Bestial Covenant

The sea beast wages war against the saints (Revelation 13:7), assisted by the land beast (13:11-15), also known as the “false prophet” (16:13; 19:20; 20:10). That the land beast is a prophet gives us a big clue to what’s happening. 

Prophets end and initiate covenants; prophets are the sacred architects of a new sanctuary, and the social architects of a new order. If the land beast is a false prophet, he’s initiating a new covenantal order of worship and politics, of political worship.

He calls down fire from heaven like Elijah, who initiated the remnant covenant. There are overtones of Moses in his performance of great signs, but he is more Aaron than Moses because he builds not a tabernacle but the image of a beast (a golden calf). If he is an Aaron, he is also a Jeroboam, who also forged golden calves to establish a separate worship in the northern kingdom. 

And once we’re talking about Jeroboam, we’re getting somewhere. Jeroboam was himself a quasi-Mosaic figure, who called the northern tribes out of the “Egypt” of Solomonic Israel. The land beast is a Jeroboam because he is leading an exodus out of the kingdom of David, now ruled by a Lamb in heaven, the Lion of Judah. A new exodus means a new Sinai, and the worshipers of the beast and the beast’s image are appropriately marked with phylacteries on the right hand and forehead (13:16; cf. Deuteronomy 6 for the law on the forehead, Exodus 12 for law on hand and forehead). This bestial Jeroboam sets up a new Torah.

This is important because it means that the land beast’s religion is not “Judaism” attaching itself to Roman power. From the perspective of Revelation, the land beast initiates a new covenant order, a shadowy mimesis of the new covenant in Christ. They call themselves Jews, Jesus says in the letters to the churches, but they are not. Because they have abandoned the Jew, the Judahite, the Davidic king, they are Jews only in name. According to Revelation, it’s not that old Judaism continues alongside Christianity; rather, those who were Jews ally with the beast, choose Caesar instead of Jesus, and so form a new religious order. Jeroboam doesn’t continue the worship of the temple. He deliberately invents a new religion no longer tied to Zion, no longer directed by a son of David.

By joining the sea beast, the land beast establishes an infernal counterfeit of the church. Within the church, Jews and Gentiles are knit together in one new man. The land and sea beasts are Jews and Gentiles cooperating in war and worship, and they unify humanity – small and great, rich and poor, freemen and slaves, all receive the mark of the beast (13:16). 

Once the church emerges as the new humanity, there is a new Babel (cf. Revelation 17-18) to oppose them. Jesus unifies humanity in both directions. Those who follow Him are joined in His one Body by the Spirit, but He also unifies His enemies, so that Herod and Pilate become friends, Jews and Gentiles unite against the church. Revelation, in short, describes the double climax of the history of Israel and the nations – the unity of peoples, tongues, nations, tribes in Christ, and the unity of the beast.