Structure of Revelation 14

Scholars have doubted the coherence of this chapter, one calling is a “pastiche” of themes from other parts of the book of Revelation. In a brilliant article, Pieter GR de Villiers has presented a compelling structural analysis of the whole chapter.

As a number of scholars have pointed out, chapter 14 begins a section that is concluded in chapter 15. The 144,000 are said to learn a new song, which only they can learn, but chapter 14 does not say anything about the content of the song. We don’t learn what that new song is until the beginning of chapter 15, when we see the saints, now elevated above the firmament sea, singing the song of Moses and of the Lamb. Chapter 15 is also the beginning of the bowl section; it is a transitional passage between the scenes of chapters and 15. The text, then, begins in 14:1 but does not end until 15:8 or so.

John uses the disjunctive marker, “I looked and behold,” twice in the chapter. The chapter begins with the phrase, and it is repeated in verse 14. That gives us a general two-panel structure for the chapter. Each time, the phrase is used to introduce a vision of Jesus, first as a Lamb (14:1) and then as “one like a son of man” (v. 14). The Lamb at the beginning of the chapters is surrounded by the 144,000, who are called “firstfruits,” and the one like a son of man is riding on a cloud, equipped with a sickle to carry out a harvest of the earth. The structural parallel between two visions of Jesus supports the conclusion that the harvest in 14-20 is the harvest of the firstfuits introduced in verses 1-5.

Verse 6 includes another slight disjunction with John’s saying “I saw,” and this introduces a series of brief glimpses of three angels. The first is flying in the air, and the other two are said to be “following” him, which means they are also flying. Each is called “another angel” (allos aggelos), and each has something to say about worship. After the son of man is mentioned, briefly, three more angels appear, each again called “another angel.” Both sets of three angels are in motion: The first three are flying, and the last are said to be “coming out” from somewhere.

Two other patterns indicate the carefulness of the composition of the passage. Four of the “another angels” speak with “a loud voice,” and they are the first and last of each set of three (14:6, 9, 15, 18). If you include the son of man in the sequence, then the ones that speak with a loud voice are the odd-numbered figures: 1, 3, 5, 7. De Villiers also points out that the descriptions of the movements of the angels form a chiasm of sorts, centering on the one like a son of man:

A. Another angel flies

B. Second angel follows

B’. Third angel follows

C. Another angel comes out of the temple

C’. Another angel comes out of the temple

D. Another angel comes from the altar

We can schematize one dimension of the overall structure this way:

De Villiers, however, links the vision of 14:1-5 with the heavenly vision at the beginning of chapter 15, and thus takes the section from 14:6-20 as a unit. As many have noted, this is a seven-patterned section, three angels, the son of man, and then three more angels. What de Villiers notices is that the disjunctive beginning of verse 14 (“And I looked and behold”) breaks the seven sections into a 3 + 4 pattern. 

He also notes that the 4 last begins are set up in a complex of pairs. On the one hand, the one like the son of man is paired with the angel who commands him to reap (v. 15), while the angel with the sharp sickle (v. 17) is paired with the altar-angel who commands him to reap (v. 18). This yields two ABA patterns: Son of man with sickle/commanded to reap/reaps; angel with sharp sickle/commanded to reap/reaps.

On the other hand, the son of man is paired with the angel with the sickle: Both have sickles, both take action in response to commands, both reap. The other angels (numbers 5 and 7 in de Villiers’s sevenfold scheme) are linked as commanders and as angels who speak with a loud voice (vv. 15, 18).

(De Villiers, “The Composition of Revelation 14:1-15:8: Pastiche or Perfect Pattern, Neotestamentica 38:2 [2004] 209-249.)