Seven Horns and Seven Eyes?

Seven Horns and Seven Eyes?

Sometimes it’s quite the challenge to try to visualize in literal form the images that come to us in the Book of Revelation.  This weekend we heard about the Lamb that will shepherd those who worship him, and lead them to springs of life-giving water.  That sounds like a fairly innocuous image, right?

But our lectionary leaves out the description of the Lamb himself.  What form does this Lamb take?  In his guided tour of the New Testament, Fr. Felix Just, S.J., notes that the “lamb who appears [is] not a cute little lamb, as we might imagine, but a lamb that has seven horns and seven eyes and looks like it had been slain and yet was standing and alive [Revelation 5]."  Fr. Just goes on to explain that, "This lamb is identified with the lion of the tribe of Judah, the root of David who has conquered, imagery clearly referring to Jesus, who, although he died, in Christian belief, rose again from the dead.  But why seven horns and seven eyes? [The] seven horns represents the perfection of power.  In other words [Jesus] is all-powerful.  Whereas seven eyes represents the idea of being able to see everything, or to be all-knowing.  But who is the only one who is omnipotent and omniscient, all-powerful and all-knowing?  It is God himself.”

The Book of Revelation clearly links the striking imagery of the Lamb, in chapter 5, back to imagery used for God in chapter 4, where God is depicted as an ancient one on his throne.  Both God and the Lamb are worshipped by the twenty-four elders and the four living creatures and myriads of angels.  The image is a powerful reminder to readers of Jesus’ own divinity, Jesus, the Lamb who shepherds us, source of the life-giving water that is God's grace.

Image source (Thixendale, England)

Quotation source:  Fr. Felix Just, The New Testament:  A Guided Tour