The True and Faithful Witness

To you, O king, as you lay in bed, came thoughts of what would be hereafter, and the revealer of mysteries disclosed to you what is to be. Da 2:29

just as you saw that a stone was cut from the mountain not by hands and that it crushed the iron, the bronze, the clay, the silver, and the gold.

The great God has informed the king what shall be hereafter. The dream is certain and its interpretation trustworthy.” Da 2:45.

As I watched in the night visions,
I saw one like a human being
coming with the clouds of heaven.
And he came to the Ancient One
and was presented before him.
To him was given dominion
and glory and kingship,
that all peoples, nations, and languages
should serve him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion
that shall not pass away,
and his kingship is one
that shall never be destroyed. Dan. 7:13–14

“Seventy sevens are determined for your people and your holy city, to end wrongdoing, and to finish with sin, and to atone for guilt/iniquity, and to bring in eternal righteousness, and to seal up prophetic vision, and to anoint a most holy place/person, so you must know and understand, from the issuing of a word to rebuild Jerusalem until an Anointed One, a leader, are seven sevens and sixty-two sevens.

It will be rebuilt in square and trench and in distressing times. And after the sixty-two sevens, an Anointed One will be cut off but not for himself, and the people of the coming leader will ruin/spoil the city and the sanctuary, and its end will come with a flood. And until the end war—desolations are what is decided.

And he will bring into force a covenant with the many in one [final] seven, and at the half of the seven he will cause sacrifice and offering to cease, and on a wing of abominations is one bringing desolation and until an end and what is decided gushes out on the one being desolated.” Daniel 9:24–27

Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, Second Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 610.

There is a good reason why the future king is referred to in Daniel 9:25 and 26 by the term nāgîd, “ruler,” rather than by the term melek, the standard word in Hebrew for king. This is best explained by Donald F. Murray, who has provided the most recent and thorough treatment of nāgîd, particularly in the context of 2 Samuel 5:17–7:29. His conclusion is worth citing:

In our texts the melek is one who sees his power from Yahweh as susceptible to his own arbitrary manipulation, who obtrudes himself inappropriately and disproportionately between Yahweh and Israel, and who treats Israel as little more than the subjects of his monarchic power.

The nāgîd, on the other hand, is positively portrayed as one who sees his power as a sovereign and inviolable devolvement from Yahweh, who acts strictly under the orders of Yahweh for the benefit of Yahweh’s people, and holds himself as no more than the willing subject of the divine monarch.

In short, nāgîd-prince communicates kingship according to God’s plan and standards, whereas melek communicates kingship according to the Canaanite model of absolute despotism and self-aggrandizement. That is why the term nāgîd dominates in the passage on the Davidic covenant (2 Samuel. 7) and is also the term used here in Daniel.

The Davidic king ruling in Jerusalem was removed from the throne by the exile in 586 BC. Yet according to the eternal and irrevocable promises of Yahweh to David, the prophets spoke of a coming king from David’s line.

The message and vision given to Daniel associates the king’s return with the end of the exile and the climactic purposes for Israel and Jerusalem but with great personal tragedy:

he will be cut off but not for himself. Thus the coming king will give his life to deliver his people.

Peter J. Gentry and Stephen J. Wellum, Kingdom through Covenant: A Biblical-Theological Understanding of the Covenants, Second Edition (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2018), 628–629.

Biblical prophecy mixes literal and figurative without much regard for modern standards of consistency. Daniel’s seventy weeks prophecy begins with the decree of Cyrus and ends with the Messiah (Dan. 9:24–27). That period is symbolized as 7 × 70 weeks, representing 490 years.

By contemporary chronology, that is not the actual time period between Cyrus and Christ. Yet in some details the chronology is exact. The seventy weeks are divided into three subunits—a seven-week period, a 62-week period, and a final week.

The first period of forty-nine years represents the time between the decree of Cyrus and the completion of the walls of Jerusalem, and that half-century is literally true (following the chronology of Ezra-Nehemiah).

A near-literal chronology is embedded within a symbolic one.

More generally, it seems that any apocalyptic allegory must mix literal and the figurative. If it is wholly literal, it is not allegorical; if wholly allegorical, it has no hooks to real events. If there is no literal hook, how can we begin to recognize allegory as allegory?

