Sárospataki Füzetek 15. (2011)

2011 / 4. szám - TANULMÁNYOK

Paradise Motifs ín the Book of Revelation

Isaiah has this to say about Zion, the future city of light (Isa. 60:19): “The sun will no more be your light by day, nor will the brightness of the moon shine on you, for the LORD will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory”.

Where Isaiah speaks of one source of light, in the book of Revelation that is doubled: “.. .the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp” (Rev. 21:23) — even though elsewhere in the Bible Christ is called ‘the light’, but never a ‘lamp’. Fekkes explains this in terms of the Hebrew parallelism found in Isaiah: ‘the LORD will be your light, God will shine on you’.20 This doubling paves the way for the book of Revelation to turn the parallelism into a chiasm: “...the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp”. Still, the Lamb is not an independent source of light: God and the Lamb belong together and complement each other. ‘The lamp of God’ was a cultic object in the tabernacle and in the temple. That light must be kept burning, unceasingly, day and night (Lev. 24:1-4). In the city that has no temple, God’s shining presence, together with the Lamb as Lamp, is its perpetual source of light. Even as the godless city of Babylon is punished by the removal of light (Rev. 18:23).

At first, the light is for the new Jerusalem itself: ‘the glory of God gives it light’ (Rev. 21:23: atixfjv); then, the light is also for its inhabitants: ‘the Lord God will give them light’ (Rev. 22:5: én’ ocÚtoóq). Especially this second reference makes us think of the priestly blessing over Israel. For that is how the name of God was put on his people. And this also fits with the promise of the Name that is placed on the foreheads of his servants, and with the whole cultic setting of the passage: ‘The LORD make his face shine upon you’ (Num. 6:25).21 The ancient priestly blessing becomes a perpetual reality for the inhabitants of the new Jerusalem. Who exactly are those inhabitants? They are the nations who live in the light of Jerusalem; rulers of the world, too, will be included among those who worship God and the Lamb.22 The ‘pilgrimage of the nations’ motif in John’s visions (based on Isaiah 60 and other prophetic texts) shows us how all of them go up to Jerusalem.23 The promise to Abraham, the ancestor of the people of Israel, that all nations will be blessed through him, finds its ultimate fulfilment.

4. Servants who reign as kings

“And they will reign for ever and ever” (Rev. 22:5b). Grammatically, the subject of this ‘reigning’ is found back in verse 3: the servants of God, who worship him. Cultic adoration in heaven was already described with reference to a great multitude, whom no-one could count: “These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore they are before the throne of God day and night, and serve him day and night in his temple...” (Rev. 7:14-15). Just as to serve the God of Israel in freedom was one of the goals of the Exodus, so these people will be free to wor20 Jan Fekkes, Isaiah and Prophetic Traditions in the Book of Revelation. Visionary Antecedents and their Development (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1994), 267-268.

21 Mathewson, A New Heaven and a New Earth, 210-211.

22 G.K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 1094-1096.

23 For details, see: Mathewson, A New Heaven and a New Earth, 163-175.

2011/4 SÁROSPATAKI FÜZETEK 17