Exodus 9:18

Hebrew Bible

18 I am going to cause very severe hail to rain down about this time tomorrow, such hail as has never occurred in Egypt from the day it was founded until now. 19 So now, send instructions to gather your livestock and all your possessions in the fields to a safe place. Every person or animal caught in the field and not brought into the house—the hail will come down on them, and they will die!”’” 20 Those of Pharaoh’s servants who feared the Lord’s message hurried to bring their servants and livestock into the houses, 21 but those who did not take the Lord’s message seriously left their servants and their cattle in the field. 22 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Extend your hand toward the sky that there may be hail in all the land of Egypt, on people and on animals, and on everything that grows in the field in the land of Egypt.” 23 When Moses extended his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire fell to the earth; so the Lord caused hail to rain down on the land of Egypt.

Revelation 16:21

New Testament

17 Finally the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air and a loud voice came out of the temple from the throne, saying: “It is done!” 18 Then there were flashes of lightning, roaring, and crashes of thunder, and there was a tremendous earthquake—an earthquake unequaled since humanity has been on the earth, so tremendous was that earthquake. 19 The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations collapsed. So Babylon the great was remembered before God and was given the cup filled with the wine made of God’s furious wrath. 20 Every island fled away, and no mountains could be found. 21 And gigantic hailstones, weighing about a 100 pounds each, fell from heaven on people, but they blasphemed God because of the plague of hail, since it was so horrendous.

 Notes and References

"... Set in its first-century Asian context Revelation's image of the fall of the great city in an earthquake had greater power than the Old Testament alone could have given it ... This expression in 16:18 was something of an apocalyptic technical term, derived from Daniel 12:1 (which is echoed in Testament of Moses 8:1; 1QM 1:11; Matthew 24:21; Mark 13:19; compare also 1 Mark 9:25). John will certainly also have noticed the similar terminology used with reference to the Egyptian plagues of hail and locusts (Exodus 9:18, 24; 10:6), the great cry at the death of the firstborn (Exodus 11:6), Joel's locust plague (Joel 2:2) and the great day of the slaughter of the Amorites (Joshua 10:14). But the technical apocalyptic formula, describing the end events as the unprecedented climax of all previous history of divine judgments, corresponded to a more everyday hyperbole, the natural tendency to describe a remarkable event as unprecedented. Josephus described the earthquake in Judaea in 31 B.C. as 'such as had not happened at any other time' (Antiquities 15.121), and Pliny called the earthquake in Asia in A.D. 17 the greatest in human memory (N.H. 2.86). Revelation 16:18 both alludes to whatever its readers were accustomed to recall as the greatest earthquake ever, and projects that experience into the apocalypdc future which will surpass any known disaster ... the contrasts of 11:13 and 16:19-21 are instructive. The earthquake of 11:13 accompanies the resurrection and ascension of the two witnesses, whose careers are modelled on those of Moses and Elijah and also Jesus Christ ..."

Bauckham, Richard The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (pp. 206-208) T&T Clark, 1993

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