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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadBob Utley You Can Understand the Bible - Revelation 7:5 - 7:8
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Rev_7:5-8
5from the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben twelve thousand, from the tribe of Gad twelve thousand, 6the tribe of Asher twelve thousand, from the tribe of Naphtali twelve thousand, from the tribe of Manasseh twelve thousand, 7the tribe of Simeon twelve thousand, from the tribe of Levi twelve thousand, from the tribe of Issachar twelve thousand, 8the tribe of Zebulun twelve thousand, from the tribe of Joseph twelve thousand, from the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed.
Rev_7:5 "from the tribe of Judah" The list of tribes in Rev_7:5 does not agree with any of the twenty-plus lists found in the OT. It especially does not agree with Eze_48:2-7, which lists the eschatological people of God. Dan is omitted, Judah is listed first, Ephraim is left out, but Joseph is listed in its place and Levi is included with the other tribes. Any Jew would recognize that this list is irregular and meant to be taken symbolically.
F. F. Bruce, Answers to Questions, p. 139, mentions that the reason the tribe of Dan was omitted from the list in Church tradition goes back to Irenaeus' interpretation of Jer_8:16 in the Septuagint. It reads:
"We shall hear the neighing of his swift horses out of Dan: the whole land quaked at the sound of the neighing of his horses; and he shall come, and devour the land and the fulness of it; the city, and they that dwell in it."
Irenaeus saw the coming Antichrist as coming out of the tribe of Dan. This is mere speculation, not exegesis!