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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 5:5, the Lion of the tribe of Judah
The elder names Jesus the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Jacob's blessing on Judah in Genesis 49, which Jewish tradition read of the Messiah.
Revelation 5:5, in every translation this tool compares.
A team that keeps a lion as its badge is telling you how it plans to win. One of the elders tells John to stop weeping, because Judah's Lion has won. On his deathbed Jacob called his son Judah a lion's cub and said the ruler's staff would not leave Judah. Jewish readers took that as a promise of the Messiah. John names Jesus as that Lion, the one who has won.
Judah and a lion. The Hebrew of Genesis 49:9 calls Judah gur aryeh, a lion's cub; the Greek has skymnos leontos Iouda, a lion's cub, Judah. Revelation 5:5 has ho leon ho ek tes phyles Iouda, the lion from the tribe of Judah. Genesis 49:10 adds the ruler's staff that stays with Judah.
Genesis speaks of a tribe, Judah the lion's cub; John speaks of one person from that tribe. Jacob's lion crouches over its prey; John's lion has conquered, a word he adds. And John does not let the lion stand alone: when John turns to look, he sees a slain Lamb.
The Lion is the Messiah from Judah who rules the nations. Beale says the conquering word brings out the victory in the title, and Jesus fulfills it. Then John turns the image over: the lion wins by being the slain Lamb. Wright warns against both readings that keep only the lion and readings that keep only the lamb.
Not Jacob's lion unchanged. Genesis 49 pictures a lion's cub crouching over its prey. John gives the title to one man and sets it beside a slain Lamb. Wright, Beale and the ESV Study Bible stress that the Lion conquers through the Lamb's death.
Beale says the two titles of 5:5 come from Genesis 49:9 and Isaiah 11:1, 10, and that both concern a messianic figure who overcomes his enemy through judgment. A messianic reading of Genesis 49:9 occurs in the Targums Neofiti and Pseudo-Jonathan of Genesis 49:9-12, in later Jewish writings and in 4 Ezra 11:37 and 12:31-32, where a lion stands for the Messiah of David's seed; Qumran's 1QSb 5.21-29 joins Genesis 49:10 with the same hope. Beale thinks this tradition may have prompted John to combine the two texts. In his introduction he lists the lion from Judah among his analogical uses, a judging figure. Keener, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, the ESV Study Bible, the CSB Study Bible and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible all cite Genesis 49:9-10, and Wright mentions the lion of 2 Esdras 11-12. Walton notes that a hand on the enemy's neck in 49:8 signals Judah's power. The grade is drawn here: the title can only come from Genesis 49.
The sources agree on Genesis 49. They read the hard word Shiloh in 49:10 differently: Walton takes it as tribute brought to Judah, while the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible reads the verse of a ruler from Judah who will rule the nations. Keener notes that lions also adorned Torah shrines in Jewish art, but says the direct background is Genesis 49. Wright, Beale and the ESV Study Bible define the Lion's victory by the cross. MacArthur holds that the Lion's fierce strength, only glimpsed at the first coming, is shown in full at the moment this scene looks toward, while the Lamb's death is what makes him worthy to take the scroll.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 5:5, and introduction, The Use of the Old Testament in the Apocalypse, Analogical Uses
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 5:5
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 5:5
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 5:5
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 5:5-7
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 5:5
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 5:1-7
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Genesis 49:8-12
- Septuagint, Genesis 49:9, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Hebrew text of Genesis 49:9, Miqra according to the Masorah (Sefaria)
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 5:5
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), notes on Revelation 5:5 and 5:9
