ESSAY
Him Whom They Pierced
POSTED
January 1, 2014

Revelation 1: 7 states the theme of Revelation. It is a self-standing verse, beginning and ending with “Amen” (the “Amen” at the end of verse 6 should be taken as the beginning of the statement in verse 7). A double Amen as a double witness, and it becomes a threefold witness with the addition of “Yes” to the second “Amen.”

Standing isolated in its context, the verse quotes two complex passages of the Old Testament that together anticipate the shape of the book. Revelation announces the fulfillment of these particular prophecies. The first, and more straightforward, quotation is from Daniel 7:13. The phrasing in Revelation is slightly different from the LXX, but the substance is the same. Daniel’s vision begins with four beasts arising from the sea, which is stirred up by the four winds of heaven. We are told later in the chapter that these beasts are “kings who will arise from the earth” (v. 17), and within Daniel this vision is chiastically related to the dream of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 2, which represents four kingdoms with a statue of different metals. These are the same four kings/kingdoms, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome. The fourth beast, Rome, terrifying and powerful, has ten horns, representing powers or specific kings out of the fourth kingdom (v. 7, 24), and from them emerges a single horn different from the rest. He is a “little horn” that uproots three horns, gets eyes and a mouth, and speaks boastfully (v. 8). This little horn wages war on the saints and overpowers them (vv. 21, 25).

In short, this is a scene of persecution of the saints by some power arising from the Roman beast. The Lord gives the saints into the hands of this horn for a “time, times, half a time” (v. 25). Yet that situation is reversed in the course of the vision. The saints who are persecuted will receive the kingdom and possess it forever (v. 18). They will be overpowered until judgment is given to them and they take possession of the kingdom (vv. 21-22). In the end, sovereignty, dominion, and the greatness of all the kingdoms will be given to the saints of the Highest One, and this kingdom is “His Kingdom,” the kingdom of God, an everlasting kingdom in which all dominions will serve God (v. 27). The vision of the “Son of Man” ascending on clouds (vv. 13-14) has less to do with the exaltation of the Messiah as an individual and more to do with the exaltation of the saints.

The transition from persecution to exaltation is based on a court decision. Thrones are set up, the ancient of days takes His seat, the court of myriads of attendants takes its seat, and books are opened (vv. 9-10). The court determines that the dominion claimed by the beasts rightly belongs to the Son of Man, the saints, and so this dominion is transferred to them. The saints are “justified,” that is, they are declared innocent by being delivered from the beast’s horn and by being given dominion. This is extremely close to the story-line of Revelation (for a concise but detailed discussion, see Thomas Hieke, “The Reception of Daniel 7 in the Revelation of John,” in Hays and Alkier, Revelation and the Politics of Apocalyptic Interpretation, esp. the chart on page 51).

A composite beast, made up of the specific features of the four beasts from Daniel 7, appears in Revelation 13. There are beasts threatening and making war on the saints; the Lord sits for judgment, and the court decides in favor of the saints. The tribulations of the saints, a divine judgment in their favor, dominion granted to the saints – this is what it means to be a kingdom and priests, and this is how Jesus establishes His kingdom of priests. Revelation includes a number of other allusions to Daniel 7 that fill out the picture. At the beginning of chapter 20, John sees the dragon shut up and sealed, like the beasts and horn of Daniel 7. While he watches, thrones are set up, “they” sit on them, and judgment is given. In Daniel 7, we see “the court sat” (v. 10), and judgment gives to the saints (v. 22) when the court sits for judgment (v. 26). At the end of chapter 20, God sits on His great white throne, and the small and great gather. 

Books are opened, and judgment is given, another echo of Daniel 7:10. Both before and after the “millennium,” we see a scene resembling Daniel 7, when the court sits, judgment is given in favor of the saints who have witnessed to the end in spite of intense opposition and murderous persecution, and they are crowned and included in the marriage supper of the lamb. Revelation 1:7 informs us that the vision of Revelation will be about the defeat of the beast and the horn, the tribulation of the saints, and their eventual glorification and enthronement. All very straightforward, but then John adds another quotation, this from Zechariah 12:10-14, which prophesies the mourning of those who look on the pierced on. Zechariah 12 begins with a siege of Jerusalem (12:3), but the Lord promises that He will intervene to save Judah and Jerusalem (vv. 6-9).  In Zechariah 12:10-13:1, the siege has been lifted, and during this respite, the Lord promises to pour out His Spirit upon the house of David and inhabitants of Jerusalem.

The Spirit elicits mourning from those who look on “Me,” the Lord, whom they have pierced (v. 10). More specifically, the verse refers to the rejected shepherd of chapter 11. He was identified with the Lord, and was “gored” by the people’s rejection. The Lord, in the person of the shepherd, is pierced, spurned and rejected by His people, but when the Spirit comes, the people mourn because they have rejected and despised Him. Specifically, the leaders of Jerusalem and the royal house of David, who were responsible for piercing the shepherd, mourn over their sin. The mourning is described by series of comparisons. It is like the mourning for an only child, perhaps a reference to Isaac. Isaac is the covenant incarnate, the pierced one is likewise the covenant representative of the people. The pierced shepherd is a new Isaac. The mourning over the firstborn is also like the mourning of the Egyptians at the time of Passover (cf. Exodus 12:29-30). Zechariah describes in detail how each family, from the royal and priestly families on down, was affected by the death of the pierced one.

