Introduction
Scholars almost universally identify “the great multitude that no one could count from (ἐκ) every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9) as a multi-ethnic gathering of Christ-followers made up of every nation, tribe, people, and language.Footnote 1 According to this reading, the preposition ἐκ functions abstractly: the great multitude is made of every nation (ἐκ παντὸς ἔθνους), etcetera, just as a cart may be made of wood (ἐκ ξύλου).Footnote 2 However, this language could also describe a regathered twelve tribes of Israel taken out from every nation, tribe, people, and language among which they reside. In this case, the preposition ἐκ functions spatially to frame the nations, tribes, peoples, and languages as the locations from which the great multitude of scattered Israel has come: they have come out from every nation (ἐκ παντὸς ἔθνους), etcetera, just as one might flee from the battle (ἐκ τῆς μάχης). The identification of the great multitude as Israel is plausible in the first century CE because of the widespread belief in the continued existence of the twelve tribes and the persistent hope of their regathering. Further, the identification of this great multitude as regathered Israel can better explain John’s pervasive echoes (esp. Rev 7:14–17) of the repatriation theme from Israel’s ancestral writings and the preceding vision’s enumeration of the 144,000 slaves (Rev 7:1–8) as 12,000 from twelve tribes of Israel (7:4)—most likely representing the same group as the innumerable multitude (7:9). I first present the evidence in favor of the twelve-tribe identity of the great multitude in Rev 7:9 (cf. 5:9), which no one has yet argued, and then consider the implications for understanding the place of the nations in or around Revelation’s New Jerusalem (21:1–22:5).
The Regathered Multitude of Israel in Rev 7:9
John uses variations of “every tribe and people and language and nation” seven times (Rev 13:7; cf. 5:9; 7:9; 10:11; 11:9; 14:6; 17:5), echoing Daniel’s “all peoples, nations, and languages” (Dan 7:14).Footnote 3 In all seven instances of John’s reuse, as in Dan 7, it designates all of humanity, whom both John and Dan 7:14 depict as subjected to the Lamb/Son of Man upon his ascendancy (esp. Rev 14:6–7). John uses “every tribe and people and language and nation” synonymously with “the inhabitants of the earth” and related phrases.Footnote 4 These phrases in Revelation form a catch-all category for the human species, which is usually undifferentiated as they are collectively deceived (e.g., 13:14; 17:8), subjected to the beast (13:8, 12; 17:8), and suffer (e.g., 1:7; 3:10; 6:15; 8:13; 9:15–20; 19:18).Footnote 5 However, in two scenes John echoes the danielic phrase in order to focus on a subgroup that has come out from (ἐκ) “every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev 5:9; 7:9).Footnote 6 Both of these scenes take place before the throne (5:6, 11; 7:9) and those who come out are said to “reign on the earth” (5:10). If John is attuned to the wider context of the danielic echo, he likely understands this ruling subgroup as “the holy people of the most high” (λαῷ ἁγίῳ ὑπίστου), whom Daniel learns will be given the kingdom and will rule over all people and whose ascendancy represents the climax of the interpretation of Daniel’s vision (Dan 7:27). That is, both the phrase “every tribe and people and language and nation” and the focus on a subgroup fit the danielic context.
Grammatically, those who have come out from the nations could be members of each of these people groups (i.e., a multi-ethnic group) or a specific group living among other people groups (e.g., the scattered twelve tribes). As I will demonstrate, both the historical and literary context suggest that John refers to the regathered twelve tribes. John could have imagined these persons making up closed social groups living among foreign peoples or as highly assimilated persons who maintained a sense of Israelite identity. What is significant for our purposes is that there was a widespread expectation of the return of all twelve tribes and that John’s account of the regathered multitude in Rev 7:9 repeatedly echoes these expectations.
