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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 9:21, murders, sorceries, sexual sin and thefts
The sins the survivors will not leave may follow the Ten Commandments and Jeremiah's temple sermon, where murder, adultery and theft go hand in hand with serving other gods.
Revelation 9:21, in every translation this tool compares.
A rap sheet often reads like a list someone wrote long before. In Jeremiah 7 the prophet stands at the temple gate. He names the crowd's sins: theft, murder, adultery, false oaths, incense to Baal, other gods. John's list after the idols is close: murders, sorceries, sexual sin, thefts. In both, false worship and wrongs against neighbors come together.
Murder, sexual sin and theft listed beside the worship of other gods. Jeremiah 7:9 in Greek has phoneuete, you murder, and kleptete, you steal; John has phonon, murders, and klemmaton, thefts. The Ten Commandments ban murder, adultery and theft after banning other gods.
John adds sorceries (pharmaka), which neither Jeremiah 7:9 nor the commandments name. He has sexual immorality in general where they have adultery. Jeremiah speaks to Judah at the temple; John speaks of the whole unrepentant world.
Beale says the vices cannot be separated from idolatry: idolatry is the root and these grow from it. Wright puts it simply: people become like what they worship. So the refusal to turn from idols brings the refusal to turn from the rest.
Not a full list of sins. John picks four that, the sources say, travel with idol worship in the Bible.
Beale says the Ten Commandments may have inspired the list, since idolatry comes first there and three of the four sins follow, and he gives Jeremiah 7:5-11 first among texts that tie these vices to idolatry, with Hosea 3:1-4:2, Wisdom of Solomon 12:3-6 and 14:22-29, and Romans 1. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible links the evil deeds to idolatry by citing Jeremiah 7:5-11. The vault's Septuagint of Jeremiah 7:9 lists murder, adultery, theft, false oaths, incense to Baal and other gods. Wright writes that murder, magic, fornication and theft are forms of the blindness and deadness idols produce. The grade is drawn here: two sources propose Jeremiah 7, and the likeness is a list of vices tied to idolatry.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 9:21
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 9:21
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 9:13-21
- Septuagint, Jeremiah 7:9, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 9:21
