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In 1 Maccabees the people celebrate victory and the restoration of the temple by entering Jerusalem with palm branches, songs, and musical instruments. Revelation uses similar language to describe a huge crowd of people waving palm branches.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
1 Maccabees 13:51
Deuterocanon
47 So Simon was reconciled to them, and didn’t fight against them; but he expelled them from the city and cleansed the houses where the idols were, and then entered into it with singing and giving praise. 48 He removed all uncleanness out of it, and placed in it men who would keep the law, and made it stronger than it was before, and built a dwelling place for himself in it. 49 But the people of the citadel in Jerusalem were hindered from going out and from going into the country, and from buying and selling. So they were very hungry, and a great number of them perished from famine. 50 Then they cried out to Simon, that he should give them his right hand; and he gave it to them; but he expelled them from there, and he cleansed the citadel from its pollutions. 51 He entered into it on the twenty-third day of the second month, in the one hundred seventy-first year, with praise and palm branches, with harps, with cymbals, and with stringed instruments, with hymns, and with songs, because a great enemy had been destroyed out of Israel.
Date: 134–63 BCE (based on scholarly estimates)
Revelation 7:9
New Testament
4 Now I heard the number of those who were marked with the seal, 144,000, sealed from all the tribes of the people of Israel: 5 From the tribe of Judah, 12,000 were sealed, from the tribe of Reuben, 12,000, from the tribe of Gad, 12,000, 6 from the tribe of Asher, 12,000, from the tribe of Naphtali, 12,000, from the tribe of Manasseh, 12,000, 7 from the tribe of Simeon, 12,000, from the tribe of Levi, 12,000, from the tribe of Issachar, 12,000, 8 from the tribe of Zebulun, 12,000, from the tribe of Joseph, 12,000, from the tribe of Benjamin, 12,000 were sealed. 9 After these things I looked, and here was an enormous crowd that no one could count, made up of persons from every nation, tribe, people, and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb dressed in long white robes, and with palm branches in their hands. 10 They were shouting out in a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God, who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Date: 92–96 CE (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... [Revelation] 7:9 as a reinterpretation of 7:4-8 indicates not so much the replacement of the national people of God as the abolition of its national limits. This is consistent with the picture of the new Jerusalem in chapter 21, where gates inscribed with 'the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel' (21:12) stand open to the nations (21:24-26). If 7:9a contrasts the great multitude as innumerable and international with the 144,000 Israelites, there is as yet no reinterpretation of the military theme as such. Indeed, it could correctly be translated 'army,' and verses 9b-10 can readily be understood as continuing the military theme by depicting the army victorious after battle. The white robes are the festal garments of the victory celebration (compare Tertullian, Scorpiace 12; 2 Maccabees 11:8), and the palm branches may be compared with those which the holy warriors of Simon Maccabee's army waved in celebration of their recapture of the citadel of Jerusalem (1 Maccabees 13:51; compare Testament of Naphtali 5:4) ..."
Richard Bauckham, The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), 225.
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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