A song with a closed roll of singers

Where we are

We have come through the dragon, the beast from the sea and the beast from the earth, and Revelation 13 has just ended with a mark on the right hand or the forehead and a number. Chapter 14 opens by cutting to a different mountain and a different mark, and the contrast is the point: the beast's followers are marked and so are these, and the whole difference is whose name is written.

What happens

"I, John, looked and there was the Lamb standing on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who had his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. I heard a sound from heaven like the sound of rushing water or a loud peal of thunder. The sound I heard was like that of harpists playing their harps. They were singing what seemed to be a new hymn before the throne, before the four living creatures and the elders. No one could learn this hymn except the hundred and forty-four thousand who had been ransomed from the earth." And: "These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They have been ransomed as the firstfruits of the human race for Theos and the Lamb. On their lips no deceit has been found; they are unblemished."

What to notice

Adousin hōs ōdēn kainēn — "they sing what is like a new song." The fourth new song in five days — Psalm 149 and Revelation 5 on Thursday, Psalm 144 on Saturday, and now this. And this one has hōs in front of it, as it were a new song, which no translation quite carries. John is describing a sound he can only approximate, and the sentence before it has already tried three similes: many waters, thunder, harpists.

Then the restriction. Oudeis edynato mathein tēn ōdēn ei mē hai hekaton tesserakonta tessares chiliades — "no one was able to learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand." Manthanō, to learn — not that no one else was permitted to sing it but that no one else could pick it up. The song is not secret; it is unlearnable, which is a different kind of exclusion and a stranger one.

The mark is the chapter's argument. To onoma autou kai to onoma tou patros autou gegrammenon epi tōn metōpōn autōn — his name and his Father's name written on their foreheads. Revelation 13:16 has just described the other mark, on the right hand or the forehead, and 13:17 has said nobody could buy or sell without it. Both groups are branded. The book does not offer an unmarked option, and the question it puts is only ever whose name is on you.

The commercial verb from Revelation 5 returns. Hoi ēgorasmenoi apo tēs gēs — those bought from the earth — agorazō, the market verb, the same one used when the lamb bought for Theos with your blood. And the purchase is then given a cultic name: aparchē tō theō kai tō arniō, firstfruits for Theos and the Lamb.

Aparchē is yesterday's word. 1 Corinthians 15:20 called the risen Christ aparchē tōn kekoimēmenōn, the firstfruits of those who sleep — the first sheaf of Leviticus 23:10, waved to commit the rest of the field. Here the same term is applied to the redeemed rather than to Christ, which means this crowd is not the harvest but the pledge of one.

And the last phrase is sacrificial. Amōmoi eisin — "they are without blemish." Amōmos is the technical requirement for an animal fit for the altar, Leviticus's tamim. Put beside aparchē, the two words make the hundred and forty-four thousand an offering rather than a rank.

A note on what the lectionary leaves out. The reading skips Revelation 14:4a — houtoi eisin hoi meta gynaikōn ouk emolynthēsan, parthenoi gar eisin, "these are they who did not defile themselves with women, for they are virgins." It is one of the hardest verses in the book, and the selection's 4b is a deliberate cut. Whatever one makes of the omitted line — a purity-of-army image from Deuteronomy 23, a metaphor for refusing idolatry, or a literal ascetic claim — the page as read today does not contain it.