A. Widespread Expectation of a Return of All Twelve Tribes and their Assumed Existence
The Hebrew prophets provide ample description of a future regathering of the twelve tribes.Footnote 7 These fostered enduring expectations of the continued existence of the scattered northern tribes and of a hope of their return, which is well attested through the first century of the Common Era. Perhaps most prominently, Josephus asserts that “two tribes in Asia and Europe are subject to the Romans, while ten tribes are still beyond the Euphrates until now—countless myriads unable to be known by number (μυριάδες ἄπειροι καὶ ἀριθμῷ γνωσθῆναι μὴ δυνάμεναι).”Footnote 8 Josephus’s description is no anomaly, but reflects the reality that “many of these [Second Temple] texts continue to show a surprising degree of concern with the fate of the northern tribes scattered by Assyria in the eighth century BCE.”Footnote 9 Here I briefly summarize the scope of this expectation to illustrate that it is more the rule than the exception.Footnote 10
Many texts directly state the expectation that Israel will be restored and that it will include all twelve tribes. For example, toward the beginning of the second century BCE, the scribe Joshua ben Eleazar ben Sira asks God to “gather all the tribes of Jacob, and give them their inheritance, as at the beginning” (Sir 36:13, 16).Footnote 11 Possibly around the same time the (probably) non-sectarian Temple Scroll’s ideal vision of the temple and its environs includes the twelve tribes camped around the sanctuary with cultic responsibilities for each tribe.Footnote 12 A bit later, the sectarian War Scroll anticipates the twelve tribes gathered for the final battle with twelve Levitical chiefs, “one for (each) tribe.”Footnote 13
Most significantly, 2 Baruch and 4 Ezra, the two most comparable texts to Revelation, both anticipate an eschatological regathered twelve tribes. The pseudonymous author of 2 Baruch, writing in the latter part of the first century, addresses a letter to “the nine and one half tribes” (2 Bar 78.1; cf. 77.19). He expresses solidarity with them, for “all we of the twelve tribes are bound by one captivity as we also descend from one father” (2 Bar 78.4), and exhorts them to persist in their hope (2 Bar 83.4), for “he will not forget or forsake our seed. But with much mercy he will assemble again those who were dispersed” (2 Bar 78.7; cf. 83.5).Footnote 14
The pseudonymous author of 4 Ezra has the angel interpret a vision of a man emerging from the sea as the coming of Daniel’s Son of Man. The angel explains that,
as for your seeing him (the Son of Man) gather to himself another multitude that was peaceable, these are the ten tribes which were led away from their own land into captivity in the days of King Hoshea, whom Shalmaneser the king of the Assyrians led captive; he took them across the river, and they were taken into another land. But they formed this plan for themselves, that they would leave the multitude of the nations and go to a more distant region, where mankind never lived, that there at least they might keep their statutes which they had not kept in their own land…. then they dwelt there until the last times; and now, when they are about to come again, the Most High will stop the channels of the river again, so that they may be able to pass over. Therefore, you saw the multitude gathered together in peace. But those who are left of your people, who are found within my holy borders, shall be saved. Therefore, when he destroys the multitude of the nations that are gathered together, he will defend the people who remain.Footnote 15
The figures in Rev 7:9, as well as 5:9, come out of the nations in the same way. Just as the writer of 4 Ezra depicts a multitude (multitudinem; 4 Ezra 13.39) of the ten northern tribes coming out from the multitude of the nations (multitudinem gentium; 4 Ezra 13.41; cf. 13.49), so John sees a “great crowd” (ὄχλος πολύς; vul: turbam magnam; 7:9) that has come out “from every nation (ἔθνους; vul: gentibus), from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9).Footnote 16 4 Ezra 13.39–49 shows that other Jewish writers conceive of the scattered tribes as coming out of the nations, lending plausibility to the idea that John reflects the same expectation of a regathered Israel in Rev 5:9 and 7:9.
Numerous other texts echo the prophetic expectations of return without explicitly stating that it involves the twelve tribes. These include widely circulated texts. For example, the author of Psalm of Solomon 11 writes, “Stand on a high place, O Jerusalem, and see your children from east to west, finally brought together by the Lord” (Ps. Sol. 11.2).Footnote 17 Other, likely less widely circulated, texts express the same hope. For example, a fragment of an unknown narrative records the expectation that “[He] will return his scattered ones to the land; [gre]at and mighty, their camps.”Footnote 18 Many of these texts, as well as others, include contextual clues that the anticipated regathering involves the twelve tribes.Footnote 19 Moreover, the consistent use of “Israel,” with its connotations of twelve tribes, rather than “the Jews” in Second Temple descriptions of the eschaton suggests that the expectation of a regathered twelve tribes was pervasive. Jason Staples summarizes his comprehensive survey, stating: “Jews in this period did not anticipate merely a Jewish restoration but a full restoration of all Israel.”Footnote 20
B. Father- and Motherlands, Multiple Ethnicities, and Israel Among the Nations
The widespread expectation of a regathered twelve tribes means that it is possible that the innumerable multitude “from (ἐκ) every nation, from all tribes, languages, and peoples” (Rev 7:9; cf. 5:9) depicts an Israel regathered out from the nations among whom they have been scattered. If so, John may conceive of these persons as having lived among, but remained distinct from, these nations, similar to 4 Ezra’s explanation that the northern tribes “would leave the multitude of the nations and go to a more distant region” to better keep the commandments (4 Ezra 13.41–42). If this is the case, then John envisions those returning as never being part of, but rather living amongst, the other nations, tribes, and peoples.
