On Mount Zion

I. From the Number to the Name

The darkest page of Revelation ends with a number.

In the thirteenth chapter the darkness is complete. Nothing more is missing from it. The beast from the sea has its throne and its mouth full of great words; the whole earth has gone after it; a second beast has risen, with horns like a lamb and a voice like a dragon, which teaches the inhabitants of the earth whom they must worship. The image has been given a spirit and has begun to speak; whoever does not worship it is killed. The market is boarded shut: no one can buy or sell except whoever bears the mark — the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Then the chapter closes with the sentence in which the whole night draws together: "Here is the wisdom. Whoever has understanding, let him calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man — six hundred and sixty-six."1 The last word of the darkness is no roar and no blasphemy. It is a number. An empire that cannot win hearts stamps skin; a night that knows no names ends in a sum.

And then — nothing. No "after this," none of the transition-formulas with which this book otherwise shifts from scene to scene. Between the number of the beast and the next verse there is no seam:

"And I saw, and behold, the Lamb stood on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand, who bear the name of his Father written on their foreheads."2

Frame against frame: out of the night of the mark, the morning of the Name. Twice before this book stood at the edge of this cut — in chapter 1, when the telescope brought it into view, and in chapter 6, when the forehead turned out to be the battlefield — but then the view was from the far side, from the seal and the storm. Now this book steps into the picture. This is the portrait: the only scene in the book in which this company stands fully in the light, up close, five verses long. Until now they appeared as list and total — twelve lines, a number read aloud. Here they stand. Every word of the opening verse weighs.

The Lamb stood. The Greek sets down a perfect form here: the Lamb stands — it has taken its stand and stands still. In the whole book that form belongs to the Lamb alone: in the throne room, at the scroll — "a Lamb, standing, as slain" — and here, on Zion.3 Slain and yet standing: the whole theology of this book sits in that one participle. The Lamb did not remain standing despite the slaughter but straight through it; the pierced one stands. And of the hundred and forty-four thousand it is not said that they stood. The standing belongs wholly to the Lamb; of them only their place is named, and that place is not a coordinate but a person: with him. Where are the hundred and forty-four thousand? With the Lamb. More the text does not need, and less it cannot do.

On Mount Zion. In a book that otherwise knows every geography of the end time, "Zion" falls exactly once: here.4 Whoever has read the prophets knows what comes with it. In the psalms Zion is the mountain of the anointed king: while the nations rage, the decree sounds — "I have anointed my king over Zion, my holy mountain." And in the prophets Zion is the mountain of escape: "everyone who calls on the name of YHWH shall escape; for on Mount Zion there shall be escape" — and Obadiah: "and it shall be holiness." King's mountain and mountain of escape at once, and Revelation 14 lays the two images upon each other: the anointed one on the mountain is the Lamb, the escaped are the marked ones. At the foot of the mountain the thirteenth chapter still rages; above stands already what remains.

A hundred and forty-four thousand. The same number as in chapter 6 — but the verb is the hinge between the two chapters. There John heard the number; the sealing took place off-screen. Here he sees them — the same move by which the book announced its lion and showed its Lamb.5 From roster to company, from roll-call to muster. Between those two observations lies just about the whole book: the trumpets, the pit that opened, the witnesses, the dragon, the beast and its mark. And the number has not shrunk. It does not say: and I saw the survivors of the hundred and forty-four thousand. It gives the number itself, whole, without subtraction. What was counted before the storm stands complete after the night: not one name has fallen from the roster. The body has arrived complete.

The name of his Father written on their foreheads. Chapter 6 followed this word right into the workshop: what the high priest's forehead alone bore — the Name, in seal-script, "continually" — is here borne by a hundred and forty-four thousand foreheads. The montage screams the contrast. One verse earlier something was also written on people: the name of the beast, or the number of his name — on the forehead of the marked stands not who they are but who their owner is, and even that owner can be summed up in a sum. Here too it does not say who they are — and yet exactly the opposite: no number but a Name, written, γεγραμμένον, as a writer writes; the Name of a Father. The beast numbers its stock; the Father writes his Name on his children. And what stands here on a hundred and forty-four thousand foreheads was promised eleven chapters earlier to one congregation, little faithful Philadelphia: "the one who conquers — I will write on him the name of my God."6 The promise stands here redeemed, on a grand scale, on a mountain.

