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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 8:5, thunder, voices, lightning and earthquake
The thunder, sounds, lightning and earthquake are the signs of God's coming at Sinai, repeated to close each series of judgments.
Revelation 8:5, in every translation this tool compares.
A band that ends every set with the same chord tells you each set is over. When God came down on Mount Sinai there were thunders, lightning, a loud trumpet, and the whole mountain shook. John uses those signs to close the seals here. He uses them again at the end of the trumpets (11:19) and the bowls (16:18). Each time the list grows, as the judgments come closer to the end.
Sounds or voices (phonai), lightnings (astrapai), and thunder, with the shaking of a quake. The Greek of Exodus 19:16 has phonai kai astrapai; John has brontai kai phonai kai astrapai kai seismos.
Sinai adds a thick cloud, smoke and a trumpet. John keeps four items and adds an earthquake, where Exodus has the mountain shaking. At Sinai God came down to meet his people. Here the signs mark judgment falling on the earth.
Beale and Bauckham see the list grow through the book. It has three items at 4:5, four at 8:5, five at 11:19, and more at 16:18-21. Each marks the end of a series as the last judgment draws near. Heiser adds that Sinai was also where God made his covenant, so the signs carry promise for his people.
Not a weather report. The sources read the signs as God's presence in judgment, borrowed from Sinai, not as a storm.
Beale says this fourfold chain of cosmic disturbance has precedent in Exodus 19:16, 18, Psalm 77:18-19 and Isaiah 29:6, and that the Sinai theophany is partly in mind in 8:5, as it was in 4:5. He follows Bauckham in seeing a progressive sequence: lightnings, sounds and thunders in 4:5; thunders, sounds, lightnings and quaking in 8:5; adding great hail in 11:19 and 16:18-21. Since the formula ends the trumpets and bowls with the last judgment, he argues, it ends the seals the same way. In the vault's Septuagint, Exodus 19:16 reads egenonto phonai kai astrapai kai nephelai gnophodeis, and 19:18 has the mountain smoking. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible says 8:5 alludes to the Sinai theophany (Exodus 19:16-20); the CSB Study Bible's cross-references point back to 4:5. Beale adds that the trumpets that follow partly echo the Sinai trumpet. The grade is drawn here: the cluster is traceable to Sinai.
Heiser reads Beale and McDonough: the thunder, rumblings, lightning and earthquake have Old Testament precedent in Exodus 19:16, 18, Psalm 77:17-18 and Isaiah 29:6, and Sinai is partly in mind, as in 4:5. The same formula closes the trumpets and the bowls. He stresses Sinai's other side: there God, though frightening, made a covenant with a people he loved. By looping it in, John shows God remembering his covenant even as he judges.
The sources differ on where the series stands in time. Beale, after Bauckham, reads the formula as closing each series with the last judgment, so the seals reach the end, as the trumpets and the bowls do. MacArthur reads one sequence: the seventh seal holds the trumpets, the thunder and lightning are God's fury and not a storm, and the earthquake is a real one, at least as strong as that of the sixth seal.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 8:5
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:5
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references at Revelation 8:5
- Septuagint, Exodus 19:16 and 19:18, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 8:5
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 8: The Seventh Seal and the First Four Trumpet Judgments, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 4:5, 8:1 and 8:5
