Revelation 19:9

Babylon, the great city that stands for the corrupt world set against God, has fallen (Revelation 17–18). On earth the kings and merchants who grew rich with her weep and wail over her (Revelation 18:9–19), while in heaven the news is met with praise. The chapter opens with a run of it (Revelation 19:1–6), and the word allēlouïa sounds four times, in verses 1, 3, 4 and 6. This is the fourth and last, and the loudest. The word is Hebrew carried over into Greek, and it means “Praise ye Jah”, that is, “Praise the LORD”. It is the cry of the last psalms of the Psalter (Psalms 146–150), so the song of God’s people in Israel’s worship is the song heaven sings at the end.

The multitude gives its reason in one line: “for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” The word behind “omnipotent” is pantokrátōr, built from pas, “all”, and kratos, “strength” or “power”. It means the all-ruling One, the Almighty, and it names God as sovereign over all creation and all of history. The verb is basileúō, from basileus, “king”, and it means to reign or to be king. The English “reigneth” is a present, while the Greek tense is an aorist, often read as “has begun to reign”. God has always been King, as the psalm says: “The LORD reigneth, he is clothed with majesty” (Psalm 93:1). Heaven celebrates his reign standing in the open, now that the city that defied him has been brought down. Nebuchadnezzar learned the same truth when his understanding returned and he praised the God whose dominion is everlasting and whose hand none can stay (Daniel 4:34–35). Paul gives God the same kind of titles when he calls him “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords” (1 Timothy 6:15–16).

John received this vision in a time of hard persecution under Rome, most likely in the reign of the emperor Domitian around AD 95, when Christians were pressed to honour the emperor as divine. To say “the Lord God omnipotent reigneth” in that world was to confess that every earthly throne answers to God’s. The words carry the same comfort today, for they are sung over a world where evil long looked as if it had its way, and they declare that God’s plan stands against every earthly power and every rebellion.

Heaven turns from the judgment of a harlot city to the wedding of the Lamb. “Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him” calls the whole company to joy with two verbs, chaírō and agalliáō, for gladness and exultation. The “him” who receives the honour is God, whose saving plan is reaching its end.

The Bridegroom is the Lamb. The word arníon is the diminutive of the ordinary word for lamb, “a lambkin” or “a little lamb”, and it is John’s name for Christ throughout Revelation, where it appears 29 times. It recalls his death. John sees him as “a Lamb as it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6), heaven sings “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain” (Revelation 5:12–13), and the name looks back to the Passover lamb of Exodus 12 and to John the Baptist’s cry, “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). The one who marries his people is the one who died for them, so the wedding rests on his sacrifice, and here the Lamb who was slain stands as the victorious Bridegroom.

The word for marriage, gámos, means a wedding and the celebration that goes with it. Heaven says it “is come”, using an aorist, the tense for a completed action, so the long-awaited day is spoken of as having arrived. It is the high point of the whole story of salvation.

God called his bond with Israel a marriage long before this. “For thy Maker is thine husband; the LORD of hosts is his name” (Isaiah 54:5). To a straying people he said, “Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married unto you” (Jeremiah 3:14), and through Hosea he promised, “I will betroth thee unto me for ever” (Hosea 2:19–20). Isaiah adds, “as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee” (Isaiah 62:5). The New Testament takes up this picture for Christ and his church.

Weddings in John’s day were long events, with a betrothal, a procession and a great feast, and a bride prepared for her day with special clothing and adornment. His first readers would have heard “his wife hath made herself ready” in that light. The bride also stands opposite the woman of chapters 17 and 18. Babylon was a harlot and has been judged, while the Lamb’s wife is faithful and pure, and heaven rejoices over her.

Verse 8 shows what her readiness looks like. “To her was granted” uses dídōmi, the plain word “to give”, so the bride’s wedding clothes are given to her. The cloth is býssinos, fine linen, an expensive fabric worn by royalty and people of high rank and associated with priestly garments, a fitting honour for the Lamb’s wife. It is “clean and white”, katharós kai lamprós, clean and bright, the radiant purity of a bride on her wedding day. White clothing in Revelation belongs to the redeemed, who washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:9–14).

