This note is interpretation, not translation. The word “lion” is in six verses of Revelation (4:7, 5:5, 9:8, 9:17, 10:3, 13:2), and two of them are about Him. This note gathers the echoes behind those two, and the false lion set against them. The echoes already marked are named as they come; the section in Jon’s words is marked as his.
Told a lion, shown a lamb. “Stop crying. Look — the Lion from the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has won. He can open the scroll and its seven seals” (5:5). John turns and sees “a Lamb — looking as though its throat had been cut” (5:6). The grey note there says it: he hears of a lion and sees a lamb, and he never sees the lion. The one who has won is the one who was slain.
Judah’s lion. The marker at 5:5 is Jacob’s blessing on Judah: “Judah is a lion’s cub; from the prey, my son, you have gone up. He crouches, he lies down like a lion, and like a lioness; who dares rouse him?” (Genesis 49:9). The Greek translation reads “from the prey” differently: “from a shoot (ek blastou), my son, you went up.” The Hebrew word teref can also be a fresh leaf, as in the dove’s olive leaf (Genesis 8:11). So in the Greek, Judah’s lion verse already has a shoot in it, and 5:5 sets the Lion beside the Root: “a shoot will come out from the stump of Jesse … the root of Jesse, who will stand as a banner for the peoples” (Isaiah 11:1, 11:10), the other marker there. Jesus says it of Himself at the end of the book: “I am the root and the descendant of David” (22:16). “Our Lord arose from Judah” (Hebrews 7:14), and the line runs through Judah in both genealogies (Matthew 1:2–3; Luke 3:33).
The sceptre, and the obedience — Jon’s reading. The next verse is the kingship: “The sceptre will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs, and to him will be the obedience of the peoples” (Genesis 49:10). That is the “has won” behind the lion. The word for obedience, yiqhah, is found only twice in the Hebrew Bible, here and at Proverbs 30:17; the Greek translation has “he is the expectation of the nations” instead. Jon sets beside it the obedience the New Testament names. His was to God: “He humbled Himself, becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:8); “although He was a Son, He learned obedience from what He suffered, and being made complete, He became the source of salvation that lasts into the ages for all who obey Him” (Hebrews 5:8–9); “by the obedience of the one the many will be made righteous” (Romans 5:19). Ours is to the faith: Paul received grace and apostleship “for the obedience of faith among all the nations, for His name’s sake” (Romans 1:5), and the good news has been made known “to all the nations, for the obedience of faith” (16:26); in Jerusalem “a great crowd of the priests became obedient to the faith” (Acts 6:7). Genesis has the obedience of the peoples to the one from Judah; Paul has the obedience of faith among all the nations. Paul does not quote Genesis 49:10; the likeness is of sense, and the words differ.
The same words over all Israel. When Balaam was hired to curse Israel, the blessing came out of his mouth in Judah’s words: “He crouched, he lay down like a lion, and like a lioness; who dares rouse him? Blessed is everyone who blesses you, and cursed is everyone who curses you” (Numbers 24:9), and before it, “look, a people rises like a lioness, and lifts itself up like a lion” (23:24). Balaam is the man the letter to Pergamum names (2:14).
The roar. At 10:3 a strong messenger “shouted in a loud voice, like a lion roaring. And when he shouted, the seven thunders spoke in voices of their own.” The marker is Amos: “A lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken; who can but prophesy?” (Amos 3:8). The prophets give the roar to the LORD Himself: “They will walk after the LORD; He will roar like a lion; when He roars, His children will come trembling” (Hosea 11:10); and “the LORD roars from Zion, and utters His voice from Jerusalem, and the heavens and the earth shake” (Joel 3:16, 4:16 in the Hebrew; Amos 1:2). There the roar is followed by a voice and a shaking, as here by the thunders. The book does not say who the messenger of 10:1 is. His face like the sun and his legs like pillars of fire recall Jesus at 1:15–16, but he is called a messenger.
