Sermon Tone Analysis

Summary

Revelation 11 is well known for two major items: the two witnesses and the reference to the temple court.

Both are controversial.

Who are the two witnesses?

Are they individual people?

Old Testament prophets who did not die (Enoch, Elijah)?

Are they symbolic?

Does the temple reference in Rev 11:1 mean the temple was still standing when

Revelation was written, thereby suggesting the book’s events were fulfilled in or by 70 A.D.? What are the meaning of the numbers John uses (1,260 days, 42 months), and how do those numbers relate to similar or identical language in the book of Daniel?

How did Jews of Jesus’s day understand all these items?

In this episode of the podcast, we work through Revelation 11 to contextualize the content in light of the Old Testament and Second Temple Judaism.

Second Temple Context

Yeah, and Revelation 11 is kind of a… Well, I guess they’re all important chapters.

But this one seems to have some good stuff in it.

Oh, yeah, it does.

We should jump in.

Because this is going to… We’re going to get into the weeds here.

We’re not going to do two parts.

I’m going to try to cram this into one part.

But a lot of this episode is going to be more like “Revelation in Second Temple Jewish context” than specifically “Old Testament context.”

But having said that, those two contexts are intertwined anyway.

So we’re just going to have to get into the weeds here, because this chapter is sort of famous (or infamous or notorious) for a couple of things.

Obviously, it’s known for the two witnesses.

And also, it’s known for being a passage that is much fought over for the purposes of dating the book.

In both of those regards (the nature of the witnesses and the whole thing about the dating of the book, which really revolves around the first verse where it mentions the temple of God—is this the literal temple or some other temple?)…

I’m going to say some things about both of these issues (the witnesses and the temple) that are going to likely be unfamiliar to hearers in the audience.

Again, I’m not a systems guy.

I’m not going to land on any one system, and you’ll pick up why as we go through.

But again, this is getting into the weeds a little bit.

So let’s just jump in here.

And I could’ve done an episode on the first three verses, but like I said, we’re going to try to cram everything in here and have it sort of make sense and be coherent.

So Revelation 11:1-3 says this. I’m reading from ESV.

Now most people familiar with this particular passage are going to know what follows.

You get into verse 4, the two witnesses are the two olive trees, the two lampstands, so on and so forth.

And then they do miraculous things.

And then the beast that arises from the bottomless pit makes war on them in verse 7 and conquers and kills them.

And then their bodies lie in the street for a while.

Really, it’s Jerusalem and symbolically called Sodom and Egypt where the Lord was crucified.

Very obviously Jerusalem.

So they lay there for three and a half days, and then they come back to life and so on and so forth.

System Issues

And naturally, the obsession has been identifying these two witnesses.

And we sort of skip what follows, which is the seventh trumpet and very clear Day of the Lord language.

And in a system like standard premillennialism, the Day of the Lord is at the end of the tribulation.

But again, that part of Revelation 11 sort of gets skipped and we have the first part happening before the end and chopping it up into chronological bits because John uses this number (1260 days).

And you have all these charts and systems and whatnot.

So there’s a lot in this passage that has fueled a lot of speculation.

And I’m going to try to maybe not unravel it, but I’m going to get into the weeds in terms of context for these things and hopefully help stimulate some (I think) better thinking, or at least better contextual thinking about what’s going on.

Measuring Rod

So let’s start here with the first thing—the “measuring rod,” this measuring reed.

Now this image is drawn from Ezekiel 40, specifically verse 3.

But this is the part of Ezekiel… You know, we did the series on Ezekiel, about the temple there in Ezekiel 40-48.

But Ezekiel 40:3 says the following (Ezekiel is talking).

“When he brought me there…” This person is sort of showing… It’s a vision, okay?

So he’s escorted in this vision.

And so this “man” is going to proceed to measure Ezekiel’s temple.

So this is where the imagery is drawn from in Ezekiel.

