The Unchanging God of Revelation
Table of Contents
- Introduction: Why Revelation Confounds Modern Readers
- The Problem of Shallow Interpretations
- 3 Essential Hebrew Keys to Scripture
- Case Study 1: “God Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart”
- Case Study 2: Ananias and Sapphira
- Case Study 3: Herod in Acts 12
- Revelation Often Misunderstood: Beyond Apocalyptic Fear
- God Unchanged: Consistency from Genesis to Revelation
- The Revelatory Nature of Divine Holiness
- Revelation as Unveiling, Not Just Judgment
- 7 Practical Implications for Readers Today
- Conclusion: A Fresh Reading That Resolves Contradictions
- Related Resources
Introduction: Why Revelation Confounds Modern Readers
My position is first you cannot understand Revelation unless you understand and embrace fully the immutability of God. Whenever we attribute the actions that take place on earth as coming from a holy God that does not change, then our interpretation and understanding become flawed and wander all over the place.
Revelation is often read as God’s judgment unleashed on a rebellious world. But maybe that’s too shallow. Maybe it’s better understood as the inevitable unraveling that happens when human beings resist the confrontation with divine holiness—a holiness that does not merely attract but reveals and demands response, a holiness that by its very presence creates a crisis point where neutrality is impossible.
The book of Revelation has confounded, frightened, and fascinated readers for centuries. It stands as perhaps the most misunderstood text in scripture, often reduced to apocalyptic predictions or complex timelines of end-time events. But what if our approach has been fundamentally flawed? What if we’ve been reading Revelation through lenses shaped more by Hollywood than by Hebrew thought?
To truly grasp what John witnessed in his apocalyptic vision, we must return to the conceptual world that shaped scripture from beginning to end. Three Hebrew concepts in particular—hesed, kadosh, and berith—offer profound insights that can transform our understanding of Revelation from a terrifying prophecy of destruction to a powerful testimony of God’s unchanging character.
The Problem of Shallow Interpretations
Before we explore these Hebrew keys, let’s acknowledge a common pattern in biblical interpretation. We often rush to conclusions based on surface readings, particularly when dealing with challenging passages. Perhaps no example illustrates this better than the infamous case of Pharaoh’s hardened heart.
When we read that “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart,” we lay this on God thick and heavy. We assume God arbitrarily overrode Pharaoh’s free will to accomplish divine purposes. This interpretation creates a troubling theological problem: it suggests God directly causes someone to sin and then punishes them for it.
But what if our understanding is built on shaky linguistic ground? What if we’ve missed crucial nuances in the original Hebrew that reveal a very different picture?
3 Essential Hebrew Keys to Scripture
To properly interpret Scripture—whether Exodus, Acts, or Revelation—we need conceptual keys that unlock the Hebrew mindset. These aren’t arbitrary hermeneutical tools but fundamental concepts that shaped the theological world of scripture from Genesis to Revelation.
Hesed: God’s Unbreakable Covenant Faithfulness
The Hebrew word hesed defies simple translation. It encompasses loyalty, loving-kindness, steadfast love, and mercy—all bound together in covenant relationship. It’s not just emotional affection but committed action toward those with whom God has made covenant.
Hesed reveals that God’s actions are never arbitrary but always consistent with His covenant commitments. When we see judgment in Revelation, we must view it through this lens—not as divine retribution but as the painful yet necessary preservation of covenant.
God’s hesed means He remains faithful even when we don’t. It means His apparent severity in Revelation isn’t contradiction but consistency—the same love that created Eden must also cleanse creation of everything that destroys it.
Kadosh: Holiness as Transformative Revelation
God’s holiness is not a distant purity—it’s a living revelation. The Hebrew concept of kadosh (holiness) isn’t primarily about separation from impurity but about wholeness and completeness. God is holy because He is wholly and completely God, lacking nothing, perfect in every attribute.
This holiness doesn’t simply attract or pull—it reveals and demands response. The holiness of God does not pull those who are not surrendered. It does not pull those who do not choose to align themselves with it. God’s holiness invites with the presence of holiness itself.
The presence of God does not allow incompatibility to remain static. When Moses met the holiness of God, there was a response. When Isaiah met the holiness of God, there was a response. When Paul met the holiness of God on the Damascus Road, there was a response. There is nothing neutral or static about any encounter with the holy.
When humanity encounters holiness, a dynamic takes place. It is either undoing, unraveling, or surrender. Holiness doesn’t attract—holiness by its very presence demands either conformity or unraveling. There is no middle ground.
And here’s the crux: When we encounter true holiness, we are invited to surrender to it—not in fear, but in love. To resist that invitation is to fracture ourselves, because what we are resisting is the very thing that gives us life, purpose, identity, and wholeness.