Alexander the Great is not a goat, but he does rush across the surface of the earth, does beat down a great empire (the Persians, represented by a ram), is shattered and broken into four parts (Dan. 8:5–8).

To insist on a reading that vision as consistently literal or consistently figurative is to destroy the music and dance of reading.

Peter J. Leithart, Revelation, ed. Michael Allen and Scott R. Swain, vol. 1, The International Theological Commentary on the Holy Scripture of the Old and New Testaments (London; Oxford; New York; New Delhi; Sydney: Bloomsbury; Bloomsbury T&T Clark: An Imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2018), 427.

Then the voice that I had heard from heaven spoke to me again, saying, “Go, take the scroll that is open in the hand of the angel who is standing on the sea and on the land.” 9 So I went to the angel and told him to give me the little scroll, and he said to me, “Take it and eat; it will be bitter to your stomach but sweet as honey in your mouth.” 10 So I took the little scroll from the hand of the angel and ate it; it was sweet as honey in my mouth, but when I had eaten it my stomach was made bitter.11 Then they said to me,

“You must prophesy again about many peoples and nations and languages and kings.”

Then I was given a measuring rod like a staff, and I was told, “Come and measure the temple of God and the altar and those who worship there, 2 but do not measure the court outside the temple; leave that out, for it is given over to the nations, and they will trample over the holy city for forty-two months. Re 10:8–11, 11:1–2.

Measuring distinguishes holy and profane. It bounds off a holy space, and therefore marks it off from the common space outside. That is what John’s prophesying will accomplish. Prophesying, like priestly measuring, is an art of division. Jesus warned that he brought a sword not peace, and he said that the preaching of his disciples would likewise divide their hearers. Some hear and believe, some hear and hate Jesus.

Every time a prophet speaks, he attracts some and repels others. Every time a prophet speaks, he measures and draws lines to divide holy from profane.

Having received the book from the Angel-Spirit of Jesus, John becomes an agent of the Red Spirit of division and conflict. His Isaiah-commission advances, as he prophesies to a people already deaf and blind in order of deafen and blind them, in order to draw the line between idolaters suffering from sensory deprivation and true worshipers who will constitute the holy city.

If there are not clear lines, it is because the word is not being faithfully prophesied, because those who have been given the reed do not measure straight. Much of the church’s murky confusion in the early twenty-first century is a failure of prophetic topography, and the world’s confusions are a natural product of the church’s.

How can anyone tell the difference between marriage and an abomination if no one speaks the word of God with force and clarity, if no one measures off the holy from the profane and detestable?

Only when the Word is eaten, digested, and spoken do boundaries become clear. Preachers and teachers need to speak with the sharp straightness of a yardstick.

It is better to say that the “court” of the temple represents the old covenant people, Israel as the people of the temple court.

That fits the liturgical situation of the first century. Jewish worshipers never entered the presence of God, never ate the bread of heaven or drank wine in the sanctuary.

They remained in the courtyard, while priests mediated between God and Israel. By contrast, the church gathers in a temple with a rent veil, where the way into the Most Holy has been opened.

All are priests by union in the Spirit with the heavenly Priest. The hidden treasures of the sanctuary are distributed to all. John’s prophesying thus separates the holy city of new Jerusalem, the church, from the old people of God.

The two witnesses consume enemies like fire-breathing hippolions (Rev.9:17–18). Yahweh breathes fire (2 Sam. 22:9), and so, metaphorically, does Jeremiah. The Lord promises to put his words into Jeremiah’s mouth like fire, and to make the people like wood that will be consumed when the prophet breathes against them (Jer. 5:14).

The two witnesses are in a setting like Jeremiah’s, prophesying against the great city. Fire from the mouth is performative speech, a spoken judgment that consumes, that destroys enemies or turns them to living sacrifices. Fire-breathing witnesses demolish a world.

They shut up the heavens; they turn the waters to blood; they smite the land with plagues. Each of the three zones of creation is smitten. A whole cosmos is falling apart.

With this in the background, we can attempt a more specific identification of the witnesses. Chapter 9 begins with a vision of Satan releasing demons from an inverted temple to afflict the inhabitants of the land, a vision I have interpreted as a description of the Judaizing heresy in the early church.

