Revelation 5:9-10 vs. “Is He Worthy?”

Andrew Peterson · checked 2026-08-01

What we checked

PassageRevelation 5:9-10 chapter ↗ 2 more proofs on Revelation 5 →

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asparaphrase

Categoryadditions / omissions

AlbumResurrection Letters, Vol. I · 2018

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experienceteaching (states truths)

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria this song presents words as scripture, so these apply

✓Text-faithful

✗Translation named

✓Context kept

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Keeps the reason: the Lamb is worthy because he was slain and his blood paid a price, not worthy as a free-floating compliment
Keeps the result: every tribe and tongue and people and nation, a kingdom and priests, a reign. These are the clauses of verses 9-10 that most songs about worthiness leave out
Keeps the chapter's shape: Revelation 5 opens with a question nobody can answer, and the song sings the question before the answer. Peterson has described the call-and-response design as deliberate
The congregational answers put the church where the text puts it, among the purchased, saying so together

⚠ Cautions

No translation is named and no verse is cited. Reworked into question and answer, the wording matches no translation word for word, so there is no stated text to check it against
The text's new song is addressed to the Lamb. The song's answers are about him, reported in the third person rather than sung to his face
Verse 10 says the purchased "will reign upon the earth." The chorus keeps the reign but drops the earth; the bridge's question about God dwelling with us again carries the idea, but the clause itself is gone
The text's "them," people the elders sing about, becomes the song's "us." Fair for a congregation to claim, but the step inside the verse is silent

Verse Proof

Revelation 5:9-10

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“And they sang a new song: “Worthy are You to take the scroll and open its seals, because You were slain, and by Your blood You purchased for God those from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign upon the earth.”

This is the first "new song" in Revelation, sung by the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders the moment the Lamb takes the scroll. It answers the question that opened the scene, an angel asking who is worthy to break the seals, a question that stood unanswered long enough for John to weep. The song they sing gives the verdict a reason and a result: worthy because slain, because his blood purchased people from every tribe and tongue and people and nation, and those purchased are made a kingdom and priests who will reign upon the earth.

What the song says, described not quoted

The whole song is built as call and response. A leader sings questions and the congregation sings the answers back. The first verse asks whether the singers feel the world's brokenness and the deepening shadows, whether they know the dark cannot put out the light, whether they long to see everything made new; each question is answered yes, together. The second verse asks whether creation is groaning and a new creation coming. The chorus then asks the chapter's own question three ways, whether anyone is worthy, whether anyone is whole, whether anyone can break the seal and open the scroll, and answers it with the passage's answer: the Lion of Judah who has triumphed over death, the root of David, the Lamb whose death was the price that freed slaves. A bridge asks whether the Father loves us, the Spirit moves among us, and God intends to dwell with us again. The final chorus carries verse 9 and 10's content: people from every tribe and tongue and nation made a kingdom and priests to God, reigning with the Son. No verse is cited and no translation is named.

What survives is unusual: the reason and the result, the two clauses worthiness songs most often drop. Worthy because slain and because blood paid a purchase price; the purchased made a kingdom and priests who reign. The four-fold roll of verse 9 keeps all four nouns, reordered. What shifts: the text's song is sung to the Lamb, "Worthy are You," while this song asks about him and answers about him in the third person. The text's purchased people are "them," sung about by the elders; the song makes them "us." And verse 10's "they will reign upon the earth" becomes reigning with the Son, which Revelation 20:6 supports, but the earth clause itself does not survive into the chorus. Peterson has said plainly that the chorus is taken from Revelation 5.

~ Faithful & Labeled: The song reworks Revelation 5 into question and answer without misrepresenting it. The chorus carries the ransom by blood, all four nouns of the purchased peoples, the kingdom of priests and the reign. The one clause traded away is "upon the earth." No translation is named.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Most worship songs keep the answer. This one makes the room sing the question first.

Why it matters

"Worthy" may be the most-sung word in modern worship, and it usually arrives as a bare adjective. Revelation 5:9 refuses to leave it bare: worthy *because* you were slain, *because* your blood purchased people, and the purchase has a stated result, a multinational kingdom of priests. A song that keeps the because and the therefore trains a congregation to hear worthiness as a verdict with evidence rather than a mood. And the chapter's drama is a question held open, long enough for John to weep. A song that makes the room sing the asking before the answer walks singers through the scene in the text's own order.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song fixes your attention on God.

What repetition plants here is a catechism: questions with their answers attached. The congregation's lines are short confessions, and looping them rehearses the habit of answering rather than only listening. The centre of attention is Christ almost throughout; the singers appear as people who feel the world's weight and say yes together, which is assent, not self-description. One thing this loop holds that few worship loops do is a named grief. The first questions plant the admission that the world is broken, and the song never leaves you there; the sequence always moves from the brokenness to the Lamb. Read the two verses once alongside it and notice the one thing the chorus cannot fit, that the reign is upon the earth. That clause is worth planting by hand.

Helpful comparison

The song's fidelity is structural before it is verbal. The chapter runs question, silence, weeping, answer; the song runs question, answer, in the same voice-against-voice pattern, a leader asking and a room replying. Peterson has said he sings the question and the congregation sings the answer back, and that the chorus is taken from the moment in Revelation 5 when the question is asked. That is a different kind of borrowing from quoting a line, and this site has few examples of it done this thoroughly.

One documented episode shows the every-tribe clause is content, not decoration. The original one-take video was filmed with a nearly all-white group of participants, and Peterson publicly apologised, naming the mismatch with the song's own line about every people and tribe, every nation and tongue. Whatever one makes of the episode, it shows the songwriter treating verse 9's list as something the song is accountable to. The song has since spread well beyond its writer; Chris Tomlin recorded it in the same year, and the call-and-response form has survived the handoff.

Sources

Andrew Peterson — Is He Worthy?, official video · (the recording checked for this proof; AndrewPetersonVEVO upload, filmed in one take at Wightman Chapel)
The Gospel Coalition — Andrew Peterson's New Song for the People · (Peterson's own account: the chorus "taken from that staggering moment in Revelation 5," the sung question-and-answer design, the 2018 release produced by Ben Shive, and the video premiere)
Andrew Peterson — Waking Up to "Is He Worthy?": An Apology · (Peterson's public apology over the video's casting, in his own words, citing the song's every-people-and-tribe line)
The Berean Test — Is He Worthy? · (line-by-line mapping of the lyric to Revelation 5 and related passages)
Song Scoops — Is He Worthy? · (writers Andrew Peterson and Ben Shive; the song's origin in the question of Revelation 5:2)
Chris Tomlin — Is He Worthy? (Acoustic) ft. Andrew Peterson · (the Tomlin recording; ChrisTomlinVEVO upload)

Corrections

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