THE (Ch. Revelation 1:1-3) The original title, which at the same time serves as an introduction, and the special object of which is to indicate the great importance of the book, runs thus: The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to shew to his servants, what must shortly come to pass; and he signified it by his angel, whom he sent, to his servant John 2. Who has testified of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, what he saw. 3. Blessed is he who reads, and they that hear the words of the prophecy, and keep what is written therein; for the time is near. The book is called in Revelation 1:1, The Revelation of Jesus Christ. The word revelation, or disclosing, apocalypsis, which in the New Testament is chiefly used by Paul, stands in a near relation to the word mystery or secret. Mysteries are the object of revelation, and the territory of the latter extends as far as the territory of mysteries. See Daniel 2:19, Ephesians 3:3, “By revelation he has made known to me the secret,” Ephesians 3:5, Ephesians 3:9, Romans 16:25. The condition of the revelation, accordingly, is the inaccessibility of a matter to the ordinary faculties of the mind. For, this is the common idea of a mystery. Hence, the sphere of revelation comprehends also that, which has already been made objectively manifest, and has become the church’s own, in so far as it may be communicated to a particular individual. For, the Christian doctrine as such is super-rational; and of the faith in Christ it constantly holds, that flesh and blood cannot themselves produce and exercise it, Matthew 11:25, ss., Matthew 16:17, John 6:44. So we read of a revelation in Ephesians 1:17, where Paul designated as a product of it the Christian wisdom, which he sought for the Ephesians. But commonly the word is used to denote the new disclosure of truths, which hitherto had lain beyond the reach of the mind. Such can only be found in moments of holy consecration, when the soul, as the chosen instrument of God, is raised above itself and is brought into closest fellowship with God, the source of truth. Hence, the revelations in 2 Corinthians 12:1 appear in immediate connection with the visions; and the state in which Paul received the revelations is represented as that of ecstacy, during which he was raised to the third heavens, and heard unutterable words. So too in Acts 10, it was in a state of ecstacy, and by vision, that St Peter received the revelation concerning the reception of the heathen to the blessings of salvation Acts 10:10 and Acts 10:17, comp. also Ephesians 3:5. Revelation here and prophecy, προφητεία, in Revelation 1:3 (comp. Revelation 22:18-19) correspond with each other, just as revelation and prophecy in 1 Corinthians 14:6.[Note: In respect to the internal connection of revelation and prophecy, and the limitation of the former by the latter, the passage 1 Corinthians 14:29-30, should also be compared, “Let the prophets speak two or three, and let the others judge; if any thing be revealed to another that sitteth by, let the first hold his peace.”] The book is the revelation of Jesus Christ and the prophecy of John. The object of the revelation are the mysteries; its product is the prophecy. No revelation without prophecy and inversely. What viewed in respect to the manner of receiving it is revelation, the same, when viewed in respect to the manner of its delivery, is prophecy. Paul says in the passage referred to above, “Now, brethren, if I come to you and speak with tongues, what shall I profit you except I shall speak to you either by revelation or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine?” Here we have a double pair of corresponding parts; revelation and prophecy constitute the one, knowledge and doctrine the other.” The speaker attains to his knowing either by revelation, by a supernatural communication imparted by the Spirit of God, and when he gives utterance to this, he is a prophet. Or it may be by learning, meditation, inquiry in a merely human manner, and with the common help of the Holy Spirit; and then his knowing is a gnosis, a knowledge, and the utterance of it, in a manner that should now be naturally adapted to the mode of receiving it, will be a purely intelligent one, working on the understanding.” As the condition, in which the revelation is received, differs from that in which the knowledge is matured, so the mode of deliverance in the prophet differs from that of common teaching. That which has been received in ecstacy can only be delivered in an elevated state of mind; that is, in so far as the delivery stands immediately connected with the receiving, and the receiving has not, as was usually the case with Paul, been already wrought into a sort of knowledge. All prophecy, just because it has revelation for its basis, is closely allied to poetry, though it does not properly resolve itself into this: its respect to the church, and the understanding of her members, prevents it from doing so. It must not wing its flight higher than where these can follow. The speech of the tongue may be designated the embryo of revelation and of prophecy. Secrets are the common object of both, but the speech of the tongue does not rise above a general connection with them, it does not reach even to the clear knowledge of them, and is hence incapable of coming forth to fulfil the office of teaching in the church. No solid reason exists for the assertion of Lόcke, that the word revelation, besides its general import, has also the special meaning of eschatological apocalypsis, or revelation in respect to the final development of the kingdom of God and the coming of the Lord Jesus. By the word itself nothing is indicated here as to the special object of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. But the thing to be supplied is furnished by the circumstances which occasioned the revelation. These determine the character of every revelation and prophecy. None swims in the air, none is entirely general. The object of the revelation given to the prophets is uniformly such, as in the given circumstances was adapted for counsel, for warning, or consolation. And if it is certain, that the starting-point here was the oppression of the church by the world-power, the object of the Revelation of Christ to the apostle can only be, what was fitted for the edification of the church under such circumstances, the preservation of the church amid the persecutions of the adversary, the destruction of the latter, and the final complete triumph of the church. It is a fundamental error in the older expositors, that they did not perceive how the object of the Revelation was more exactly determined by the relations of the time, and that we have here to do with a discovery of Jesus Christ, disclosing that after which every one then inquired, and the darkness of which lay like an oppressive night-mare upon all bosoms. They proceeded on the ground, that the Apocalypse must spread itself over the entire range of church history, and converted it into a simple compend of this. Revelation, and the prophecy which springs out of it, are under the New Testament closely joined with the apostleship, and belong to its prerogatives. Acts 10 relates an important revelation granted to the apostle Peter. In regard to the revelations and prophetical states of Paul, see 2 Corinthians 12, Ephesians 3:3, Galatians 1:12, Galatians 2:2. In Ephesians 3:5-6, “Which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed into the holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit: that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel,” the prophets are personally identical with the apostles. For it is a historical verity, that by no other than the apostles, namely, Peter and Paul, was the truth in question conveyed to the minds of Christians in the way of supernatural revelation. Paul says immediately before, “Through revelation did he make known to me this mystery.” Also in Revelation 18:20, which points back to Ephesians 3:5, the apostles are not personally separate from the prophets, “Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets, for God hath avenged you on her.” This is manifest from the circumstance, that history knows nothing of persecutions by the Roman world-power against prophets, except against the three among the apostles, Peter, Paul, and John. Instead of the apostles and prophets in ch. Revelation 18:20, we have in ch. Revelation 11:18, merely prophets along with the saints; so that the apostles are comprehended under them. Were it otherwise, had not prophecy culminated in them in like manner as the apostleship, the names of the twelve apostles could not with propriety have stood alone on the foundations of the New Jerusalem, ch. Revelation 21:14; elsewhere the prophets are coupled with them as occupying this position. The gift of prophecy is of all the highest. New truths could only be communicated through it, so as to obtain a place in the conscience of believers, and become thereby more widely diffused as knowledge and doctrine. The whole position of the apostles must have been changed, if