So the portrait opens: a standing Lamb, a mountain of kingship and escape, a complete number, the Name in the place where the beast sets its mark. Two traits were promised their own hour back in chapter 6 — the song no one can learn, and the word "firstfruits." This is that hour.

II. The Song No One Could Learn

Then sound goes through the vision — sound that John can only write down in similes:

"And I heard a voice from heaven, like the voice of many waters and like the voice of a heavy thunder; and I heard a voice of lyre-players, playing on their lyres. And they sing as a new song before the throne and before the four living creatures and the elders; and no one could learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand, the purchased from the earth."7

Three times "like." Like many waters, like heavy thunder — and then, in the same breath, lyre-players. That combination is deliberately impossible. Many waters and heavy thunder: the heaviest register of sound that Scripture possesses, sound you do not hear but undergo, that makes rib cages vibrate along and drowns out cities. And lyre-playing is the opposite: the finest sound antiquity knew — individual strings, plucked with fingertips, music from close by. Here it is one and the same voice: the mass of a flood with the precision of string-playing, power that gives up nothing of delicacy, majesty that articulates. This is how heaven sounds when it sings of the redemption.

And the lyres tell a story of their own within this book. String-playing sounds in the throne room, where the elders carry lyres; here, above Zion; later at the sea of glass, where the victors hold "lyres of God" in their hands. And once it is named for its falling silent: in fallen Babylon "the voice of lyre-players and musicians shall no longer be heard, never again."8 The music moves house. It moves away from the city of merchandise and settles where the Lamb stands. At the end of history Babylon is silent and Zion sings.

Then the song. "They sing as a new song before the throne" — and this song has already been sung once in the book. In the throne room, when the Lamb took the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders sang "a new song," with its content: "You are worthy to take the book and to open its seals, for you were slain and have purchased us for God with your blood."9 The new song of this book is the song of the redemption — heaven sang it first. Now it sounds again, out of heaven, above the mountain. And then follows the sentence on which everything in this chapter turns:

And no one could learn the song except the hundred and forty-four thousand.

"Learn" — μαθεῖν. That verb stands in the whole of Revelation exactly once: here.10 The book that hears everything and sees everything uses its only "learn" for this song. And it adds its heaviest formula, for "no one could" is in Revelation not a sigh but a stamp — the mark of its utmost exclusivities. No one could open the book except the Lamb. No one could count the great multitude. No one could enter the temple as long as the bowls were not empty. And no one could learn the song except these.11 There is a scroll that could be opened only by One — and a song that could be learned only by one company.

What is that — a song you cannot learn? Every melody in the world can be copied: you hear it, you play it back; if need be you steal it. Against every imitator who would strike the notes, this verse sets one word: no one. The key lies in how the exception is described. It does not say: except the gifted, the trained, the singers. It says: except "the purchased from the earth" — a perfect participle, not a skill. Access to this song is not a talent but a history. The song is about the redemption, and a song about the redemption can be learned only by one who has himself been purchased, just as only the one who passed through the water can sing the song of the crossing. Whoever has not undergone it misses no notes; he misses the content. You can learn this song only by being who they are.

And in that verb there is one more thing, the tenderest: to learn presupposes a teacher. The voice comes from heaven; the company stands on the mountain. Heaven sings the lead, and below the learning happens — even in the glory they stand in the posture this book from the beginning drew as the deepest: that of the Servant, awakened every morning "to hear as pupils hear."12 The song of the consummation is not composed by those permitted to sing it. It is received from above, line by line.

Back into the Old Testament: there, centuries earlier, the type of this scene stands ready. On the eve of the temple's building David sets up the song-service, and the chronicle records who co-signs that decision: "And David and the commanders of the army set apart for the service the sons of Asaph and Heman and Jeduthun, who prophesied with lyres, with harps, and with cymbals."13 Army commanders appoint singers — in this chronicle army and song are not separate worlds; the choir is drawn up like a corps. And what those singers do is called by the heaviest word Scripture has for it: they prophesy with their strings — Asaph "under the hands of the king," Jeduthun "with the lyre, at the praising and thanking of YHWH." String-playing at the sanctuary is here no ornamental frame; it is proclamation on strings.

