The 144,000 and an innumerable throng

Revelation 7. Where are the 12 tribes of Israel today? Why are 144,000 called out from them? And what is the great multitude now seen before the throne?

The tribes are those descended from the twelve sons of Israel (the name God gave Jacob), omitting Dan and counting Joseph as two tribes through his sons Ephraim and Manasseh (Jos 14:4). These were the sons born to Joseph when he was in Egypt, whom Jacob blessed as if they were Joseph’s immediate sons. Although Manasseh was born first, Jacob pronounced a greater blessing upon Ephraim, who is here listed as carrying on the name of his father. “His offspring will become a fullness of nations,” Jacob prophesied (Gen 48:19). If the blessing was fulfilled, it can only have been partially, for the tribes Ephraim and Manasseh rejected God, and eventually he rejected them. Dan is omitted from the list because the tribe persistently worshiped a carved image (Judg 18:30f) and was omitted from the genealogies (1 Chr 1–7). It is not, however, debarred from finally inheriting the land (Ezek 48:1).

The first and last-named tribes, Judah and Benjamin, along with most of Levi, survive to the present day. They are the Jews, so named after their territory Judah or (in Latin) Judaea, which was named after the tribe. Their ancestors lived there from the Conquest c. 1400 BC until their exile in 586 BC, when Nebuchdrezzar deported those who lived in the cities to Babylonia; the agricultural poor remained. After 50 years some of the exiles returned; the rest remained in Babylonia and subsequently spread to other parts of the Near East, where, having finally learned not to worship idols, they maintained their ethnic identity (Est 3:8, Acts 2:9-11). After the first and second revolts against the Romans those in Judaea were also exiled. Although some today can reasonably claim to descend from the tribe of Levi, genealogies going back to specific tribes were lost when the Temple was destroyed. Over the past 100 years many Jews have migrated to the land. Nonetheless, more still live in other parts of the world – chiefly the United States – than in Palestine itself. It is remarkable that the Jews retain their identity at all.

As a single kingdom, Israel existed for little more than a century. Solomon, Israel’s third king, was succeeded in 931 by Rehoboam. At his accession ten of the tribes (counting Ephraim and Manasseh separately and not counting Levi) broke away from Judah and Benjamin to form a separate, northern kingdom called Israel, distinct from Judah. Their first king was Jeroboam, from the tribe of Ephraim. A few years into his reign he abandoned Judah’s Jerusalem-centred religion, built two new religious centres, and persuaded Israel to identify Yahweh with a golden calf. Objecting, most of the Levites in Israel went over to the house of David.

Israel continued until Assyria conquered the kingdom. In 732 Tiglath-pileser annexed the land belonging to the tribe of Naphtali, immediately north of the Sea of Galilee, and deported the population to Assyria (II Ki 15:29). Then in 721, ‘in the ninth year of Hoshea [king of Israel], the king of Assyria captured Samaria. He carried Israel away into Assyria and placed them in Halah [N Iraq] and on the Khabur, the river of Guzana [in NE Syria], and in the cities of the Medes [NW Iran]’ (II Ki 17:6). These deportees were chiefly the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh. In their stead the Assyrians brought in people from other parts of the empire, rendering the dispossession irrevocable, and the territory became an Assyrian province, named Samaria after Israel’s former capital. In New Testament times the inhabitants were called Samaritans. The territory of the tribe of Issachar was also annexed – hence Jacob’s prophecy that Issachar would become a gang of slaves (Gen 49:15). Some of the Israelites fled to the southern kingdom and became part of Judah. Anna, for example, the woman who recognised the baby Jesus as the Messiah when he was presented at the Temple, belonged to the tribe of Asher. Those who had been deported to Assyria and beyond merged with the Gentiles. New Testament references to ‘the twelve tribes in the Dispersion’ (Jas 1:1, I Pet 1:1, Acts 26:7) were largely notional, since most of them by then no longer existed.

‘Israel’ in the prophecies may refer either to the whole nation of Israel (even Judah alone where Judah represents the whole nation) or to the northern kingdom distinct from the southern; usually the context makes clear which. In Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones, some 150 years after the Assyrian deportations and 11 years into the Babylonian Exile, God said, “These bones are the whole house of Israel.” He promised that he would raise the Israelites from their graves and place them in their own land. ‘Judah and the children of Israel associated with him’ would be re-united with ‘Joseph and all the house of Israel associated with him’. They would no longer be estranged, but one king would rule them all.

God drove the northern tribes out of the promised land because they did not wish to be set apart as his own people, distinct from the nations around them (II Ki 17:15). To abandon Yahweh was necessarily to lose their identity, and that over time is what happened. No prophets followed them into exile, and we have no evidence that the exiled tribes ever came back. ‘Joseph and all the house of Israel associated with him’ in Ezekiel’s vision therefore refers to the northern tribes before they merged with the Gentiles.