this gift had not been concentrated in them. According to the measure of prophetic gifts was the place that the apostles respectively occupied; so that it was not accidental, that precisely the three, Peter, Paul, and John, who otherwise were so pre-eminent above the rest, were also the most highly distinguished by these gifts. Such as possessed no prophetical gifts might indeed have been faithful witnesses of Christ, but they could not fulfil the other design of the apostleship, that of receiving the much that the Lord had still to say to them, but which they were not able to bear during his personal sojourn on earth, John 16:12. For, there is no other organ for the recipiency of new truths, but the prophetical. “The comforter” was also, according to John 16:13, etc., to make known the future to the apostles. But instruction respecting the future is only received by revelation, and communicated to others by prophecy. What is written in the Acts of the manifestations of other prophets, serves to confirm what we have said—see Acts 11:27, Acts 13:1, Acts 15:32, Acts 21:10. All there bears a subordinate character. There is no trace of anything like a communication of new and important truths. From what has been said, it is obvious what we are to make of Bleek’s assertion (Beitr. p. 191), “When we consider what special weight is attached in ch. Revelation 21:14 to the apostolic dignity, it becomes the more improbable that the Seer should not have been expressly designated as such in ch. Revelation 1:1, if the author really belonged to the number of the apostles, or wished to be regarded as of that class.” The author has actually done what is here desired; he has in the most emphatic manner described himself as an apostle. For, a prophecy of such a marked and important character as is contained in this book could only have proceeded from the circle of apostles; nay, more, could only have proceeded from one, who among the apostles themselves held a leading place. He, who possessed the highest apostolical gift in the highest degree, did not need to begin with assuring us that he was an apostle. This was to be understood of itself. It admits of no doubt that the Revelation of Jesus Christ is the revelation which has Jesus Christ for its author, or which was communicated by him. This appears from the corresponding testimony of Jesus Christ in Revelation 1:2; from a comparison of the passages Revelation 1:10, ss. Revelation 4:1, Revelation 19:10, Revelation 22:16, where in like manner the matter of the Apocalypse is spoken of as derived from Christ; and from the obvious design of the prologue, which manifestly intends to indicate the high importance of the book by the circumstance of its contents having been derived from God and Christ. Entirely analogous is Galatians 1:12, “For, I have not received it of man, nor was I taught it but by the Revelation of Jesus Christ.” Of course, the fact of the contents of this book being derived from the Revelation of Jesus Christ docs not exclude a manifold human preparation, but rather demands it: especially a zealous investigation and study of Scripture, a profound reflection on the divine purposes, and an energetic and earnest desire to penetrate the divine secrets. Still, the remark of Bengel is perfectly just: “What the apostles and evangelists have written elsewhere they brought forth under the good hand of God from that treasury of wisdom and knowledge which they had constantly beside them.” For that, however, which John has written in this book, he must have been quite specially furnished. The Lord Jesus Christ is himself the author, John only holds the pen. Hence we may understand the peculiar distinction which belongs to this book, and on account of which it ought to be held especially precious. This consideration also explains how, while John has so many endearing epithets in his epistles, “my little children,” “my brethren,” “beloved,” none whatever are to be met with in the whole of this book. He writes here not as of himself, but in the name of Jesus Christ. Of what appears in Revelation much certainly is to be found also in the old prophecies, to which reference is expressly made in ch. Revelation 10:7, but by no means the whole. For how otherwise could it be said that God had given the revelation to Jesus Christ? But in no part does the Revelation come into conflict with the Scriptures which were formerly given by God; it rather gives a summary representation of all that in ancient prophecy still remained to be fulfilled after the times of Christ and the apostles.” Another remark of Bengel we cannot so fully accord with: “The Old Testament dispensation was the time of promise, and hence there are so many prophetical books among the Old Testament Scriptures. The New Testament dispensation is the time of fulfilment, though not without intimations of what belongs to a still coming future; and therefore the greater number of books in New Testament scripture are books of history and doctrine—one only avowedly prophetical, and that in the full, clear, elevated style which befits the new dispensation.” This statement is grounded on the erroneous assumption, that the only design of prophecy was to disclose the future. It would be more correct to say that, under the New Testament, Christ has appeared as the way, the truth, and the life. The main source of higher and clearer views was thus at once laid open to the church, so that knowledge and doctrinal instruction came to occupy the foreground. Prophecy was required only for the new things that still remained to be developed. Which God gave to him.Revelation is properly the act of communication; comp. Galatians 1:12. Here, however, it also includes its object, that which is disclosed, and to this refers the which. It is one of the pervading characteristics of John’s Gospel, that in reference to Christ it “constantly alternates between a respect to the position of dependance and the position of substantial identity” (Koestlin Lehrbegr. des John, p. 101), constantly makes statements which imply, that the Son has every thing that the Father has, and yet has nothing but what he has of the Father. In this characteristic the Revelation stands in the closest affinity with the Gospel. In particular, two passages of the Gospel should be compared with the one before us. The first is John 12:48-49, “He that rejecteth me and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.” This passage so far also coincides with ours, that it ascribes the origin of Christ’s word to God, in order to impress the idea of its importance, and of the awful guilt of rejecting it. Then John 16:14-15, “All that the Father hath is mine. Therefore, said I, he will take of mine and shew it unto you.” He had said just before, “He will shew you things to come.” As in the preceding passage what Christ had spoken upon earth was ascribed to God, so here is the same done in respect to what, after his departure, was communicated through the Spirit to his apostles. Therefore, every one who approaches this book has to do with the Most High God; and the warning is virtually sounded at the outset: Take off thy shoe, for the place is holy ground. A book which has the Almighty for its original author, must be frightful in its threatenings, and in its promises the object of unlimited confidence. He whom it assures of salvation may well rejoice in hope even in the midst of tribulation. For God is not a man, that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent; and for him nothing is impossible. To shew to his servants. The word shewing is never used in the signification of making known, but always in that either of causing to see, or of proving.[Note: In Matthew 16:21, δεικνύειν is nor, to give to know, but to prove, to make manifest from the declarations of the Old Testament. The subject has respect, not to the fact but to the necessity for the fact, “From that time forth Jesus began to shew to his disciples how that he must go into Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders, and chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day,” comp. Matthew 26:64, Luke 24:44-46.As the latter is not suitable here, we must adhere to the former. That the shewing refers to the presentation of the things communicated to the internal vision, is clear from the other passages in the book in which the verb occurs; it is the word specially appropriated in a manner to this act, comp. Revelation 4:1, Revelation 17:1, Revelation 22:1; Revelation 22:6; Revelation 22:8. To the shewing, on the part of God, corresponds the seeing, on the part of the prophet;[Note: Text: Comp. the δψΰπι in Amos 7:1 (LXX., οὕτωςἔδειξέμοικύριοςὁθεός), 4:7, Jeremiah 24:1, “And the Lord made me see, and behold two baskets of figs;” LXX ἔδειξέμοικύριοςδύοκαλάθουςσύκων, Mich.: idem est ac si diceret: monstravit mihi dominus in visione duos, etc., Ezekiel 40:1.comp. Genesis 41:22, “And I saw in the dream, and behold seven ears.” If the import of the shewing is thus rightly determined, by the servants of God we can only understand the prophets, for to them alone belongs the seeing. By