Then the chronicle counts them:

"And their number was, with their brothers, taught in the song of YHWH, all who were skilled: two hundred and eighty-eight."14

A company with a number: two hundred and eighty-eight — no arbitrary figure, for it breaks down into twenty-four lots of twelve men each, twelvefold after twelvefold. A company defined by a learned song: "taught in the song of YHWH" — the Hebrew sets down a participle of the verb to learn; their whole qualification is that the song has been taught to them. And a company without weak spots: "all who were skilled" — not some, with the rest towed along; all. Then follows the lot-casting verse: "they cast lots for their service, the small as well as the great, the teacher with the pupil."15 The teacher with the pupil — in one lot, at one service, without rank in the drawing. The word for "pupil" that falls here later became the word for disciple — and the canon uses it exactly once, here, in the midst of counted singers.

Lay this roster beside the mountain. A counted company — there two hundred and eighty-eight, here a hundred and forty-four thousand. Ordered in twelvefolds — there twenty-four times twelve, here twelve times twelve thousand. Defined by a song that must be learned — there "taught in the song of YHWH," here "no one could learn the song except them." All skilled — there "all who were skilled," here a company without remainder: the song knows no half-pupils. With lyres, at the sanctuary, under a king. It is the portrait of Revelation 14, thirteen centuries earlier, in the language of the chronicle: the canon knows exactly one company that is both counted and defined by a learned song — until Revelation draws a second.

One thing must be said here once, and then let go. The chronicle's key word — "all who were skilled," "the teacher with the pupil" — is in Hebrew one and the same word: mevin, "the one who understands," the participle of the understanding-verb known from Daniel; "the wise shall make the many understand" is built with this root.16 The counted singers who have learned the song thus stand, linguistically, right next to the wise who make the many understand — the song-roster and the teacher-roster of the canon speak the same word. Whether that nearness is also coincidence — whether the body that sings here and the function that teaches there are the same people — is the question that receives its own treatment further on. Here the likeness is left standing, as a string goes on vibrating after it has been touched.

III. The First Sheaf

After the song the portrait names price and destiny in one breath:

"These have been purchased from among men, as a firstfruit for God and the Lamb."18

"Purchased" is familiar; chapter 6 followed that word right down to the law of counting — counted, purchased, no plague; the receipt on the forehead. But then that second word: firstfruit. It sounds like a title of honor, and whoever reads it that way reads right past it. "Firstfruit" in Scripture is no compliment; it is an institution, with its own law, ritual, and a very precise legal content. Go to the law.

It stands in Leviticus 23, among the feasts. The people are in the land, the harvest is ripe — and then the law ordains something wondrous: before even one grain of the new harvest is eaten, one sheaf goes out, ahead. "When you come into the land that I give you, and you reap its harvest, then you shall bring the sheaf of the first of your harvest to the priest. And he shall wave the sheaf before the face of YHWH, for your acceptance; on the day after the sabbath the priest shall wave it."19 It is one of the quietest and greatest gestures of the cult: one sheaf of grain, the very first, cut loose while all the rest still stands on the stalk, carried to the sanctuary — and there the priest lifts it up and waves it before the face of YHWH, as if showing it to the Owner of the harvest. One sheaf, held aloft. And around that one sheaf, for miles, a whole land full of grain stands waiting.

For wait it must — that is the sharpest provision of the law: "bread, roasted grain, and fresh grain you shall not eat, until this very day, until you have brought the offering of your God."20 Before the sheaf, the whole harvest is forbidden ground. One sheaf goes up — and the land may eat. The firstfruit does not only announce the harvest; it releases it. That whole year of bread hangs on one uplifted sheaf.

Now the bridge — not of atmosphere but of letters. When this law learned to speak Greek, in the translation John's first readers read, "the first of your harvest" received a name: ἀπαρχή — "you shall bring the sheaf, the firstfruit of your harvest, to the priest."21 That is, letter for letter, the word of Revelation 14:4. The hundred and forty-four thousand are called what the omer was called. No loose association: the same word, on its way from the one text to the other — and it drags the whole institution along with it.

