Audio Version!
It’s been a few weeks since I posted on the fifth seal. Redding heat, work, Greek tutoring, vacations, visitors, peaches (my largest ever), and so much more have conspired to keep me from getting the sixth seal out.
And in the meantime I heard an intriguing thought that I resonate with: Sometimes to find the answer, we must sit in the question (what movie is it from?).
That has definitely been the case with me and Revelation—so many questions that just need to be sat with, hopefully to hear the still small voice of God in the quiet.
So here goes:
The Length of the Sixth Seal
The first four seals are fairly short—they are all only two verses long.
Seal five is only slightly longer at three verses.
The sixth seal, however, is significantly longer.
If, like most interpreters assert, this seal is limited to the rest of Revelation 6, then it is double the fifth seal at six verses.
If, as I will argue, the seal also encompasses all of Revelation 7, then the length burgeons to twenty-three verses!
What is going on?
First of all, there are two options for the length of the seal.
Most maintain that the seal should be limited to Revelation 6:12–17, and that all of Revelation 7 is an interlude. They argue that the phrase “and after these things I saw” in 7:1 indicates a new section.
But that is the only phrase which would indicate a break.
But if the “things” of that phrase are the first part of seal six, then what comes “after” is the second part of the seal.
At this point I see the first part of the sixth seal, 6:12–17, as one long sentence in two parts focused first on the cross, then on unredeemed humanity, then all of ch. 7 is focused on redeemed humanity.
The definitive confirmation for me is 8:1, “And when he opened the seventh seal.”
Nothing indicates that the whole of 6:12–7:17 is not part of the sixth seal.
(continued)
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Sixth Seal Part 1: Earthly and Heavenly Phenomena
In this post we will look at the first part 6:12–14.
And I saw when he opened the sixth seal a great shaking happened, and the sun became black like a sack of hair, and the entire moon became like blood, and the stars of the heaven fell to the earth like a fig tree—shaking from a great wind—casts its late figs, and the heaven disappeared like a rolled up scroll, and every mountain and island were moved from their place.
What we have here is one sentence that speaks of one visionary event comprising six elements.
The main question of interpreters is what does this visionary event refer to in historical terms.
Most argue for some earthly event from their respective theories of Revelation.
The preterists see the culmination of the first Jewish War.
Most of the historicists see the fall of the Roman Empire.
The futurists (e.g. dispensationalists) see the beginning of the last days and may take the earthquakes, sun, moon, stars, etc. literally as material earthly phenomena—for example, the smoke from earthquakes and volcanoes obscures the sun and moon, or maybe a nuclear explosion (one person sees the stars as “Russian bombs”).
Finally, idealists normally see (symbolic) calamities culminating in the Second Coming.
Except for dispensationalists who take everything literally in a material sense, interpreters explain the heavenly phenomena (sun, moon, stars, heaven) as symbolical prodigies or portents of a major upheaval, whether past or future.
They often cite the Old Testament in support of various views—texts such as Isaiah 13:10, 34:4, 50:3; Jeremiah 10:22; Ezekiel 26:15, 32:7, 38:19; and Joel 2:10, 3:4, and 4:15—passages themselves that are poetic, not literal.
There is one close biblical text in the New Testament: the “apocalyptic” passage in Mark 13:24–25 (also in Matthew 24) where Jesus said “but in those days after that tribulation, the sun will be darkened and the moon will not give its light and the stars will be falling from the heavens and the powers in the heavens will shake.” Just after those words Jesus described his second coming (hence the idealists’ view, which is a strong option).
No matter what, most modern interpretations call John’s description in Revelation 6:12–14 “stereotypical apocalyptic imagery” as one commentary puts it, then generally apply one of the ways mentioned above.
Once again, though, interpreters often treat this passage as though John made it up from his imagination using other biblical texts.
But if he is recounting his actual vision, we need to take what he says as meaningful, not “stereotypical.” The images are symbolic of some reality, not just in the whole but in the parts. And the vision must somehow develop the logic already in place in the previous seals (and of “The Gospel of the exalted Jesus”).
What time is it?
The problem of interpreting this part of the sixth seal leads me to an issue that is rarely addressed:
How is John’s recounting of the vision reported with respect to time?
In all six seals, John uses the past tense almost exclusively for the main verbs (45 past, 2 present)—the same is true for the rest of Revelation.