the current interpretation, it is believers generally that are meant by these servants, who are undoubtedly so called in ch. Revelation 2:20, Revelation 7:3, Revelation 22:3. But, for understanding the expression here of the prophets, who are also in the Old Testament often named by way of eminence God’s servants (Jeremiah 7:25, Jeremiah 26:5; Daniel 9:6; Amos 3:7; 2 Kings 17:13, 2 Kings 17:23), for understanding it of them as the persons, who had not merely for themselves to execute the will of God, but to serve him in his kingdom, and so filled in this respect the highest place,[Note: Comp. John 15:20, Matthew 24:45, ss. ,Matthew 25:14, ss., and on the distinction between servants of God in a general, and in a more special sense, see Keil on Joshua, p. 3.there are other considerations besides those just mentioned. First, the connection. The Seer descends from God to those who read and hear the book. With these latter he first begins at Revelation 1:3; and the chain would be broken if here he already speaks of believers generally. Then there is the confirmation yielded by ch. Revelation 19:10, “I am thy fellow-servant and of thy brethren, who have the testimony of Jesus;” and ch. Revelation 22:9, “I am thy fellow-servant and of thy brethren the prophets.” The comparison of these passages leaves no doubt, that the servants are here also the species of prophets; John, the servant of God, the individual, who represents the species. Equally decisive is ch. Revelation 22:6, “And the Lord God of the spirits of the prophets sent his angel to shew unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass.” By the servants of God here can only be understood the prophets, who are represented in John. For, the sending of the angel appears as the indication of the fact, that the Lord is the God of the spirits of the prophets. And the expression to shew, points hack to ch. Revelation 17:1, Revelation 21:9, Revelation 22:1, where the angel shows to John the Seer; comp. also Revelation 22:8, “And I fell down to worship before the feet of the angel who shewed me these things.” Finally, the expression to shew is again resumed by the subsequent words: he has signified it. What must shortly come to pass. The fulfilment of what is announced in the Revelation is here placed in the immediate future. So also in other passages. According to Revelation 1:3, and ch. Revelation 22:10, the time is near. “I come quickly,” says the Lord in Revelation 22:7; Revelation 22:12; Revelation 22:20, Revelation 3:11, Revelation 2:5; Revelation 2:16. These declarations are opposed to the view of those who would convert the entire book into a history of the time of the end, and confirms the view, which treats it as our companion through the whole course of history. Neither do those do it justice who remark with Bengel, “therefore did the fulfilment begin immediately after the date of the book.” Not merely was the beginning in general ascribed to the immediate future, but such a beginning as was to be the beginning of the end. There is here a touchstone for the exposition of the book, before which that of Bengel and the old Protestant one cannot stand. For there the main burden of the book refers to relations, of which no notion could as yet be formed. “The keeper of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps,” “I am with you always to the end of the world,”—of these truths, the “shortly coming to pass,” and the “I come quickly” of this book, are the necessary consequence. The boundless energy of the divine nature admits here of no delay. There is nothing of quiescence or indolent repose in God. His appearing often to linger is merely on account of our short-sightedness. He is secretly working for salvation and destruction, when he seems to us, perhaps, to be standing aloof; and only when by the execution of his judgment we are called to enter into his salvation, do we learn consequentially what is meant by the “shortly.” At every period, when the book acquires new significance by Satan stirring up new wars against Christ and his church, the “shortly,” and “I come quickly,” also spring again into new life. Where the carcase is, there the eagles are constantly gathered together; and where the distress is the greatest, there the help is also nearest. God be praised that we are never pointed to the far-distant future; but that the retributive justice of God against sin, and his pity and compassion toward the wretched, tread closely on each other’s heels. It is nothing but a shift to say, as numbers do here, that the measure of time we are to think of is not the human, but the divine, with which a thousand years are as one day (Psalms 90:4, 2 Peter 3:8). The remarks made respecting this in my Christology on Haggai 2:6, “Yet once it is a little while, and I shake the heavens and the earth, and the sea and the dry land,” are equally applicable here: “Whoever speaks to men, must speak according to the human mode of viewing things, or give notice if he does otherwise. It is for the purpose of consoling us, that the prophet declares the shortness of the time. But for such a purpose, that only was suitable which might appear short in the eyes of men. Only in mockery or by deception could the prophet have substituted that, which was short in the reckoning of God.” We have there shewn, that the shaking spoken of began to take effect in the immediate future. The axe was already laid to the root of the Persian kingdom (as in the time of John to that of the Roman), and its subsequent visible fall was only the manifestation of a much earlier latent one. De Wette’s remark, that the shortness must not be taken too stringently, that it was used to encourage the suffering and warn the impenitent, represents the Seer’s God and the Lord himself, who in Luke 18:8 likewise promises a speedy deliverance to his faithful people, as acting like the worthless physician who feeds his patients with false hopes. That Luke 18:7 can only be quoted in support of such a view on a wrong interpretation, is manifest. And in refutation of it, as also against the notion of its being the divine measurement of time that is to be understood, there is the circumstance that in the fundamental passage, Ezekiel 12, to which the expression in Ezekiel 12:3, “the time is near,” refers, the declaration, “the days are near,” in Ezekiel 12:23, corresponds to “in your days, ye rebellious house, will I do it,” in Ezekiel 12:25,[Note: The ἐντάχει, it appears, was felt to be difficult so early as the time of Dionysius of Alexandria. For, that in Eusebius, 7:25, he should have omitted ἁ ?́δεῖγενέσθαι, can scarcely have been accidental, but was done for the purpose of connecting the ἐντάχει with δεῖξαι. This way of dealing with the subject was quite accordant with the whole character of the man, who in his artful way would set aside that which was not agreeable to his own feelings.]On the “what must shortly come to pass,” comp. Revelation 4:1, Revelation 22:6. The best commentary is to be found in Isaiah 14:27, “For the Lord of Hosts hath purposed it, who will disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, who will turn it back?” So also the must in Matthew 24:6 is to be understood of the necessity, which has its foundation in the divine purpose. On the other hand, in Matthew 26:54, the necessity rests primarily on the prophecies: it must fall out so, because it has been so predicted. But the prophecies are of weight only in so far as they manifest the divine purpose, so that the matter still returns back to this. Here a reference to the prophecies, as the more remote one, would have been more definitely marked. And he signified (it) by his angel, whom he sent, to his servant John. We must not explain in this manner: he signified it, the revelation; but rather: he signified it, viz., what must shortly come to pass. For the expression, “he signified,” resumes the former, “to show” again. The Revelation is given to Jesus Christ by God, that he may show to his servants what must shortly be done, and he has accordingly signified it to his servant John.[Note: The σημαίνειν occurs also in three passages of John’s Gospel, and, as here, of the discovery of future things, 12:34, 18:32, 25:19. It is found besides only in the Acts 11:28; Acts 25:27. It means simply to signify, or inform of, and corresponds to δεγις in Exodus 18:20, and to δβιγ in Esther 2:22. The exposition of Bengel: “The Lord has indicated to you things, through various marks and images, which shall be understood when they have been fully considered, and when one has been compared with another,” is without any support from the usage. Acts 25:27 is against it. That the word in New Testament Scripture is used predominantly of the announcement beforehand of future things, is to be explained from this, that it belongs to the higher and more elevated style; on which account it is also found chiefly among the Poets in classical Greek. Still more objectionable is the rendering of Zόllig: and which he made to be understood. The word does not bear this meaning, nor would it be suitable here. The angel must be a member of the chain, which begins with God, and ends with the hearer, and it is not the explanation, but only the communication through the angel, which comes into notice.]Instead of: by his angel, whom he sent, several explain improperly: in that he sent a message by his angel.