What does the institution say about them? Three things.

First: a firstfruit is never the whole harvest. "First" is an ordinal, and an ordinal exists only where more follows. A sheaf that were the whole harvest is no longer a firstfruit but a crop failure. Whoever, then, reads a ceiling into this counted company — as if with a hundred and forty-four thousand the ingathering were full and the door shut — reads the word exactly backwards. "Firstfruit" says the opposite: these are the beginning of something greater than themselves, the anticipation of a harvest still standing in the fields. And the chapter knows this itself: eleven verses on sounds the word to which the firstfruit points — "send your sickle and reap, for the hour to reap has come, for the harvest of the earth has ripened."22 Firstfruit and harvest stand in one composition; the sheaf did not stand at the front for nothing.

Second: the firstfruit is given on behalf of the whole. The sheaf does not go up for itself; it is waved "for your acceptance" — for the acceptance of those who brought it; in that one sheaf the whole harvest is brought before God's face and received. An apostle states the principle in one line: "if the firstfruit is holy, then so is the dough."23 Holiness flows, in this institution, from the first part to the whole — never the other way. What the hundred and forty-four thousand are, they are not instead of the harvest but for its sake: their sanctification stands surety for more.

And third — strict, for the misunderstanding lies in wait: firstfruit is not a rank. The sheaf is no different grain from the field. It is not better; it is earlier. It is set apart, not over against the harvest but ahead of it and in its service — as the roster in chapter 6 apportioned no inheritance but recorded service, so this word measures no quality but place: at the front, and for the rest. The canon knows the false variant too, harrowing enough to name once: "woe to the complacent on Zion [...] the notable men of the firstfruit of the nations" — a self-assured society that on the holy mountain held itself to be firstfruit and was not.24 Firstfruit-status that becomes rank is, with the prophets, a mortal sin. The true sheaf knows that it is grain like all the rest — only cut earlier, and held aloft for the whole.

Two more traits of the law light up beside the mountain. The sheaf is waved — and in the whole law there is only one living gift waved before YHWH with that same verb: the Levites, whom Aaron waves "as a wave offering before the face of YHWH" — human beings, offered and not slain, the only living human offering of the cult; and Levi of all tribes counts, the one time in a tribal roster, plainly along in the roster of chapter 6.25 And the firstfruit gift is the only gift in the whole law that may not be brought in silence: whoever brings his firstfruits has a confession placed in his mouth, prescribed word for word — "a wandering Aramean was my father [...]"26 The gift speaks. On Zion it has begun to sing.

So the third line of the portrait stands sharp. "A firstfruit for God and the Lamb": purchased, sanctified, at the front — the first, God-accepted part of an ingathering that follows; the sheaf that goes up while the fields still stand full. It states their place in the harvest, nowhere that they exhaust it — on the contrary: as long as a firstfruit stands on the mountain, the harvest is not yet in, and the sickle already stands ready.

IV. The Mouth Without Deceit

Three lines of the portrait remain, each with a root that goes deeper into the canon than you see at first glance.

"These are they who follow the Lamb wherever he goes."27 The closest nearness-formula in the whole book. And the form: no promise ("they shall follow"), no past tense ("they have followed"), but a participle — the following ones; the following is what they are, as "the wise one" was a participle and not a title. And then that tail: "wherever he goes" — open, blank. The destination is not named; the following is pledged before the route is known. That is the signature of this company: not a contract with a route map appended, but a person, and nothing further. There is a word for those permitted to be so near to someone: confidants — confidants of the Lamb. Consider what the Lamb's way led through. The Lamb they follow is the Lamb "as slain" — his track runs through the slaughter-bench, and whoever follows him "wherever he goes" has therefore followed him there too; the "wherever" has had a price. Revelation knows one other going, carefully laid down as a contrast: the beast too "goes" — "it goes to destruction."28 Two goings this book knows, and only two. Every footstep on earth runs in one of the two tracks: after the Lamb, wherever — or along with the beast, and that "whither" is filled in.

"With women they have not defiled themselves, for they are virgins."29 No line of the portrait has caused readers more embarrassment, and none is so distorted the moment it is isolated. Set it back into the two frames Scripture itself supplies; they do not exclude each other.

