7 After that I saw four messengers standing around the earth, holding back the four winds of the earth so that no wind would blow on land or sea or on any tree.[ref] 2 Then I saw another messenger coming up from the direction of the rising sun, and he was holding the living God’s seal. He called out loudly to the four messengers that God had permitted to damage the earth and the sea, 3 saying, “Don’t harm the earth or the sea or the trees until we can mark the seal on the foreheads of God’s servants.”[ref] 4 Then I heard the count of those who were marked with the seal. There were 144,000 from all of Israel’s tribes. 5 There were 12,000 from the tribes of Yehudah, Reuben, Gad, 6 Asher, Naftali, Manashsheh, 7 Shimeon (Simeon), Levi, Yissashkar (Issachar), 8 Zebulun, Yosef (Joseph), and Benyamin (Benjamin).