Satan unleashed demons and demon-inspired Jews to rip apart the new Adam that Jesus had made in his death and resurrection, to turn humanity back to the old duality of Jew and Gentile.

The prayer-and-preaching cavalry of the sixth trumpet opposes the demons and overcomes them.

Prosaically: Paul rebuked Peter, raged against Judaizers, and the council of Jerusalem settled the affair. After the council of Jerusalem, Jew and Gentile witness together provided a double witness in the city where Jesus is crucified.

Some Jews could not abide the pollution of joining Jews and Gentile into one new man, and if they could not separate Jew and Gentile, they would kill them both together, a double witness slaughtered in the streets of Jerusalem.

The two witnesses are the two humanities of the old world, united in common testimony to Jesus (cf. Bede 1997: 146; Oecumenius (1997: 48) thinks the two olive branches are Jew and Gentile).

This understanding of the two witnesses smooths the transition from the two witnesses passage to what follows in chapters 12–13. Satan has been unable to tear Jew and Gentile apart, so he attempts to kill the united, dual witness by forming his own Jew-Gentile cooperative,

the counterfeit new covenant of sea beast, land beast, and harlot, a mystery of iniquity (Rev.13:11–18).

Sixth Vision: The Flying Scroll

Zechariah 5:1–4

Covenant Curse: By identifying the scroll Zechariah saw as a “curse” (Zech. 5:3), the angel tells us it is a covenant document, the Lord’s treaty given through Moses.

It is the execution of this curse sanction of the old covenant that is portrayed in Zechariah 5:1-4 (see Deut. 28:1–68; 29:16–28; cf. 27:11–26; Lev 26:3–39)

Meredith G. Kline, Glory in Our Midst: A Biblical-Theological Reading of Zechariah’s Night Visions (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001), 178.

I looked up again, and I saw, and look!—a flying scroll! And he asked me, “What are you seeing?” And I said, “I am seeing a flying scroll twenty cubits long and ten cubits wide.”

And he said to me, “This is the curse going out over the surface of the whole earth.

For everyone who steals has gone unpunished according to it, and likewise everyone who swears falsely has gone unpunished according to it. ‘I have sent it out,’ declares Yahweh of hosts, ‘and it will go into the house of the thief and into the house of the one swearing falsely by my name, and it will spend the night in that house and will destroy it, with its timber and its stone.’ ” Zech. 5:1–4 The Lexham English Bible

The King of Glory, enthroned above the ark of the covenant scroll, would maintain the sanctity of his holy house and land according to the covenant’s stipulations, cleansing them of all that failed to satisfy its demands, punishing all such according to its sanctions. “According to it … according to it” (Zech. 5:3), they must be cut off.

Then said he unto me, this is the curse,... So the law of Moses is called, because it has curses written in it, Deut. 27:15–26 and 28:15–26 and 29:19, 20 and 30:19. which curse is not causeless, but is according to law and justice; it is from the Lord, and is no other than the wrath of the Almighty; and, wherever it lights, it will remain and continue for ever.

Vitringa, on Isa. 24:6. says, this is the curse which Isaiah there prophesies of, which had its accomplishment in the times of Antiochus; but there the prophet is speaking, not of the land of Judea, but of the antichristian states.

That goeth forth over the face of the whole earth; over the whole land of Judea, and the inhabitants of it, for their breach of the law, contempt of the Gospel, and the rejection of the Messiah;

and which had its accomplishment when wrath came upon them to the uttermost, in the destruction of their nation, city, and temple; and is the curse God threatened to smite their land with, Mal. 4:6 and this curse also reaches to the whole world, and the inhabitants of it, who lie in wickedness; and to all sorts of sinners, particularly those next mentioned:

for every one that stealeth shall be cut off as on this side, according to it; as it is written and declared on one side of the roll: and every one that sweareth shall be cut off as on that side according to it; as is written and declared on the other side of the roll; which two sins of theft and false swearing, the one being against the second, and the other the first table of the law, shew that the curse of the law reaches to all sorts of sins and sinners;

to all who do not keep it in every respect; and, indeed, to all but those who are redeemed from it by the blood of Christ;

and that it is proportioned according to a man’s sins: and those two are particularly mentioned, because they are sins which prevailed among the Jews at the time Christ was on earth. Theft did, both in a literal and figurative sense, Matt. 23:14 KJV; Rom. 2:21; Luke 11:52; John 10:8, 10 and so did vain swearing, Matt. 5:33–36 and 23:16–22.