The first frame is the law of the war camp. This company was counted in chapter 6 the way one counts an army — Judah at the front, camp order, mustering — and for the army of Israel there held a rule of sanctification that had nothing to do with marital morality and everything to do with nearness: "when you go out as an army against your enemies, then be on guard against every evil thing [...] for YHWH your God walks in the midst of your camp, to save you [...] therefore your camp shall be holy." Whoever went to battle abstained — David could swear to Ahimelech: "women have been kept from us, as whenever I go out"; and Uriah, with the ark in booths in the field, refused even to enter his own house.30 No contempt for marriage: the same law sends the newly betrothed home, away from the front. It is a protocol of nearness: in this camp the Holy One himself dwells, and whoever marches so close to him lives at the sharpest edge of purity. Read this way, the line says: here stands an army that has the campaign of its life behind it — gone into the field pure and arrived pure.

And this frame of reading was, in the centuries around the New Testament, no dead letter. The War Scroll of Qumran — chapter 6 introduced it: no canon and no source, but a witness to how people then read — spells out for the end-time army of the "sons of light" precisely this camp law, after Deuteronomy 23 and stricter: no boy and no woman in the army camps, from the march out to the return; each one "willing for the battle, pure of spirit and flesh"; and the reason is given, from the same register as the law itself: "for holy angels are together with their army" (1QM 7:3-7). A weighed witness, no more — but it documents that the purity of Deuteronomy 23 was, in the Second Temple period, read as the condition of the army of the last war: purity as a state of readiness in the nearness of the Holy One, not in the first place as abstinence for abstinence's sake. And the boundary goes honestly along: the scroll asks camp-purity for the duration of the campaign, not lifelong celibacy; the word "virgins" is and remains the step Revelation itself takes.

The second frame is the book itself. In Revelation "woman" is never simply a woman: the word draws a figure each time — Jezebel who seduces the servants, the woman in labor clothed with the sun, the bride of the Lamb. And three chapters after Zion the fourth: the great harlot, "with whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication," drunk with her wine — and "fornication" is, in the prophets and in this book, the fixed name for idolatry.31 Over against her these are virgin: unseduced, not taken in by the great offer, kept for One — as an apostle wrote of the congregation: "I have betrothed you to one man, to present you to Christ as a pure virgin."32 And the book had already defined "not defiled," in the letter to Sardis: "you have a few names even in Sardis who have not defiled their garments, and they shall walk with me in white" — there the image is clothing, the reward the walking-along.33 Soldier's purity or bridal faithfulness: the text does not force a choice — an army that marches out pure and a betrothed who passed the harlot by stand without friction on the same mountain.

And the canon gives that undefiledness a face too — the oldest. Even before there was a camp law, there was one man who, in the house of his master, in the heart of the empire, refused the woman and went into the dungeon for it: "how could I do this great evil and sin against God?"34 Joseph, the consecrated one among his brothers, kept his body pure where it cost him everything; and his double on the other side of the exile did the same with the table of the king — "Daniel resolved in his heart that he would not defile himself."35 What here stands of a whole company — not defiled — stood first of them: the undefiled servant in the court. Chapter 3 already showed those two as the prototypes of the wise; here their undefiledness, inflected from singular to plural, stands on the mountain.

Lay, then, the tribe-list of chapter 6 beside this portrait, and it proves to be one document in two genres. The muster doubled what the portrait describes, and left out what the portrait denies. Joseph stands there twice — the undefiled one, the double portion of the firstborn; the portrait says: not defiled. Dan does not stand there — the tribe that in the father-word became "a serpent on the road," "that bites the horse's heels so that its rider falls backward"; the portrait says: in their mouth no deceit — and deceit is the medium of the serpent. Who stands doubled at the roll call and who is silent from it together spell the same word that stands written over this company. Why Dan is silent, chapter 6 leaves undecided; here it counts only that whoever stands there doubled bears the face of this portrait.

"And in their mouth no deceit was found, for they are blameless before the throne of God."36 In this last line sounds a familiar voice — the oldest and deepest of this book.

