How does Revelation draw on and complete Old Testament prophetic imagery?

Question 10201.

Almost every picture in Revelation is borrowed prophetic imagery, and once you see that, the book stops feeling like a code and starts behaving like a conclusion. Estimates vary, but of the roughly four hundred verses in Revelation something close to two thirds contain an allusion to the Hebrew Scriptures, and John never once stops to explain a quotation.

That tells us something about how he expected to be read. He assumed a reader soaked in Daniel, Ezekiel, Zechariah, Isaiah and the Psalms, and he wrote for that reader rather than for a puzzle solver.

A book with no quotations and hundreds of allusions

Revelation contains no formal citation of the kind Matthew loves, with a that it might be fulfilled attached. Instead John weaves the prophetic imagery into his own sentences. The Lamb standing as though slain, the sea of glass, the four living creatures, the measuring reed, the two olive trees, the scroll that must be eaten, the harlot city, the marriage supper: every one of those comes from an earlier prophet.

That method is deliberate. John is not proving a point from proof texts; he is showing that the visions the prophets received are converging on one event and one person. The whole book reads as the last movement of a symphony in which every earlier theme returns.

It also means the prophetic imagery of Revelation cannot be interpreted from a dictionary of symbols. It has to be interpreted from the Old Testament, which is the only place the pictures have a settled meaning. That is what I mean when I say Scripture interprets Scripture.

There is a good reason John writes this way. A persecuted church reading a book stuffed with allusions to the prophets is being told that nothing happening to them is outside the pattern God has already revealed. The prophetic imagery functions as reassurance before it functions as information, which is how prophecy generally works in Scripture.

Daniel supplies the framework

Daniel gives Revelation its skeleton. The beast rising from the sea with ten horns in Revelation 13:1 and 2 is assembled from the four beasts of Daniel 7:3 to 7, lion, bear and leopard combined into one composite creature. The forty two months and the twelve hundred and sixty days come from Daniel’s time, times and half a time. The little horn with a mouth speaking great things becomes the beast who blasphemes.

Daniel also gives the throne room, with the Ancient of Days seated, the books opened and one like a son of man coming with the clouds to receive a kingdom. John sees the same court and names the one who comes.

So the prophetic imagery here is not decorative. It carries Daniel’s chronology with it, which is why the seventieth week of Daniel 9 sits underneath the structure of Revelation 6 to 19. I set that framework out in the article on the seventy weeks.

Ezekiel supplies the throne, the scroll and the city

Ezekiel’s opening vision of living creatures, wheels, crystal expanse and a figure on a throne surrounded by rainbow light stands directly behind Revelation 4:2 to 6. John even keeps the details Ezekiel found hard to describe.

Ezekiel is told to eat a scroll that tastes sweet in his mouth, and John is given a little scroll that is sweet in the mouth and bitter in the stomach. Ezekiel measures a temple, and John is told to measure. Ezekiel sees a river from the threshold with trees on its banks, and John sees a river from the throne with the tree of life either side.

The completion is the point. Ezekiel’s city was named the Lord is there; John’s city has God dwelling with His people and no temple in it at all, because the presence has filled everything. The prophetic imagery has not been abandoned, it has arrived.

Zechariah, Isaiah and the Psalms

Zechariah gives us the four horsemen patrolling the earth, the two olive trees standing before the Lord, and the mourning of a nation that looks on the one they pierced, which John places in Revelation 1:7. Zechariah 14 gives the Lord standing on the Mount of Olives and reigning as king over all the earth.

Isaiah supplies the new heavens and new earth, the death of death, the wiping away of tears, the treading of the winepress in garments stained with blood, and the invitation to the thirsty to come and drink without price which closes Revelation. Isaiah also gives the root of Jesse and the key of David.

The Psalms supply the rod of iron, the nations raging, the new song and the reign of the Lord’s anointed from Zion. Read Psalm 2 and then read Revelation 19, and the prophetic imagery lines up sentence by sentence.

Why prophetic imagery governs how we interpret

Here is the practical consequence. If the prophetic imagery of Revelation is drawn from passages where it had a definite reference, then we are not free to make it mean whatever suits our system. When Daniel’s beast means an empire, John’s beast is not a state of mind. When Ezekiel’s Israel means Israel, John’s twelve tribes are not a metaphor for the church.

This is where I part company with the spiritualising approach. It treats the imagery as free floating symbol and then decides its meaning from theological necessity. The literal grammatical historical method takes the picture back to its source and lets the source govern.

That does not make me a wooden literalist. Symbols are symbols, and John tells us when he is using one, as when he explains the seven stars and the seven lampstands. A symbol with a stated referent is still a definite statement. I work through the method in the article on interpreting Revelation.

Completion rather than repetition

Revelation does more than recycle. It completes. Every prophetic imagery thread that the earlier prophets left hanging is tied off. Eden’s tree of life, guarded since Genesis 3, is open again in Revelation 22. The serpent of Genesis 3 is finally crushed. The curse pronounced in Genesis 3 is lifted in Revelation 22:3.

Babel becomes Babylon and then falls. The scattered nations become a multitude no one can number. The tabernacle presence that filled the tent, then the temple, then walked among us in flesh, finally fills a city where the Lamb is the lamp.

That is why I read Revelation as the last chapter rather than an appendix. The prophetic imagery is the thread, and John is pulling it tight. The related discipline of reading types across the canon is the subject of the article on typology.

The pattern also runs through the feasts and the tabernacle. The Lamb, the trumpets, the day of atonement imagery of a temple opened, the booths of a people dwelling with God: every institution God gave Israel turns up in Revelation as a picture of what He was always intending. That is why I read the book with a Bible open at both ends.

A worked example: Babylon

Take one case to see the method in action. Babylon in Revelation 17:1 to 6 is a woman, a city, a harlot, drunk with the blood of the saints, riding a beast. Isaiah 13 and 47 and Jeremiah 50 and 51 give the original oracles against Babylon, with the same charges of pride, sorcery, luxury and violence against God’s people, and the same promise of sudden and total ruin.

John takes that prophetic imagery and applies it to a final world system which will do at the end what Babylon did at the beginning: gather the nations, organise idolatry and shed the blood of the faithful. The pictures of a millstone thrown into the sea and of a place never inhabited again come straight out of Jeremiah.

Whether that final Babylon is a rebuilt city, a religious system, a commercial order or all three is a fair question, and I take it up in the article on Babylon. What is not in doubt is where John got his language.

That example also shows why the imagery cannot be read as pure symbol. Jeremiah 51 promised that Babylon would become a desolation without inhabitant, and Isaiah 13 said it would never be rebuilt. Whether one reads those as fulfilled in stages or as awaiting a final fulfilment, the point is that John expected his readers to hear the earlier oracles behind his own words.

So, now what?

So read Revelation with your finger in the prophets. When you meet a picture, ask where it came from and what it meant there, and the fog lifts a good deal faster than it does with a chart. A cross reference Bible and a little patience will teach you more than most end times paperbacks.

And notice what all that prophetic imagery is finally for. It is not there to make us clever. It is there to make us long for the Lamb who is worthy to open the scroll. Does your reading of prophecy leave you worshipping, or only arguing?

Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him.

Revelation 1:7 (ESV)