[Note: These persons refer to some passages of the Old Testament, in which after verbs of sending the accusative, the message, is to be supplied; Exodus 6:13, “Send by whose hand thou wilt send;” 1 Kings 2:25, 1 Samuel 16:20. But in the New Testament ἀποστέλλειν is never so used, and πέμπειν only in a more than doubtful reading of Lachmann’s text in Matthew 11:2, πέμψαςδιὰτῶνμαθητῶναὐτοῦ. More to the purpose is the application of another and more common Old Testament usage, the omission of the person after verbs of sending. Comp. for example Genesis 31:4 : “And Jacob sent and called Leah;” 41:8: “And he sent and oiled the Chartummin of Egypt, ΚαὶἀποστείλαςἐκάλεσενπάνταςτοὺςἐξηγητὰςΑἰγύπτου; Joshua 2:3; 1 Samuel 4:4; Job 1:5. With ἀποστείλας of the New Testament, where it is joined to a verb, the accusative of the person is always to be supplied, comp. Matthew 2:16 : Mark 6:17; Acts 7:14. The only difference in regard to our passage is, that here the ἀποστείλας follows; but this arises from the ἐσήμανε resuming the δεῖξαι, and hence properly opening the sentence.]It is said here, as also at the close in ch. Revelation 22:6-16, that Christ through the mediation of his angel communicated to his servant John the knowledge of the future. We might with propriety explain: through his angel, to whom he committed this business; so that the expression: by his angel, would virtually he the same as: by one of his angels. But as in the Old Testament, and especially in those prophets, with whom John has the closest affinity, a particular angel is brought into notice, who stands beside the angel of the Lord as the mediating agent of his revelations, we are naturally led to think of such being understood here. Even so early as at Exodus 32:34 we find along with the highest revealer of God, the angel of the Lord or the Logos, an angel placed in a subordinate relation to him as his inseparable attendant. In Daniel the angel of the Lord appears under the symbolical name of Michael. But as he commonly manifests himself in overwhelming majesty, the angel Gabriel acts as mediator between him and the prophet, comp. Daniel 8:16, Daniel 9:21. In Zechariah “the angel who speaks with him” is a standing figure. It is this angelic minister who conducts him from the common state to one of ecstacy, awakens in him the spiritual sense to apprehend what was presented in the vision, and explains it to him, so as to enable him to break through the shell into the kernel. It is remarkable that while here in the Prologue the agency of the angel in the business of the revelation is set forth in a quite general way, nothing is said in regard to the manner in which his agency more particularly displayed itself till we come to the two last groups, the vision of the judgment on the three enemies of God’s kingdom, where he is introduced at the very commencement ch. Revelation 17:1, comp. Revelation 5:7-14, Revelation 19:9), and the vision of the New Jerusalem. There are two ways in which this difficulty may be solved. Several suppose that the main subject of the book is concentrated in the two last groups, to which the others served only as preparatory visions, and that the mediation of the angel is here ascribed to the whole from being so specially connected with the most important part. One might also conceive that the prologue was added by John after he had finished the whole, while the action of the angel was still fresh in his mind. But we can hardly feel satisfied with this, as the angel even at first seems to form a necessary link in the chain; and we may rather suppose that the agency which belongs to the angel throughout the whole was employed so as in the first instance to raise John from the common to an ecstatic condition, and then at ch. 17 to put forth another and more special operation. If the spiritual sense in John was first opened by the angel and kept awake, then he was the mediating agent of the message for him. A revelation is of no use for one whose mind is not prepared to receive it; the indispensable condition is, that the seer be in the Spirit, Revelation 1:10, Revelation 4:2. It is in favour of this supposition that the mediating angel in the two prophets, whom John more especially followed, Daniel and Zechariah, is a pervading one, and that a leading characteristic intimation in each of them is their announcing, that it was thus they were raised into the ecstatic condition. In Daniel 10:16 Gabriel touches Daniel’s lips, and thereby inspires him with the powers of a higher life, comp. Daniel 10:10, Daniel 8:17. On Zechariah 1:9 I have already remarked in my Christology, “that the words, I will make you see what these are, refer to the opening of the spiritual eye and ear of the prophet. Only when this had been done by the angelus interpres, could the prophet apprehend the declaration of the angel of the Lord, and the report of the ministering angels.” On Zechariah 4:1, where the angel is spoken of as awaking the prophet, like a man out of sleep, it was also said, “Between this vision and the preceding one we must suppose a pause to have taken place. The angel had withdrawn for a little from the prophet, and the latter had returned from his ecstacy into the state of common life. The common and the ecstatic condition stand related to each other as sleeping and being awake.” It is not as an apostle that John is named here the servant of Christ, but as a prophet. This is evident from the relation in which “to his servant John” stands here to the preceding expression “to his servants.” We are certainly, however, conducted indirectly to the apostleship; since revelations of such high importance as those contained here, were not, as formerly stated, given beyond the limits of the apostleship, and could not have been given without shaking the foundation of the apostolic dignity. Then, only such a person as John could be meant, as one whom all would naturally think of, and who held a pre-eminent place in the churches, for which the book was primarily intended. Otherwise the special designation, which is always designed in the prophetic writings to convey through the authority of the instrument a pledge for the truth of the contents, would have failed of its object. And history knows of no other but the apostle John. In his Gospel John has only in a gentle way indicated his name by describing himself, with reference to the import of his name (John, he to whom the Lord is gracious) as the disciple whom Jesus loved. But here he gives his name expressly. We find the same difference in the Old Testament also between the historical and the prophetical writings of the prophets. The history had its security in the joint knowledge of contemporaries; but in prophecy personality is of the greatest moment, and the anonymous is excluded. Nameless prophecies have no place in Old Testament Scripture. In Revelation 1:2, “Who has testified of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, what he saw,” there is the same tendency apparent as in Revelation 1:1, to render manifest the high importance of the book, and signalize it as deriving its matter through Christ from the Supreme God. Hence everything of an independent nature in the author is thrown into the shade, and he presents himself throughout as merely, occupying the place of a servant, who faithfully announces his master’s charges. John does not speak from himself; he merely testifies of the word of God, as it had been certified to him through the testimony of Jesus Christ. Therefore in the threatenings, promises, and exhortations of the book we are not to look at the person of the writer, but constantly to remember, that it is the Most High God who speaks here. The blessedness pronounced in Revelation 1:3 on those who read and hear, thus becomes most appropriate. The expression: who has testified, not: who testifies, which has given rise to much misunderstanding, was first placed by Bengel in its true light: “It is the manner of the ancients in their books and writings, that they often frame their words not in respect to the time when they wrote, but to that when their writings should be read. “I Paul write it with my hand,” might have been said at Philemon Philemon 1:19, when Paul wrote at Rome; but as Philemon was to read the epistle in Asia, he put instead: “I have written it” (comp. also Romans 16:22). In like manner when John wrote in Patmos, it might have been said, he testifies; but in respect to the book being read in Asia, he preferred saying, he has testified. And in Revelation 1:3 it is not said, what is written, but what “has been written.” Compare also what has been remarked at Revelation 1:9 on the expression, “I was on the isle Patmos.” By the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ is never of itself denoted the prophetic communication. Here it is used of this only on account of