Revelation 19.11–16 presents John's vision of the rider on the white horse, an image of Christ coming in judgement, whose attributes are a compilation of several OT texts.Footnote 1 Of these attributes, the source of one detail has remained more enigmatic: the ‘inscribed thigh’ in Rev 19.16 has no known precursor in the Hebrew or Greek Old Testament. As Beasley-Murray notes: ‘[T]hat Christ's name is inscribed on his robe and on his thigh has provided commentators with an exegetical puzzle.’Footnote 2 He suggests that the inscribed name ‘was not unknown in ancient society’ and relates it to statuary. This argument is taken up by Lupieri (among others), who suggests that ‘the writing of a name on a robe or thigh evokes Hellenistic statuary’ and that John has ‘decided to pattern his Logos after statues of the gods’ or perhaps after ‘paleo-Christian portraiture’.Footnote 3 But, as Prigent notes, ‘[O]ur rider is nothing like a statue!’Footnote 4 The armies of heaven follow him, he treads the winepress of the wrath of the almighty God, and the rider's eyes flame fire. This is a living picture and it makes little sense for John to have patterned the image of the white horse rider on statuary.
Beale and McDonough offer a solution from the Old Testament. They note that, in the OT, the thigh was ‘the symbolic place under which the hand was placed to swear oaths . . . [which signifies in Rev 19 the] fulfillment of God's promise to judge’.Footnote 5 While their interpretation of ‘inscribed on his thigh’ fits the context of judgement, Rev 19 contains no oath-taking, the key element of the hand-under-thigh ceremony.
Charles notes that Wellhausen, ‘recognizing the unintelligibleness of the text, proposed ἵππον [horse] instead of ἱμάτιον [robe] and makes the αὐτοῦ [his] refer to the ἵππον [horse]’.Footnote 6 In other words, the horse is tattooed, not the rider. As this solution only serves to shift the problem of the inscribed name and as there is no textual evidence for this proposal, I agree with Charles that ‘the idea of such an inscription on a horse cannot be entertained’.Footnote 7
From this brief survey,Footnote 8 the multitude of explanations for the phrase ‘inscribed on his thigh’ testifies to the enigma it has presented in the history of the interpretation of the rider. No suggestion has gained a consensus. Considering the compositional make-up of the rest of the pericope (see n. 1 above), it would not be unlikely that this phrase too stems from the OT. Here, I will argue that JohnFootnote 9 derived the phrase ‘inscribed on his thigh’ in Rev 19.16 from Jacob's blessing on Judah in Gen 49.10.
Gen 49.10 in the MT can be divided into four poetic lines:
‘a’ לא־יסור שבט מיהודה The scepter will not depart from Judah
‘b’ ומחקק מבין רגליו Nor the commander's staff from between his feet
‘c’עד כי־יבא שילה Until Shiloh comes
‘d’ולו יקהת עמים And the obedience of the nations will be to him.
In my argument, ‘b’ , ומחקק מבין רגליו is my primary concern. Often this MT phrase is translated as ‘nor the commander's [ruler's, legislator's] staff from between his feet’ (e.g. Skinner, Sarna, Speiser).Footnote 10 The word מחקק is a denominative from חק ‘statute, ordinance’ construed as a participle: ‘one who keeps statutes’ – a type of commander – or, with the LXX, a ἡγούμενος ‘leader’. The translation ‘commander's staff’ may also be legitimate, if מחקק is understood as a synonym for שבט (v. 10a).Footnote 11 But, by the time of John's writing, מחקק could have been read in another way. We see in later literature of the OT that חקק was also a verb in its own right, meaning ‘to cut in, inscribe, decree’.Footnote 12 We also find חקק with this meaning in later rabbinic literature; Genesis Rabbah 68.12 says: את הוא שאיפותנין שלך חקוקה למעלה ‘It is thou, whose features are engraved on high’.Footnote 13 It is thus plausible that John, writing between the composition of the OT and rabbinic literature, chose to interpret the participle מחקק with the meaning ‘inscribe’ for his own literary purposes.
In the OT, where the MT has חקק and the LXX translators understood the word to mean ‘inscribe’, the translator usually used a form of γράφω (which also means ‘to write, inscribe’). For example, in Isa 10.1 הוי החקקים חקקי־און ‘Woe to the ones inscribing inscriptions of iniquity’ the LXX has οὐαὶ τοῖς γράφουσιν πονηρίαν ‘Woe to the ones writing iniquity.’Footnote 14 In Rev 19.16 we find γεγραμμένον, a perfect middle participle from the root γράφω. Thus, because γράφω is a legitimate translation of חקק, it is plausible that John was reading from an MT-like text.
The MT of Gen 49.10b also contains the noun plus pronoun רגליו ‘his feet’. In the MT, while רגל normally refers to a foot, it can also occasionally be used to indicate a leg. 1 Samuel 17.6 is a clear example of רגל referring to a leg: ומצחת נחשת על־רגליו וכידון נחשת בין כתפיו ‘He had bronze greaves on his legs, and a bronze javelin from his shoulders.’ There are other cases where the referent of רגל, though ambiguous, could also be leg. In Num 22.25 the donkey scrapes Balaam's רגל against the wall; it seems likely that here too רגל should be understood as ‘leg’. Mephibosheth's accident which caused him to be lame could as easily be in his legs as in his feet (see 2 Sam 4.4, 2 Sam 9.3, 13). It seems likely that John read רגל in this sense. Most importantly, Gen 49.10 LXX is one of two verses in the Greek Bible that translates רגל as μηρός (see also Deut 28.57): καὶ ἡγούμενος ἐκ τῶν μηρῶν αὐτοῦ (cf. ומחקק מבין רגליו). This suggests that μηρός ‘thigh/leg’ is a legitimate translation of רגל and it is entirely plausible that John translated רגל with μηρός, the noun we find in Rev 19.16.
From this evidence, it would appear that John was reading a text similar to the MT. The translation ‘inscribed on his thigh’ is a legitimate translation of the consonants we find represented in the MT.Footnote 15 The LXX also offers a legitimate Greek equivalent of what we see in the MT, but its translators made alternative translation choices. Thus, as mentioned before, since the rest of the image of the rider is derived from pertinent portions of the OT, it is fitting that this phrase originates in Gen 49.10.
Significantly, 19.16 is not the first allusion to Gen 49.8–12 within the book of Revelation. Bauckham observed that Gen 49.8–12, along with Ps 2.9, Isa 11.4,10 and Num 24.17, all contain the word שבט. All are paired in different combinations throughout Revelation because of their mutual use of שבט. For example, Rev 2.26–8 alludes to Psa 2.9 and Num 24.17. Revelation 5.5 alludes to Gen 49.9–10 and Isa 11.10.Footnote 16 Revelation 19 employs two of the four verses: Psa 2.9 and Isa 11.10.Footnote 17 Because John uses Gen 49.8–12 elsewhere in conjunction with these verses, it is not surprising that he is referencing it again here. Beyond this pattern noted by Bauckham, NA28 further lists Rev 7.14 as containing an allusion deriving from Gen 49.8–12.
Above, I have demonstrated the phrase ‘inscribed on his thigh’ was a legitimate translation of the consonantal Gen 49.10b MT. In light of John's overall compositional style in this pericope, as well as the use of Gen 49.8–12 elsewhere in the book of Revelation, it is very likely that the source of the phrase ‘inscribed on his thigh’ was an MT-like text of Gen 49.10b.
