Texts in Conversation
4 Ezra describes a man rising from the sea who destroys his enemies with a stream of fire from his mouth. 2 Thessalonians uses similar apocalyptic imagery, describing how God will destroy the lawless one with the breath of his mouth.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
2 Thessalonians 2:8
New Testament
7 For the hidden power of lawlessness is already at work. However, the one who holds him back will do so until he is taken out of the way, 8 and then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord will destroy by the breath of his mouth and wipe out by the manifestation of his arrival. 9 The arrival of the lawless one will be by Satan’s working with all kinds of miracles and signs and false wonders,
4 Ezra 13:10
2 Esdras
Pseudepigrapha, Apocalypses
9 Behold, as he saw the assault of the multitude that came, he didn’t lift up his hand, or hold a spear or any weapon of war; 10 but I saw only how he sent out of his mouth something like a flood of fire, and out of his lips a flaming breath, and out of his tongue he shot out a storm of sparks. 11 These were all mixed together: the flood of fire, the flaming breath, and the great storm, and fell upon the assault of the multitude which was prepared to fight, and burned up every one of them, so that all of a sudden an innumerable multitude was seen to be nothing but the dust of ashes and the smell of smoke. When I saw this, I was amazed.
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Notes and References
... find testimonies not only in Revelation 19.15, 21, but also in, for instance, 4 Ezra 13.10: 'I [Ezra] saw only how he ["the man from the sea", God's agent] sent forth from his mouth as it were a stream of fire, and from his lips a flaming breath' (translated by B. M. Metzger, in Charlesworth 1983:551). Isaiah's parallelism has been contracted, in 2 Thessalonians, to 'killing with the breath of his mouth'. This phrase suggests that the lawless one will not withstand the slightest activity on the part of the Lord Jesus: the latter has only to breathe to kill the former. The contraction may have been influenced by the wording of Psalm 33.6, where it is said that God made 'the host of heavens' 'by the breath of his mouth'. If this text is in the background, then we have here again an instance of the transfer of divine predicates to Jesus ...
* 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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