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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 7:3, the sign that turns the destroyer away
Behind the seal stands the Passover blood on the doors of Israel's houses, a sign that kept the destroyer out while Egypt was struck.
Revelation 7:3, in every translation this tool compares.
A pass at the gate lets you through while others are stopped. On the night of the last plague, blood on the doorposts marked Israel's houses. When God saw it, he passed over, and the destroyer did not enter. John's servants of God are sealed before the plagues of the trumpets begin. Beale thinks the Passover sign may stand behind both Ezekiel's mark and John's seal.
A sign that marks God's own before a judgment, so that the harm passes them by. In the Greek of Exodus 12:13 the blood is a sign (semeion). The Greek of Ezekiel 9 uses that word for the mark.
In Exodus the sign is blood on a door. In John it is a seal on the forehead. Exodus protects the firstborn on one night; John's seal comes before a whole series of plagues. Exodus names no seal, and the link runs through the pattern, not shared words.
Beale notes that the trumpets and bowls that follow are modeled on the plagues of Egypt, and the sealed are protected from them. So the scene repeats the order of the exodus: God's people are marked, and then the blows fall on their oppressors.
Not a promise that believers never suffer. Beale stresses that the sealed still pass through trials, and Heiser notes that the Israelites were not spared every plague either.
Beale says the blood on the Hebrews' doors at Passover (Exodus 12:7, 13, 22-28) did the same work as Ezekiel's mark. In his view the Passover may lie behind both Ezekiel 9 and Revelation 7:2-3, since the seal protects believers from the trumpet and bowl plagues modeled on the exodus. Walton notes that marking those who will survive God's wrath is comparable to the blood on the doorposts, and that the two marks were linked early. Wright compares the sealing to the Passover blood that spared Israel from the angel of death. Keener and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible note that God protected his people in Goshen during the plagues. In the vault's Septuagint, Exodus 12:13 reads estai to haima hymin en semeio, and 12:23 says the Lord will not let the destroyer (ton olothreuonta) enter. The grade is possible: the pattern is shared, the wording is not.
Heiser calls Beale's link to Passover decisive, with one qualification. The trumpets and bowls copy the plagues, and the 144,000 are protected from them as Israel was at Passover. He is frustrated that Beale then turns the protection into a purely spiritual one. For Heiser the Old Testament data keeps a physical element on the table: in Egypt some plagues spared Israel, though the last one spared only houses marked with blood.
Beale ends by saying John's seal protects faith, not bodies. Heiser thinks the same Passover evidence points to some physical protection as well. Wright says those sealed may still pass through great suffering. MacArthur reads the seal as God's protection of the 144,000 while they carry out their mission.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), The Seal: Its Nature and Its Background in Ezekiel
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 7:3
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 7:1-8
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 7:1-8
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Ezekiel 9:4
- Septuagint, Exodus 12:13 and 12:23, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 7: The Sealing of the 144,000, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 7:4