the connection with what precedes, though without implying anything as to its general import, and in reference to the earlier and different record borne to the testimony of Jesus Christ in the Gospel and Epistles of John. (See the Introduction p. 17.) Bengel remarks: “In this book the things that concern God and the things that concern Jesus Christ, are often conjoined together. Immediately before it was said, God had given the revelation to Jesus Christ, and now John bears record to the word of God, and along with that to the testimony of Jesus Christ.” In this connection, then, the testimony of Jesus Christ can only be the testimony which Jesus Christ delivers. For thus only could the object be gained, of tracing up to the Most High God the subject-matter of the book. Jesus Christ gives testimony to the word of God, and John again gives testimony to the word of Christ, and so far to the word of God. To the same result we are also led by the connection of the testimony of Jesus Christ with the word of God. As the word of God is the word which God utters, so the testimony of Jesus Christ must be the testimony which Jesus Christ delivers. Besides, more careful investigation shews that the testimony of Jesus, who in Revelation 1:5 is called the faithful witness, and who manifests himself near the close, at ch. Revelation 22:20, as the person who attests the contents of the book, is uniformly in this book, not the testimony of Jesus, but the testimony which Jesus delivers. It has this meaning also where the testimony of Jesus stands alone, and is not coupled with the word of God; comp. ch. Revelation 12:17. In the Gospel of John, likewise, John 3:32-33, the testimony of Jesus Christ is the testimony which he delivers. The testifying, moreover, is a word of which John is particularly fond, and is of frequent occurrence in all his writings. Christ testifies of what he has heard and seen, and so also do his disciples. John 15:27 is in perfect unison with the “who has testified” in the passage before us. The words: what (comp. the ὁ ?́σα in John 21:25) he saw, determine more precisely the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. They shew that the subject here is of those higher communications which were received in vision by the internal eye. Seeing is used thus of the prophetic vision in an entire series of passages of this book, for example, Revelation 1:11-12; Revelation 1:17; Revelation 1:19-20, Revelation 5:1. By the expression: what he saw, the feeling of his own mind, the intermingling play of a luxuriant fancy, is quite excluded. “Inasmuch as ‘he saw,’” says Bengel, “we have the strongest assurance of the divine origin of this book. To see and to testify bear reference one to another. The matters successively presented to him were partly seen and partly heard. But to see is the more excellent. Hence, the prophets were anciently called seers, and this book itself has the name of a revelation.” Till Bengel’s time it was customary to refer the verse before us to the composition of the Gospel by John. But Bengel deprived this interpretation of its only support by the proper explanation of the words: “who has testified,” and understood the verse of the apostle’s “obedience, diligence, and faithfulness in describing this revelation.” It is a matter of surprise that the reference to the Gospel should still have found its defenders in the present century. One does not see for what purpose John could here refer to his Gospel. The relation in which he stood to those to whom the book was more immediately sent, leaves no room to doubt that he wished to make himself known, and so as that he might be distinguished from others of the same name. His first readers and hearers must have known what it was they were directed to. But if John had really pointed to the Gospel, he would certainly have expressed himself more plainly. He would in that case assuredly not have omitted, “also formerly.” But the reference to the Gospel is absolutely excluded by the phrase, “what he saw.” This does not serve, according to the supposition in question, as an explanatory clause added to the “word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.” This latter must refer to the words of Christ, and the other, “what he saw,” to his deeds. An and would then have been indispensable, coupling the two together.[Note: The apprehension of this difficulty has given rise to the reading ὁ ?́σατε in some critical helps, against which it is enough to say, that the light and airy τε is never found in the Revelation.]As an additional explanatory clause, the words “what he saw” are only such discourses as have been seen or received in vision. Then there is the circumstance to which Hoffmann has drawn attention, that the explanation would set aside a link in the chain that cannot easily be dispensed with. At the close of Rev 1:1, the word of God is first represented as coming into contact with John. But we expect, before a transition is made to the hearers and readers, to have some account of his own agency in reference to the matter. “What Jesus had shewn to John must be written down and published, before any one can read what the prophet saw.” In fine, the reference to the Gospel would destroy the unity of the prologue, interrupt its regular progression, and rob Revelation 1:3 of its foundation, for which it would need to look back to Revelation 1:1. The third verse pronounces him blessed, “who reads, and those who hear the words of the prophecy, and keep what is written therein.” Blessed, it is said in Revelation 22:14, are they who keep his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and enter in by the gates into the city. Blessed, according to ch. Revelation 19:9, are those who are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb. Blessed, it is once more said, ch. Revelation 20:6, and holy is he who has part in the first resurrection. Accordingly, the benediction here refers mainly to what is to be found in another state of being, to the participation first in the bliss of heaven, and afterwards in the kingdom of glory upon earth. Still, we must not limit it to these. In this book also another recompense of fidelity is often discoursed of, which must not be excluded here, since the word employed is comprehensive of all the good, which is obtained as the reward of fidelity—the secret and wonderful preservation of true believers from the plagues which fall upon the world; ch. Revelation 7:1-8, Revelation 3:10. In the conclusion, which corresponds to the beginning here, ch. Revelation 22:18-19, a twofold threatening is held out against those who, after the original passages in Deuteronomy 4:2, Deuteronomy 12:32, add to or take away from the book with the view of getting rid of the obligations of duty, viz. a participation in the plagues which are described in the book; and exclusion from the tree of life and the holy city. The contrast in regard to those who keep what is written, requires that the blessing pronounced on them should also have a double reference—preservation in the midst of plagues and eternal blessedness. The description, “He who reads and they who hear,” points, as the distinction of the singular and the plural shews, not to the two classes of such as could, and such as could not read, but the reading meant is like that mentioned in Luke 4:16, the reading aloud in churches; so that the meaning is, he who reads in public and they who hear what is read. In ch. Revelation 22:17-18, it is implied that hearing is the usual way of coming to the knowledge of the book. The book contains a word of prophecy; whence we conclude that it is not made up of mere citations from the Old Testament. These are suitably found in calm argumentative discourses, but not in such as are of a divinely raised and excited character, which carry their own guarantee along with them In the latter the references to the earlier portions of God’s word must be of a more delicate nature, by allusion merely, or immediate appropriation.