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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 9:7, horses like a swarm of locusts
Jeremiah 51 calls for horses like a multitude of locusts against Babylon at the sound of a trumpet, and John's horse-like locusts echo that call in its Greek form.
Revelation 9:7, in every translation this tool compares.
A crowd can chant the rival team's own song back at them. In Jeremiah 51 God calls the nations to war on Babylon. A trumpet sounds, and horses come up like a swarm of locusts. John's trumpet brings locusts like horses. The Greek translation of Jeremiah is closer to John than the Hebrew is, Beale says. The judgment once aimed at Babylon now falls on a world that acts like it.
Horses and locusts in one picture, at a trumpet blast. The Greek of Jeremiah 51:27 says bring up horses against her like a multitude of locusts (hippon hos akridon plethos), after the call to blow the trumpet among the nations (salpisate). Jeremiah 51:14 promises to fill Babylon with men as with locusts.
Jeremiah likens horses to locusts; John likens locusts to horses. The Hebrew of 51:27 has bristly locusts, in Beale's rendering, while the Greek has a multitude of locusts, which Beale calls closer to Revelation. In Jeremiah the army attacks Babylon for Israel's sake. In John the targets are the earth-dwellers, who worship idols. This trumpet is also the fifth of seven.
Beale reads the echo as a sign of whom the woes strike. Jeremiah's horses struck Babylon, which served idols and harmed Israel and its temple. The woes strike idol-serving persecutors in the same way. The second trumpet already drew on the burning mountain of Jeremiah 51, so John is still in that chapter. Babylon will soon name the whole hostile world.
Not a separate army from Joel's. John blends Joel and Jeremiah into one swarm.
Beale counts echoes of Jeremiah 51:14, 27 here and gives three reasons. Jeremiah 51:27 opens with a call to sound the trumpet among the nations, as a trumpet brings these locusts. The second trumpet in 8:8-9 already drew on the burned mountain of Jeremiah 51:25, 63-64. And the Septuagint of 51:27 (28:27 in its order) is closer to Revelation than the Hebrew is. The vault's Septuagint reads anabibasate ep auten hippon hos akridon plethos, bring up horses against her like a multitude of locusts, and Jeremiah 51:14 has hos akridon, as locusts. John's Greek is homoia hippois. Beale adds the Targum on Jeremiah 51:26-27, where horses come speeding like a locust, and Isaiah 33:1-4. Keener says horses could be called as many as locusts (Jeremiah 51:27; 51:14), and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible cites Jeremiah 51:27 beside Joel 2:4. The grade is drawn here: three sources name the text and Beale gives a motive, but the wording is not identical.
Heiser reads Beale's case aloud and breaks in to underline it: the earlier trumpets used Jeremiah 51 and so does this one, and the Greek is closer than the Hebrew. Near the end of the lecture he names Joel 1-2 and Jeremiah 51 as the main passages John draws on here, part of a small set of texts John keeps returning to.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 9:9
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 9:7
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 9:7
- Septuagint, Jeremiah 51:14 and 51:27, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 9:7
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 9: The Fifth and Sixth Trumpet Judgments, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