Berith: The Binding Promise That Defines Reality
Berith (covenant) forms the backbone of God’s relationship with humanity. It’s a binding agreement, but unlike human contracts, God’s covenants are asymmetrical gifts of grace. God binds Himself to us with promises that He will fulfill regardless of our faithfulness.
Revelation is incomprehensible without this covenant framework. The imagery of marriage, of the Lamb and His bride, of a new heaven and new earth—these aren’t random apocalyptic symbols but the culmination of covenant promises that began in Genesis.
The judgments in Revelation aren’t God losing patience but God keeping His word. They represent the necessary removal of everything that threatens the covenant relationship God established with creation from the beginning.
Case Study 1: “God Hardened Pharaoh’s Heart”
To understand how these Hebrew concepts transform our reading of Scripture, let’s examine our first test case: the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. This example reveals how easily we misinterpret scripture when we lack linguistic and conceptual precision.
The statement “God hardened the heart of Pharaoh” appears repeatedly in Exodus. A surface reading suggests divine manipulation—God forcing Pharaoh to disobey and then punishing him for it. But a closer examination of the Hebrew verbs used tells a different story.
Chazaq: Strengthening What’s Already There
The most frequently used verb in these passages is chazaq (חָזַק), appearing 13 times. It doesn’t mean “to make stubborn” but “to strengthen” or “to make firm.” This suggests God didn’t create resistance in Pharaoh but strengthened what was already there.
Pharaoh made his initial choice to resist. God’s action was to confirm and solidify this choice, allowing it to reach its full expression. It’s less about changing Pharaoh’s heart and more about strengthening his resolve to follow through on his own decisions.
Khaved: The Weight of Repeated Resistance
The second verb, khaved (כָּבֵד), used four times, means “to make heavy” or “to make dull.” This implies not manipulation but a natural consequence—Pharaoh’s heart became increasingly unresponsive to moral persuasion.
Think of it as spiritual callouses forming with each act of resistance. God didn’t force this hardening but allowed the natural hardening effect of repeated rebellion to take its course without intervention.
Qashah: Self-Imposed Rigidity
The third verb, qashah (קָשָׁה), used only once, means “to make hard” or “to make stiff.” It describes the final state of someone who has repeatedly chosen resistance until that resistance becomes their fixed character.
The progression in Exodus is revealing. Initially, Pharaoh hardens his own heart. Only later does the text say God hardened it. This suggests that God’s “hardening” was confirming Pharaoh’s freely chosen path, not imposing a new one.
When we understand these Hebrew nuances, we see that the person who hardened Pharaoh’s heart was primarily Pharaoh himself. It’s convenient to blame God, but doing so removes Pharaoh’s responsibility and creates a theological contradiction: it makes God complicit in sin.
Case Study 2: Ananias and Sapphira
Another frequently misunderstood passage that seems to portray God as arbitrary and vindictive is the account of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. This husband and wife sold a piece of property, kept back part of the proceeds while claiming to give all, and subsequently fell down dead after being confronted by Peter.
The Common Misinterpretation
The typical reading of this passage portrays God as executing immediate judgment—striking down Ananias and Sapphira for lying. This interpretation presents God as harsh and retributive, seemingly at odds with the God of hesed revealed throughout scripture. It creates an image of God as a volatile deity who might strike us dead for any misstep—a stark contrast to the patient, loving Father portrayed by Jesus.
But maybe that’s too shallow. Maybe we’ve misunderstood what actually happened in this account.
A Closer Examination of the Text
When we examine the text closely, something remarkable emerges. Nowhere does it explicitly state that God killed Ananias and Sapphira. Acts 5:5 simply says, “When Ananias heard these words, he fell down and breathed his last.” Similarly, in verse 10, when Peter confronts Sapphira, it says, “Immediately she fell down at his feet and breathed her last.”
The text describes what happened but does not explicitly attribute their deaths to direct divine intervention. This is significant because in scripture, when making theological claims, precision matters. The text tells us what happened, not necessarily why it happened.
The Greek phrase used—“he fell down and breathed his last” (ἔπεσεν καὶ ἐξέψυξεν)—is a description of what happened, not an attribution of cause. It describes the event without assigning divine agency.
Natural Consequences, Not Divine Execution
What if Ananias and Sapphira experienced the natural consequences of their own actions? Consider the context: they had deliberately planned to deceive the apostles and the Holy Spirit. When confronted with the reality of their deception—when truth collided with falsehood—the shock may have triggered a fatal physiological response.
Medical literature documents cases where extreme shame, fear, or shock has triggered fatal cardiac events. What if their deaths were the natural result of the extreme stress and shame of having their carefully constructed deception suddenly exposed?
