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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 20:5, the first resurrection
The rest of the dead and the first resurrection may draw on Daniel 12:2, where many who sleep in the dust wake, some to life and some to shame.
Revelation 20:5, in every translation this tool compares.
Two invitations can come from one wedding, one to the feast and one to the door. Daniel 12 says many who sleep in the dust will wake. Some wake to a life that lasts forever. Others wake to disgrace. John speaks of a first resurrection for the faithful and of the rest of the dead, who come to life later and face the second death. The sources hear Daniel's two groups behind John's words.
The dead rising, with two outcomes: life for one group and judgment for the other. Daniel 12:2 and Revelation 20 both speak of the dead coming back in two kinds.
Daniel gives one waking with two outcomes. John separates the faithful who come to life in 20:4 from the rest of the dead, who wait until the thousand years end. He calls the first a resurrection and the end of the others the second death. Daniel uses neither phrase. Keener notes Daniel does not separate the two in time.
John promises the faithful that death has no claim on them. The resurrection Daniel waited for is theirs first. The others will rise too, but to judgment before the great white throne in 20:11-15.
Not a quotation of Daniel 12:2. John takes up Daniel's hope of the dead rising to two outcomes, in his own terms: a first resurrection and a second death. The phrase second resurrection never occurs, as Heiser stresses.
The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says Daniel had predicted a resurrection of the damned, citing Daniel 12:2, with 2 Baruch 51 and John 5:29. Beale reads 20:12 as assuming the last great resurrection of righteous and unrighteous, in light of 20:5 and Daniel 12:2. Keener says the punishment of the rest after an interval may come from Isaiah 24:21-22, though Daniel 12:2 has no gap between the two. In the vault's Greek Daniel, 12:2 reads houtoi eis zoen aionion, kai houtoi eis oneidismon, these to everlasting life and these to reproach. John's word for came to life is ezesan; Daniel's verb for waking is exegerthesontai. Beale himself takes the first resurrection in 20:4-6 as spiritual and the rising of 20:12-13 as bodily. The grade is possible: the wording is only generally similar, and two sources name Daniel.
Heiser says the first resurrection is the general resurrection the Old Testament expected, as in Daniel 12. The second death is the final judgment, either endless dying or annihilation; he keeps both open. He points out that the phrase second resurrection never occurs. In his reading 20:11-15 describes the same general resurrection again from the side of judgment, and Aune's survey shows the two-sided resurrection already in Second Temple writings, before the rabbis.
Beale takes the first resurrection as spiritual life with Christ after death, and the rising of 20:12-13 as the bodily resurrection of all. Heiser reads the first resurrection as the general bodily one of Daniel 12, after Christ's return. The ESV Study Bible sets out the premillennial view of two bodily resurrections a thousand years apart. The CSB Study Bible notes that first implies a second resurrection to come. MacArthur sees two kinds of resurrection. The first, for the redeemed of the Old Testament, the church and the tribulation, comes before the thousand years; the second, for unbelievers, comes at the great white throne.
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- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:5
- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 20:12
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 20:5-6
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:4-5
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 20:4-6
- Septuagint, Daniel 12:2, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 20:4-5
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 20: Satan's Final Defeat and the Great White Throne Judgment, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 20:5