[Note: Bengel: “Prophecies certify themselves by their own, and so by divine authority, in particular the Apocalypse, which therefore does not mention the ancient prophecies, except in the slump, and that only once, ch. 10:7. In other books of the New Testament, ancient prophecies are quoted, for the purpose of shewing their fulfilment; but not so in the Apocalypse. Hence, while Surenhusius could produce examples of quotations from the Old Testament in each of the evangelists, the Acts of the Apostles, and the epistles, he had none to produce from the Apocalypse.”]Such also is the relation of the prophecies of the Old Testament to the books of Moses; all pervaded and saturated with references to them, but without any formal citations. The expression of keeping the word, the command, the faith, etc. (in contrast to the thoughtless forgetting of it in James 1:25), is one much liked by the faithful and conservative John; comp. Revelation 3:8, Revelation 14:12. That the keeping is the thing principally in view, to which the blessing belongs, and that the reading and hearing is only the preliminary condition to this, is clear from ch. Revelation 22:7, where the keeping alone is mentioned, “Blessed is he who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book.” The person who has got to the close of the book has already fulfilled the condition. Comp. Romans 2:13, James 1:22, James 1:23, James 1:25. That every thing is placed in the keeping points to the practical character, which continually attaches to Scripture prophecy, never being intended to serve for the gratification of a frivolous and prying curiosity, but always for promoting the divine life. The true prophet is a counseller, comp. Numbers 24:14 (where see my Balaam), Isaiah 41:28. Bengel: “According to the diversity of the things, which are written in it, to the keeping belongs repentance, faith, patience, obedience, prayer, watching, stedfastness.” The hearing and reading of the book, however, though only as conditional to the keeping, must be held to be a matter of high importance, especially for the times, in which there is a return of the circumstances that called it forth. “But whence comes it,” says Bengel, “that the book now-a-days is so seldom read in the churches? Throughout the whole ecclesiastical year we have not a single Sunday or festival day, for which a text has been chosen out of Revelation. A wise householder will consider how he may in some other way compensate for this omission.” The words, for the time is near, provide a reason for the call to keep, indirectly contained in the preceding; the time of the fulfilment is near, and consequently the time for rewarding the faithful and punishing the slothful; comp. 1 Peter 4:7, “But the end of all things is at hand, be ye therefore sober and watch unto prayer,” etc., Luke 21:34, Romans 13:11. THE SEVEN (Ch. Revelation 1:4 to Revelation 3:22) The Salutation Here we have first the salutation, Revelation 1:4-6. According to the common view this does not belong to the series of epistles merely, but to the whole book. So Bengel: “The inscription of this book is in Revelation 1:4-6, which gives to the whole book the nature of an epistle, with which also the conclusion agrees.” But the following reason decides against this view. Both on the one side and the other of ch. Revelation 1:4-6, and ch. 22, we find ourselves on the wide territory of the whole Christian church. Ch. Revelation 1:3 pronounces all without distinction blessed, who hear the book read and keep what is written in it. The conclusion is just as general as the beginning. According to ch. Revelation 22:6, God had sent his angel to show to his servants what must shortly come to pass. In Revelation 1:7 all are called blessed who keep the words of the prophecy of this book. The book closes in Revelation 22:21 with the words: The grace of Jesus Christ be with all saints. In the middle portion also we everywhere meet with the entire body of the church, and not the slightest trace occurs of a special respect to the seven churches of Asia. In ch. 7 it is not the elect in Ephesus and the other Asiatic churches, but the servants of God at large, who are sealed. The twelve tribes of the children of Israel, and the 144,000 sealed ones, obviously represent the whole church. So likewise do the multitudes, whom no one could number, of every people, and tribe, and nation, and tongue, in Revelation 1:9. In ch. Revelation 11:1, the temple of God is a symbol of the church in its militant, as the New Jerusalem is of the same in its triumphant state. The sure result from these particulars is, that the inscription does not belong to the book in general, but exclusively to the series of the seven epistles. Had it been otherwise, there could not have failed to be some reference to them in the title and prologue of the book, as also in the portions subsequent to ch. 3. It is only the conclusion of the whole, indeed, which resembles an epistle, that gives any countenance to the supposition, that the inscription and the epistolary character extend to the entire contents. But the words: with all the saints, not with you all (as in Paul’s epistles), shews that here we have only an imitation of the conclusion of an epistle. How certain it is, that the seven churches in Asia were representative in their different states of the church in general, it cannot be less certain, that what is written in the epistles is only primarily addressed to them. This is clear from the circumstance, that it has not the form of an accompaniment to the book, but is an integral part of the book itself, a book that is destined to the use of all God’s servants. The special reason for the individualizing here is to be found in the subject-matter. The relation of this first series to the six following ones is generally this, that in the one is unfolded in detail the call, “Repent,” “Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a high-way for our God,” and in the other, “The glory of the Lord shall be revealed” “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” When great manifestations of the Lord for the deliverance of his church, and for the execution of judgment on the world, are ready to appear, there comes at the same time an urgent call on the Lord’s people to prepare themselves aright for such manifestations, by purging out from among them the worldly elements, and having all in readiness for the Lord’s work. Throughout the whole of this first series, the predominating element is the hortatory, or the pressing of such practical exhortations as fitly arose out of the near approach of the Lord. But in order that this might be effectively done, it must necessarily go into the special circumstances of the churches. The more pointed and particular it was, the more fully would it reach the general aim. The ample variety of the circumstances and the foundation of the general applicability of what was written, was indicated by the sevenfold number of the churches to which the epistles were addressed. Bat if thus a special reference becomes necessary in a part of the book to the churches of Asia, none could be more suitable than that actually chosen. The example of Paul already pointed in that direction, and it was due from John to his diocese as a compensation for his personal absence. Revelation 1:4. John to the seven churches in Asia. Grace be to you and peace from Him, who is, and who was, and who comes; and from the seven spirits, who are before his throne. 5. And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, the first born of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. To Him that loved us, and washed us from our sins by his blood; 6, and made us a kingdom, priests to God and his Father: to Him be honour and power for ever and ever. Amen. The author of the epistles no farther indicates his person than by the simple name of John. This alone marks it to be the apostle of that name. It designates a John, who held such a high preeminence among those who bore the name, that he would readily occur to every one, for whom the epistles and the book generally were more immediately destined. One, who stood merely in “certain relations” to the churches in question, could not have remained satisfied with so general a designation, and would certainly have added something more specific as his reason for addressing them. Let only the salutation be compared in the Epistle to the Romans. There we find an extended description of what constituted the apostle’s right and obligation to write the epistle. “The Salutation,” remarks Philippi, “is more lengthened than in the other epistles of Paul. For the apostle had first to introduce himself to the church of the capital of the world, which was neither founded nor had yet been visited by him.” So and still more would a certain John have found it necessary to introduce himself. The bare John must have been received with a sort of smile.We are also led to think of the apostle John by the seven churches of Asia. It admits of no doubt, that the Asia meant here is Proconsular Asia, and that the limitation, which some have sought to establish in favour of a narrower territory, is arbitrary. But in this region there were other churches besides the seven, which are mentioned by name in this book. There was, for example, the church at Colosse, that at Hierapolis (Colossians 4:13), that at Tralles, which Cicero calls Gravis, locuples, ornata civitas, and that at Magnesia, which was in a flourishing state when the Ignatian epistles were written, and must certainly have existed at the date of the Apocalypse. Neither can we say that the more important churches, those which belonged to the greater cities, are the ones mentioned. For there is nothing in the description to indicate this; the cities named were not all of primary rank, especially Thyatira and Philadelphia; and others, which are not named, especially Tralles and Miletus, which last is called by Strabo next to Ephesus “the noblest and moat distinguished city in Ionia,” and by Pliny “the chief of Ionia,” and where without doubt a church already existed. It is carefully to be noted that John does not write to seven churches in Asia specified by name; had he done so, we should have been obliged to cast about with Lόcke for the reasons, on account of which these should have been chosen out of a greater number. But he writes simply to the churches of Asia. We have manifestly but one of two alternatives here—either there were in Asia only seven churches, or the address to precisely seven churches had its limitation from the person of the writer, virtually importing to his seven churches. In this case it would just be as if the president of certain affiliated churches in Prussia should write to the churches there; it would at once be understood, that those only were to be thought of, which belonged to that number. As the first of those alternatives is against the history, we are shut up to the latter. But this again obliges us to think only of the apostleJohn as the author. History testifies respecting him, that he had a district in that particular part of Asia, which embraced quite a circle of churches, named by Tertullian “John’s nurslings.”