This interpretation aligns with the concept of kadosh (holiness) we’ve explored. When we encounter true holiness—as Ananias and Sapphira did when confronted by Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit—there is an invitation to surrender to it. Their resistance to that holiness, their attempt to deceive the Spirit of truth, created an internal fracture that had physical consequences.
This reading preserves God’s consistent character. It doesn’t require us to believe that the God who is “slow to anger, abounding in love” (Psalm 103:8) suddenly and arbitrarily executed two people for a sin that, while serious, was certainly not unique in human history.
Instead, we see the unveiling of what happens when deception collides with truth, when human resistance encounters divine holiness. It’s not God changing His character but humans experiencing the natural consequences of resisting reality itself.
Case Study 3: Herod in Acts 12
Let’s examine a third passage that, on surface reading, seems to contradict our understanding of God’s unchanging nature: the death of Herod Agrippa I in Acts 12:23, where the text states, “Immediately, an angel of the Lord struck him down, because he did not give God the glory, and he was eaten by worms and breathed his last.”
The Conventional Reading
The traditional interpretation of this passage sees God directly executing Herod for his blasphemous pride. This reading seems supported by the explicit statement that “an angel of the Lord struck him down.” Unlike the case of Ananias and Sapphira, here the text appears to assign clear divine agency to Herod’s death.
This conventional reading creates a troubling portrait: God dispatches an angelic assassin to strike down a human being who failed to give proper glory to God. It suggests a deity whose ego is so fragile that He responds to human pride with lethal force—a far cry from the patient, merciful God revealed throughout scripture.
But maybe that’s too shallow. Maybe we’ve misunderstood what the text is actually telling us.
The Theological Contradiction
If we interpret this passage as God directly killing Herod, we create profound contradictions with the Hebrew concepts that frame our understanding of God’s character:
The concept of kadosh (holiness) presents God as wholly pure, lacking nothing, perfect in every attribute. If God directly engages in a physical act of destruction—sending an angel to strike down Herod—we compromise this purity. We make God the author of death, not just life. We create a theological contradiction where God’s holiness includes acts that, from a human perspective, would be considered unholy.
The concept of hesed (covenant faithfulness) reveals God as steadfast in love, patient with human weakness, and committed to restoration. A God who strikes people dead for moments of pride contradicts this steadfast love. It suggests God’s patience has limits and His love can be exhausted—a direct contradiction of His revealed character.
The concept of berith (covenant) shows that God establishes spiritual laws and remains faithful to them. If God must directly intervene to punish Herod, it suggests these spiritual laws are insufficient—that God must step outside His own established order to enforce consequences, undermining His covenant faithfulness.
Reframing Our Understanding
Given these contradictions, how might we better understand this passage? The key lies in recognizing metaphorical language and understanding divine law as a system of natural consequences, not arbitrary punishment.
The phrase “an angel of the Lord struck him” need not be interpreted as a literal, physical assault. In biblical language, angels often function as messengers or agents of divine reality. The “striking” might refer not to a physical blow but to the unveiling or revealing of truth that Herod had resisted.
In this light, the angel doesn’t function as an assassin but as a revelatory agent—making manifest the consequences of Herod’s own choices. When Herod accepted worship that belonged only to God, he placed himself in fundamental opposition to reality itself. The “striking” was the revelation of this contradiction, which had physical consequences.
The description of Herod being “eaten by worms” suggests he died from a physical ailment—possibly what medical literature would identify as intestinal worms leading to peritonitis, a known and painful condition in the ancient world. What if Herod’s condition was already present, and the stress of his public humiliation—the revelation of his pride before the crowd—accelerated the physical breakdown that was already underway?
This interpretation preserves God’s consistent character. It doesn’t require us to believe that the God who is hesed, kadosh, and berith suddenly became a vengeful deity who strikes down humans who offend His honor. Instead, we see the unveiling of what happens when human pride collides with divine truth—not God changing His character but Herod experiencing the natural consequences of placing himself in opposition to reality.
Revelation Often Misunderstood: Beyond Apocalyptic Fear
Just as we’ve often misunderstood the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira, and the striking down of Herod, we’ve frequently misread Revelation. We’ve approached it as a text of divine vengeance rather than covenant fulfillment. We’ve seen its imagery as literal predictions rather than symbolic representations of deeper truths.
Revelation is often treated as an outlier in scripture—a strange apocalyptic text disconnected from the rest of the biblical narrative. But through the lenses of hesed, kadosh, and berith, we can see it as the perfect culmination of God’s story.
