When he had taken the scroll, the four living
creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp
and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. (Rev 5:8
NRSV)
Another angel with a golden censer came and
stood at the altar; he was given a great quantity of incense to offer with the
prayers of all the saints on the golden altar that is before the throne. And
the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from
the hand of the angel. (Rev 8:3-4 NRSV)
Commenting
on the efficacy of the prayers of the saints in heaven, as depicted in the book
of Revelation, Brian J. Tabb wrote:
The Apocalypse refers explicitly to ‘the
prayers of the saints’ (hai proseuchai tōn
hagiōn) only three times (5:8; 8:3-4). However, these petitions—along with
the cries of the martyrs in 6:10—play a crucial role in the book’s unfolding
drama of a new-exodus salvation and judgment.
First, in 5:8 John describes the four living
creatures and twenty-four elders falling down before the Lamb, who is found
worthy to take the sealed scroll. Each of these heavenly worshippers holds ‘a
harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints’.
The harp (kithara) frequently
accompanies praise and thanksgiving to God in the Old Testament (cd. Psaa 33:2;
43:4; 57:8; 71:22; 92:3; 108:2; 147:7; 150:3) and elsewhere in Revelation the
redeem hold harps as they sing ‘a new song’ and ‘the Song of Moses . . . and
the song of the Lamb’ (14:2-3; 15:2-3). The golden bowls in their hands contain
incense (thymiamata), a staple of
Jewish worship in the tabernacle and the temple (Exod. 30:1, 7-8; 1 Chr. 28:28;
Luke 1:9). John explains that the incense represents the prayers of God’s
people. In Luke 1:10 the faithful gather to pray at the hour of incense, and in
psalm 141:2 (140:2 LXX) the psalmist asks that his prayer ‘be counted as
incense’ (cf. 4 Bar. 9.3-4; Judt.
9.1). Revelation 5:8 draws upon this symbolic association of incense and prayer
but goes further by presenting heavenly beings bringing the saints’
sweet-selling prayers directly into the divine throne room as the worthy Lamb
prepares to break the seals of the divine scroll. Moreover, they bring these
prayers before the Lamb, who shares God’s praise and carries out God’s purposes
(5:8-9).
The next prayer scene in the Apocalypse comes
in 6:9-11. When the Lamb opens the scroll’s fifth seal, John sees under the
altar the souls of martyrs who cry out, ‘O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how
long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the
earth?’ (6:9-10) (1 En. 47.1-2
likewise refers to the blood of the righteous and repeated prayers that ascend
to the Lord until ‘judgment is executed for them’). Interpreters debate whether
the ‘altar’ here refers to the altar of burnt offering or the altar of incense.
The sacrificial connotations of ‘blood’ and the location ‘under the altar’
relate most closely to the Old Testament description of the altar of the altar’s
base (Lev. 4:18, 30, 34). However, the Apocalypse seems to present only one
altar in the heavenly sanctuary (see Rev. 6:9; 8:3, 5; 9:13; 11:1; 14:18; 16:7).
John’s reference to the souls as ‘slain’ (sphazō)
recalls the repeated depiction of the ‘slain’ Lamb (5:6, 9, 12), which may
imply ‘a kind of participation in the shed blood of the Lamb’ or that Christ’s
followers ‘will have their sacrificial suffering and apparent defeat turned
into ultimate victory . . . in chapter 8 in a transitional scene marking the
conclusion of the seven seals and the introduction of the seven trumpets
(8:1-2, 6). John writes:
And another angel came and stood at the altar
with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers
of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the
incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hands of the
angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar
and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes
of lightning, and an earthquake. (8:3-5)
When the Lamb takes the sealed scroll in
Revelation 5, the elders bring incense-prayers in golden bowls. Here in
Revelation 8 the angel offers those prayers with incense on the altar, like a
priest ministering in the tabernacle (Lev. 16:12). This is presumably the same
heavenly altar sprinkled by the martyrs’ blood in Revelation 6:9. The mingled
prayers and incense rise before God, signalling that the petitions of God’s
people—including the martyrs’ appeals for justice in 6:10—reach God’s throne
with angelic authorization. The direct answer to these prayers comes in 8:5,
where the same priestly angel who offers the prayers in 8:3 fills his censer
with fire from the altar and hurls it to the earth. The storm theophany in 8:5
recalls God’s awesome presence at Sinai and prepares for the next septet of
judgments on the earth. The first two trumpets in 8:7-8 include ‘fire’ (pyr), further linking these divine acts
with the prayers offered on the heavenly altar in 8:5.
The Apocalypse reinforces the connection
between prayer and divine judgment in several ways. In 9:13 the voice from the
altar at the sixth trumpet blast further links to the matrys’ blood and the
saints petitions with God’s righteous acts of judgment. In 14:18 an angel with ‘authority
over the fire’ comes from the altar and announces the time for gathering the
grapes for the winepress of God’s wrath (v. 19; cf. 19:15). This may be the
same priestly angel who offers the saints’ prayers and takes fire from the
altar in 8:3-5 who now prepares for avenge the ‘blood’ of God’s people (6:10;
16:6; 18:24; 19:2). Finally, in 15:7, ‘one of the four living creatures gave to
the seven angels seven golden bowls full of the wrath of God’. Elsewhere in
Revelation ‘golden bowls’ (phialas
chrysas) appear only in 5:8, where they are filled with incense-prayers.
Whether or not the golden bowls full of repetition of ‘golden bowls’ implies
the same as those in 5:8, the unique lexical repetition of ‘golden bowls’
implies that the last septet of judgments is a further, more definitive, answer
to the petitions of God’s people in 5:8 and 8:3-4 (cf. 6:9-11).
Thus the
Apocalypse presents the judgment cycles of seals, trumpets and bowls as God’s
direct response to the effective prayers of the saints. The heavenly altar under which
the slain martyrs cry (6:9-10) and on which the angel presents believers’
petitions as a fragrant offering (8:3-4) is also the place from which divine
fire falls, bringing righteous retribution (8:5; 9:13) and leading to approving
praise for the Almighty (16:7). (Brian J Tabb, All Things New: Revelation and Canonical Capstone [New Studies in
Biblical Theology 48; London: Apollos, 2019], 140-41, 142-43, emphasis in bold
added)
