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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, like horses ready for battle
The locusts that look like war horses and sound like chariots come from Joel 2, where a locust swarm is pictured as an army charging into battle.
Revelation 9:7; Revelation 9:9, in every translation this tool compares.
A sports writer who calls a fast team a cavalry charge is borrowing an old war picture. Joel 2 describes a locust swarm as an army. They look like horses and run like cavalry. They sound like chariots rattling over the hills. John takes that picture whole. His locusts look like horses ready for war, and their wings roar like many chariots in a charge.
Horses (hippoi) and battle. Joel 2:4 says the swarm looks like horses, and 2:5 that it is drawn up for battle (eis polemon); John's locusts are like horses made ready for battle (eis polemon). The sound of chariots (phone harmaton) is the same in Joel 2:5 and Revelation 9:9.
Joel's locusts are real insects pictured as an army. John's are demonic beings pictured as locusts, so the picture now runs both ways. He adds what Joel lacks: gold crowns, human faces, women's hair and iron breastplates. Joel's chariots leap on the mountain tops; John's chariot noise is the sound of wings. Joel's swarm eats Israel's land; John's harms only the unsealed.
Joel's locusts announced the day of the Lord, and a trumpet sounded at their coming (Joel 2:1, 15). Beale points out that a trumpet brings John's locusts too. So the fifth trumpet carries that day's dread to the whole world. Heiser presses the point: every detail is from the Old Testament, so none of it is a coded weapon.
Not attack helicopters. Beale calls the hunt for modern war machines here misguided, and Heiser, Wright and the ESV Study Bible agree.
Beale says the portrayal in 9:7-9 is based on Joel 1-2, and that Joel's locusts are themselves modeled on Exodus 10. In the Septuagint Joel 2:4 reads hos horasis hippon he opsis auton, their look is as the sight of horses, and 2:5 hos phone harmaton, as a sound of chariots, then a people drawn up eis polemon. John has homoia hippois hetoimasmenois eis polemon and hos phone harmaton hippon pollon trechonton eis polemon. Beale adds that the iron breastplates may partly recall the war horse of Job 39:19-25, which charges at the trumpet and leaps like a locust. Walton notes that ancient Near Eastern texts often pictured armies as locusts, and that Joel turns it round. Keener, the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the CSB Study Bible all point to Joel 2:4-5. The grade is drawn here by Beale's definitions: horses for battle and the sound of chariots are nearly word for word from Joel, and the locust setting points nowhere else.
In the lecture Heiser reads Beale and McDonough: 9:7-9 is based on Joel 1-2, framed by the trumpet of Joel 2:1 and 2:15, and Joel is modeled on Exodus 10. He then reads Beale's longer list, with Job 39's war horse. His purpose, he says, is to show that all of it comes from the Old Testament, so the locusts are not helicopters or missiles. He calls the creatures the released Watchers, described in animal terms as ancient writers described demons.
The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible and Keener think long hair and fierce horses also called to mind the Parthians, Rome's feared horsemen, though the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible adds that Parthian links in these verses are few. Beale and Heiser keep to the Old Testament and the demonic. MacArthur reads demonic creatures, the human faces marking them as beings who can reason.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 9:7 and 9:9
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 9:7-9
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Revelation 9:3-11, 9:7 and 9:9
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 9:7-9
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references on Revelation 9:7
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 9:7-11
- N. T. Wright, Revelation for Everyone, comment on Revelation 9:1-12
- John H. Walton, Victor H. Matthews and Mark W. Chavalas, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: Old Testament, on Joel 1:6
- Septuagint, Joel 2:4-5, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 9:7 and 9:9
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 9: The Fifth and Sixth Trumpet Judgments, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
- John MacArthur, The MacArthur Study Bible (ESV), note on Revelation 9:7
