Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

This episode, the third installment of our discussion of the Old Testament in Revelation 4, has a singular point of focus: the twenty-four elders of Revelation 4. Who or what are the twenty-four elders?

What do they symbolize?

What is their intended meaning?

This episode explores the interpretive options and how each might derive from Old Testament content.

24 Elders

this is Part 3, as it worked out.

This is just the way things fell.

I didn’t want to loop chapter 5 in here, so we’re going to do a discrete episode on chapter 5 to wrap up these two that are this Divine Council throne room scene.

We’re going to spend today just covering a couple of verses that deal with one item, and that is the 24 elders.

So I’m going to just read where they show up in chapter 4. I mean, they’re going to pop up in chapter 5, too, but by then we’ll already have covered it.

So Revelation 4:4 says:

And then if you skip ahead a little bit, you hit verse 9 and the first part of 10, which read:

So the question is kind of obvious here.

Who or what are the 24 elders?

And there are two possible trajectories in the Old Testament for the “elder” language here, though not really the number (at least in terms of being explicit).

So I’m going to quote here (just to sort of summarize the two trajectories or at least get us into this part) from Aune’s commentary again on Revelation 1-5, his first of three volumes in the Word Biblical Commentary series.

He says:

There are two OT passages in which a group of “elders” is depicted as present before Yahweh: (1) Isa 24:23, which describes an eschatological event [and then he quotes it] (“For the Lord of hosts will reign on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, and before his elders he will manifest his glory”), and (2) Exod 24:9–10, the narrative of the seventy elders who accompanied Moses up to Mount Sinai where they had a vision of God.

The author may have derived his conception of twenty-four elders surrounding the heavenly throne of God from these two passages, or may at least be alluding to them.

Now again, those are the two directions you could go.

I take Isaiah 24:23 as describing celestial elders (supernatural beings, Divine Council), not humans.

And of course in Exodus 24, you do have humans (Moses and Aaron and Nadab and Abihu and the 70 elders).

They go up Mount Sinai and they seethe God of Israel and have a feast—have a meal.

So we have sort of a celestial (divine) and a human trajectory—one of each.

You know, these are the two paths you could go.

A false dichotomy

Now just a heads up, I’m going to suggest at one point here when we go through the material that you don’t really need the dichotomy.

The dichotomy’s really a bit of a false dichotomy.

But for the sake of starting off, there you go.

Now the identity of the elders, Baumgarten writes… I have an article by Joseph Baumgarten called The Duodecimal Courts of Qumran, Revelation, and the Sanhedrin.

“Duodecimal” is a term that refers to 12 (themes of the number 12).

The article is from the Journal of Biblical Literature.

It’s a 1976 article.

So he makes the comment that the identity of the elders “has been one of the longstanding and still unresolved problems in the interpretation of Revelation.”

So Beale, sort of building off that, summarizes the interpretive options adduced by scholars.

Now again, you have these two trajectories, but the two trajectories have produced a number of interpretive approaches to this.

So Beale writes:

Now a heavenly entourage around the throne is pictured [ : in Revelation 4].

The elders have been variously identified as (1) stars (from an astrological background), (2) angels, (3) OT saints [that would be people—the righteous], (4) angelic, heavenly representatives of all saints [both Old and New Testament], (5) patriarchs and apostles representing the OT and NT saints [ again, the righteous] together, and (6) representatives of the prophetic revelation of the twenty-four books of the Old Testament.

Of course, the 24 books would be according to the Hebrew arrangement and canon and all that.

Now nobody really spends much attention on that last one, and I’m not going to either.

Because the other ones are so much better options.

Baumgarten observes that:

… the Church Fathers and ancient commentators generally took them [the 24 elders] to be glorified saints

[glorified righteous people], some modern exegetes have tried to advance the view that they were angels.

Recently there has been a return to the former opinion [the glorified righteous saints], but no adequate rationale for the number twenty-four has been offered.

So again, Baumgarten basically is saying, “We’ve got problems here.”

Now consequently, most of the discussion about the 24 elders has been oriented to really the second through fifth options: angels, Old Testament saints, angelic representatives of all the saints in both testaments, or patriarchs and apostles (also representing Old and New Testament saints).

