Revelation of John 4:7

Look at what John actually writes. Four living creatures, and each one is described with a comparison word: like a lion, like a calf, a face like a man, like an eagle. He never says the first creature is a lion. He is a man straining to put into words something he saw once and never saw again, and the repeated "like" is his honesty about that.

The verse before this ( Revelation 4:6) tells you where they are: in the center and around the throne, covered with eyes front and back. The verse after ( Revelation 4:8) tells you what they do: they never stop saying "Holy, holy, holy." So verse 7 sits between their position and their song. It describes what they look like, and the point of the description is worship.

These four faces are not John's invention. Ezekiel saw almost the same thing by a canal in Babylon ( Ezekiel 1:10), and he later names the creatures cherubim ( Ezekiel 10:14). John takes Ezekiel's vision and fuses it with Isaiah's seraphim, who have six wings and cry "Holy, holy, holy" ( Isaiah 6:2-3). So what you are seeing here is the deepest, oldest picture Scripture has of what stands closest to God.

What do the four faces mean? The most straightforward reading is that they stand for creation itself at its best: the lion for wild animals, the calf for the tame animals that plow and pull, the man for humanity, the eagle for everything that flies. Tyndale In other words, the noblest, the strongest, the wisest, and the swiftest things God made, all turned toward him. bible.usccb.org

Christians have long read more into it. An early tradition, going back to Irenaeus around AD 170, matched the four faces to the four Gospels, though Irenaeus and Augustine disagreed about which face goes with which Gospel. ccel.org Some older Jewish writers connected them to the four tribal banners in Israel's wilderness camp. Adam Clarke These readings are not wrong so much as secondary. The text itself simply shows you creation gathered at the throne, eyes open, singing.

Where this sits in Revelation: chapters 1 through 3 are letters to seven struggling churches on earth. Chapter 4 opens a door into heaven and shows the throne that stands behind everything those churches are suffering. Verse 7 is part of the furniture of that throne room, and it is there to steady you before the scroll and the Lamb appear in chapter 5.

John wrote this from Patmos, a small rocky island off the coast of what is now western Turkey, where he says he was exiled "because of the word of God" ( Revelation 1:9). Most scholars date the book to the mid-90s AD under the emperor Domitian, though some argue for the late 60s under Nero. Either way, you are reading a letter written by a prisoner to churches under pressure.

That pressure had a face. In the cities John writes to (Ephesus, Pergamum, Smyrna, and the rest), the emperor was being honored as a god. Pergamum had a temple to Augustus; Ephesus built a huge one to Domitian. Trade guilds held meals in honor of the emperor and local gods, and a Christian who refused to attend could lose work, friends, or worse. To stay in business, you bowed.

Picture the Roman throne room: the emperor seated, his court arranged around him, people prostrate, shouts of "Lord and God." Now read Revelation 4. There is a throne, a court, falling down, a cry of "Holy, holy, holy." John is showing frightened believers the real throne room, the one Rome's is a counterfeit of.

The four faces come from an older crisis. Around 593 BC, Ezekiel was a priest living among Jewish exiles in Babylon, deported by Nebuchadnezzar's army before Jerusalem fell. He had no temple and seemed to have no God. Then by the Kebar canal he saw a throne on wheels carried by four-faced creatures ( Ezekiel 1:10), and the message was that God was not stuck in Jerusalem. He had come to Babylon with his people.

Composite creatures were everywhere in that world. Assyrian and Babylonian palaces had huge stone guardians at the gates, bulls or lions with human heads and eagle wings. Ezekiel's readers, and John's, would have recognized the type: these are throne guardians, the beings that stand nearest a king. The difference is that Israel's God needs no guards. His creatures are there to worship, not to protect him.

So verse 7 reaches back across six centuries, from a Babylonian canal to a Roman prison island, and says the same thing both times: whatever empire is squeezing you, the throne is still occupied, and all creation still answers to it.

ζῶον (zōon, G2226), "a living thing." The older King James translation says "beast," and that is unfortunate, because Revelation uses a completely different Greek word for the monster of chapter 13. This word simply means a live creature, built on the verb "to live." Strong's These are not beasts in any threatening sense. They are the most alive things in the room.

ὅμοιος (hómoios, G3664), "similar in appearance or character," and ὡς (hōs, G5613), "in that manner, as." Strong's John leans on both words. Every creature is like something. He is not describing a zoo; he is reaching for the closest earthly comparison and admitting it falls short.

λέων (léōn, G3023), "lion," and μόσχος (móschos, G3448), "a young bullock." Strong's The second is interesting. The Greek Old Testament often uses this word for a full-grown ox, so "calf" and "ox" both work, and that matches the ox in Ezekiel 1:10. Jamieson-Fausset-Brown An ox is strength that serves: it pulls, it plows, and it was the standard animal for sacrifice.

