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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 21:4, he will wipe every tear
God wiping every tear and ending death comes from Isaiah 25:8, the feast where death is swallowed up.
Revelation 21:4, in every translation this tool compares.
A parent kneeling to dry a child's face does more than any speech about comfort. Isaiah 25 pictures a feast on God's mountain. There God swallows up death and wipes the tears from every face. John says the same of the new world. God himself wipes away every tear, and death is gone. The promise Isaiah gave to Israel now belongs to all of God's people.
Every tear (pan dakryon), wiped or taken away by God, and death ended. The Greek of Isaiah 25:8 has the Lord God removing every tear from every face, right after death is swallowed up.
Isaiah says from every face; John says from their eyes. Isaiah's verb in Greek is to take away; John's is to wipe out. Isaiah puts death being swallowed first, then the tears. John puts the tears first and then says death will be no more. Some copyists added God before every tear to match Isaiah more closely, Beale notes.
In Isaiah the tears were Israel's, under exile and death. John gives the promise its final reach: no more death for anyone in the new world. Revelation 7:17 already used this verse for the great crowd before the throne. Here it is the settled state of the world to come.
Not a promise that grief never mattered. The tears are wiped, which means they were real. Beale reads them as the sufferings of God's people in the old world, now ended.
The Hebrew of Isaiah 25:8 reads billa hammavet lanetsach, he has swallowed up death forever, umachah adonai YHWH dimah me'al kol panim, and the Lord God will wipe the tear from every face. The verb machah means to wipe, which John's exaleipsei matches more closely than the Greek translation's apheile, removed; that link to the Hebrew is drawn here. The Greek has pan dakryon apo pantos prosopou, every tear from every face. Beale calls Revelation 21:4 a fulfillment of Isaiah 25:8, lists 21:4 among the clear allusions to Isaiah in this vision, and in his introduction names Isaiah 25:8 in 21:4 among the clearest cases of a prophecy expected to be fulfilled at the end. He notes that later Jewish readers took Isaiah 25:8 of the resurrection. Exodus Rabbah 15.21, like John, joins it with 35:10 and 65:19. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible both say the verse alludes to Isaiah 25:8.
Heiser calls this line a specific fulfillment of Isaiah 25:8. He notes it was already echoed in Revelation 7, with the crowd before the throne. A promise given to Israelites, he says, is here given to every believer.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 21:4 and 21:11, and introduction, Possible Indirect Fulfillment Uses
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 21:4
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:4
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:4
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:4
- Septuagint, Isaiah 25:8, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Hebrew text of Isaiah 25:8, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 21:4
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 21-22: The New Heaven and the New Earth, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