From the point of view of John as he wrote Revelation, the visions were a past event, and most of the elements in the visions are set in past tense (overwhelmingly aorist tense—the normal past tense).
There are definitely future elements when John used the future tense, especially from chapter 10 onward, but those futures only emphasize the past tenses.
And some of the visions are of things absolutely in the past, for example, most of Revelation 12. The woman, the child, the dragon, the heavenly war and fall of the dragon and angels—all are past being retold in symbolic language, with the touchstone in the Incarnation (see my post, “A Cosmic Christmas”).
Contrast this with what Jesus said in Mark 13: “the sun will be darkened,” “the moon will not give its light,” “the stars will be falling,” “the powers in the heavens will shake.” From Jesus’s point of view, what he said was in the future.
But here in Revelation 6:12–13, “I looked … and there was a great shaking, and the sun was black … and the entire moon was as blood … and the stars of heaven fell … and the heavens disappeared … and the mountains and islands were moved.”
The same is the case for the first five seals.
Not that the pastness of the vision means that any event must also be past.
Events put in the past could actually be future with certain conditions.
If the past tenses do indicate the future (as the futurists and the historicists also claim—and even the preterists if they maintain John wrote Revelation before the Jewish War), then John must have been transported to the future in his vision to see past events from beyond them.
Yet he never says he was transported to the future; he was only “in the spirit on the Lord’s Day.”
And the fact that there actually are future tenses later in Revelation makes the point even stronger—if John was in the future looking back, then there was no need for future tenses!
So no one can say with any assurance that the seals predict the future, because the vision is told in the past tense.
If there is any correlation to literal earthly events, they could as easily be explained as already past as they could be future.
Maybe even more.
The upshot is that the visionary elements placed in the past from John’s perspective of recording them can be explained as past or as future conceived as past, though the actual future tenses in Revelation mitigate that possibility.
We will continue to address this issue in the trumpets and beyond.
(cont.)
The Past Event in the Sixth Seal
What I see in this part of the sixth seal, then, is a symbolically framed reference to the primary event of the previous five seals—a past event!
The description of heavenly and earthly phenomena that John saw in the first part of the sixth seal represents the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, as well as attendant spiritual realities.
(As I mused with a fellow church member last Sunday, this view is pre-preterist!)
And in fact the Gospels document actual phenomena that attended the crucifixion and resurrection:
Mark 15:33—“And in the sixth hour darkness came over the whole land until the ninth hour” (also Matthew 27:45 and Luke 23:44).
Matthew 27:51–54—“And behold the veil of the temple was split from top to bottom in two and the land was shaken and the rocks were split …”
Matthew 28:1–2—“After the Sabbath, at the dawning of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb, and behold there was a great earthquake, for the angel of the Lord, after descending from heaven and approaching, rolled away the stone.”
All well and good.
These phenomena may help us to correlate what John saw with the crucifixion and resurrection.
One other passage seems to be definitive though for the language John used to describe the vision:
In Acts 2:17–21, Peter—at Pentecost—quotes from Joel:
And it shall be in the last days says the Lord I will pour out from my Spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters will prophesy and your youth will see visions and your old men will dream dreams and even upon your male slaves and female slaves in those days I will pour out from my Spirit and they shall prophesy. And I will give wonders in the heavens above and signs on the earth below, blood and fire and vapor of smoke. The sun will be changed to darkness and the moon into blood before the great and visible day of the Lord comes. And it shall be: everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved.
In this passage, Joel prophesied of heavenly signs and earthly signs, the sun to darkness and the moon to blood.
“The moon to blood” is unique in the Old Testament, and only in Acts 2 and Revelation 6 in the New Testament.
Then in the verses directly after in Acts 2:22–24, Peter decisively connected this passage to the event of Jesus’s death, resurrection, and the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost.
John’s use of the phrase “the whole moon was as blood” is not a direct quotation, but the image is the same.
Oecumenius in the sixth century intuitively saw the same:
“The vision clearly describes for us the miracles which took place at the cross—the earthquake and the turbulence of the earth, the darkness of the sun, and the changing of the full moon into blood. Quite accurately, he added the word full to the moon; for the moon was filled with light even though it was not quite a full moon on the day of crucifixion, and in its fullness it beheld the passion. This is what usually happens in the illuminated part during lunar eclipses. The prophet Joel, too, predicted that this would come about, saying, ‘The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the great and wonderful day of the Lord’” (trans. Suggit).