[Note: Adv. Marcion. iv. 5: Habemus et Joannis alumnes ecclesias. Nam etsi Apocalypsin ejus Marcion respuit, ordo tamen Episcoporum ad originem recensus in Joannem stabit auctorem. “The meaning is: We too have such churches as are nurslings of John, and which must be recognized as such by Marcion himself—those, namely, to whom he sent the seven epistles in the Apocalypse. For though Marcion will not admit the fact of these apocalyptic epistles being any proof of the connection between the churches and John, because he will not own the Apocalypse to have been written by John, yet if we trace the series of bishops in these churches up to its origin, we necessarily arrive at John as the founder of them.” Rothe.]Eusebius reports from Origen, in B. III. c. 1, that when the apostles were scattered into different countries, John received for his share Asia, and continued there till he died at Ephesus. Clement of Alexandria relates, in Eusebius, B. III. c. 23, “When after the death of the tyrant he returned to Ephesus from the isle Patmos, he went also, when requested, to the neighbouring regions of the heathen; in some to appoint bishops, in some to institute entirely new churches, in others to appoint to the ministry some one of those that were pointed out by the Holy Ghost.” In the same chapter of Eusebius Irenaeus says, that the church of Ephesus had been founded by Paul, but that John continued to abide there till the times of Trajan. He elsewhere refers to “all the elders who in Asia had conferred with John the disciple of the Lord.” Eusebius himself says, “he ruled the churches there.” Not only is such a relation testified of John respecting those particular churches, testified of him alone, but from the very nature of things such a relation toward a circle of churches could only have subsisted with an apostle. It is not necessary, however, to suppose that the other churches in Asia besides those seven had rejected the apostolical authority of John, comp. 3 John 1:9. He may not have been able to extend his agency to them; though Clement expressly states, that after his return from Patmos he organised new churches, and consequently brought them within the field of his active operations. The result which we have thus obtained from the address: “John to the seven churches,” or from the fact that John here writes to the seven churches under his superintendence, is confirmed by the way and manner in which he writes to them. Lόcke, p. 198, admits that “the author could not have ventured, without some official position in the region of those churches, to address them as he did.” It was such, indeed, as to require the whole fulness of the apostolico-prophetical authority. Without this he could never, for example, have written to Sardis, “I know thy works, that thou hast a name, that thou livest and art dead;” and to Laodicea, “Because thou art lukewarm, and art neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my month.” And the commendations, not less than the sharpness of the reproofs, must have been hurtful, if the epistles had not proceeded from an ascertained servant of Jesus Christ. It cannot justly be objected, that it is not John who speaks in the seven epistles, but Christ. Unless the conviction had been deeply rooted in the churches, that the John, who held such communications with them, was the organ of Jesus Christ, the authority of Christ would not have covered the author. The question was sure to be asked, whether Christ had really authorized such messages to be sent, and the affirmative reply to this question could not have been expected from the churches, if they did not recognise the John, who was the medium of communication, to be the apostle. For such charges are not imparted by the Lord simply to the person, who is abstractly the first or best. They always rest upon an official basis. But the apostle John, according to the testimony of history, stood entirely toward those churches in that relation of unconditional authority, which these epistles evidently imply. Of special importance in this respect is Clement’s account of the youth, quis dives T. II. p. 958, and in Eusebius B. III. c. 23. John was called in by the churches when matters of moment were to be decided, for which the bishop was not sufficient. As here to the angels of the seven churches, so there to the bishop he gives instructions and reproofs, and shows him, for his own justification, that the authority which he claimed is an unconditional one; he speaks as a person who has absolute power and authority, and who judges by the most rigid standard. When he gives up the young man to the bishop, he says: “This person I commend to thee with all earnestness, and call Christ and the church to witness respecting it.” On his latter return he again says to the bishop, “Bestow what I and Christ confided to thee in the presence of thy church.” The bishop had done everything, as it appeared, to the youth, which could have been expected of him. “He took him into his house, instructed him, kept him in order, and shewed the greatest regard to him.” But before the judgment-seat of Christ and his servant John he does not stand the test: John, when he understood what had happened, “tore his garment, struck his head with loud lamentations, and exclaimed, I have given up the soul of a brother to a fine watchman.” The narrative there also coincides with the epistles here, in that the bishop in the one place, as the angel in the other, is made responsible for all that was proceeding in the church. Finally, it serves also to confirm the result, which we have obtained from the words: John to the seven churches, that the series of the seven epistles begins precisely with that to the church at Ephesus, the place where John usually resided according to the uniform and well-established tradition. This address of John, however, to the seven churches of Asia, is not more important for the author of the Revelation, than for the time of its composition. It does not square with the supposition of that being in the reign of Galba. Before the martyrdom of Paul John had certainly not come to reside in Asia Minor,[Note: Lampe, in his Comm. on John Proleg. B. i. c. 3, § 12, says: “It is admitted that before the synod at Jerusalem he continued with the other apostles in Judea and its confines. Nor after this could he have lived there till the period of Paul’s first imprisonment under Nero. The history of Paul’s journeys, and the pains which he took in planting the church at Ephesus, where he remained three years, evince the contrary. Nor after the liberation of Paul (?) even to his death could John have been found at Ephesus, as he could not have omitted sending a salutation to him in his two epistles to Timothy. During the whole time that Paul traversed Asia no mention is made of John, and it is certain that Paul appointed Timothy as pastor of the church at Ephesus.”]but in all probability did so on the occasion of the Jewish war, and the interruption thereby given to the operations of John in his native region. The Jewish war first began in the year 66. If the Apocalypse had been written under Galba, it would fall into the year 68. But this would not have afforded sufficient time to form the relation we find existing here. For the authority of John appears as one firmly established throughout an extensive district of churches, with the circumstances of which he was most minutely acquainted. He must previously have adapted himself to the Grecian culture, he must have visited the particular churches, some of which stood pretty far apart from one another (Ephesus, for example, being distant three days’ journey from Sardis, according to Herodotus and Xenophon), he must have resided for a considerable time at each place in order to establish his authority, and must also have frequently returned to confirm it. No easy accomplishment, as appears from 3 John 1:9, and one that as a whole could not have been pressed through in a very short time without something of constraint. A series of years must necessarily have elapsed before John could have named the seven churches in Asia