As I have demonstrated in several of my blogs, the Book of Revelation is permeated by Old Testament allusions. See especially the post titled “Revelation 15:3-4” in which every phrase is an echo of something said in the Hebrew Bible. But in those particular verses (more specifically in vv. 3b-4), there is another Hebraic feature pointed out by Leon Morris, namely, “This is the one song in Revelation to show the parallelism so characteristic of Hebrew poetry.”
As NRSV translates and indents this song, it reads:
3 A. Great and amazing are your deeds,
B. Lord God the Almighty!
A'. Just and true are your ways,
B'. King of the nations!
4 A. Lord, who will not fear
B. and glorify your name?
A'. For you alone are holy.
B'. All nations will come
B''. and worship before you,
A''. for your judgments have been revealed.
Thus, according to that scanning, verse 3 takes the form of what is called identical parallelism, ABAB.
In the same manner, verse 4 appears to take the slightly more elaborate alternating form, ABABAB, but only if we consider B' and B'' to taken together as but one line of poetry. Or, with others, we could consider 3-4a and 4b as the two separate arrangements ABABAB and ABBA (not to be confused with the great singing group).
NIV utilizes the identical indentations for verse 3, but differs in how it understands the parallelism in v. 4:
A. Who will not fear you, Lord,
B. and bring glory to your name?
A'. For you alone are holy.
A''. All nations will come
B'. and worship before you,
A'''.for your righteous acts have been revealed.
This appears as a more complicated pattern, ABAABA not really paralleled in Old Testament poetry unless wishes to break verse 4 into two separate ABA constructions.
TEV also feels that v. 3 is written as a simple identical parallelism. However, when it comes to the first and third lines, the translators chose for some reason to break out “your deeds” and “your ways” as separate lines so that an ABCABC pattern emerges. One could just as accurately have parsed it as follows:
Great
and
amazing
are
your
ways, and
Just
and
true
are
your
deeds
Then when it comes to verse 4, all semblance of a symmetrical scheme appears to have been abandoned:
A. Who will not stand I awe of
C. you, Lord?
B. Who will refuse to declare
C'. your greatness?
B'. You alone are holy.
A'. All the nations will come
B''. and worship you,
B'''. because your just actions
C''. are seen by all.
In his commentary, Mounce also correctly identifies the parallelism in verse 3 and says, “The structure of the hymn suggest that it may have been used in the liturgy of the early church. The first four lines are a classic example of synonymous parallelism.” However, when it comes to v. 4, he treats “Who shall fear, O Lord, and glorify thy name?” as a rhetorical question answered by the following three lines, which are parallel to one another:
For thou only art holy,
For all the nations shall come and worship before thee;
For thy righteous acts have been made manifest.
This way of looking at v. 4b does appear to make sense since the Greek original does contain three occurrences of hoti (“for, because”), one at the beginning of each of these three lines. However, as Beale rightly points out, the function of hoti in the middle line serves an entirely different function than the other two: “The second hoti of v 4 introduces not a ground clause but is to be rendered as 'so that.' This consecutive rendering of the hoti indicates the effect of God's incomparable holiness expressed in the first hoti clause (v 4a), which declared the ground for worship due to God (v 4a; for the consecutive or final nuance of hoti with the sense of 'so that'). The effect of God's unique holiness is that people from all nations will recognize it and stream to worship God, which repeats the primary thought of v 4a that God is to be feared and glorified.”
Then there is John Phillips' analysis of these verses. The tack he takes is to consider vv. 3-4a as ABABAB parallelism in which there is an alternation between what is said and what is sung:
Sing: “How great thou art”
Say: “How great and marvelous are thy works, Lord God Almighty”
Sing: “How good Thou art”
Say: “Just and true are thy ways, thou king of saints.”
Sing: “How glorious thou art!”
Say: “Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name?”
By combining some of the above insights as well as discarding supposed parallelisms in which the meanings and functions of the supposedly similar lines of poetry do not really match one another, I would like to propose yet another way to understand v. 4 of this short poem, using the RSV wording but not its indentations.
A. Who shall not fear and
B. glorify thy name, O Lord?
C. For thou alone art holy.
A'. All nations shall come and
B'. worship thee,
C'. for thy judgments have been revealed.
Finally, I would question the statement of Morris which began this post: “This is the one song in Revelation to show the parallelism so characteristic of Hebrew poetry.” Just taking one random example which is the closest to 15:3-4, consider 16:5-7. It can be quite easily scanned as follows:
A. And I heard the angel of water say,
B. “Just art thou in these thy judgments,
C. thou who art and wast, O Holy One.
D. For men have shed the blood of saints and prophets,
D'. and thou hast given them blood to drink. It is their due!”
A'. And I heard the altar cry,
C'. “Yea, Lord God the Almighty,
B'. true and just are thy judgments!”
This is but another form of Hebrew poetic parallelism, taking a mirror image, or chiastic, form instead.
Or, to taking another random example from Revelation, look at 13:9-10:
A. If any one has a ear let him hear:
B. If any one is to be taken captive,
C. to captivity he goes;
B'. if any one slays with the sword,
C'. with the sword must he be slain.
A'. Here is a call for the endurance and faith of the saints.
Here we have a combination of parallelism and chiasm in one poetic construction
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