John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 6, The Baptist Commentary Series (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 701.

Here was a judgment cloud moving over the land, the winged cloud identified with the cherubim, the cloud-chariot on which the divine warrior-judge advances over the earth (Psa. 18:9–15, 10–16; 104:3)

Hence the flying scroll not merely symbolizes the standard of the covenant judgment and its angelic agents, it also represents a Parousia of the covenant God and Judge himself. It images an anathema advent of the Lord of hosts riding through the heavens in the midst of his vehicular angel agents.

Zechariah 5.1ff. warns those restored from the Babylonian exile of a future recurrence of national cutting off. Israel would again forfeit, this time beyond recovery, their national election to the heritage of the typological kingdom offered in the blessing sanctions of the old covenant.

In that respect, they would be disowned and suffer dispossession and dispersion as the vengeance of the covenant Lord, a coming of the wrath of God upon them to the uttermost (cf. 1 Thess. 2:16). This fate foretold in Zechariah 5 overtook the old order in 70 A.D., the doom Jesus announced in language recalling Zechariah 5 “Your house is left unto you desolate” (Matt 23:38).

Clearly pointing to the fall of old covenant Israel as the (at least) initial fulfillment of the flying scroll judgment is the interpretive recasting of the sixth vision in Zech. 13:2–9, the parallel to Zechariah 5 in the matching chiastic structures of the two parts of the book. There again we read of a judgment affecting “all the land” (Zech.13:8), and again of a cutting off: “two parts therein shall be cut off and perish” (Zech. 13:8).

And connected with this judgment is the prophecy of the messianic shepherd’s rejection and the scattering of his followers (Zech. 13:7; cf. Matt 26:31–2; Mark 14:27).

The cutting off befalls the generation that knew not the hour of its messianic visitation.

In its leadership and as a whole it was a generation of thieves and perjurers. They turned the house of God into a den of thieves (Jer. 7:11; Matt 21:13) and bore false witness against the Son of God.

Refused and cast out by them, the vindicated, exalted Messiah-Prince sent the Roman legions as his army to destroy their temple-city, pouring out on their abominable apostasy the desolations foretold in covenant sanctions and prophetic visions (Deut. 9:26–7).

Meredith G. Kline, Glory in Our Midst: A Biblical-Theological Reading of Zechariah’s Night Visions (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2001), 179-184.

the allusion in Mark 11:17 to Jeremiah also supports the idea of the disqualification of the Temple, for in its context the Jeremiah text predicts not a reform or cleansing of the Temple but its destruction. According to Jeremiah, the Temple in Jerusalem, like the earlier shrine at Shiloh, will be demolished (Jer. 7:12–14).

Consequently, those readers who have not really grasped the significance of Jesus’ suffering messiahship and the true nature of the kingdom—that is, those readers who expect Jesus to inaugurate the kingdom of God in a manner resembling that of a warrior-king—will, like the characters of the disciples in Mark’s Gospel, have to revise their expectations.

Paul Brooks Duff, “The March of the Divine Warrior and the Advent of the Greco-Roman King: Mark’s Account of Jesus’ Entry into Jerusalem,” Journal of Biblical Literature 111 (1992): 69-71.

Thus Paul could later look back on the death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ in the light of divine warrior imagery. For instance, in Colossians 2:13–15 he culminates his argument with divine warrior language:

“And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross” (Col 2:15 NIV). In Ephesians 4:8 he cites an OT divine warrior hymn (Ps.68) and so casts the ascension as a triumphal parade: “When he ascended on high, he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.” (NIV) Thus the divine warrior theme is pressed into service in the NT to describe Jesus’ victory over Satan on the cross.

Leland Ryken et al., Dictionary of Biblical Imagery (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 213

Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven,
and he who testifies for me is on high. Job 16:19

The parallelism now uses the Aramaic word “my advocate”—the one who testifies on my behalf. The word again appears in Gen 31:47 for Laban’s naming of the “heap of witness” in Aramaic—“Sahadutha.”

