The seven bowls: the song of Moses and the last plagues

Revelation was sent as a letter to seven churches in Roman Asia (1:4), probably about AD 95 under Domitian, though a minority argue for Nero's time. Its hearers were a small and exposed people, and chapters 15 and 16 answer their question: will the blood of the martyrs be answered? Chapter 13 showed the beasts at war with the saints. Chapter 14 showed the Lamb on Zion and a harvest of the earth. Chapters 15 and 16 describe the last of three sets of seven judgments, after the seals (chapter 6 and 8:1) and the trumpets (chapters 8 to 11).

The bowls differ from the trumpets in scope. The trumpets struck a third of the earth, the sea, the waters and the sky (8:7-12), a limited warning. The bowls are 'the seven final plagues, with which the wrath of God is completed' (15:1). The people struck do not repent (16:9, 11, 21), as Pharaoh did not.

The two chapters have a clear structure: a vision of those who conquered the beast singing in heaven (15:1-4), the opening of the heavenly temple and the giving of the bowls (15:5-8), and the seven outpourings (16:1-21), with the sixth and seventh opening onto a gathering of kings for battle and the fall of Babylon. The first hearers, who knew the exodus story from the Law and the Psalms, would have recognized that the judgment of the new Egypt follows the pattern of the first.

These chapters are apocalyptic prophecy, and their pictures are drawn above all from the book of Exodus. The first bowl is the sores of Exodus 9, the second and third the blood of Exodus 7, the fifth the darkness of Exodus 10, the sixth the frogs of Exodus 8 (with the drying of a river like the Red Sea), and the seventh the hail of Exodus 9. John has changed the order and enlarged the scale, but the allusion is plain. The reading rule is to ask what each plague meant in Egypt: a judgment on the gods of the empire and a deliverance for God's people.

A second question is how the seals, trumpets and bowls relate. They can be read as a strict sequence, one set after another, or as three views of the same period with growing intensity (recapitulation).

• The second view is at least as old as the commentary of Victorinus of Pettau, who died about AD 304. The signs for it are that each series ends with thunder, lightning, earthquake and hail (8:5; 11:19; 16:18-21) and reaches the end of history.
• The first view is held by most dispensational readers, who see the bowls as events of a future tribulation, and the strength of its case is that the bowls are called 'final' and described in a numbered order.

The four approaches then read the bowls differently. Preterist readers see first-century judgments. Gentry and Chilton, who date the book before AD 70, read them as judgments on Jerusalem and the Jewish leadership that persecuted the church, while other scholars read them as judgments on Rome. Historicist readers have found the bowls in successive events of European history, and some identified the Euphrates with the Ottoman power. Idealist readers, such as Hendriksen, see the bowls as the intensified judgment of God on persistent evil, recurring through the age. Futurist readers, such as Walvoord, expect literal plagues in the last part of a future tribulation and a literal campaign at Armageddon tied to the return of Christ.

The millennial views weigh in here. Dispensational premillennialists place the bowls before the return of Christ and the thousand years. Historic premillennialists such as Ladd also place the final judgments before the return, though usually with a symbolic reading of the details. Amillennial readers (Hoekema, Riddlebarger) take the bowls as the culmination of judgment within the one age between the comings. Postmillennial readers tend to read the plagues as events within history that the gospel outlasts.

Our understanding of the passage is limited to this: whatever their timing, the bowls are the complete form of God's judgment on a world that has taken the beast's mark, and every one of them is modeled on the plagues that freed Israel.

15:1-4. John sees 'another great and marvelous sign in heaven': seven angels with the final plagues. Before they act, he sees those 'who had conquered the beast and its image and the number of its name' standing by a 'sea of glass mixed with fire'. The glass sea first appeared before the throne in 4:6. Now it is the place of the redeemed, like Israel on the far bank of the Red Sea. They hold harps and sing 'the song of God's servant Moses and of the Lamb'. The song of Moses in Exodus 15 celebrated the drowning of Pharaoh's army, and Deuteronomy 32 is also called Moses' song. The words here are built from lines of the Psalms and prophets: 'Great and wonderful are Your works', 'Just and true are Your ways', and 'All nations will come and worship before You' echo Psalm 86:9, Psalm 111:2 and 145:17, and Jeremiah 10:7. It is one song of Moses and of the Lamb, because the Lamb has done the second exodus.

15:5-8. The temple, 'the tabernacle of the Testimony', opens. The name comes from Exodus 38:21 and Numbers 9:15, where the tabernacle held the tablets. Seven angels in clean linen and golden sashes receive seven golden bowls from one of the four living creatures. The temple fills with smoke 'from the glory of God and from His power', as at the dedication of the tabernacle and of Solomon's temple (Exodus 40:34-35; 1 Kings 8:10-11), and no one can enter until the plagues are finished. Judgment comes from the place of God's own presence.

16:1-9. A voice from the temple orders the pouring.

