Structure in Revelation 19-21

Structure in Revelation 19-21 July 21, 2015

Revelation 19-21:8 functions as a literary unit, broken up into subunits by the phrase “and I heard” (19:1; 21:3) and “and I saw” (19:11, 17, 19; 20:1, 4, 11; 21:1, 2). There are ten sections in all. The two “hearing visions” frame the section. In 19:1, John hears the loud voice of a great heavenly multitude celebrating the fall of Babylon; in 21:3, he hears a loud voice from the throne, announcing that God has tabernacled among men. Like the first creation, the coming of new creation is greeted by the song of the sons of God; like the first creation, God Himself speaks to announce that He now dwells among men. 

There are seven hearings/visions in chapters 19-20, arranged chiastically:

A. Celebration in heaven, 19:1-10

B. Heaven opens, and rider on white horse, 19:11-16

C. Angel in the sun invites birds to feast on corpses, 19:17-18

D. The beast and kings thrown into lake of fire, 19:19-21

C’. Angel with chain to bind Satan, 20:1-3

B’. Martyrs reign for a millennium, 20:4-10

A’. Great white throne, 20:11-15 (I’m taking the “and I saw” at v. 12 as a subordinate vision.)

A and A’ are both about God’s judgment of His enemies. B reveals Jesus as a rider on a white horse, followed by the white-robed army of saints, and B’ reveals the saints no longer at war but enthroned as kings. C and C’ both involve angels. The first angel invites the birds to feast on the human enemies of the rider on the horse, and the second comes to bind the power behind the human enemies, the serpent himself. At the center, the beast and kings of the land are thrown into the lake of fire. 

There is a complication in the sequence from B to C to D: 19:21 returns to theme of B, the rider on the white horse, and then to C, the feast of the birds. Internally, 19:11-21 might be outlined this way:

A. Rider on a white horse, 19:11-16

B. Angel invites birds to feast on corpses, 19:17-18

C. Beast and kings thrown into lake of fire, 19:19-20

A’. Rest killed by sword of the rider, 19:21a

B’. The birds were filled with their flesh, 19:21b

I’ll return to this point in a moment. For now, another complication: We may take the last two “and I saw” visions together; they occur in successive verses and so don’t play the same structural role that the phrase plays elsewhere in the passage. And they essentially reveal the same thing under different names – the new heavens and new earth, and the bridal city. The doubling of “and I saw” might be for “emphasis,” but is more likely a double-witness motif. John the witness has seen these things, they are true, and he implicitly swears to their truth by saying “and I saw” twice. It’s John’s version of “verily, verily.”

Chapters 19-20 numerically evoke the creation week. Do the details match? Many of them do:

Day 1: The celebration in heaven recalls the song of the morning stars at the moment of creation (Job 38:7).

Day 2: The rider on the white horse comes through an open firmament.

Day 3: This connection is the least obvious. Edible plants were made on Day 3, as the Lord set the table of the land, and that links with the angel’s invitation to the birds. An angel in the sun would more naturally be in the fourth-day slot.

Day 4: Ruling lights in heaven are created on the fourth day, and the kings of the land who are allied with the beast are destroyed. The structural complication introduced by the placement of 19:21 makes some sense here. The rider on the white horse is King of kings and Lord of lords, and a reference to him in the fourth section makes sense. The reference to the birds filled with flesh in verse 21 points ahead to the fifth section; birds are creatures of the fifth day.

Day 5: An angel binds a serpent, a swarming creature of day 5.

Day 6: The martyrs reach the goal of human existence, to sit on thrones sharing in God’s rule of His creation.

Day 7: The great white throne is a scene of ultimate Sabbath, ultimate peace, as things are put right once and for all.

The seven-vision sequence of chapters 19-20 numerically invokes the creation account, preparing for the unveiling of the new creation in 21:1, right where it belongs, in a structurally “eighth” slot. 


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