For thus it stood written of the Servant, in the grave-line of the fourth song: "he had done no violence, and no deceit was in his mouth."37 Chapter 3 showed how Daniel's vision sets its highest word about the wise in the words of this song. Here Revelation does something of the same order: it takes the sentence with which the song acquitted the mouth of the Servant, and sets it — inflected from singular to plural — upon the company of the mountain. What held of Him alone is said of them all. As in chapter 6 the seal passed from the one bearer to the many, so here the mouth of the One passes over to the many: the sealed bear his Name above their eyes and his signature on their lips. But the boundary of chapter 3 stands: they inherit his mouth, not his bearing. The song said something more about that mouth without deceit — that like a lamb it was led to the slaughter and did not open; and that it bore the iniquity of many. That remains his own.

And the Servant is not the only voice. Zephaniah saw, on the far side of the judgment, a people standing marked in precisely this way: "I will leave in your midst a lowly and poor people, and they shall take refuge in the name of YHWH. The remnant of Israel shall do no wrong and speak no lie, and in their mouth no deceitful tongue shall be found; for they shall graze and lie down, and no one shall frighten them."38 There it already lies ready. A remnant that takes refuge in the Name — here they bear it on the forehead. A plural of mouths in which no deceit is found — the courtroom formula of Revelation 14:5, word for word. And then that close: they shall graze and lie down — flock language; the people without a lie as a flock in safe grass. The shepherd of that flock has already been named: "the Lamb [...] will shepherd them."39

And there is a third voice, from the heart of the word-field of this whole book. There is a psalm that bears the genre-word of the wise as its heading — maskil — and its opening beatitude ends thus: "blessed is the man to whom YHWH does not reckon iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit."40 The maskil psalm defines the blessed man by the absence of deceit. But the psalm also tells how a man comes to such a spirit. Psalm 32 is no song of a spotless man; it is a penitential psalm. "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away [...] My sin I made known to you, and my iniquity I did not cover; I said: I will confess my transgressions to YHWH — and you took away the iniquity of my sin."41 The deceit of this psalm is not in the first place lying to people; it is the covering-up before God — the silence that wrecks the bones. And the man without deceit is not the man who never had anything to cover up, but the man who has stopped covering up. This is how a mouth without deceit is made: not given at birth, but cleansed through confession — and, said chapter 4, burned clean. What crept into the circle at the stumbling: smooth mouths, increase by flattery, the weapon of the despised one in the mouth of table companions. Look, then, at the mountain. What the fire had to attack is no longer there; the smoothness has been burned out of these mouths down to the last flattering phrase. The perfect opposite of the flatterer is not the silent man. It is the person in whose mouth you can read that nothing is hidden anymore.

The last two words of the portrait set the hallmark on it: blameless — the word by which a sacrificial animal passes inspection, "without blemish," the requirement the law placed on every gift.42 Sacrificial language, on people just now called "firstfruit": the gift has been inspected and found good — "before the throne of God," where the song too sounded. The sheaf has been accepted.

V. The White That Sang

Set the portrait before you once more: the standing Lamb; the mountain of the king and of the escape; the complete number; the Name above the eyes; the song sung from above and learnable below by no one else; the firstfruit, held aloft on behalf of a harvest still to come; the following ones, wherever; the virgins; the mouths without deceit, inspected before the throne. Whoever has read chapter 3 hears in this scene an instrument he knows. All four strings sound — but differently than ever: not as prophecy, but as consummation.

The suffering — the darkest string — sounds no longer as threat but as price paid: twice the portrait calls them "purchased," and the book had already named the price — blood, the same for everyone. The smelting-furnace of chapter 4 lies behind them. The perseverance — the longest string — has rung itself out: from the sealing before the storm to the mountain after the night of the beast, and the number did not shrink along the way. "Blessed is the one who waits, and arrives," said the blessing at the close of Daniel; here stand those who have arrived.44 The testimony — the string for which the others exist — sounds: the new song, aloud, before the throne; from the only mouths on which that song can be played, for a song about the redemption tolerates no deceit in the instrument. And the glory — the fourth string, which always comes after the other three — is no longer a promise: it is the scene itself. The Name, the mountain, the Lamb, "with him." Closer to "shining like the stars" this book does not come before the stars themselves have their turn.