John may also conceive of these persons as much more integrated so that they are part of the nations, tribes, and peoples from whom he expects them to come out. Sociologists and anthropologists have long recognized that people and groups possess multiple ethnicities, both in antiquity and today.Footnote 21 These may be nested—one inside the other—such as Josephus’s Galileans, who are a spatially defined subgroup of the Jews, who are a genealogically defined subgroup of Israel.Footnote 22 They may also be unrelated, such as Atmos, who was “a Jew, a Cypriot by birth” (Ἰουδαῖον, Κύπριον δὲ τὸ γένος; Jos., Ant. 20.142). Josephus acknowledges the accretion of identities among Jews and others, writing,
For all who are invited to join a colony, even if they are from widely different peoples (γένεσι), take their name from its founders…. Our own people who reside in Antioch are called “Antiochenes;” for the founder, Seleucus, gave them citizenship. Similarly, those in Ephesus and throughout the rest of Ionia have the same name as the native citizens that have been afforded to them by the successors. Has not the benevolence of the Romans ensured that their name has been shared with practically everyone, not only with individuals but with sizeable nations as a whole? Thus, those who were once Iberians, Tyrrhenians, and Sabines are called “Romans.”Footnote 23
Teresa Morgan summarizes that ancient ethnicity “is often—perhaps typically—accretive.”Footnote 24 A person may have multiple ethnicities because of a changed legal status, (e.g., “Roman” extended to conquered peoples), the ambiguity that results from marriage (e.g., Timothy; Acts 16.1), or residing outside their ancestral homeland long enough to develop solidarity with another place, its people, and its customs. This last example would have been the case with scattered Israel. This second ethnicity may be strengthened by rediscovered kinship ties from the past (e.g., 1 Macc 12.21), official assignment to a tribe or family genealogy,Footnote 25 or simply increasingly strong ancestral connections to a place after successive generations. Philo describes this latter process:
For so populous are the Jews that no one country (χώρα) can hold them, and therefore they settle in very many of the most prosperous countries (χωρεῖ) in Europe and Asia both in the islands and on the mainland, and while they hold the Holy City where stands the sacred Temple of the most high God to be their mother city, yet those which are theirs by inheritance from their fathers, grandfathers, and ancestors even farther back, are in each case accounted by them to be their fatherland (πατρίδας) in which they were born and reared.Footnote 26
This accretion of multiple ethnicities is also attested among Romans, whom Dionysius of Halicarnassus argued were descended from Greeks,Footnote 27 Syrians, who encompassed Assyrians and some Greeks,Footnote 28 Egyptians, who at times needed to also be Greek for gymnasium access,Footnote 29 and presumably any other people group in antiquity and today.
Like Philo and some other ancient writers, John may have conceived of the members of Israel called out from every nation (Rev 7:9) as possessing multiple ethnicities—that is, being both members of Israel who still consider Jerusalem to be their mother city, but now consider, say, the Italian peninsula and the city of Rome, as their fatherland. If so, John’s use of ἐκ παντὸς ἔθνος parallels the phrase ἐκ φυλῆς (7:4–8) that he uses thirteen times in the preceding verses to depict twelve thousand sealed out from each of the tribes of the sons of Israel (ἐκ πάσης φυλῆς υἱῶν Ἰσραήλ; 7:4), because in both scenes, a subgroup is distinguished from a larger group to which it also belongs. That is, just as 12,000 Judahites are sealed out of [ἐκ] Judah (7:5), so, for example, some Antiochenes, who perhaps emigrated a number of generations back and trace their ancestry to Jacob/Israel (that is, persons who self-identify as both Israel and Antiochenes), come out of (ἐκ) Antioch to stand before the throne and the Lamb with other members of Israel regathered from other places (7:9).
This understanding of the twelve-tribe identity of the great multitude in Rev 7:9 is not a redefinition of the people of Israel like the verus Israel among later Christian writers.Footnote 30 Although scholars often argue that John redefines Israel as followers of Christ, this is done to explain apparent tension between the 144,000 explicitly identified as Israel and the assumed multi-ethnic membership of the New Jerusalem.Footnote 31 Rather than assume that John expropriates the name “Israel” for Christ followers—which is never stated—it is better to assume that John uses the name “Israel” in its most common sense for persons who traced their putative ancestry through the twelve sons of Jacob, especially when this is explicitly stated (7:4–8).
While sociologists and anthropologists have demonstrated that, in actual practice, ethnicities are constructed, contested, negotiated, and malleable over time, they have also observed that most members of ethnic groups assume they are a given, immutable part of the social landscape.Footnote 32 For our purposes, what matters is that John seems to assume the existence of a group who shared the name Israel and that this name functioned to enhance a sense of solidarity among persons who might also distinguish themselves by tribes (esp. 7:4–8). Like many other Jews, John evidently thought of Israel in terms of genealogical descent, attachment to a common homeland, and at least some distinguishing cultural practices (including adherence to Israel’s ancestral god).Footnote 33 Whether he thought critically about the boundaries or had opinions on whether certain cultural markers were non-negotiable for members of Israel who lived among other nations is less significant than that he assumed the existence of a twelve-tribe Israelite identity without a wholesale expropriation of the name Israel for followers of Christ from all nations.Footnote 34
C. Echoes of Regathered Israel in John’s Vision of the Great Multitude (Rev 7:9–17)
John’s description of the great multitude (Rev 7:9–17) repeatedly echoes expectations of national restoration found in Israel’s ancestral writings. With only one ambiguous possible exception, John echoes Hebrew Bible texts that are either exclusively interested in the regathering and reuniting of the twelve tribes, or assume the twelve-tribe identity of the community in their vision of restoration. The significance of John’s choices here is all the more striking because of the plethora of Hebrew Bible texts that include the nations in Israel’s restoration (e.g., Isa 2:2–4; 56:6–8; Micah 4:1–4; Ps 22:27–28; 86:9; 138:4–6; Jer 3:17; Zech 3:9–10). John echoes none of these, but instead includes resonances of the restoration of Israel specifically. Scholars regularly note these echoes but conclude that John redirects promises of Israel’s national restoration to a new multiethnic multitude “from (ἐκ) every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9) without apparently considering that the same language could describe regathered Israel.Footnote 35 Here I summarize the contexts of prominent intertexts from Israel’s ancestral writings in Rev 7:9–17 to emphasize how pervasively John echoes Israel’s regathering.
