What Is the Sealed Scroll in Revelation 5?

Revelation 5 opens with a book in the right hand of God, written on both sides, sealed seven times, and a challenge nobody in the universe can answer. What the book contains is never stated. That is the honest starting point, and any confident answer you meet is an inference.

Here is the short version. The reading held by most commentators today is that the scroll is God's decreed plan for history, both judgment and redemption, and that holding it means the authority to run that plan. The reason is simple: when the seals are broken in Revelation 6, things happen. Riders go out, wars begin, the earth is struck. This is not a book that only tells you something. It is a book that, opened, does something.

What John actually sees

And I saw in the right hand of him that sat on the throne a book written within and on the backside, sealed with seven seals. And I saw a strong angel proclaiming with a loud voice, Who is worthy to open the book, and to loose the seals thereof? And no man in heaven, nor in earth, neither under the earth, was able to open the book, neither to look thereon. Revelation 5:1-3

The Greek word translated "book" is biblion, which in the first century normally means a papyrus roll rather than the bound codex we picture. A roll was written on the inside face, where the fibres run horizontally and the pen moves smoothly. Writing on the back as well, which scholars call an opisthograph, from the Greek opisthen, "behind", meant either that the scribe had run out of room or that the document was of a kind that carried a summary on the outside.

What a seven-sealed scroll was in the ancient world

Two background practices get cited, and they pull in different directions.

The first is the doubly written legal document. A deed of sale or transfer was written out in full, rolled, and sealed, with a short open summary on the outside so anyone could see what it was without breaking the seals. Jeremiah 32:9-14 describes exactly this when the prophet buys a field: "the evidence of the purchase, both which was sealed according to the law and custom, and that which was open". This is the strongest evidence for reading John's scroll as a deed.

The second is the Roman will. Roman law required a valid testament to be sealed by seven witnesses, and the wills of Augustus and Vespasian are the standard examples. Interpreters who read the scroll as God's last will and testament, disposing of the inheritance of the world, lean on that requirement for the number seven.

Both parallels are real. Both have a weakness. John is a Jewish seer writing to churches in Asia Minor whose vocabulary comes overwhelmingly from the Hebrew prophets, and it is fair to ask whether Roman probate law is where he got his picture.

The main proposals

The title deed view is the one most readers of popular prophecy books will have met, held by writers such as Robert Thomas and John MacArthur, who argue the scroll is the deed to a forfeited earth that the Redeemer buys back. The divorce decree view belongs mainly to preterists, who read Revelation as judgment on first-century Jerusalem; Kenneth Gentry argues it as a covenant lawsuit and bill of divorce against unfaithful Israel.

The book of destiny view has the broadest support in current scholarship. G. K. Beale, in his commentary on Revelation (1999), describes the scroll as God's plan of judgment and salvation for the world, with particular reference to his people. Richard Bauckham, in The Climax of Prophecy (1993), goes further and identifies the sealed scroll of chapter 5 with the open scroll of chapter 10, so that its contents unfold through the rest of the book.

Why worthiness is the question

Notice what the angel does not ask. He does not ask who is able. He asks who is worthy, Greek axios, a word about standing rather than strength. The answer in verse 3 is a survey of the whole created order with a result of zero. Nobody in heaven. Nobody on earth. Nobody under it.

Then the answer comes.

Weep not: behold, the Lion of the tribe of Juda, the Root of David, hath prevailed to open the book, and to loose the seven seals thereof. Revelation 5:5

"Hath prevailed" translates enikēsen, from nikaō, to conquer or win. It is the ordinary word for victory in war or in the games, and it is the same verb Revelation uses in every one of the seven letters, where the promises go "to him that overcometh". The Lion has won, and the reader expects to be shown a conquering lion. What John sees in the next verse is a Lamb standing as though it had been slain. The victory that qualifies him to run history is a death.

The Daniel command this reverses

Now the point that ties Revelation 5 to the Old Testament book behind it.

Daniel is twice told to close his prophecy.

But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book, even to the time of the end. Daniel 12:4

He asks how it ends, and is refused.

And I heard, but I understood not: then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the end of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel: for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end. Daniel 12:8-9

That is a prophet asking the last question anyone would want answered and being told, in effect, not yet. The words are sealed. The seal stands.

Revelation 5 shows a sealed book in the hand of God and a search for someone able to break the seals. Many readers take the connection as deliberate rather than accidental, and the physical description supports it. The scroll written "within and on the backside" comes from Ezekiel 2:9-10, where the prophet is handed a roll written "within and without" and full of "lamentations, and mourning, and woe". The heavenly court where books are opened comes from Daniel 7:10. John has taken his picture from more than one place, and Daniel supplies the sealing.

The reversal at the end of the book

Then, in the last chapter, John is told the opposite of what Daniel was told.

And he saith unto me, Seal not the sayings of the prophecy of this book: for the time is at hand. Revelation 22:10

The verb is the same, the object is the same, and the instruction is inverted. Interpreters of most stripes read this as an intentional contrast, and the stated reason is the timing. Daniel was sealed because the end was far off. John is left open because the time is at hand.

What they do with "at hand" then divides them. Preterists take it at face value and look for fulfilment within the generation John was writing to, principally in the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70. Futurists read imminence differently, as the next thing on God's calendar rather than the next thing on the calendar of the reader. Idealists read it as the permanent nearness of the end throughout the church age. The verse itself gives you the contrast with Daniel, not the timetable.

What the pattern shows

Step back and look at what has just happened across two books. A sixth-century prophet asks how history ends, is told the answer is sealed, and dies without it. Centuries later a man on an island sees the sealed book, weeps because nobody can open it, and then watches a slaughtered Lamb take it out of the hand of God.

That is not a loose thematic echo. It is one image, put down in one book and picked up in another, and Revelation does the same thing with the throne, the beasts, the son of man and the white hair. John almost never quotes the Old Testament outright. He builds with it, and Daniel supplies more of the material than any other book. Once you can see the seams, Revelation stops being a code and starts being a reading of Scripture.