πρόσωπον (prósōpon, G4383), "the front, the countenance," paired with ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos, G444), "a human being." Strong's Notice only the third creature is described by its face. The others are "like" a whole animal. The human one is identified by what you look at when you meet someone, the face.

πέτομαι (pétomai, G4072), "to fly." Strong's The eagle is not perched. It is caught mid-flight, which is why your translation says "in flight." Even in a vision of a throne, this creature is moving.

Start with what Revelation itself does with these creatures. In the very next chapter, when the Lamb takes the scroll, the four living creatures fall down before him and sing a new song: "Worthy are You" ( Revelation 5:8-9). The creatures who in chapter 4 adore God on the throne turn in chapter 5 and adore Jesus. Creation's worship is aimed at him.

Then look at the first face. Jacob's blessing called Judah "a young lion" ( Genesis 49:9), and Revelation 5:5 names Jesus "the Lion of the tribe of Judah." That is a straight line, not a stretch. The lion at the throne points to the Lion who conquers, and when John turns to look at that Lion, he sees a slain Lamb ( Revelation 5:6).

The calf, or ox, is the animal of the altar. It is what a priest brought when he needed cleansing for himself and for the people ( Leviticus 16:6). Jesus is the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices, entering the real throne room "by His own blood" ( Hebrews 9:12). The ox face is a quiet echo of that.

The human face is the one you should linger on. God did not take on the form of a lion or an eagle. "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us" ( John 1:14). Of all the faces at the throne, one of them is ours, and Jesus made it his.

The eagle in flight is harder to pin down, and I'll be honest about that. Christians have read it as a picture of the ascension, or of the heavenly view of John's Gospel, but the text does not say so. What I can say is that Jesus is the one who descended and then "ascended far above all the heavens" ( Ephesians 4:10).

The old tradition that matched these faces to the four Gospels was never really about zoology. It was a way of saying that the one Jesus is seen in four portraits: the King, the Servant, the Man, the One from above. ccel.org Whichever face you assign to whichever Gospel, the deeper truth holds: everything God made, at its best, is a picture that finds its subject in Christ, "for in Him all things were created" ( Colossians 1:16).

Here is where this verse presses on you. It shows you creation at its best, and every one of those creatures is facing the throne. The lion's strength, the ox's labor, the man's mind, the eagle's speed, all of it is pointed at God and none of it at itself.

Now be honest about where your strength is pointed. You have some lion in you, some capacity to push and win and protect what is yours. You have ox in you, the ability to work long and carry weight. You have a human face, a mind that reasons and plans. You have an eagle's reach, ambitions that climb. Where are they facing?

Most of us have built a throne room of our own and set ourselves in the center of it. Our strength serves our security. Our labor serves our comfort. Our mind serves our arguments. Our ambition serves our name. The four creatures around God's throne are covered with eyes ( Revelation 4:6), and they see him clearly. We are covered with eyes too, and mostly we are looking at ourselves.

The cost this verse asks is simple to say and expensive to pay. Turn around. Take the best of what you are, the strongest and wisest and fastest parts, and aim them at the one on the throne. That will mean strength spent on people who cannot repay you, labor done when no one is watching, a mind used to understand God rather than to win, and ambition that is willing to be small if he gets the glory.

And it asks you to do this in the middle of pressure. John's readers were told to bow to Caesar or lose their livelihood. You will be told, more quietly, to bow to money or approval or fear. The vision is there to steady you: the throne is occupied, and the most alive things in the universe are already worshiping. Join them, and keep at it. They "never stop" ( Revelation 4:8). Neither should you.

• Lord, you sit on the throne, and the best of everything you made faces you. Turn my face toward you too.
• Take the lion in me, my strength and my will to win, and spend it on your purposes instead of my own.
• Take the ox in me, my capacity for long hard work, and let me labor for you when no one is watching.
• You gave me a human face and then wore one yourself. Thank you, Jesus, for coming as one of us.
• When I am pressed to bow to the thrones of this world, remind me that your throne is still occupied, and give me the courage to keep worshiping you.

• Of the four faces (lion, ox, man, eagle), which one is most like you right now, and what is that strength actually serving?
• The creatures are described only by comparison, "like" this and "like" that. Where have you mistaken your own picture of God for God himself?
• John saw this throne room from a prison island. What would it change in your week to believe that the throne is occupied and creation is already worshiping?
• Only the third creature is named by its face. When God looks at your face, what does he see turned toward him, and what does he see turned away?
• The creatures never stop. Where in your life has worship become occasional, and what would it cost to make it constant?