Babylon was “arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls” (Revelation 17:4), and Revelation uses this same word for fine linen when it describes the great city’s clothing. What marks the bride’s linen is that it is clean, that it is given to her, and that heaven itself explains it: “for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” The word is dikaíōma, “an equitable deed”, and by extension a statute or decision. Here it is plural, ta dikaiōmata tōn hagíōn, “the righteous acts of the saints”. The bride’s dress is made of the deeds of God’s holy people.

Now the angel who has been showing John these things speaks to him. “Write” tells John to set the words down for the churches, so that they are kept for every generation that reads this book. What he writes is a blessing in the same form as the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.” The word makários means “blessed” or “happy”, and it is the word Paul uses of God himself, “the blessed and only Potentate”. Here it declares the happiness of everyone invited to the Lamb’s table.

“Called” is kaléō, to call, properly aloud, and so to invite or summon. In Jesus’ parable a king “made a marriage for his son” and sent his servants to call the guests, and when the first ones bidden made light of it, the hall was filled from the highways (Matthew 22:1–14). In Revelation the called are God’s redeemed people, the bride herself, gathered at the table by his invitation and his grace. To be invited to a great wedding feast was an honour, and this invitation is into endless joy.

The deîpnon, “supper”, was the main meal of the day, usually eaten in the evening, a time of fellowship and plenty. A Jewish wedding had stages: the betrothal (kiddushin), a time of waiting apart, and then the wedding feast (nisu’in), often at the groom’s home and sometimes lasting for days. The marriage supper of the Lamb is that final feast.

Isaiah saw it coming: “in this mountain shall the LORD of hosts make unto all people a feast of fat things”, and there “He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces” (Isaiah 25:6–9). Jesus told his disciples that he was going to prepare a place for them and would come again to receive them to himself (John 14:1–3). On the night before he died he took the cup and said, “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:20). The supper of the Lamb is the full celebration of that new covenant sealed in his blood, and the one who said “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) is both its host and its Bridegroom.

The angel adds a seal: “These are the true sayings of God.” Everything heaven has sung in Revelation 19:1–8, and the promise of the wedding and the feast, is God’s own word, and it will come to pass.

Overwhelmed by all he has seen and heard, John falls at the angel’s feet to worship him. The verb is proskynéō, to do homage or worship, often by bowing to the ground. In the Greek and Roman world people prostrated themselves before emperors, gods and powerful men, and John, faced with a glorious messenger who had shown him such things, does the same.

The angel stops him at once: “See thou do it not.” The Greek, mḗ horáō, is a strong warning, “beware lest you do it”. Then he says who he is: “I am thy fellowservant, and of thy brethren that have the testimony of Jesus.” The word sýndoulos is built from sýn, “with”, and doúlos, “slave” or “servant”, so it means a fellow slave. The angel stands beside John and beside every believer who holds the witness of Jesus, all of them servants of one Master. Hebrews calls the angels “ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation” (Hebrews 1:14).

Then comes the command, “worship God.” The word theós is the common word for a god, and with the article it names the one supreme God, as it does in the angel’s command. Moses taught Israel, “Thou shalt fear the LORD thy God, and serve him” (Deuteronomy 6:13), and Jesus answered Satan with the same law: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10).

These five verses show us the end from heaven’s side. The Lord God omnipotent reigns, and the evil that long looked unbeatable has fallen. The Lamb who was slain is the Bridegroom, and his people, washed in his blood and made holy by his grace, are his bride. Even her wedding clothes are a gift, and the righteous deeds that make them up are the works God prepared for his people to walk in. The invitation to the supper carries his blessing and his word that it is true.

The passage also shows who God is. He judges what is false and rejoices over what is faithful. He shares his joy with his people and keeps their worship for himself alone. When John fell before the glorious angel, he was told “worship God”, and that is the word for every one of us who will sit at the Lamb’s table. The great multitude’s Alleluia is a song God’s people can join now, because the God who will reign then reigns today.