Rev, sevens and seven sevens
The briefest glance over the Apocalypse indicates that seven
is a very prominent number: seven lampstands, seven letters to seven churches,
seven angels, seven spirits, seven seals, seven trumpets, seven thunders, seven
bowls, etc., etc. Further investigation [see page 6 in the following article]
reveals that some of these "sevens" may be further organized into groups of
"seven sevens"!
This is not a matter of ingenuity, chance, or coincidence.
This design is from God. From the very beginning, God has worked on a "plan of
sevens":
"For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in
them, and rested the seventh day; therefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day and
hallowed it" (Exo 20:11).
God commanded Israel to memorialize this simple yet awesome
truth in a calendar in which every seventh day was a special day of rest and
worship. To this day, the major religions of the world -- Judaism, Christianity,
and Islam -- all commemorate a seventh day, although for various reasons the
particular day is different in each religion.
But, in God's timetable, it is not just the seventh day that
is special and sacred. It is also the forty-ninth day -- the end of seven cycles
of seven days each:
"And you shall count from the morrow after the sabbath, from the day that you
brought the sheaf of the wave offering; seven full weeks shall they be, counting
fifty days to the morrow after the seventh sabbath; then you shall present a
cereal offering of new grain to the LORD" (Lev
23:15,16).
The "sabbath" in v 15 was the great day of the Passover. A
count of 49 days -- or seven sevens of days -- ended with the Feast of Harvest
(Exo 23:16), or the Feast of Weeks (Exo 34:22), when the firstfruits of the
field were to be offered to God. This feast is also called "Pentecost" in the
New Testament, from the Greek for "fifty", because it began on the fiftieth day,
ie, 49 days after Passover.
The "plan of sevens" applied to both days and years in the
Jewish calendar. The seventh year was a very special "sabbath" for the people of
God, just as the seventh day was a regular "sabbath" of rest:
"At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release... every creditor
shall release what he has lent to his neighbor; he shall not exact it of his
neighbor, his brother, because the Lord's release has been proclaimed" (Deu
15:1,2).
Not only were debts to be forgiven after seven years, but
those who were sold or had sold themselves into contractual service to satisfy
debts were also to be released:
"If your brother, a Hebrew man, or a Hebrew woman, is sold to you, he shall
serve you six years, and in the seventh year you shall let him go free from you"
(v 12).
The seventh year was also significant even for the soil of
Israel (Deu 11:12). The Land of Israel was Covenant land, beloved and watched
over by Israel's God himself, granted especially to the people of Israel, and
apportioned to each tribe. They were to hold their particular inheritance in
trust only so long as God willed. As man was to rest one day in seven, the soil
was to rest, or lie, fallow, one year in seven:
"When you come into the land which I give you, the land shall keep a sabbath to
the LORD. Six years you shall sow your field, and six years you shall prune your
vineyard, and gather in its fruits; but in the seventh year there shall be a
sabbath of solemn rest for the land, a sabbath to the LORD; you shall not sow
your field or prune your vineyard. What grows of itself in your harvest you
shall not reap, and the grapes of your undressed vine you shall not gather; it
shall be a year of solemn rest for the land" (Lev
25:2-5).
And, with the years as with the days, the cycle of seven was
itself to be repeated seven times:
"And you shall count seven weeks of years, seven times seven years, so that the
time of the seven weeks of years shall be to you forty-nine years. Then you
shall send abroad the loud trumpet on the tenth day of the seventh month; on the
day of atonement you shall send abroad the trumpet throughout all your land. And
you shall hallow the fiftieth year, and proclaim liberty throughout the land to
all its inhabitants; it shall be a jubilee [literally, a trumpet blast: cp the
seven trumpets of Revelation!] for you, when each of you shall return to his
property and each of you shall return to his family" (vv
8-10).
The trumpet blast that resounded and echoed throughout the
Land would signal the return of all properties, sold or leased during the
interim 49 years, to their original owners or -- if they were deceased -- to
their heirs. Thus the integrity of God's original deeding of the Land to the
particular tribes would be preserved.
Several themes are evident in these divine cycles of seven and
seven times seven:
- The ends of the cycles marked times when the
people of God rested from their ordinary business, and especially remembered and
worshiped their Creator.
- The ends of the cycles
meant that God would free His people from their debts and their
bondage.
- The ends of the cycles brought the
return of God's Land to its rightful owners.
- In
Revelation, the recurrence of numbers and combinations of numbers which are
strikingly significant in the Jewish calendar reinforces the idea that the
Apocalypse is a Jewish book -- about the Jewish people and the Jewish Land.
In Scripture, the special numbers seven and 49 stand for the
completion of cycles and the returning of affairs to their rightful, original
state. And this is what the Apocalypse is all about: a time when the kingdom of
men becomes the kingdom of God and His Christ (Rev 11:15). A time when the
people of God, delivered out of tribulation and bondage, will find rest and
comfort with Him (Rev 7:14-17). A time when the faithful will be released from
the greatest debt -- sin -- and the greatest bondage -- death (Rev
20:4-6,11-14)!
And a time when God's own blessed Land, long in alien hands,
will itself be freed and returned to its rightful owners:
"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Behold, the dwelling of God
is with men. He will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God
himself will be with them; he will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and
death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning nor crying nor pain any
more, for the former things have passed away.' And he who sat upon the throne
said, 'Behold, I make all things new.' Also he said, 'Write this, for these
words are trustworthy and true... He who conquers shall have this heritage, and
I will be his God and he shall be my son' " (Rev
21:3-7).