The book’s very name in Greek—apokalypsis—doesn’t mean catastrophe but “unveiling” or “revelation.” It pulls back the curtain on reality, showing what happens when creation embraces or rejects its Creator. It reveals not an arbitrary future but the inevitable consequences of our relationship to holiness.
God Unchanged: Consistency from Genesis to Revelation
For our interpretation of Revelation to be sound, we must recognize that God cannot change. He is the same God hovering over the waters in Genesis as He is in the dramatic scenes of Revelation. If we find ourselves creating a different God in Revelation—one who contradicts His nature revealed elsewhere—we’ve misunderstood the text.
The God who is hesed, kadosh, and berith in Genesis remains so in Revelation. His covenant faithfulness doesn’t disappear. His holiness doesn’t transform from relational wholeness to distant, angry purity. His covenant commitments don’t dissolve into arbitrary judgments.
When we read of God’s wrath in Revelation, we must understand it through these Hebrew concepts. Divine wrath isn’t emotional rage but the loving, holy, covenant determination to remove everything that destroys creation and relationship.
The Revelatory Nature of Divine Holiness
Revelation shows us what happens when creation confronts the revelatory power of God’s holiness. The holiness of God does not pull those who are not surrendered. It does not pull those who do not choose to align themselves with the holiness of God. God’s holiness does not pull or reject—it reveals and demands response.
The presence of God does not allow incompatibility to remain static. When humanity encounters holiness, there is a dynamic that takes place. It is either undoing, unraveling, or surrender. Holiness by its very presence demands either conformity or unraveling—there is no middle ground.
Like Pharaoh, like Ananias and Sapphira, like Herod, those who repeatedly harden themselves against God’s holiness experience the natural consequences of that resistance. The catastrophes in Revelation aren’t God’s vindictive punishment but the unveiling of what happens when we consistently choose to live contrary to reality’s deepest structures.
When we reject hesed, we experience its absence. When we resist kadosh, we fragment ourselves. When we violate berith, we step outside its protection. The plagues, beasts, and judgments of Revelation aren’t God losing control but God revealing the natural order of things. They show what creation becomes when it rejects its Creator—not because God petulantly destroys what doesn’t obey Him, but because creation cannot sustain itself apart from its source.
Revelation as Unveiling, Not Just Judgment
Through the Hebrew concepts of hesed, kadosh, and berith, we can reframe our understanding of Revelation from a book primarily about judgment to one about unveiling reality.
Revelation unveils:
- The true nature of evil—not just as breaking rules but as corrupting relationship, purity, and covenant
- The consequences of resistance to God—not arbitrary punishment but the natural unraveling that occurs
- The faithfulness of God—not changing His character but fulfilling it perfectly
- The final restoration of creation—not abandonment but complete renewal
The dramatic imagery of Revelation isn’t meant to terrify but to reveal. It shows us both the depth of evil’s corruption and the greater depth of God’s commitment to restore all things.
7 Practical Implications for Readers Today
This reframing of Scripture through Hebrew concepts has profound implications for how we live today:
- It challenges us to examine our response to divine holiness. Are we surrendering to the holiness of God, or are we resisting its transformative power? There is no neutral position—we are either being aligned or unraveled.
- It reorients our understanding of judgment. God’s judgments aren’t arbitrary punishments but the loving removal of everything that destroys relationship.
- It offers hope amidst apparent chaos. What looks like the world unraveling may actually be God’s faithfulness at work, removing what cannot remain in a restored creation.
- It transforms fear into invitation. Instead of dreading God’s holiness, we can recognize it as an invitation to surrender—not in fear, but in love.
- It reveals the consistency of God’s character. We need not fear that God will suddenly change from loving to vengeful. His actions in Scripture are consistent with His covenant faithfulness from the beginning.
- It transforms our reading of apocalyptic literature. We can approach Revelation not as a frightening prediction of arbitrary destruction but as the unveiling of reality’s deepest structures.
- It reshapes our understanding of divine justice. God’s justice isn’t about punishment but about restoration—the removal of everything that prevents creation from flourishing as intended.
Conclusion: A Fresh Reading That Resolves Contradictions
By approaching Scripture through these Hebrew concepts, we gain a fresh reading that resolves many of its apparent contradictions. We see not a God who inexplicably changes from love to wrath but a God whose very love necessitates the removal of everything that destroys what He loves.
Revelation is not God’s abandonment of hesed, kadosh, and berith but their ultimate fulfillment. It shows us not an arbitrary future but the inevitable consequences of either embracing or resisting the God who remains consistent from Genesis to Revelation.
In the end, Revelation isn’t primarily about destruction but recreation. Its final vision isn’t desolation but a new heaven and new earth where God dwells with His people in perfect covenant relationship—the ultimate expression of hesed, kadosh, and berith.
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