So those four options (options two through five), that’s really where the discussion lives, and at times the distinctions between them are pretty blurred.

Now each of those options has some connection to the Old Testament.

After all, this series is

The Book of Revelation’s Use of the Old Testament.”

All of these have some connection to the Old Testament.

And where Beale lands is illustrative.

You’re going to see that the lines are blurred in the list that he himself gave.

He writes:

The elders certainly include references to OT and NT saints [so he’s going that way].

They are either angels representing all saints or the heads of the twelve tribes together with the twelve apostles, representing thus all the people of God.

So he kind of merges two or three of these options.

Beale supports his reasoning in this regard by noting that, earlier in the book, a close relationship between angels and the people of God is suggested via the lampstand imagery, which applies to the churches and, in its Old Testament source (Zechariah 4), divine beings in the presence of God.

Beale also notes that the white garments and crowns worn by the elders (that’s what they’re wearing) are items associated with human believers who keep their faith until the end.

And again, this is well traveled turf in the last few episodes.

But the allusion here is specifically to Revelation 2:10, 3:4, and 3:11.

And then to follow that, Beale writes this:

The readers are given a look into heaven to see that the saints of old together with deceased Christians…

Think of the white robes and crowns here, that’s how he’s tying in the martyrs here.

The readers are given a look into heaven to see that the saints of old together with deceased Christians who have persevered have received the heavenly reward of crowns, white clothing, and kingship… [t]he readers can be assured that they too will receive a like reward, if they are faithful to the end… [I]n Revelation angels never wear crowns or white clothing or sit on thrones…

Now that one’s debatable, because if that’s where you fall with the 24 elders, he would not be correct there.

Though what he’s saying is that you’ll never see the word “angel” sitting on a throne.

Okay, that much is fair.

But it’s a bit of a misdirection.

So I’ll back up here.

He says:

[I]n Revelation angels never wear crowns or white clothing or sit on thrones, but such descriptions are predicated only of saints [the righteous] who are in heaven (7:13–15; 19:7–8, 14) or of the saints’ reward after death, as a result of their perseverance (cf.

2:10; 3:4–5; 3:21; 20:4).”

So that’s where Beale lands.

A little bit of a blurring of distinction, but he’s definitely… I’d say it’s fair to say the majority of his thinking is sort of on the human trajectory, or at least the glorified human trajectory.

Now other scholars have opted for twelve representatives of Israel’s original tribes and the twelve apostles by analogy to the two “twelves” of Revelation 21.

So let’s not forget about this 12-and-12 thing in Beale’s list.

So some say, “Hey, look at Revelation 21, where the gates of the new Jerusalem correspond to the twelve tribes of Israel, but the foundations correspond to the apostles.”

So you get 12 + 12, obviously equaling 24.

So the reasoning is that the new Jerusalem symbolizes the new Israel comprised of the first people of God (Old Testament Israel) and the new Israel (the Church).

Okay, so this is again another notion that’s on the human trajectory, but it’s more symbolic (the 12 and 12—the tribes and the apostles).

Now what Beale says and what these other scholars would say (the predominantly human trajectory), all that is true, but there are outliers in the data.

For example, members of God’s council may lack crowns, but they do sit on thrones (that’s Dan 7:9-10).

And if we’ve learned anything about Revelation 4 up to this point, it tracks Daniel 7 on fourteen points in the same order.

And the celestial heavenly host in Daniel 7 is meeting.

It’s a Divine Council meeting.

It’s a divine courtroom.

And they have some participatory role in God making a decision here.

They open the books—all of these motifs that we’ve talked about before.

So yeah, okay, they don’t have crowns, but they do have some authority here.

They do have a participatory role.

They participate in God’s governance.

Further, Isaiah 24:23references Yahweh’s “elders.”

I suggested there (and will continue t ssage is Yahweh’s celestial, supernatural council.

Not human beings, okay?

Now I reference an article by Timothy Willis in this regard.

The title of it is “Yahweh’s Elders (Isaiah 24,23): Senior Officials of the Divine Court.”

That’s a 1991 article.