Lamentation for Christ As a Hero: Revelation 1:7‪.‬

Here is an oddity: Two sentences in Revelation with the same syntactical construction are translated very differently. The texts read as follows: The first describes the response of royalty to the fall or death of Babylon the whore. The NRSV translates, "kings of the earth ... will wail over her." (1) The prepositional phrase [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is translated to mark the direction and object of the act of lamentation. R. H. Charles parallels it to the action of David and his men, when they wailed over the death of Saul and Jonathan (2 Sam 1:12). (2) The second, Rev 1:7, describes the response of all the tribes of the earth to Jesus Christ, when he comes with the clouds. The NRSV translates, "'and on his account all the tribes of the earth will wail." Here the prepositional phrase [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] is translated to mark the cause of the action ("on his account"). [TEXT NOT REPRODUCIBLE IN ASCII] then functions as an intransitive verb (no object) expressing an emotional state of the "tribes of the earth": repentance or compunction or fear of the judgment to come. (3)