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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 22:3, his servants will serve him
Isaiah's promise that Israel will be called priests of the Lord is fulfilled when all God's servants serve him in the temple-city.
Revelation 22:3, in every translation this tool compares.
A title once held by a few can be handed to everyone in the room. Isaiah promised that Israel's people would bear the title of the Lord's priests. In Revelation 22 all of God's servants serve him before his throne. John's verb is the word for priestly service in a temple, so the whole people now do what priests once did.
God's people serving him as priests. The shared idea is a whole people in priestly service.
Isaiah uses the nouns priests and ministers. John uses a verb, latreuo, to serve in worship, as in 7:15. Isaiah promises Israel the wealth of the nations; John says nothing of wealth. The sources give no reason for the change of wording.
In the old temple only priests came near. Now every servant of God serves him face to face, because the city itself is the temple. Beale and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible read the service as priestly, the fulfillment of a promise first made to Israel.
Not a word for slavery. The servants here are God's people, and their service is worship in his presence, as in 7:15.
Beale says the priestly service echoes Isaiah 61:6, and that Isaiah is in mind because John weaves Isaiah through 21:1-22:5, with Isaiah 61:10 in 21:2 and Isaiah 60 in 21:23-26 and 22:5. He compares 7:15, where the saints already do priestly service in the heavenly temple. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible also cites Isaiah 61:6 for priestly service in God's temple-city, and the ESV Study Bible calls the servants priests in a city that has become a temple. The Greek of Isaiah 61:6 has hiereis kyriou, priests of the Lord, and leitourgoi, ministers; John's verb is latreusousin. The grade is drawn here: Beale's wording, evident, fits his probable grade, since the idea is traceable to Isaiah though the words differ.
The sources agree the service is priestly. They do not discuss a rival source.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 22:3
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 22:3
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 22:3
- Septuagint, Isaiah 61:6, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 22:3
