Circles from the Sky

Circles from the Sky October 16, 2015

When the seventh bowl is poured out on the air, the world collapses. The throne of God comes to earth, flashing and thundering and shaking the earth until everything that cannot stand collapses. Cities fall, islands run away, mountains disappear. And hailstones weighing a talent (talantiaia) fall to earth (Revelation 16:17-21).

English translations will tell you that the hailstones are “one hundred pounds each,” which is accurate, but the Greek wording indicates a different unit of measure – a talent. Why would the hailstones be measured by talents?

James Jordan has suggested that the text may refer to the use of “talents” in the weight of materials for the tabernacle and temple. This is the most common context for the use of the Greek word in the LXX. The gold for the sanctuary was over 29 talents (Exodus 38:24), much of it devoted to the lid of the ark. Specifically, the gold of the lampstand weighed a talent (Exodus 25:39). The tabernacle is a heavenly environment on earth, and the fall of “talents” of hail suggests the collapse of this sanctuary system. More specifically, the cover of the ark is an image of the firmament that serves as Yahweh’s footstool: The crumbling of the firmament shatters the footstool into pieces, each a talent in weight.

When we push beyond the LXX to the Hebrew text, we find that the Hebrew term translated as talanton is typically kikar, which fundamentally means “circle.” It can refer to a circular region of a river valley (Genesis 13:10), and comes to mean a measure of a precious metal because metals were traded in “circles.” Whatever the weight of a talent of gold and silver (and it seems to have varied by time and place), it was described as a kikar because of its shape.

This opens up another angle on the collapsing-firmament imagery of Revelation 16, however. Not only gold and silver, but bread came in “circles” (Exodus 29:23; 1 Samuel 2:36; Proverbs 6:26). During Israel’s wilderness wandering, bread fell from heaven as manna. The Lord sustained His people with “circles” from heaven. With the seventh bowl, this is reversed. Instead of raining life-giving bread, He rains down circles of hail, which crush the people beneath, much as barley “circle” of Gideon crushed the Midianite camp (Judges 8:5). The people of the city are not Israel, and so do not eat the heavenly bread. They are instead remembered before God, and are given anti-bread along with the wine of God’s wrath.


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