The false lion. The animal from the sea has “a mouth like a lion’s mouth” (13:2), from Daniel’s first beast, “like a lion, with eagle’s wings” (Daniel 7:4). Peter names who prowls that way: “your adversary the slanderer walks about like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8), and Paul, at his trial, “was rescued from the lion’s mouth” (2 Timothy 4:17). The torments of chapter 9 have lions’ teeth and lions’ heads (9:8, 9:17). The false lion roars to devour. The true Lion of Judah wins by being slaughtered, and those He bought obey Him by trusting.
The false lion’s roar — Jon’s reading. Jon stresses this. The false lion is a fake. In the prophets the roar belongs to the LORD: He roars like a lion, and His children come home trembling (Hosea 11:10); He roars from Zion (Joel 3:16; Amos 1:2). The slanderer borrows the roar. He impersonates God, acting as though God were angry with you. Paul says he disguises himself: “The accuser himself masquerades as a messenger of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). This book calls him “the accuser of our brothers … the one who accused them in front of our God day and night,” and says he “has been thrown down” (12:10). His roar is accusation and fear, and the answer to both is already given. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in the Anointed Jesus” (Romans 8:1). “Who will bring a charge against God’s chosen ones? It is God who makes them right. Who is the one who condemns? The Anointed Jesus is the one who died, and more than that was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also pleads for us” (8:33–34). “God has not appointed us to anger, but to obtain salvation through our Lord Jesus the Anointed” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Jesus shared our flesh and blood “so that through death He might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the slanderer, and set free those who through fear of death were held in slavery all their lives” (Hebrews 2:14–15). “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” (1 John 4:18).
God has sworn. Isaiah prophesied the covenant of peace and put God’s oath on it: “This is like the waters of Noah to me: as I swore that the waters of Noah would never again go over the earth, so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you, and will not rebuke you. For the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but my steadfast love (chesed) will not depart from you, and my covenant of peace will not be removed, says the LORD, who has compassion on you” (Isaiah 54:9–10). The rainbow round the throne at 4:3 is the sign of that first oath (Genesis 9:13). So when the false lion roars that God is angry with you, he is contradicting an oath.
What Jesus says. Jesus names the liar: “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks from his own, for he is a liar and the father of it” (John 8:44). He sets the thief against the shepherd: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it to the full” (10:10). He says what He was sent for: “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world might be saved through Him. The one who trusts in Him is not condemned” (3:17–18). To His flock: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32); “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you … do not let your heart be troubled, and do not let it be afraid” (John 14:27). When the accuser asked for Peter, Jesus prayed for him: “Simon, Simon, look, the accuser has demanded to sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31–32). He saw the accuser fall: “I watched the accuser fall like lightning from heaven” (10:18), and “now the ruler of this world will be thrown out” (John 12:31), as this book says he “has been thrown down” (12:10). And in this book His first words to John, who fell at His feet like a dead man, are these: “Stop being afraid. I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead — and look, I am alive into the ages, and I hold the keys to death and to the grave” (1:17–18).
A nod to C. S. Lewis — from Jon. This is outside scripture, and it is a gift to families. In C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950), the first-written of The Chronicles of Narnia, the great lion Aslan gives himself up to die at the Stone Table in place of the boy Edmund, whom the White Witch claims as hers by law, and then rises again. The accuser with her claim, and the Lion who takes the place of the guilty: Lewis drew this book’s picture for children. Jon recommends the series to readers with kids. It is a story, not scripture, and the place to check it against is the verses above.
Red flag That the slanderer impersonates God by acting as though God were angry with those who trust. No verse says it in those words. What is stated: the roar belongs to the LORD in the prophets (Hosea 11:10; Amos 1:2), the slanderer prowls like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8), disguises himself as a messenger of light (2 Corinthians 11:14) and accuses God’s people before Him (Revelation 12:10; Zechariah 3:1), and God has sworn not to be angry with His people (Isaiah 54:9).