First, the description of those before the throne as a “great multitude whom no one could count” (Rev 7:9) echoes the ancestral promises that Abraham would have innumerable descendants (Gen 13:16; 15:5; 16:10; 22:17–18; 26:4; 28:14; 32:12) and that he would be the father of many nations (Gen 17:4–6; 28:14; 32:12; 35:11; 48:19).Footnote 36 In context, Abraham’s many nations are his direct descendants. David Aune, for example, notes this and yet concludes that Rev 7:9 “implies that the promises to Abraham has been fulfilled, though not through physical descent from Abraham.”Footnote 37
Second, one of the elders before the throne tells John about the identity of the great multitude: “These are they who have come out of the great suffering; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:14). The articular substantival participle οἱ ἐρχόμενοι (“the ones who come out”) seems to presume a definite referent that the elder expected John to know (and by extension that John expected his intended readers to identify). The combination of persons being made white (ἐλεύκαναν) after great suffering (θλίψεως) is found only in Daniel’s final vision (Dan 11:2–12:13).Footnote 38 In Daniel’s vision, many will be “purified, cleansed, and refined” (Dan 11:35; 12:10), and there will be a time of great suffering (12:1).Footnote 39 Daniel receives assurance of the vindication of “your people” (12:1)—that is, Israel (cf. 9:7)—without any note of the vindication of the righteous among the nations.Footnote 40
Both the promises of a great multitude to Abraham and of the deliverance of “your people” Israel to Daniel are contextually directed to Israel, and not the nations, and so fit with a twelve-tribe referent for the great multitude (Rev 7:9). Yet, neither explicitly evokes the twelve-tribe regathering of the scattered descendants. However, when the elder elaborates on the destiny of “the ones who come out” (Rev 7:14) the description (Rev 7:15–17) amalgamates as many as five texts (Isa 25:6–8; 49:8–26; Jer 31:15–17; Ezek 34:11–31; 37:15–28) that are primarily concerned with the regathering of scattered Israel.
The elder first explains that, because the great multitude has washed their robes, they worship continuously before the throne and “the one who is seated on the throne will shelter (σκηνώσει) them” (Rev 7:15). This is widely regarded as an echo of Ezek 37:27.Footnote 41 In the enacted prophecy of Ezek 37:15–28, Ezekiel is directed to take two sticks, symbolizing the kingdoms of Judah and Ephraim (Ezek 37:15–16), and join them together to symbolize the rejoining of the two kingdoms. This rejoining involves taking “the people of Israel from the nations among which they have gone” (Ezek 37:21) to become “one nation in the land, on the mountains of Israel; and one king shall be king over them all” (Ezek 37:22). The description culminates with God promising to place his sanctuary among them for eternity (Ezek 37:26) and pronouncing that, “My dwelling place (MT: 
LXX: κατασκηνώσις) shall be with them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Ezek 37:27), while the nations observe the united monarchy from the outside (Ezek 37:28).Footnote 42
The elder then explains that the great multitude “will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat” (Rev 7:16). This echoes Isa 49:10, where those returning to the land (Isa 49:8) are said to no longer suffer from hunger, thirst, or exposure to extreme sun and wind.Footnote 43 In the immediate context (Isa 49:8–12), these persons were prisoners who have been called out of their enslavement (Isa 49:8) and who will come from all corners of the earth (Isa 49:12) to restore the desolate heritage of their land (Isa 49:8).Footnote 44 In the following scene (Isa 49:14–23), which elaborates on the return, God promises that the land will be overcrowded with the returning inhabitants (Isa 49:19–21) after Israel is carried back by the subjugated and now servile nations among whom they once dwelt (Isa 49:22–23). It remains possible that John repurposes Isaiah’s depiction of Israel to refer to the nations, but the cluster of texts focused on Israel (without a direct statement that they now refer to the nations) supports the twelve-tribe identity of the great multitude.
