1/14/2024
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. Quotations on this page are from the NET Bible.
8:1-6
After an interlude, we return to the seventh seal, which at first yields only silence.
Then we meet seven angels who stand before God. We’ve previously read about seven spirits, which some commentators believe to be Isaiah’s sevenfold spirit of God (Isaiah 11:1-5) and/or the Holy Spirit (because the seven spirits share attributes with God himself). We’ve also learned about the seven angels of the seven churches. The letters we read were addressed, not to the churches themselves, but to the angel of each church. Given what we’ve read in Revelation so far, the seven angels here seem most closely related to the seven angels of the seven churches who previously each received a letter.
Here though, they each hold a trumpet. An eighth angel stands by the altar holding a censer. This is presumably the incense altar, which, in the Tabernacle, is immediately in front of the Holy of Holies, so it appears we are moving inward toward God’s presence.
Earlier chapters associate incense with the prayers of the saints. Here, the altar appears to intensify the prayers’ effect. “The smoke coming from the incense, along with the prayers of the saints, ascended before God from the angel’s hand.”
As Matt Fisher pointed out, the censer has a layered historical association with judgment beginning in Leviticus. The first time the censer is used, Nadab and Abihu, Aaron’s sons use it inappropriately, and God sends fire to consume them at the entrance of the Tabernacle’s Holy Place. (Leviticus 10:1-7) Then, in Numbers 16, Korah leads a rebellion including 250 leaders, who Moses tells to bring their own censer to present incense before the Lord. The ground opens up to consume many of them, and “a fire went out from the Lord and devoured the 250 men who offered incense.” As we’ve read through Revelation, we’ve seen incense’ association with prayers, the saints crying out after they have been persecuted and slain. Earlier, Old Testament narratives prepare us for its use here in judgment.
“Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and threw it on the earth, and there were crashes of thunder, roaring, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake.”
There is a pattern evident in the early books of the Old Testament in which God makes a fruitful land for people to live in relationship with and acting as representatives of him, but people rebel, becoming increasingly corrupt, violent, and destructive to the land. God hears the cries of the oppressed and comes down, evaluating what has happened and telling us what he will do. He then brings judgment as de-creation including exile and death of people. He preserves a remnant to restore to the land, then provides a new paradigm, often a covenant, that relates to the rebellion that led to judgment.
Here in Revelation 8, we see elements of a continuation of the pattern. The incense represents the cries of God’s oppressed people, and on the earth we see elements of the form God took when he appeared to the Israelites on Mount Sinai (Exodus 19:18) and as he sits on his throne earlier in Revelation (4:5), suggesting God comes down here too as a precursor to judgment.