Five-minute study · Day 300 · Revelation 21
Revelation 21:4
A word worth stopping on: tears δάκρυον dakryon
'And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.' Three hundred days of words. Genesis to Revelation. Hebrew roots and Greek compounds. And the last word study lands here, at a verse that uses dakryon. A single tear. The Greek is specific: dakryon can refer to one tear, a single drop on one face. John, exiled on Patmos, writing to persecuted churches scattered across Asia Minor, recorded a vision of God doing the most intimate thing imaginable. Wiping a tear off a face. One face. One tear. One finger. The Creator of the universe, closing the distance between his hand and your cheek.
Word study: tears
- Greek
- δάκρυον
- Pronounced
- dakryon
- Strong's
- G1144
- Definition
- A tear, a teardrop. The physical product of weeping. Used in the singular to emphasize individual, personal grief and in the plural for collective or sustained weeping.
Dakryon appears 10 times in the New Testament. BDAG defines it as 'tear, teardrop' and notes its use in contexts of grief, repentance, pastoral concern, and eschatological promise. The word appears in several memorable passages: Luke 7:38 (the sinful woman wetting Jesus's feet with her dakrya), Acts 20:19 (Paul serving the Lord 'with many tears'), Acts 20:31 (Paul warning the Ephesian elders 'night and day with tears'), Hebrews 5:7 (Jesus offering prayers 'with strong crying and tears' in Gethsemane), Hebrews 12:17 (Esau finding 'no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears'), and Revelation 7:17 and 21:4 (God wiping away all tears).
Aune's commentary on Revelation in the Word Biblical Commentary series examines the imagery of 21:4 within the new creation vision (21:1-22:5). The verse draws from Isaiah 25:8: 'He will swallow up death in victory; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces.' The Hebrew in Isaiah uses dim'ah (tear, from the root meaning to flow, to weep). The LXX translates with dakryon. Revelation 21:4 picks up the Isaianic promise and places it in an eschatological setting: the new heaven and new earth, the New Jerusalem descending from God, the tabernacle of God with humanity.
Aune notes that the phrase 'God shall wipe away every dakryon from their eyes' appears twice in Revelation: 7:17 and 21:4. The first occurrence is in the context of the great multitude from the tribulation (7:9-17). The second is in the new creation. The repetition creates a narrative arc: the comfort promised to the suffering church in chapter 7 is fulfilled cosmically in chapter 21. Aune observes that the act of wiping is personal and physical. The Greek exaleipsei (shall wipe away, from exaleipho, to wipe out, to obliterate, to erase) is used elsewhere for blotting out sins (Acts 3:19) and blotting out names (Revelation 3:5). The same verb that erases sins erases tears. The action is complete removal.
The use of 'every' (pan) with dakryon in 21:4 is comprehensive. Every tear. Aune translates: 'he will wipe every tear from their eyes.' The specificity of dakryon (a single tear, a single drop) combined with pan (every, all) creates a paradox of scale and intimacy. God attends to every individual teardrop across every human face. The cosmic scope (new heaven, new earth, death abolished, sorrow ended) does not reduce the personal attention. Aune notes that the vision moves from the largest possible frame (new creation) to the smallest possible detail (one tear on one face) in a single sentence.
Historical context · John's exile on Patmos approximately AD 95 during the reign of Domitian; the seven churches of Asia Minor (Revelation 2-3); the Isaianic promise of tear-wiping (Isaiah 25:8) and its fulfillment in the new creation vision
Patmos, Persecution, and the Promise Written to Suffering Churches
John wrote Revelation from Patmos, a small rocky island in the Aegean Sea approximately 37 miles off the coast of modern Turkey. Revelation 1:9 describes John as being on Patmos 'for the word of God, and for the testimony of Jesus Christ.' Early church tradition (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 5.30.3; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.18.1) places the exile during the reign of Domitian (AD 81-96). Patmos is barren, approximately 13 square miles, with rocky terrain and limited fresh water. The island was used by Rome for political banishment.
The seven churches addressed in Revelation 2-3 were located in the Roman province of Asia (western Turkey): Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These congregations faced a range of pressures: false teaching (Nicolaitans at Ephesus and Pergamum), imperial cult demands (Pergamum, 'where Satan's seat is,' likely a reference to the altar of Zeus or the imperial cult temple), poverty (Smyrna), and complacency (Laodicea). Aune notes that the letters reveal communities under social, economic, and political pressure. The promise that God would wipe away their dakrya was addressed to people who had specific, identifiable reasons to weep.
The Isaiah 25:8 background is significant. Isaiah 25 describes a future feast on Mount Zion where God 'will swallow up death in victory' and wipe tears from all faces. The passage sits in the 'Isaiah Apocalypse' (chapters 24-27), a section that envisions cosmic judgment and restoration. Aune traces how Revelation 21:4 gathers multiple Isaianic promises into a single verse: no more death (Isaiah 25:8), no more tears (Isaiah 25:8), no more sorrow or pain (Isaiah 35:10, 'sorrow and sighing shall flee away'). The new creation vision in Revelation 21 is the fulfillment catalog. Every promise scattered across the prophets arrives in one scene.
Aune observes that the intimacy of the image is striking against the cosmic backdrop. Revelation 21:1-2 describes the new heaven, the new earth, and the New Jerusalem descending from God, dressed like a bride. Then 21:3-4 narrows the focus: God's dwelling is with humanity, he will be their God, they will be his people, and he will wipe every tear from their eyes. The God who creates a new cosmos also touches a human face. The dakryon, one tear, receives the attention of the one who just remade the universe.
For reflection
Dakryon. One tear. Three hundred days of word studies, and the last one is a teardrop. John saw a vision of the new creation from a prison island in the Aegean, writing to churches that were being ground down by an empire. Aune notes that the seven churches had specific, identifiable reasons to weep: poverty, persecution, false teaching, the daily grind of living under a government that demanded worship of its emperor. And the promise John recorded was not abstract. It was physical. God shall wipe. The verb exaleipho means to blot out, to obliterate, the same word used for erasing sins. Every dakryon from their eyes. Pan dakryon. Every single one. The God who made the new heaven and the new earth narrows his attention to one face, one tear, one gentle motion of his hand. You have dakrya that no one else has seen. Tears shed alone, at night, in the car, in the bathroom with the door closed. This verse says God knows about each one. And the promise is not that you will stop crying. The promise is that he will wipe. Personally. Every last one.
Dakryon: tear, teardrop. BDAG: 10 NT occurrences across grief, repentance, pastoral tears, and eschatological promise. Aune traces the imagery to Isaiah 25:8 and notes the dual appearance in Revelation (7:17 and 21:4). Exaleipho (wipe away) is the same verb used for blotting out sins.
Sources: BDAG; Aune, 'Revelation' (WBC)