The elder continues: “the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd” (Rev 7:17), echoing Ezek 34:23, where God promises that “I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd.”Footnote 45 The sheep symbolize Israel (e.g., Ezek 34:2–3).Footnote 46 God denounces the shepherds of Israel (Ezek 34:1–10), whose failure to feed their sheep have caused the flock to be scattered “over all the face of the earth” (Ezek 34:6), where they have been eaten by wild animals (Ezek 34:5). Unlike Israel’s shepherds, God himself will search for the scattered sheep and “will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries and will bring them into their own land” (Ezek 34:13), where they will no longer be oppressed by the nations. Like the elder’s echoes of Ezek 37 and Isa 49, Ezek 34 depicts a regathered Israel, who are rescued from the nations, without including the nations among the restored Israel.Footnote 47
Commentators often find an additional echo of Isa 25:8 in the elder’s note that “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes” (Rev 7:17).Footnote 48 Isaiah 25:6–8 depicts a feast at which “God will wipe away the tears from all faces” (Isa 25:8). The banquet is set in Zion (“this mountain”; Isa 25:6, 7) after God has punished the kings of the earth and set up his reign from Jerusalem (Isa 24:21–23).Footnote 49 Therefore, contextual echoes of Isa 25:8 cohere with the other echoes of subjugated nations and a restored Jerusalem. However, in contrast with Ezek 34, 37 and Isa 49, the banquet in Isa 25:6–8 is made for “all peoples” (Isa 25:6), rather than just Israel, and God will remove a dark covering from “all peoples” (Isa 25:7).Footnote 50 Contextual echoes of Isaiah’s banquet could therefore be at odds with any shared assumption between John and his intended audience of a restoration of the twelve tribes specifically. However, for an intended audience attentive to the other echoes and who shared a fixation on Israel’s restoration, the description of wiping away tears might first echo Jer 31:16.Footnote 51 In Jer 31:15–17, the matriarch Rachel, who is weeping for her lost children, is told to wipe away her tears (Jer 31:16), for “they shall come back from the land of the enemy” and “come back to their own country” (Jer 31:17).
The elder’s description of the destiny of the great multitude, then, likely amalgamates as many as five source texts, each about the restoration of Israel, with only one possible contextual hint of the nations. John’s choice to echo these depictions of regathered Israel, rather than those readily available depictions that include the nations suggests he also envisioned the great multitude as regathered Israel.
Commentators regularly acknowledge the above contexts for the echoes of Israel’s ancestral writings but assume that John is reusing them with a twist.Footnote 52 For example, Craig Koester writes about Rev 7:15–17 that,
This concentrated use of biblical language emphasizes that John’s vision of the redeemed is congruent with expectations that are already known from Scripture. Rhetorically, this recasting of prophetic texts affirms hopes that would have been familiar to many readers. What is new is that these blessings are extended to a people that includes not only the traditional twelve tribes of Israel, but the redeemed of every nation.Footnote 53
Koester, like others, does not find it necessary to argue that the nations are included, but finds it self-evident that the great multitude who have come out of every nation are the members of these nations themselves.Footnote 54 However, Koester’s only contextual evidence that the redeemed are “of every nation” (i.e., Rev 7:9) could just as well describe his alternative—that they are “only the traditional twelve tribes of Israel,” who were widely understood to reside among the nations and expected to return. If so, and the contextual echoes support it, then John is reading with, rather than against, the grain of Israel’s ancestral writings.Footnote 55
D. The Vsion of the 144,000 (Rev 7:1–8) and the Great Multitude (Rev 7:9–17)
Further support for the twelve-tribe identity of the great multitude (Rev 7:9) can be found if the 144,000 in the preceding vision (Rev 7:1–8) are the same as the great multitude (7:9). In 7:1–8, John sees four angels prepared to inflict natural disasters on the earth. Before disaster strikes, the slaves (τοὺς δούλους) of God are marked and John hears their number as “one hundred forty-four thousand, sealed out of every tribe of the people of Israel” (7:4).Footnote 56 While it was once common to distinguish the 144,000 (7:4) from the great multitude (7:9), many now consider the two groups to be the same.Footnote 57 While the ambiguous imagery of Revelation precludes certainty, this is suggested by the parallel with Rev 5:5–6 (where John first hears about a lion, and then sees it as a Lamb),Footnote 58 the scenes’ shared military imagery,Footnote 59 and the two groups’ common experience of suffering.Footnote 60
