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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 21:27, nothing unclean will enter
The ban on anything unclean entering the city recalls Isaiah 52:1 and 35:8, where the unclean will no longer pass through Zion or walk the holy way.
Revelation 21:27, in every translation this tool compares.
A clean room in a lab has a door that only the properly dressed can pass. Isaiah 52 tells Jerusalem that the unclean will never again walk through her. Isaiah 35 describes a holy road home where nothing unclean will travel. John says nothing unclean will enter the new city. Only those whose names the Lamb has written in his book go in.
The unclean kept out of the holy city for good. Isaiah 52:1 in Greek promises that no longer will the uncircumcised and unclean (akathartos) pass through Jerusalem.
John's word for unclean is koinon, common or defiled, not Isaiah's akathartos. Isaiah names the uncircumcised and the unclean; John names whoever practices what is detestable or false. Isaiah has no book; John adds the Lamb's book of life, which Beale links partly to Isaiah 4:3, those written for life in Jerusalem.
Isaiah's line was about foreign armies and ritual impurity. John makes it moral and spiritual: the liars and idolaters of 21:8 stay outside. Beale says the warning is mainly for those who claim faith but live against it. Just as the unclean could not enter the old temple, the unclean will not enter the eternal one.
Not a ban on the nations. Verses 24-26 have just brought the nations in. The ban is on uncleanness, as Keener notes, not on any people group.
Isaiah 52:1 in Greek ends ouketi prostethesetai dielthein dia sou aperitmetos kai akathartos, no longer will the uncircumcised and unclean go through you. Revelation 21:27 reads kai ou me eiselthe eis auten pan koinon kai poion bdelygma kai pseudos. Beale says the verse alludes partly to Isaiah 35:8 and 52:1, both of which keep the unclean off the way into end-time Jerusalem, and adds Ezekiel 44:9, which bars the uncircumcised from the sanctuary. The allusion is supported, he notes, by the use of Isaiah 52:1 in 21:2 and 21:10. He also links the stones of 21:18-20 to righteousness, citing Isaiah 52:1, 60:20-21, Ezekiel 44:9 and Zechariah 14:21. The CSB Study Bible cross-references Isaiah 35:8 and 52:1. The grade is drawn here: the idea is distinctive, but John's words differ from the Greek.
Keener hears Zechariah 14:21, no more traders or abominations in God's house, and Joel 3:17, no strangers in Jerusalem, rather than Isaiah. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible sets the verse beside Zechariah 5:3-4, where the wicked are banished.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 21:18-20 and 21:27
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 21:27
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:27
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references on Revelation 21:27
- Septuagint, Isaiah 52:1, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 21:27
