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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 8:8-9, a third of the sea became blood
The second trumpet turns a third of the sea to blood and kills its creatures, as the first plague turned the Nile to blood and killed its fish.
Revelation 8:8-9, in every translation this tool compares.
A river turning red is a picture no one forgets. In the first plague Moses struck the Nile, its water turned to blood, the fish died and no one could drink. At the second trumpet a burning mountain falls into the sea. One third of the sea turns to blood. One third of its creatures die, and one third of the ships are wrecked. The plague on Egypt's river now strikes the world's seas.
Water turned to blood (haima) and the creatures in it dying. The Greek of Exodus 7:20-21 says the river turned to blood and the fish died. John has one third of the sea turned to blood and one third of its creatures dead.
Exodus strikes a river; John strikes the sea. Exodus kills all the fish; John kills a third of the creatures. John adds the burning mountain as the cause, and the loss of ships, which Exodus does not have. Beale traces the mountain to Jeremiah 51.
Beale reads the trumpet as judgment on the world's trade and food, a famine at sea. The ships point ahead to chapter 18, where sailors mourn Babylon. For Beale, Egypt's plague becomes a blow against the whole world system that oppresses God's people.
Not the Nile plague repeated. Exodus strikes a river and kills all its fish. John strikes a third of the sea, adds a burning mountain, and wrecks ships.
Beale calls a third of the sea became blood a direct allusion to Exodus 7:20, where Moses turns the Nile to blood, and notes that as the fish died there, a third of the sea creatures die here. In the vault's Septuagint, Exodus 7:20 reads metebale pan to hydor to en to potamo eis haima, and 7:21 says the fish died. Revelation has egeneto to triton tes thalasses haima. Beale suggests a shortage of water may be implied, since that was a major effect of the Nile plague, made explicit in the third trumpet. He notes Ezekiel 29:3-5, where Egypt's people are the fish of the Nile, and suggests the sea creatures may stand for people. 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 first plague. The grade is drawn here: Beale's direct allusion meets the clear grade.
Heiser says the sea turning to blood is the plague reference that draws attention right back to Exodus, and calls it obvious. He reads the second and third trumpets together, since their language repeats. For the burning mountain and the ships he reads Beale's link to Babylon (see the next entry).
The sources differ on how to read the scene. Beale reads it through its Old Testament models: the fire may picture severe famine, the lost ships a blow to sea trade, and the sea creatures may stand for people. The ESV Study Bible names Vesuvius as one example of a burning mountain. MacArthur reads a physical event still to come: a huge meteor or asteroid strikes the sea and its wave wrecks a third of the ships; the blood may be a red tide of dead micro-organisms, or real blood.
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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 8:8-9
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 8:8-9
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:9
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:8-9
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:8-9 and cross-references at Revelation 8:8
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 8:8
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 8:6-13
- Septuagint, Exodus 7:20-21, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 8:8-9
- 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 8:8