When they are understood as different groups, they are often distinguished as members of Israel and members of the nations. However, if Rev 7:9 is understood to be multi-ethnic it would seem to encompass, rather than exclude, Israel and so this distinction is unlikely.Footnote 61 If they are the same group, the difference in number can be explained by John’s first hearing the (likely symbolic) number 144,000, and then seeing a great multitude, which presumably (symbolically) number 144,000 but remain too many to easily count.Footnote 62 Those who argue that the two groups are the same explain the 144,000 from Israel by appealing to the church as the true Israel, although this theme is absent from Revelation, so that both the great multitude and the 144,000 include diverse peoples.Footnote 63 However, when the great multitude is understood as a regathered twelve tribes, both scenes can be read together as depicting a regathered Israel without reinterpreting the statement that the 144,000 are from the twelve tribes.Footnote 64 If the 144,000 are different than the great multitude, the great multitude should still be understood as a regathered twelve tribes, based especially on the echoes of national restoration from Israel’s ancestral writings. In this case, the 144,000 would represent a “first-fruits” (14:1–5) of a larger regathering of the scattered twelve tribes.Footnote 65
E. The Regathered Multitude as a Remnant of Israel and Adherence to Christ
John likely thinks of the regathered multitude of Israel (Rev 7:9) as a part, but not all, of the scattered descendants of Jacob. This is supported especially by the parallel of the great multitude with the 144,000 (7:4–8), made up of 12,000 taken out of each of twelve tribes (7:4–8). Although John likely uses the specific numbers symbolically, they still depict those sealed as a part, but not all, of scattered Israel. In this, John’s expectation is like many early Jewish texts, which anticipate a restoration/refinement of Israel that includes only some members of Israel.Footnote 66
The great multitude are depicted worshipping before the throne and the Lamb (Rev 7:9–12), and the elder explains that, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (7:14). Accordingly, the basic criterion may be adherence to Christ/the Lamb and obedience to his directives.Footnote 67 If the groups in the two visions are the same, as argued here, then perhaps adherence to Christ is the necessary requirement for their regathering, even though this is not explicit in 7:1–8. Alternatively, there may be some other, more basic, criterion for inclusion in this regathered part of Israel, such as a posture of repentance, endurance, or persistence in maintaining their cultural distinctiveness. Such a criterion is especially plausible for a text like Revelation, where, as John Marshall points out, the Jewish/Roman “axis of difference” overshadows the significance of adherence to Christ.Footnote 68
Either way, this type of boundary contraction, is similar to how other Jewish texts distinguish a privileged part of greater Israel, whether by adherence to a specific leader (e.g., the teacher of righteousness as the correct interpreter of the law; CD 3.12–16), or a particular set of behavioral requirements (e.g., those who maintain the covenant; 1 Macc 1.11–13). For these two visions, those depicted before the throne are a part of Israel, distinguished from the rest of Israel by their adherence to Christ, with no mention of the nations. That is, they are Christ-following Jews and those from the scattered tribes whom the writer envisions following Christ.Footnote 69
The Regathered Twelve Tribes of Rev 7:1–17 and Revelation as Jewish Literature
David Aune acknowledges that the great multitude (Rev 7:9) could refer to a regathering of diaspora JewsFootnote 70 but dismisses such a reading because of an assumed Christian/Jewish dichotomy. He reasons that, “even if 7.9–17 were based on an earlier Jewish source, the present shape of the text (with the obviously Christian references in vv. 10, 14) indicates that at the very least the author has provided a Christian reading of the ‘source.’ ”Footnote 71 Aune assumes that 1) only a non-Christian Jewish source would anticipate a specifically regathered Israel, 2) that the references to the Lamb, symbolizing Christ, in 7:10 and 7:14 indicate a Christian and not a Jewish context, and 3) that in such a context a great multitude “from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (7:9) could only refer to a gathering of persons from all nations. Since Aune’s commentary was published in 1998, scholarship has moved away from such a first-century Jewish/Christian dichotomy: Adherence to Christ, even a so-called “high Christology,” would not necessarily lead to separation from other Jews,Footnote 72 and some Christ-followers seemed to anticipate the regathering of Israel.Footnote 73
Several studies of Revelation have provided a framework for reading Revelation as an expression of first-century Judaism. These studies are helpful for thinking about how the twelve- tribe identity of the innumerable multitude of Rev 7:9 coheres with other parts of the writer’s conceptual and social worlds.
John Marshall first drew out the implications of the observation that the primary tension between John’s assemblies and certain related groups (e.g., Rev 2:9; 3:9) is not adherence to Jesus, but disposition toward the Roman Empire and its associated cultural complex.Footnote 74 Marshall concludes that, in Revelation, Jesus is a central force in the resolution of the cosmic conflict, but the primary “axis of difference” is Jerusalem/Rome and not (non)adherence to Jesus.Footnote 75 Jesus’s birth and ascension to heaven, where the cosmic battle is now won, function as a witness (τὴν μαρτυρίον; 12:17) and proof (τήν πὶστιν; 14:12) that the earthly conflict will also be won soon.Footnote 76 John’s portrayal of the earthly conflict between Jerusalem and Babylon/Rome reflects a related Jew/nations binary and does not insert a third “Christian” category. John’s enemies show their allegiance to Rome (and its heavenly corollary Satan) by eating food sacrificed to idols and engaging in taboo sexual practices (2:14, 20), showing themselves to be too culturally accommodating.
