Kalev Creative

4/5/2025, 5/4/2025

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.

We discussed impressions of the chapter after reading it.

Eden Deng pointed out that the pace appears to be intensifying. We have the feeling of moving faster. We briefly discussed biblical authors’ use of literary techniques to make us feel emotion and provide emphasis, recalling Genesis 22, the near sacrifice of Isaac, where, following God’s shocking instructions to Abraham, the pace of the story dramatically slows through the author’s unusually detailed account of travel preparations and progress.

The bowls, through shared imagery and vocabulary, recall earlier judgment events especially the plagues on Egypt of Exodus 5-14. Although it would take a lot of time to tease out all the judgment story references in Revelation 16, I thought it important to make an attempt at understanding the Exodus story since it is central Israel’s history and so prominent here.

We spent much of the class reading and discussing the notes on Exodus 5-14 here:

https://www.kalevcreative.com/exodus-notes

Many artists have been inspired by this passage.

On May 5, we returned to the same material and, after a few questions, which we’ll address here in context, we reviewed the chapter from the beginning:

A voice comes out of the temple, likely God’s own voice, to send forth the angels with their judgments.

The first bowl causes sores, reminiscent of the Exodus plague of boils.

The second bowl turns the sea to blood and kills the animals in it, an expansion of the first Exodus plague, which only affected Egypt’s river and associated waters.

The third bowl resembles the first Exodus plague, turning rivers and springs into blood.

Then we get a short poem emphasizing the like for like nature of the judgments, “…because they poured out the blood of your saints and prophets, so you have given them blood to drink.”

“Then I heard the altar reply, ‘Yes, Lord God, the All-Powerful, your judgments are true and just!’” We discussed what it might mean that the altar speaks, recalling that there are two altars in the Tabernacle and Temple – the incense altar before the Most Holy Place/Holy of Holies and the altar for sacrifices as the first thing you encounter when you enter the Tabernacle/Temple. Through discussion we concluded it’s likely that the altar here is the sacrificial altar, testifying to the blood of the prophets and saints who earlier passages in Revelation showed us were under it.

The fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, causing it to scorch people, yet they cursed God and did not repent, recalling Exodus’ pharaoh’s obstinate response to the plagues on Egypt.

The fifth angel brings darkness, again recalling the Exodus plague in which God says, “Let there be dark” to bring a tangible darkness on the land, forcing everyone to stay in their houses. After a dispute between the pharaoh and Moses about giving the Israelites permission to take a holiday to worship God in which the pharaoh insisted they continue to work, God imposes rest (the subject of Genesis 1 day 7) on the people by undoing Genesis 1 day 1’s “Let there be light.” Here, the darkness highlights the people’s suffering from the sores and burns from the earlier plagues, yet, like the pharaoh, they do not repent.

The sixth angel dries up the Euphrates “to prepare the way for the kings from the east.” In the Old Testament, the kings of the east are from Mesopotamia, the area between the Tigris and Euphrates, the territory of Assyria and Babylon. In Genesis 14, five of these kings raid Canaan and carry off Abraham’s nephew Lot. Abraham defeats them in battle to rescue Lot and his family. Later in Israel’s history, kings from this region destroy first Israel then Judah and carry off many Israelites and Judahites into exile. Earlier in the class, we looked at relief carvings from this region, some showing hybrid human-animal representations of spiritual beings, some of whom, in the religions of the region, served as spirit advisors to the kings. Frogs come from the mouth of the beast, the dragon, and the false prophet, demonic spirits preparing the kings of the east for battle on “the great day of God, the All-Powerful.” In Exodus, we also find frogs, there as like for like judgment, emerging from the waters of the Nile to die in the houses of the Egyptians after the Egyptians had taken the Israelite children and thrown them into the Nile to die.