Biblical Studies Press, The NET Bible, Second Edition. (Denmark: Thomas Nelson, 2019).

WITNESS

New Testament

μάρτυς mártus; gen. márturos, masc.–fem. noun. A witness. One who has information or knowledge of something, and hence, one who can give information, bring to light, or confirm something (Matt. 18:16; 26:65; Mark 14:63; Luke 24:48; Acts 1:22; 5:32; 7:58; 2 Cor. 13:1; 1 Tim. 5:19; Heb. 10:28).

It denotes that the witness confirms something, though in many cases that witness may have been bribed or otherwise persuaded to make a false statement (Acts 6:13). In the sense of a simple confirmation (2 Cor. 1:23); of the Apostle’s faithfulness and spiritual integrity (Rom. 1:9; Phil. 1:8; 1 Thess. 2:5, 10; 1 Tim. 6:12; 2 Tim. 2:2).

Heb. 12:1 refers to the “cloud of witnesses” is mentioned. This may refer to them as spectators at a race, but seems to imply that they also testify, whether by word or deed, regarding the race they themselves have run.

Peculiar to the NT is the designation as mártures (pl., witnesses) of those who announce the facts of the gospel and tell its tidings (Acts 2:32; 3:15; 10:39, 41; 13:31; Rev. 11:3). Also mártus is used as a designation of those who have suffered death in consequence of confessing Christ (of Stephen, Acts 22:20; of Antipas, Rev. 2:13; see Rev. 17:6. These verses, however, should not be understood as if their witness consisted in their suffering death, but rather that their witnessing of Jesus became the cause of their death). The Lord Jesus in Rev. 1:5 is called “the faithful witness,” the faithful one (see Rev. 3:14)

Spiros Zodhiates, The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament (Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, 2000).

Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” They said this to test him, so that they could have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and began to write on the ground with his finger. John 8:5–7 (those who turn away from thee shall be written in the earth, (Jer. 17:13.)

But when they continued asking him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let the one among you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.”(The first stones were to be thrown by the witnesses Dt 17:7) (New American Bible, Revised Edition. (Washington, DC: The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2011)

WITNESS

Old Testament

Noun: עֵד (ʿēd), GK 6332 (S 5707), 69×. ʿēd, usually translated “witness,” is a legal term that derives from a verb meaning “to repeat, do again.” In the OT, a witness is someone who is able to repeat to others something he has observed firsthand. His testimony is legal and is used to confirm a fact.

But ʿēd is found more commonly among judicial proceedings. Deuteronomy requires the testimony of more than one “witness” to establish guilt (Deut. 19:15), especially in capital cases (Deut.17:6; cf. Num. 35:30), in which the “witnesses” are to cast the first stones (Deut. 17:7).

God’s love for truth and justice is displayed in the OT demand for witnesses to be faithful (Prov. 14:5) and truthful (Prov.14:25). The ninth commandment forbids bearing false “witness” (Exod. 20:16; cf. 23:1; Deut. 5:20). Elsewhere, the law requires that the defendant’s penalty be meted out to the “witness” if the witness is found to be false (Deut. 19:16–19).

Yahweh hates a false “witness” (Prov. 6:19) who mocks justice (Prov.19:28), speaks deceit (Prov.12:17), and lies (Prov.14:5). A false “witness” will not go unpunished (Prov.19:5, 9), but will perish (Prov.21:28).

God, who sees all things, is the ultimate witness. He is the “true and faithful witness” (Jer. 42:5), convicting people of their sin (Jer. 29:23; Mal 3:5) and confirming their integrity (1 Sam. 12:5; Job 16:19).

William D. Mounce, Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2006), 796.

THE ONE WHO REPRESENTS MORTALS BEFORE GOD

“O Earth, don’t cover up the wrong done to me!
Don’t muffle my cry!
There must be Someone in heaven who knows the truth about me,
in highest heaven, some Attorney who can clear my name—
My Champion, my Friend,
while I’m weeping my eyes out before God.
I appeal to the One who represents mortals before God
as a neighbor stands up for a neighbor. Job 16:18–21 (MSG)

What saith the Scripture Tradition must give way to the clear statements of the Scripture

The True and Faithful Witness

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