Despite the fate suffered by the northern kingdom, Judah proved to be even more adulterous than her sister. Why, then, did God allow some of the Jews back? And if he still had a purpose for them, why did he apparently have no further purpose for the rest of Israel?

God had promised Abraham that he would multiply his offspring ‘as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore’ (Gen 15:5, 22:17). Though similar, the similes are not the same. Israel had become as numerous as the visible stars already by the time they entered Canaan (Deut 1:10), but – allowing for hyperbole – they never became as numerous as the sand of the sea. The promise still awaited its time. The first part of the prophecy referred to future descendants, those who would come into the promise through faith in the Messiah (Rom 4:16-18); only after losing their ethnic identity would the children of Israel increase beyond number. Faith would determine who was a child of Israel. The rest of the prophecy referred to a time still more distant, when the pre-exilic descendants of Israel would be reunified with Judah after rising from the grave. The place where they were told, “You are not my people,” was the land of Israel. It was from there, and from the countries to which the exiles were deported, that they would be resurrected (Jer 23:7f). They would not be so populous that they could not be numbered. Rather, “I will set them in their land and multiply them” (Ezek 37:26); “I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man and the seed of beast” (Jer 31:27).

The sense is that spiritual blindness has affected part of Israel, not that partial spiritual blindness has affected all Israel. There is an ordained period when the Jews, apart from the minority who believed, must be ‘enemies of God for your sake’. But when the harvest of Gentile souls is complete, then the Messiah will come; he will lift the blindness and save the whole house of Israel. He will raise them from the dead.

In the latter days days – an unspecified period near the end of history – they will seek the true God and remember his covenant with David, their king before they seceded.

Gentile believers are grafted into the olive tree and share its root (Rom 11:17). Previously they were alienated from the polity of Israel; now, being reconciled to God, they are fellow citizens with them (Eph 2:12-19), a ‘company of nations’ alongside the nation of Israel proper (Gen 35:11, Amos 9:12, Rom 4:17). So ‘Israel’ now has a wider sense than the genealogically defined tribes, which no longer exist as such. The 144,000 from every tribe of Israel are Gentiles, even the 12,000 from Judah.

Since the tribes are notional, so presumably is the number of 12,000 attributed to each, though the total may be actual. As in Gideon’s (Ju 7:3-6) and Elijah’s day (I Ki 19:18), the total is relatively small. Not everyone is chosen – they are chosen ‘from’ the tribes (similarly 5:9), believers who fear God rather than man, who worship him as creator of heaven and earth, and who sigh and groan at the abominations being committed in the city (Ezek 9:4). The seal is equivalent to the blood daubed on Israel’s doorposts and lintels at the Exodus. It implies protection against natural as much as supernatural evil, and anointing for a special purpose. The role of these servants is to prophesy about the one who is coming. Like the seventy that Jesus sent ahead of him into every city and town, they will heal the sick, preach a message of repentance, and tell the people, “The kingdom of God is near.” Their adversaries will be powerless to contradict them, for the Holy Spirit will tell them what to say.

So there will be one final push. Like the apostles at Pentecost who prophesied to the Jews before their day of wrath, like John the Baptist, they will urge people to be saved from this crooked generation (Luke 3:7, Acts 2:40, Rom 2:9). Their prophesying to the rest of the world, including the Jewish Diaspora, will be at the same time as the two witnesses prophesy in Jerusalem, for it is during the trumpets that the latter bear witness. After three and a half years they will be martyred.

In his first vision of heaven John saw myriads of angels but only twenty-four human beings. Now he sees an innumerable multitude from every nation, like the sand of the sea, in contrast to the 144,000, who can be numbered. On Mount Horeb the Israelites washed their garments in water (Ex 19:10). On Mount Zion the Gentiles blood of the Lamb. That is enough to gain them access to the throne. The unexpected tense of ‘they cry’ is dramatic present – a shift common in classical literature. ‘Salvation to our God’ reiterates the declaration in Psalm 3:8 and Jonah 2:9, ‘belongs’ understood. The palm branches celebrate the victory of the one who rode into Jerusalem to purchase that salvation (John 12:13).

An elder explains the vision, for in due time the multitude will join the elders. The tenses are significant: the cleansing of their souls occurred in the past, their service in the temple is continuous present, and the time when they will suffer no more is future. Ministering (latreia) has the religious sense of serving in worship, distinct from serving in other ways (douleia). “You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve”. The New Testament singles out constant fasting and prayer (Luke 2:37, I Tim 5:5), which takes place spiritually in the sanctuary of God in heaven (Heb 4:16), much as sacrifices were performed in the earthly temple. More generally, it is devotedly to seek and do the will of God in daily life (Rom 12:1).

Chronologically, the vision of the 144,000 and the great multitude relates to the period of the trumpets, a vision of mercy prior to the wrath of God. It thus steps out of the sequence of the six seals that culminates with the wrath. The promise of an end to suffering connects with the point later in the narrative when the promise is fulfilled (Rev 21), after the opening of the seventh seal. Silence for half an hour marks the transition to the trumpets.