9/3/23
We’re reading through Revelation along with NT Wright’s Revelation for Everyone. These notes include discussions of topics of additional interest and attempt connections with more Old Testament material.
This is a passage dense with references to the Old Testament.
The scroll with writing on both sides is almost certainly a continuing reference to Ezekiel 2. There, we find a throne room scene as we did in Revelation 4, and Ezekiel receives the command to eat the scroll and become a watchman, to warn the Israelites that judgment is coming. This reference, like many earlier in Revelation points to a prophecy (some others point to narratives or Psalms) of God’s judgment of rebellious Israelites and the preservation of a remnant who will serve Him.
The last chapters of Daniel contain several references to sealing up a scroll until the end. It appears this passage is picking up where Daniel left off. It is now time to open the scroll.
Daniel 12 prophesies a scenario that sounds a lot like Revelation:
“At that time Michael,
the great prince who watches over your people,
will arise.
There will be a time of distress
unlike any other from the nation’s beginning
up to that time.
But at that time your own people,
all those whose names are found written in the book,
will escape.
Many of those who sleep
in the dusty ground will awake—
some to everlasting life,
and others to shame and everlasting abhorrence.
But the wise will shine
like the brightness of the heavenly expanse.
And those bringing many to righteousness
will be like the stars forever and ever.
“But you, Daniel, close up these words and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will dash about, and knowledge will increase.”
Judah is first associated with the lion in Genesis 49, Jacob’s blessing of his sons. Isaiah 11’s “root of Jesse” (David’s father) becomes “the root of David” here, likely to emphasize Jesus’ right of kingship. Instead of seeing a lion, however, John sees a sacrificed lamb.
To this point in Revelation, we’ve seen the crystal sea, analogous to the laver in the Tabernacle and bronze sea in the Temple; the four creatures, possibly linked to the two cherubim on the curtain to the most holy place + two cherubim on the ark of the covenant; and the seven lampstands related to the Tabernacle/Temple lampstand. Here in Revelation 5, we find the sacrificed lamb and elders with golden incense bowls, “which are the prayers of the saints.” The gold incense altar, which produced smoke that obscured the curtains and most holy place behind, has here become a symbol of personal relationship – held in the hand and containing prayers to God.
In his Revelation commentary, Craig S. Keener has good insight into the significance of the two-sided scroll and the seals:
Most ancient people wrote on only one side of a scroll, generally the “front” (the recto, whose fibers lay horizontally, hence making writing easier). They usually employed the back (the verso) only if they ran out of space on the front. The scroll in the present text (recalling the scroll containing judgments in Ezek. 2:10…) clearly has a lot to say. Then the scroll’s user would roll the scroll up, tying it shut with a thread or, in legal documents meant to prevent tampering, several threads. Legal documents normally closed by listing witnesses, usually about six in number. Such documents were normally sealed shut with hot wax over the threads that tied the scroll closed; then witnesses would press their personal seals (usually from signet rings) into the hot wax, making an impression that matched their distinctive seal and attested that they were the witnesses. No one could open the scroll without breaking the hardened wax seals that held the threads in place, and no one could replace such seals without the witnesses’ rings; hence no one could tamper with the legal document until it was time to publicly open it. While the witnesses remained alive, one could also recall them to testify to the validity of their seals, though the seals in Revelation can hardly be fabricated (6:1–17). Seals reserved the contents of a document for its rightful recipient and authenticated the document with witnesses who attested it.