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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 8:7, hail and fire mixed with blood
The first trumpet repeats the seventh plague on Egypt, hail with fire, adds blood, and spreads it from Egypt to the earth.
Revelation 8:7, in every translation this tool compares.
A remake of a famous disaster film keeps the storm but moves it to a bigger city. In the seventh plague God sent hail and fire on Egypt. It struck the land, the plants of the field and the trees. At the first trumpet, hail and fire are hurled down, blended with blood. Fire burns a third of the land and its trees, and all the green grass. Egypt's plague now falls on the world.
Hail (chalaza) and fire (pyr) sent down together, striking the land, the plants and the trees. Exodus 9:23-25 in Greek has hail and fire on the earth and the trees of the field broken. Ezekiel 38:22 joins hail, fire and blood.
Exodus says hail did the most harm; John says fire burned things up. John adds blood, which Beale traces to the first plague or to Ezekiel 38:22. Exodus struck all Egypt; John limits the damage to a third, yet spreads it over the whole earth.
Beale reads the trumpets as the plagues of Egypt aimed at a world that persecutes God's people and serves idols. In his reading the same blows that broke Pharaoh now fall on a new Egypt. The sealed of chapter 7 are kept, as Israel was.
Not a copy of the seventh plague. John keeps Egypt's hail and fire, adds blood, limits the harm to a third, and spreads it over the whole earth.
Beale says the first five trumpets are patterned after five plagues of Egypt, and that 8:7 follows Exodus 9:22-25: in both, hail and fire from heaven strike three parts of creation, the land, the trees and the grass. One Greek manuscript of Exodus 9:23 even adds trumpets. In the vault's Septuagint, Exodus 9:23-24 has chalazan … kai dietreche to pyr epi tes ges, and 9:25 says the hail broke all the trees of the field. Revelation has chalaza kai pyr memigmena en haimati. Beale adds that 8:7 also echoes Ezekiel 38:22, where God judges Gog with plague, blood, hail and fire; Jewish writers joined that verse to the hail plague. Keener, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, the ESV Study Bible, the CSB Study Bible, the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and Wright all cite the seventh plague; the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the CSB Study Bible's cross-references add Ezekiel 38:22. Walton notes hail destroyed crops in late winter. The grade is drawn here.
Heiser says anyone can see the overlap with the plagues of Egypt. He reads Beale and McDonough: the verse follows the hail and fire of Exodus 9:23-25. The Greek of Exodus lists the same three things, land, plants and trees. With them he notes the plague is cut to a third but spread from Egypt to the whole earth. He adds Beale's note that Ezekiel 38:22, the defeat of Gog, is also echoed, and that this repeated language matters for reading Revelation as cycles rather than a timeline.
The sources differ on how to read the plague. Beale says the visions draw on Old Testament models full of figures of speech, so the burden of proof lies on a literal reading. Heiser, after Beale, reads the trumpets as cycles that retell the judgments, not a timeline. MacArthur reads a physical event still to come, in the last three and a half years: volcanoes set off by the earthquake of 8:5 throw down hail with burning lava, dust may turn the water red, and fire burns a third of the world's forests.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), The Old Testament Background of the Trumpet Judgments: The Exodus Plagues, and comment on 8:7
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 8:6-12 and 8:7
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:7-9:19
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:6-7
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:7 and cross-references at Revelation 8:7
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:7
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 8:6-13
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Exodus 9:13-35
- Septuagint, Exodus 9:23-25 and Ezekiel 38:22, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 8:7
- 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 8:2 and 8:7
