Revelation by Ian Paul

Author:Ian Paul [Paul, Ian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783593453
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2018-05-17T05:00:00+00:00

ii. The ministry of the two witnesses (11:3–6)

3. The introduction of the two witnesses seems to be quite abrupt, except that two is the number for true witness, since two witnesses need to agree for their testimony to be true (Deut. 17:6, a criterion appealed to by Jesus in John 5:31–38 and failed in Jesus’ trial in Mark 14:56; see comment on 3:14). Witness or testimony (the two English terms translate the same word martyria in Greek) is the distinctive characteristic of both Jesus and his people in Revelation. The juxtaposition of this term with mention of the ‘temple . . . and . . . its worshippers’ and the introduction of the witnesses in definite terms (lit. ‘the two witnesses of me’) suggest that the two witnesses are a metaphorical description of the people of God. The time during which they prophesy, which is 1,260 days, also matches the forty-two months of trampling in an ideal calendar with thirty days in each month.9

John has previously used square and cubed numbers (144; 1,000) to signify the people of God, and will do so again in the vision of the New Jerusalem. He will use a ‘triangular’ number – one that can be represented by objects arranged in a triangle of equal sides, like the fifteen red balls at the start of a frame of snooker – to signify the arch-enemy of God’s people in the number of the beast (666, the thirty-sixth triangular number). At the start of this apocalyptic, prophetic letter, he described himself as a subject both of the ‘kingdom’ and of the ‘suffering’ that comes from hostility to God’s people, being in exile on Patmos (1:9). If the priestly kingdom of God and his people (1:6) is signified by square numbers, and the suffering arising from opposition by the forces of evil is signified by triangular numbers, it would fit if John is using rectangular numbers to signify the overlap of the two – numbers formed by multiplying not the same number by itself, but a number by its successor. Both 42 (= 6 × 7) and 1,260 (= 35 × 36)10 are rectangles; rectangles look very much like squares, but are also closely related to triangles since each rectangle is double the corresponding triangle (42 is twice the sixth triangle 21, and 1,260 is twice the thirty-fifth triangle 630).11

The witnesses are clothed in sackcloth, the apparel of repentance which is the appropriate response to the reception of the coming kingdom of God (Mark 1:15). It is not clear where the direct speech to John ends and his own commentary begins; some think it ends at the end of verse 3, others at the end of verse 4, still others at the end of verse 8.

4. Having used images from Ezekiel and Daniel, interpreted through the traditions of Matthew and Luke, John now draws on the language of Zechariah 4 in his vision of the two witnesses.12 The two olive trees of Zechariah 4:3–14 that stand before

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