Under Which Altar?

Ian Boxall gets a lot right in his commentary on Revelation 6:9–11 (in his excellent The Revelation of Saint John, 113). He knows that the blood of a purification offering is poured out at the base of the altar, the very position where the souls of the martyrs are. And he recalls the Levitical connection of soul and blood (Leviticus 17:11).

But he errs in thinking that the altar in Revelation 6 is the same as the altar of Revelation 8:1–5. The latter is explicitly said to be gold, said to be before the throne, and it’s an incense altar. It corresponds to the altar of incense in the holy place of the temple. But blood was never poured at the base of that altar. Boxall thinks that Revelation conflates the two temple altars into a single altar. In fact, Revelation maintains the distinction between the two.

Blood was poured at the base of the bronze altar in the courtyard. The courtyard was a holy mountain area, surrounded by billowy, cloudlike curtains, with the altar as the peak of the mountain. By the symbolism of the tabernacle and temple, entering the court wasn’t entering heaven; it was ascending toward heaven. Only priests who passed through the curtain into the holy place passed through the firmament into heaven.

All that means that, Boxall to the contrary, the martyrs aren’t yet in heaven. They’re given white robes as a pledge of entry into the heavenly liturgy, but they’re not there yet. Which accounts for their agitated cry for justice and vengeance.

To reiterate my advice to young exegetes: Learn your way around the temple.