And Aune in his commentary notes:

‘Measuring’ can be a metaphor for destruction [ like you measure it, but what you’re actually doing is planning to destroy the thing you’re measuring] (2 Sam 8:2a; 2 Kgs 21:13; Amos 7:7–9; Isa 34:11; Lam 2:8) [ but it can also be a metaphor for preservation] as well as for preservation (2 Sam 8:2b; Ezek 40:1–6; 42:20; Zech 2:5)…”

So we have kind of both things going on here, and Aune believes that in this passage (Revelation 11), it’s a metaphor for preservation.

That’s just where he lands.

Now the speaker who issues the command is unidentified.

The act of measuring is never actually carried out in the passage.

So right away you kind of have a “huh.”

Like “what’s going on here?”

And Aune in his commentary gets into some of these details.

So we’ll go back to him.

And here’s what he says as he starts to get into the material.

He says:

The OT text on which this section has been modeled, Ezek 40–48 [ broadly], is introduced with an explanation of how the visionary was transported to a high mountain in the land of Israel, where he saw a structure like a city opposite him (Ezek 40:1–4).

Similarly, in Rev 21:9–10, John describes how an angel transported him to a high mountain where, after seeing the New Jerusalem, the angel proceeds to measure parts of it (21:15–17)...

This passage (along with Rev 21:10– 27) alludes to Ezek 40:3–42:20 and Zech 2:1–5,

though the latter passage is much closer to Rev 11:1 because of the absence of the actual act of measuring and the focus on the theme of divine protection...

In Ezek 40:3, a man (probably an angel) uses the measuring rod (as in Rev 20:15), and it is also a man, but again presumably an angel, who does the measuring in the Qumran [ Dead Sea Scrolls] fragments of an apocalypse on the heavenly Jerusalem [ so you actually get the same kind of thing in some of those texts]… In Zech 2:1–2 it is a man (probably an angel) who is on his way to measure Jerusalem.

Measurements of the Jerusalem temple are also found in 11QTemple 3–48 [ that’s a Dead Sea Scroll—temple scroll] and in m.

Middot.

Here in Rev 11:1–2 it is John who is commanded to do the measuring.

In a very difficult passage in 1 Enoch 61:1–5, angels are given long cords either for measuring the righteous themselves for their preservation or for measuring the future heritage of the righteous on analogy to the tribal land allotments (Josh 13–19)…

So this measuring of the city, with the angle of preservation is common.

I mean, I think it’s fair to say it’s common.

You get it in Dead Sea Scrolls, you get it in Enoch, you get it in the Old Testament.

And so Aune is saying, “This is where this imagery comes from.

It’s not a planned destruction in this case, because ultimately we’re going to have the deliverance of the city.”

We read this later in Revelation 20, where the Lord wipes out his enemies before they (encircling Jerusalem) destroy Jerusalem.

So that’s sort of what a Revelation 11 is angling toward—that scene specifically.

So that’s the Old Testament context for that.

Secondly, we read (in Revelation 11:1), “Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there.”

Like, how do you measure people?

Maybe you count them?

Something like that.

The language is a little odd.

This phrase is thought… The whole thing (“Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there”) is thought by many (maybe most) to indicate that what is being measured by John is the actual earthly temple in Jerusalem of his day, precisely because the worshippers are counted, and because (now this is Aune’s thought):

The [ Greek] phrase to naov tou theou, ‘temple of God,’ is used elsewhere in Revelation only in 11:19 [ so same chapter, a little bit later], where it is qualified with the phrase ho en te ouranē, [ which means] “which is in heaven…”.”

Now let me just stop there.

Aune is saying, “Look, we get this phrase about the temple of God two times in Revelation 11.

The first one is the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there.

And the second time it’s the temple of God which is in heaven.”

And Aune thinks that the second occurrence is important (the one that’s “in heaven”) because he believes it distinguishes the first one as being the earthly temple of God in Jerusalem, because that one isn’t described as “which is in heaven.”

So again, Aune is with probably a majority of scholars that think Revelation 11:1 is actually referencing John measuring the temple of his day.

Now if that’s the case, the implication, of course, is that Revelation has to be written before 70 A.D., because after 70 A.D., it’s destroyed.