And the white? Chapter 4 ended with it: white is what remains of a person when the fire is done. Then it was a color — and a color is silent. Now it turns out to have a voice. The white that came out of the smelting-furnace stands singing on Zion: the song no one else could learn, because no one else had become what this song requires — purchased, following, undeceiving people. This is the last thing the smelting-furnace reveals about itself, and the most beautiful: the furnace made no silence. It tuned an instrument. While the fire burned and the smoothness scorched away and the dross was skimmed off, there was not only purifying — there was tuning, string by string, for a song that did not yet exist. The white that remained could sing.

The psalms saw this morning coming. One psalm carries the whole scene in a single verse: the anointed king on Zion in the midst of his enemies, and then his people — not an army that is mustered, but a people that offers itself: "Your people are all willingness on the day of your power; in holy adornment, from the womb of the dawn, comes to you the dew of your youth."45 Young troops like dew: countless drops, each formed separately in the night, and all visible at once the moment the light falls over them. Out of the rising of the sun came, in chapter 6, the seal; out of the womb of the dawn comes, here, the people. The night of the beast was long. But what was formed in that night lies gleaming on the mountain at the first light.

Here Part III ends, and the two figures of this book both stand fully in view. In Part II a function: the wise one — not a title but a verb; a servant-figure with scars, forged in the smelting-furnace, who understands from above and makes the many understand, at the price that attaches to it. In Part III a body: a counted, sealed, purchased company — engraved like a breastplate, spared as those counted with a ransom, here complete on the mountain, singing. And the two portraits touch at places that cannot be coincidence. Both bear the signature of the Servant — the one his verbs, the other his mouth. Both stand on the far side of the same fire — the one as refined, the other as purchased. And in the background of both sounds the same rare word: the mevin, the skilled one — in Daniel the wise one who makes the many understand, in the chronicle the counted singer who has learned the song.

But there is one difference, and it must be said here, now that both portraits are done, aloud. Count the verbs of the mountain. The body does, in its whole portrait, exactly two things itself: it learns, and it follows. All the rest has happened to it — sealed, counted, purchased, found.46 Learning and following: the two verbs of a pupil. And the function of Part II had one verb that carried everything, the verb of a teacher: to make understand. There stands the riddle of this book, in its simplest form. The pupil of the Lamb and the teacher of the many — are these two names for the same person, as one river receives upstream and gives out downstream, as in the chronicle's lot-casting verse the teacher and the pupil fell in one lot? Or do two figures stand here side by side, kindred and yet distinct? That question is not decided here. But after this chapter it stands under tension — like a string tuned and not yet struck. Part IV strikes it.

For whoever reads this in those days.

If you are reading this in the days of the number — when the darkness is organized, the market closed to whoever refuses, and the last word of every day seems to be a figure — then think of the cut with which this chapter began. Between the number of the beast and the Lamb on the mountain there is no transition: one verse the night, the next verse the morning. So thin, in the book that describes your days, is the wall between the darkest scene and the brightest. And on the other side of that wall a song is waiting. But understand well what kind of song it is. Almost everything in this life can be learned by copying — skills, attitudes, even piety. Of this song there is no sheet music. No one could learn it — no one — except the purchased; so you do not sing your way closer to it by trying harder, but by becoming who they are. Purchased — that you are, once the price is paid; that line of the song is not your work. Following — that you can begin today, even without knowing where to; "wherever he goes" is not the fine print under the contract, it is the contract. And without deceit — the mouth without deceit is no inborn innocence; no one on that mountain received it at birth. It is burned-out fire and speech cleansed by confession. The psalm called "maskil" says it inexorably gently: the man without deceit is the man who stopped covering up — who confessed his sin and is forgiven, and therefore no longer needs to flatter anyone. Such a mouth is not made on the mountain but in the valley — you can begin on it today, simply by ceasing to be silent where confession must be made. And if you are afraid of getting lost along the way: the number that was read aloud before the storm stands complete on the mountain after the storm. Whoever is counted is not lost. What you will do there, then, on the other side of the night? Sing. What comes out of your fire is not ash. It is a voice — and a song stands ready for you that can be learned only by people with your history. Heaven is already singing it. Learn it.