This is a strange Passover. It is not the firstborn of Egypt that has died, but the firstborn of Israel. The Lord’s own firstborn has died like an Egyptian. In Zechariah, Egyptians don’t mourn, but Jews; and they mourn one who died at their own hands, not at the hand of the angel of death. The mourning is like the mourning on the plain of Megiddo, an allusion to the death of Josiah at that place. 2 Chronicles 35 records that “Jeremiah chanted a lament for Josiah; and all the male and female singers speak about Josiah in their lamentations to this day.”  Josiah was the last hope for the kingdom of Judah, the last good king. After his death, the kingdom slid rapidly into chaos.

Within a couple of decades after His death, Nebuchadnezzar had destroyed Jerusalem and the temple. The mourning for the good shepherd is of the same kind, and for the same reasons. The good shepherd was the last chance for Israel. After sending His servants the prophets, the Lord sent His own Shepherd, but they rejected Him, and within a generation, the city and temple were destroyed. Those filled with the Spirit recognize what has happened. The Good Shepherd was indeed another Josiah, and the Jews’ rejection of His ministry sealed their doom.

In that day, Zechariah says, there will be a fountain for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, a fountain bringing repentance and cleansing. Despite the hymns about fountain filled with blood, this is a fountain filled with water. The water referred to here is the water for impurity in Numbers 19, made from the ashes of a red heifer, cedar wood, hyssop, and scarlet, and concocted into water that removes “impurity (niddah).  According to Numbers 19:9, this cleanses people from contact with the dead. Zechariah prophesies of a time when there will be a continual, uninterrupted flow of cleansing water, which will cleanse people from contact with the corpse, the corpse of the shepherd. 

The fountain of water is parallel to the Spirit, who is the true water of cleansing. This is a much more obscure passage than Daniel 7, but we can get some handle on how Zechariah is fulfilled when we look to the explicit quotation of this passage in John 19:37 (which perhaps matches Revelation 1:7 in the great chiasm of John-Revelation). When the soldier pierces Jesus’ side, blood and water flow out. John insists that he is an eyewitness of this event, and he also claims that Zechariah 12, along with the instruction that no bones of the Passover Lamb be broken, is fulfilled in Jesus’ death. Both are Passover texts, one about the animal and the other about the mourning of those who have lost the firstborn in the house. John doesn’t quote from Daniel 7 in the crucifixion scene, but for John Jesus’ death is a fulfillment Daniel 7. John frequently speaks of the “Son of Man” being exalted or “lifted up,” and invariably the exaltation of the Son of Man is at the cross.

The Son of Man is lifted up as the serpent in the wilderness, and that happens at the cross, but Jesus is alluding to the event of Daniel 7 (3:13-14). Jesus says that people will “see” the Son of Man ascending (6:62), and “see” means “see” – they will see it when Jesus performs His last and greatest sign at the cross. Jesus speaks of the hour of the glorification of the Son of Man (12:23), the hour when He’s lifted up, and by this He signifies the kind of death He is going to die (12:31-34). This is the hour of the Son of Man’s glorification, and the glorification of the Father in Him (13:31). John 19:37, then, overtly quotes Zechariah 12 and covertly alludes to Daniel 7. It combines the two passages just as Revelation 1:7 does. In John 19, the Jews quite literally see the Son of Man exalted and gaze on the one whom they have pierced. And some mourn for the pierced Shepherd. Some mourn immediately– Joseph of Aramathea, Nicodemus, and the women all make preparations for Jesus’ burial, performing the rites of mourning. Others don’t begin to mourn until the Spirit is poured out at Pentecost, the Spirit who becomes a fountain for the house of David and the people of Jerusalem.

At Pentecost, the people can still remember that they saw the Shepherd pierced, or, if they were not there to see it, they have heard of it. This enables us to see the point of the quotation in Revelation 1:7, and how the combination of Daniel 7 and Zechariah 12 function as theme verses for the Apocalypse as a whole. As we noted above, the coming on the clouds is the exaltation of the Son of Man over the beasts, and specifically the exaltation of the saints. That is the story of Revelation, not the glorification of Jesus but the glorification of His people. But they are glorified just as Jesus was – by bearing faithful witness to death. They are glorified on the cross, but suffering with Jesus. And in their suffering, the Jews see the exaltation, the lifting up of the Son of Man, enacted all over again, not in the person of Jesus but in the saints.

Jesus has already died and risen and disappeared into the sky. How then can those who pierced Him see Him and mourn? They will see the pierced Shepherd in the pierced flock, in whom the Shepherd dwells by the Spirit. When it becomes clear that the Lord has exalted the suffering Son of Man, that the cross and persecution of the saints is the persecution of the Lord’s righteous One, then the tribes of the land will mourn. For the saints of Revelation as for Jesus, the cross is the pathway of exaltation. That is one dimension of Revelation 1:7. But the other dimension, a perfectly Girardian twist, is equally crucial: Through the suffering exaltation of the corporate Son of Man, those who pierced them will be stricken in heart, mourn for the pierced shepherd, and turn to the Lord in repentance. The suffering of the saints will bring in “all Israel” to be saved, the 144,000 marked out from every tribe of Israel.

Though the dynamic is specific to the first century, it plays out again and again in the history of the church. Christians witness faithfully to the word of God and the testimony of Jesus. Like Jesus, they are opposed, persecuted, crucified, pierced. Their suffering is their exaltation, and their patient, faithful, joyful, loving suffering provokes repentance from their persecutors. Thus is the blood  of the martyrs the seed of the church.


Peter J. Leithart is President of Trinity House.

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