Revelation 4:6-7, The Throne of God

//In John’s vision while on the isle of Patmos, he visits heaven and spies the throne of God. Revelation mentions this throne 46 times! Jewish literature, for perhaps 300 years before Revelation, showed a great fascination with the throne of God. We don’t see this trend so much in canonical scriptures, but we do in other popular writings of that day, such as material from the Dead Sea scrolls. This fascination may have originated with the book of 1 Enoch, much of which was written in the third century B.C. or even earlier.

Carved animals of various forms customarily supported the thrones of monarchs in that day. John animates these carvings using imagery already familiar to his readers. His beasts blend together Isaiah’s seraphim (Isaiah 6:2) and Ezekiel’s cherubim (Ezekiel 1:5-14). He divides these two images into four creatures–matching the four faces of the cherubim–the lion, the ox, the eagle, and the man. 

These symbols, of course, are seen in the four corners of the zodiac. Abraham’s contemporaries visualized the constellation Scorpio as an eagle, according to the Chaldean system then in vogue. Thus, God rules over the entire heavens.

Revelation falls back on astronomy a surprising number of times, but if you aren’t paying attention, they go unnoticed.