Friday, May 3, 2019

Brian J. Tabb on the Efficacy of the Prayers of the Saints in the Book of Revelation



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)