David Frankfurter points out that the purity requirement of the 144,000 (Rev 14:4) and the expectation that nothing κοινὸν will enter the New Jerusalem (21:27) fits within the context of other first-century extensions of priestly and wartime purity regulations to the daily behavior of all the saints.Footnote 77 This hyper-purity can be understood as part of John’s expectation of “those who keep the commandments of God” (12:17; 14:12) which, by implication, included everything else the commandments of God entailed for first-century Jews—for example, remaining distinct from the nations, circumcising their male children, observing the Sabbath, etcetera.Footnote 78 John’s expectation of rigorous adherence to Jewish law and priestly purity regulations explains his opposition to “those who claim to be Jews but are not” (2:9; 3:9). Frankfurter concludes that they are non-Jewish Jesus-followers who are not sufficiently rigorous in their halakhic observance, rather than ethnic Jews whom John rhetorically dispossesses.Footnote 79 The well attested Jewish communities throughout Asia minor, including in the cities of John’s seven assemblies (ταῖς ἑπτὰ ἐκκλησίαις; 1:4)Footnote 80 and the use of ἐκκλησίαις as a term for Jewish gathering placesFootnote 81 make it possible that John addresses his letter (Rev 1:4) to Jewish assemblies/synagogues.Footnote 82
The current research situating Revelation within Judaism argues that John includes members of the nations among the New Jerusalem “as a product of its Jewishness.”Footnote 83 However, if Rev 7:1–17 is a vision of a regathered twelve tribes, then John provides no indication of any deliverance of the nations prior to the vision of the New Jerusalem. This is especially surprising because of the broad agreement that Rev 7:1–17 provides an early glimpse of those who will be in the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:9–22:5).Footnote 84
Where are the Nations in the New Jerusalem?
In John’s vision of the New Jerusalem, we learn, among other things, that “the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it” (Rev 21:24). The presence of the nations in the New Jerusalem has troubled scholars, who note that, throughout the first twenty chapters, the kings of the earth and the nations (τὰ ἔθνη), as well as related categories, are consistently depicted negatively.Footnote 85 While the holy ones (οἱ ἅγιοι) and slaves (οἱ δοῦλοι)Footnote 86 come out “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (5:9; cf. 7:9; 18:4), the nations (and its synonyms) continue to designate alterity. Accordingly, existing scholarship on the nations has focused on whether there may be hints of the nations’ collective deliverance earlier in Revelation.Footnote 87 Most prominently, Richard Bauckham finds a future conversion of the “peoples and tribes and languages and nations” (Rev 11:9), who are terrified at the resurrection of the two witnesses and “gave glory to the God of heaven” (Rev 11:13). He also finds evidence in the Son of Man’s harvesting of the earth (Rev 14:14–16) and in the triumphal song of the Lamb that “all nations will come and worship before you” (15:4).Footnote 88 Eckhardt Schnabel objects, pointing out that each text envisions only forced worship.Footnote 89
Bauckham, Schnabel, and the entire discussion of the role of the nations in Revelation assume that the basic division between the saints/slaves—marked with the name of the Lamb and populating the New Jerusalem (Rev 22:4; cf. 14:1)—and the nations/inhabitants of the earth— marked with the name of beast (Rev 13:13–18) and eternally tormented (Rev 14:9–11)—cuts across ethnic boundaries so that both Jews and members of other people groups receive the mark of the Lamb and refuse the mark of the beast. If the earlier glimpse of the New Jerusalem in Rev 7 refers only to a regathered twelve tribes so that there is no hint of the deliverance of persons from the nations prior to the vision of the New Jerusalem, this reframes the question of the nations from why they are in the New Jerusalem, to whether they are willing participants at all. This final section aims to raise possibilities for further study.
In her recent monograph, Sarah Emanuel observes that in the New Jerusalem, the kings of the earth (Rev 21:24) look more like forcibly subjugated rulers than willing participants.Footnote 90 They bring their wealth into the New Jerusalem, their arms and foreheads having been marked (Rev 13:16; 14:9) and their jewels now adorning the city walls (Rev 21:18–19). She suggests that the city gates remain open (Rev 21:25), so that the kings can drop off their wealth and leave.Footnote 91 That is, the kings of the earth are both subjugated and permitted to enter the city only to be plundered. Emanuel’s reading has the advantage of creating continuity with the consistently hostile portrayal of the kings of the earth, elsewhere.Footnote 92 Regarding the nations, who are said to walk by the city’s light (Rev 21:24), Emanuel is ambivalent, leaving potential tension between the negative portrayal of the nations elsewhere, and any willing participation by them in the New Jerusalem.Footnote 93
Most scholars, however, see the nations and the kings of the earth as synonyms due to their interchangeable use in Rev 18:3 and Isa 60:3,Footnote 94 a poem anticipating the future restoration of Zion (Isa 60:1–20). John’s vision of the New Jerusalem contains pervasive echoes of Isa 60,Footnote 95 where the nations and their kings are forced into submission.Footnote 96 This suggests a similarly subjugated role for the nations in the New Jerusalem.
