The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
Then I saw a Lamb who appeared to have been slain, standing in the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders. The Lamb had seven horns and seven eyes, which represent the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the earth.
Earlier text
Then I will pour out on the house of David and on the people of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and prayer, and they will look on Me, the One they have pierced. They will mourn for Him as one mourns for an only child, and grieve bitterly for Him as one grieves for a firstborn son.
At the climax of John's throne-room vision he sees "a Lamb who appeared to have been slain, standing in the center of the throne" (5:6) — the enthroned One bears, in heaven and forever, the marks of His slaughter. This is the throne-room development of the pierced-one motif that Revelation 1:7 announced from Zechariah 12:10 and that John 19:37 located at the cross: the One looked upon at the parousia is the Lamb whose wounds are now the center of heaven's worship. Zechariah's pierced figure, mourned by the house of David, becomes here the slain-yet-standing Lamb adored by every creature; the wounds that were the object of penitent mourning are the very wounds that ground the song "Worthy is the Lamb who was slain" (5:12). The continuity is theological as well as visual: the pierced One is not merely vindicated but enthroned as pierced, His crucifixion-marks transfigured from shame into the title of His universal authority. The pastoral force is immense — the Lamb still slain assures the believer that nothing of Christ's self-giving is lost or undone in glory; the cross is written permanently into the throne. To behold the slain-and-standing Lamb is to find Him not pitiable but supremely worthy, the crucified God who is the joy and treasure of the redeemed forever.