• The first bowl brings 'loathsome, malignant sores' on those with the mark, as in Exodus 9:8-12.
• The second turns the sea to blood, and the third turns the rivers and springs to blood, as in Exodus 7:17-21. Where the second trumpet turned a third of the sea to blood (8:8-9), now every living thing in the sea dies. The angel of the waters declares God righteous: 'they have spilled the blood of saints and prophets, and You have given them blood to drink, as they deserve.' This is judgment in kind, and the altar answers 'true and just are Your judgments', picking up the martyrs' cry at the altar in 6:9-10.
• The fourth bowl scorches people with the sun, and they curse God without repentance.

16:10-16.

• The fifth bowl falls on 'the throne of the beast', and its kingdom is darkened, as Egypt was (Exodus 10:21-23).
• The sixth dries the Euphrates 'to prepare the way for the kings of the East'. In the Old Testament a drying river is the means of rescue or conquest: the Red Sea and the Jordan (Joshua 3), and the Euphrates, which Isaiah 44:27 and Jeremiah 50:38 and 51:36 link to the fall of Babylon, taken by Cyrus when, according to Greek historians, the river was diverted. For Romans the Euphrates was the frontier beyond which lay the Parthians, the empire's one great rival, and after Nero's death some stories spoke of his return with Parthian help. Many futurist readers expect a literal eastern army at the end. The dragon, the beast and the false prophet send out three unclean spirits 'like frogs', one of the Egyptian plagues (Exodus 8), to gather the kings 'for battle on the great day of God the Almighty'. Between the sixth and seventh comes a word of Christ: 'Behold, I am coming like a thief', the third beatitude (16:15). 'Armageddon' is the Greek form of the Hebrew Har Megiddo, 'mountain of Megiddo'. Megiddo overlooked the plain of Jezreel, the site of famous battles (Judges 5:19; 2 Kings 23:29) and of the mourning of Zechariah 12:11, and has no mountain. Some propose that the name means 'mount of assembly'. No battle is described in chapter 16. The gathering is the point, and the battle is taken up in 19:19.

16:17-21. The seventh bowl is poured 'into the air', and a voice from the throne says 'It is done!', which anticipates the 'It is done' of 21:6. A great earthquake splits 'the great city' into three, the cities of the nations fall, 'God remembered Babylon the great', islands flee and mountains vanish, and great hailstones fall. Those who suffer still curse God. The chapter ends on the fall of Babylon, which chapters 17 and 18 will explain.

What do all the main readings agree on here? That God's judgments are just, that they answer the prayers of the persecuted (6:9-10), and that they flow from his holiness. The angel of the waters and the altar both say so, and the saints sing it. Wrath in the Bible is not loss of temper. It is God's settled opposition to evil, and in these chapters it falls on those who have shed the blood of saints and prophets. All also agree that the judgment is complete: the temple is filled with smoke until the plagues are finished, and the voice says 'It is done'. And all agree that God's people are on the shore, singing, and not under the plagues.

The passage also shows the biblical pattern of redemption: God saves his people through the sea and judges their oppressor. The New Testament uses the exodus pattern for baptism (1 Corinthians 10:1-2) and for the whole work of Christ (Luke 9:31, where the Greek for Jesus' 'departure' is exodos). It also teaches that the nations will come to worship before God (Psalm 86:9; Isaiah 66:23), which is why the song says that 'all nations will come and worship'. The repeated refusal to repent raises the question of human responsibility. The hardening of Pharaoh is the same pattern in Exodus, where it is said both that Pharaoh hardened his heart and that God hardened it. The Bible holds both truths and does not explain how they fit.

What remains debated is the timing and scale: whether the bowls are first-century events, a recurring pattern, a stretch of history, or a future series, and whether Armageddon names a place, a battle or a symbol. Behind that is the question the whole of Revelation raises about eschatology: is the end described mainly as a sequence of events or as a way of seeing the age? The common ground is that the end is a judgment God completes, and that his people have already crossed.

The song is sung to God Almighty and to the King of the nations, and it is the song 'of Moses and of the Lamb'. Moses was the servant of God who led the first exodus, and the Lamb is the one who has led the greater one by his blood (5:9; 12:11). Luke says that at the transfiguration Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus about his 'departure' (exodos) that he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem (Luke 9:31). Revelation 15 completes that picture: the exodus of Christ ends with a people on the shore, singing.

In the middle of the sixth bowl the speaker is Christ: 'Behold, I am coming like a thief.' This is his own saying from the Gospels (Matthew 24:43-44; Luke 12:39) and from the letter to Sardis (Revelation 3:3), and it comes as a blessing on those who stay awake. The plagues do not fall on the world by a blind process. They fall by the word of the one who rules the kings of the earth (1:5). The 'sea of glass mixed with fire' lies before the throne of God and of the Lamb. The Lamb is not a spectator. In the next chapters he will be the one who overcomes the kings (17:14) and the rider named Faithful and True (19:11).