Isaiah 60:1–22 depicts the return of the radiance of Israel’s God to Zion (60:1–3), whose light will replace the sun (60:19–20). He will establish Israel in the land forever (60:21) in peace and righteousness (60:17–18), so that its doors will never need to be closed (60:11). He will subjugate the nations (60:10, 14) and those nations that will not submit will be destroyed (60:12).Footnote 97 The others will bring their wealth to Jerusalem (Isa 60:5–9, 11, 13) and rebuild its city walls (60:10, 14). As the nations come to pay homage to Zion, they will bring back the scattered descendants of Israel (60:4, 9). Joseph Blenkinsopp describes the nations’ arrival in Zion as “compulsion” and their role as “labor gangs engaged in rebuilding the walls formerly destroyed by foreigners.”Footnote 98
The bulk of echoes of Isa 60 occur in Rev 21:24–26, although the conceptual echoes extend beyond these verses.Footnote 99 In Rev 21:24–26, we learn that the Lamb and/or the God of Israel’s radiance provides the light (Isa 60:1–3, 19–20) and that the city gates remain open (Isa 60:11). Most significantly, John’s description that, “The nations will walk by its (the city’s) light” (Rev 21:24; cf. 21:26) echoes Isa 60:3, where the nations come to the light radiating from Zion because the rest of the earth is plunged into darkness (Isa 60:2)—that is, the pervasive darkness forces them to come.Footnote 100 These echoes depict the nations as gathering around the city, whose light they need for survival.Footnote 101 It is conspicuous that in John’s description of the nations, he echoes none of the prophetic texts that anticipate full participation of members of the nations (esp. Isa 2:2–4; 56:6–8; Micah 4:1–4; Ps 22:27–28; 86:9; 138:4–6; Jer 3:17; Zech 3:9–10). Scholars often cite these prophetic texts to show a conceptual precedent.Footnote 102 However, John chooses to echo none of these, but rather Isa 60 where the nations are subjugated.
Perhaps, then, the vision of the New Jerusalem is of a restored twelve tribes of Israel, foreshadowed in Rev 7:1–17, with the subjugated nations residing outside. On this reading, the twelve apostles, whose names are written on the foundations of the city walls (21:14) compliment—perhaps through leadership—rather than redefine the twelve tribes of Israel, whose names are written above the twelve city dates (21:12). In John’s depiction, the images of the nations benefiting from the light of the city (21:24) and the leaves of its trees (22:2) would then function rhetorically to elevate the restored twelve tribes, perhaps as “a light to the nations” (Isa 42:6).Footnote 103 In so far as the nations may be dependent on the city, the provision of light and healing may function to “assert an incontestable domination” over those subjugated nations.Footnote 104 John may even not intend the nations in these final scenes to be real characters, since they were annihilated in the preceding cosmic conflict (Rev 20:9, 15). If so, Revelation may represent a Jewish exclusivist version of Christ-following that anticipates no eschatological salvation of the nations and could be categorized with those Jewish texts that exclude the nations, rather than anticipating their eschatological participation.Footnote 105
If John does envision some members of the nations surviving the final battle (Rev 20:7–10), although he provides no mention of this, they appear to dwell outside the city, subordinate to the restored twelve tribes. This fits with the sequence of events in Zech 14, which likely informed John’s expectations, where Jerusalem is saved (Zech 14:5–11), the nations destroyed (Zech 14:12–16), and those nations that submit are permitted to survive on the condition that they come yearly to pay homage to the God of Israel (Zech 14:16–19).Footnote 106 In Zechariah’s expectation, and possibly in John’s, the nations are subjected to a restored Jerusalem reserved for Israel.Footnote 107 John does not directly state that the nations dwell outside, or that the kings must leave once they have dropped off their wealth, or that all these persons are subjugated. However, the vision allows for this interpretive possibility and the vision’s echoes of the subjugation of the nations from Israel’s ancestral writings, and the consistently negative portrayal of the nations throughout Rev 1–20 support such a reading of the culminating vision of John’s Revelation.Footnote 108
Conclusion
John’s vision of “a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (7:9) is almost universally understood as a multi-ethnic gathering of Christ-followers from among the nations, but it can also describe the widespread Jewish expectation of a regathering of the scattered twelve tribes out from the places and peoples where they were assumed to still reside. This latter reading is supported by John’s choice of echoes from Israel’s ancestral writings and by the vision of the 144,000, likely depicting the same group, and explicitly identified as “from every tribe of the people of Israel” (7:4). Like many other Jewish texts, John limits this privileged group to a subgroup of Israel—for John, delimited by adherence to the Lamb (7:14–17).
If this reading is correct, then John provides no clear indication of the presence of persons from the nations prior to the vision of the New Jerusalem. This reframes the question of the place of the nations in and around the New Jerusalem from why they are there to whether they are there, raising questions for future study.
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