Scholars almost universally identify “the great multitude that no one could count from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages” (Rev 7:9) as a multi-ethnic gathering of the nations. However, this language could also describe a regathered twelve tribes of Israel taken out from the places where they had been scattered among the nations. Such a referent is plausible because of the widespread belief in the continued existence of the twelve tribes and the persistent hope of their regathering. It can also better account for the vision’s pervasive echoes of the repatriation theme from Israel’s ancestral writings (7:9–17) and the preceding vision’s enumeration of the 144,000 from all the tribes of Israel (7:4–8)—widely understood to be the same group as the innumerable multitude. If this referent is correct, it suggests that the New Jerusalem (21:1–22:5) is also populated by a restored Israel.
