation 20:4, in every translation this tool compares.
A film that follows the chapters of a famous novel in order is retelling that book, even when the dialogue is new. Ezekiel ends with four scenes. Dry bones come to life. God's king rules his people. Gog attacks and is destroyed. Then a new temple and city appear. Revelation 20 to 22 runs in the same order. In 20:4 the faithful come to life, the same verb Ezekiel uses for the bones.
The verb ezesan, they lived, is in the Greek of Ezekiel 37:10 and in Revelation 20:4. Both times God's people come to life. The order matches too. First life from the dead, then a kingdom, then Gog and Magog, then the new city.
Ezekiel's bones are the whole house of Israel, raised as a nation and brought home. John's are those who stayed faithful to Jesus. Ezekiel's kingdom has David as king with no length given; John's lasts a thousand years. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes the match is not exact: Ezekiel has no thousand years, and John's city has no temple.
By following Ezekiel's order John tells readers that the end he describes is the end Ezekiel saw. Beale reads the coming to life, like Ezekiel's, as a picture of restoration that John applies to the church. Wright says this is why the Gog episode must come after the first resurrection.
Not a quotation of the dry bones vision. The link rests on one verb and on the order of scenes, which Keener, Beale and Wright all note.
Beale sets out a fourfold ending: resurrection of God's people (Revelation 20:4a; Ezekiel 37:1-14), messianic kingdom (20:4b-6; Ezekiel 37:15-28), the battle with Gog and Magog (20:7-10; Ezekiel 38-39), and the new temple and city on a high mountain (21:1-22:5; Ezekiel 40-48). In that light he reads ezesan in 20:4 as an echo of the same form in the Greek of Ezekiel 37:10, with future forms in 37:6 and 14. Since Ezekiel's resurrection pictures Israel's return from exile, he takes 20:4-6 as a spiritual resurrection, universalized and applied to the church; Ezekiel 37:10 is also used figuratively in 11:11. Keener says Revelation 20 onward especially expounds Ezekiel 37-48, and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says John follows that sequence to some degree. Wright notes Ezekiel 38 comes straight after the return from exile pictured as resurrection. The grade is drawn here: the order of ideas is traceable to Ezekiel alone.
Beale reads the coming to life as spiritual: the faithful dead live with Christ in heaven. He reports that Fiorenza grants the Ezekiel echo but takes it as a bodily rising, as the same verb is in 2:8. The ESV Study Bible sets the premillennial bodily reading against the amillennial heavenly one. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says the parallel with Ezekiel is partial. MacArthur reads it as a bodily rising: the martyrs enter the thousand-year kingdom in raised bodies.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 20:4-6, Observations Supporting This Analysis of 20:4-6
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 20:1-6
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:8
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 20:7-15
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:4-5
- Septuagint, Ezekiel 37:10, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 20:4
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 20:5
