Atonement Inverted

The word “bowl” (Greek, phiale) is used twelve times in Revelation, almost all of them in chapters 15-16. The other main use comes in chapter 5, where the angelic choir is equipped with bowls of incense following the appearance of the Lamb in heaven. 

In chapter 15, the bowls are filled with the wine-blood of God’s wrath. These two uses of bowls are inverses of one another. In chapter 5, the bowls are upright, and smoke rises from them before the Lord in an image of prayer. In chapters 15-16, the bowls are filled with wrath and then turned over, pouring out the contents onto the earth, the sea, the springs, the sun, and so on. In this respect, the bowls are like the censer (libanotos) of the angel in Revelation 8:5, which the angel overturns to throw the coals to earth. Prayers go up, coals go down; bowls bring prayer to God, and then an overturned censer brings judgments from heaven to earth.

As James Jordan has noted, this points to the general function of bowls in Scripture. They are typically used liturgically, and they are used to bear things before God, or to bear things from God to human beings. Bowls or other bowl-like containers are used for bringing incense before God, for transporting blood to the altar, for carrying tribute offerings of grain to the Lord, for beer libations that are set on the table of showbread, for the wine libations that are poured out on the sacrifice. On the other hand, bowls and bowl-like containers were used to bear things from God to human beings. Food at the sanctuary was carried in bowls or similar containers, as was oil and beer. Human beings are containers too, cups that need to be cleansed on the inside, clay pottery to carry treasures or to be shattered.

Kings have cups too, full of wine, and the Lord as King is pictured with a cup (Jeremiah 25). If He drinks the cup, he is in good fellowship with the peoples, but when He turns the cup over, or turns over the censer, He is rejecting fellowship and turning a deaf ear to prayer. 

This helps to explain the way the Day of Atonement imagery works in this passage. Revelation 15-16 fit into the Day of Atonement section in the Levitical outline of the book, and various indications that this is a day of atonement event. The tabernacle of the testimony is opened (15:5). That is, the way into the inner sanctuary of heaven is open, so that some can pass through the veil. In Israel’s calendar, that tabernacle of testimony was opened only on the day of atonement.

Further, the angels who receive the bowls are clothed in linen (15:6), which is the clothing of the high priest when he goes into the sanctuary on the day of atonement (Leviticus 16:4). The temple is filled with smoke (15:8). On the day of atonement, the high priest filled a pan with coals and incense and placed it in the Most Holy Place to create a smoke screen as he entered into the Lord’s presence (Leviticus 16:12-13). Finally, and most importantly, the angels receive bowls full of wrath-wine, which is also blood. They pour out these seven bowls onto the world (15:7; 16:1-21). On the day of atonement, the priest performed a seven-fold sprinkling of blood before the Lord, three times (Leviticus 16:14, 15, 19).

It is Yom Kippur, but it is an odd one. On the day of atonement, the high priest brought blood into the temple of the tabernacle of testimony to cleanse it. Here, seven priestly angels are bringing blood out of the heavenly temple and pouring it on the earth. We can say that this cleanses the earth, and that is true; the judgments of the seven bowls purge the earth, tear down the old city, and make way for the new Jerusalem. But it is also a rejected atonement. Instead of coming into the heavenly sanctuary, like the blood of Jesus, the blood of martyrs is carried out of the heavenly sanctuary. Though the Jews who kill Christians think they are doing service to God, this offering is rejected, and the blood is instead poured out on the land. Instead of cleansing the land, this rejected atonement pollutes it.

Instead of being blood of atonement, it pollutes the land and calls up an avenger. Under the law, innocent blood shed on the land has to be atoned for. It can be atoned for by the death of a heifer near the place where a dead body is found; it can be atoned for by the blood of the murderer; it can be atoned for by the death of the high priest. Here, the blood of the saints is poured out on the land, and calls up an avenger of blood who will bring the blood of the killers to return on their own heads. As verse 6 puts it, they receive blood for blood; blood will have blood.