What stands out is that John described his vision in a unique way with no interpretation, only the images plus descriptive similes.
Taken together the cross is the arguable event.
But what about the details of its six elements: the sun “black as a sack of hair,” the entire moon like “blood,” the stars falling “like a fig tree shaken by a great wind shedding autumn figs,” the heaven disappeared “like a rolled up scroll,” the mountains and islands “moved from their place.”
The comparisons suggests symbolism, but when interpreters do look at the details—as many ancient writers did, but few modern ones who just cite Old Testament parallels and move on—those results are all over the place. For instance, Tyconius in the fourth century related each element to the church. How, I don’t know. It seems totally arbitrary.
I admit that maybe my attempt will be too, but at the least I see each of the six elements as somehow related to the cross, resurrection, and its effects, in other words, theological symbolism grounded in the cross.
Here it is:
1. A shaking. This shaking or earthquake is the key feature connecting it to the cross as seen in the Gospels. The earth shook symbolically too as the cross unleashed the power of God for salvation on the world—and at the resurrection/
2. Sun black as a sack of hair. The emphasized feature is black—total darkness. The light of God was blackened because of human sin. The sin of the world placed on Jesus obliterated all light. Darkness was all around.
3. The whole moon as blood. Could there have been a lunar eclipse of the full moon the day of the crucifixion? Possible but not likely, especially if Jesus died in AD 30 (there was actually a lunar eclipse late in the day of Nissan 14/15 in AD 33, the alternate possibility for the crucifixion date). More likely, the moon as blood is symbolic of Jesus’s blood, shed on the cross, that overcomes the blackness of sin.
4. The stars of heaven fell like figs cast from a fig tree. In Revelation 12, Satan and a “third of the stars” were “cast” (same verb!) from heaven in battle with Michael. The falling stars here are symbolic of the defeat of Satan and his angels at the cross.
5. The heaven disappeared like a rolled up scroll. In the Gospels the ripping of the curtain in the temple from top to bottom at the crucifixion represented the obliteration of the barrier between humans and God. In John’s vision, the heavens disappearing and rolling up like a scroll represents the same. Because of the cross, there is no barrier between heaven and earth, God and man.
6. The mountains and islands moved. The outcome of the cross was a reordering of earthly reality represented symbolically by the mountains and islands. There may be symbolism of the resurrection here in the moving of the stone. There may even be Pentecost imagery. The world has never been the same.
So there you have it.
Would I stake my life on these details?
No.
But am I satisfied that it makes as much or more sense than other attempts.
Yes, indeed.
Observations on the Greek Text of Revelation
Literal (interlinear) Translation of Revelation 6:12–14:
Καὶ εἶδον ὅτε ἤνοιξεν τὴν σφραγῖδα τὴν ἕκτην,
And I saw when he opened the sixth seal
καὶ σεισμὸς μέγας ἐγένετο
and a great shaking happened
καὶ ὁ ἥλιος ἐγένετο μέλας ὡς σάκκος τρίχινος
and the sun was black as a sack of hair
καὶ ἡ σελήνη ὅλη ἐγένετο ὡς αἷμα
and the whole moon was as blood
καὶ οἱ ἀστέρες τοῦ οὐρανοῦ ἔπεσαν εἰς τὴν γῆν,
and the stars of heaven fell to the earth
ὡς συκῆ βάλλει τοὺς ὀλύνθους αὐτῆς ὑπὸ ⸉ἀνέμου μεγάλου⸊ σειομένη,
like a fig tree casts its late figs by a great wind shaking
καὶ ὁ οὐρανὸς ἀπεχωρίσθη ὡς βιβλίον ἑλισσόμενον
and heaven disappeared like a rolled up scroll
καὶ πᾶν ὄρος καὶ νῆσος ἐκ τῶν τόπων αὐτῶν ἐκινήθησαν.
and every mountain and island from their place were moved.
Comments:
1. These three verses have no significant variants.
2. Four times John used ὡς for the comparison “like.”
3. As I mentioned in the main post, all of the primary verbs are aorist: εἶδον, ἤνοιξεν, ἐγένετο (three times), ἔπεσαν, ἀπεχωρίσθη, and ἐκινήθησαν.
4. The only place ὀλύνθος (late or autumn fig) occurs in the Bible besides here is the LXX of the Song of Solomon 2:13.