his. and written to them in the way he does here. Bengel remarks, “From the circumstance alone of the Revelation being sent, not to Judea, but to Asia, there is good ground for drawing the conclusion, that Jerusalem must already have been destroyed, as it does not appear that John removed before that period from Judea to Asia, to say nothing of his having been sent to Patmos.” But this conclusion is rather hasty. It would only have been quite tenable if, as is still certainly supposed by Zόllig, the fact of John’s addressing the seven churches in Asia affords proof of the pre-eminent place belonging to these, is a declaration that they formed the then centre of the church. But if John wrote to them, because they constituted that portion of the general church committed to his direction, which is confirmed by the fact, that in the New Testament the limitations to a definite circle of readers always have their ground in the personal relation of the writer to that circle, taken along with the additional fact, that according to the testimony of history, John stood in a special relation to these very churches—then the conclusion falls to the ground. For such being the case, John might have written to the seven churches in Asia, even though the church at Jerusalem had still been in a flourishing condition But it is another question, whether he might have left the church at Jerusalem before that catastrophe, and entered into a new relation to the churches in Asia. And it is certainly not probable that John would have left the theatre, to which his active energies had so long been devoted, without some call arising out of external circumstances. Had he been inclined to do so, he would have done it long before. Considering also the individual temperament of John, we shall scarcely deem it probable, that after the death of Paul he should have transferred the seat of his agency to Ephesus on a mere solicitation, as Dr Neander supposes (Apost. Zeitalter II. p. 615). The faithful retentive element is a fundamental feature in the character of John. Profound ardent minds are firmly rooted in their Fatherland, and with difficulty adjust themselves to new relations. (Revelation 1:4) Grace be to you and peace, etc. Peace is always the opposite to strife and war, to hostile pressure, whether the hostility proceed from God (Romans 5:10-11), or from the creatures. The great stress that is laid on peace in Scripture arises from this, that the life of believers is threatened by so many and diverse hostile powers. Here it is the less admissible to abandon the only certain special signification for a general one, as a violent outbreak of hostility against the church forms the starting-point, and all else in the salutation itself has some reference to it. For the same reason we must not think here of peace with God, but only of a safe position in regard to the world. Emphasis must be laid on the peace. For it was this that then drew around it all the thoughts of believers, who lived in the midst of strife. The grace, which in the Mosaic blessing also precedes peace, is the source of all the benefits belonging to believers, but peace that after which they then more especially sighed—comp. Psalms 29:11, “The Lord will bless his people with peace.” There can be no doubt, that Paul’s usual form of salutation is the foundation of that employed here by John. It was quite natural that John, when writing to churches, respecting which he had entered into the place of Paul, should have connected himself closely with that apostle by adopting his well-known and precious salutation-formula. Compare only the introduction of the epistle to the Romans, “Paul—to all that be at Rome, beloved of God—grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and the Lord Jesus Christ.” With this the salutation before us entirely coincides in its leading features. The salutations of James and Jude are quite different. Peter’s salutation in his first epistle comes the nearest to Paul’s: “Peter to the elect strangers of the dispersion in Pontus, etc., grace and peace shall be multiplied unto you.” This approach in Peter to Paul’s form of salutation is in unison with the other resemblances to Paul, which occur elsewhere in Peter, as Peter also in writing that first epistle entered into the proper field of Paul’s operations. Still, he wants what is uniformly found in Paul: from God, etc. The conclusion of the Apocalypse has also the greatest similarity to the epistles of Paul. There it is: The grace of Jesus Christ be with you, here: The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all saints. The deviation was required by the general purport of the book. It cannot be objected, that Paul never, like John here, prefixes his mere name, but always, even in his epistles to Timothy and Titus, sets forth his dignity. For that has already been done in Revelation 1:1. And now a simple salutation, after the manner of Paul, appears here, but somewhat amplified according to the demands of the higher prophetic style, and in conformity with the necessities of the time, which were such as to call for a powerful consolation. From the depths of the nature of God and Christ there is brought forth what might strengthen an endangered faith, and raise a bulwark against the entrance of despair. From Him who is, and who was, and who comes. These words are a description of the name of Jehovah. I have showed in my Beitr. II. p 230, ss, that this name, properly Jahveh (for the vowels belong to Adonai, which the Jews pronounce instead of it) has the meaning of the Being, absolute existence.[Note: According to Delitzsch, in his Bibl. Proph. Theologie, p. 120, the name signifies the becoming, or going to be (der Werdende.) But this view is at once disposed of by the passage before us, as it would cut off “the who is and who was,” and leave only “the who comes.” So also by the original passage, Exodus 3:3-16, since it cannot explain the Ehjeh ascher Ehjeh and point out its essential identity with the mere Ehjeh. The name by this explanation is merely evacuated. The becoming swims in the air, if it does not rest for its basis on the being. The becoming of God, too, is a thought quite foreign to the whole of Scripture, and has passed over into theology from the modern philosophy. God comes, indeed, but he does not become.]The idea of pure, absolute, unchangeable existence, it was there remarked, as expressed of Jehovah, is a quite practical one; that which God is comes into consideration only as conditioning what he is for his people. This appears at once from Exodus 3:13-16. The people, in asking for his name, were to find in that a pledge and security for what was to be performed by God, for his wonderful help in the most distressing circumstances, not what should satisfy their metaphysical curiosity. The name Jehovah comprises in itself the fulness of all consolation, and the treasures thereof are here brought up from their depths and placed before the eyes of believers, the prophet’s companions in tribulation. On the rock of the pure, unchangeable, absolute Being of God dash all the despairing thoughts of those who can call this God their own, as also all the proud thoughts of the world which has him for its enemy. “I am a worm and no man” can be said in calm repose by such as can only look with an untroubled soul into this unfathomable mystery. As pure, and absolute, and unchangeable Being, God is; he exists in the fulness of that omnipotence which he makes subservient to the good of the church at the present time; he works, though in the depths of concealment, for her welfare, however circumstances may seem to indicate the contrary, and the world may triumph over the church lying in apparent helplessness on the ground, and bleeding with a thousand wounds He was; for he has given evidence of his being in the past by deeds of omnipotent love, as when he led the children of Israel out of the Egyptian house of bondage. He comes; for he will appear for the judgment of the world and for the salvation of his church, when the two shall be made to change places,—those ascending the throne who lay in the dust, and those who formerly occupied the throne thrust down to the ground. The stress should here be put upon the last clause, “he who comes.”[Note: The proof that the ὁἐρχόμενος is not synonymous with ὁἐσόμενος, as has been often affirmed, and still again by De Wette, is to be found in my Beitr., p. 239. I there pointed to the relation of the former expression to the ἔρχεταιμετὰτῶννεφελῶν in Revelation 1:7, to the ἔρχομαιταχύ in 22:7, 20, ii. 5, iii. 3, &c., where the view of God’s suffering and persecuted people is directed to the coming of God and Christ. Also to the dropping of the ὁἐρχόμενος in ch. 11:17, after the was and is, because the future of God’s kingdom had become present, the coming had come.]In ch. Revelation 4:8 the four living creatures constantly cry out, “Holy, holy, holy, is God, the Lord, the Almighty, who was, and who is, and who comes:” as much as to say, who, as by giving matter-of-fact demonstration of his Being in the past and present, he has proved himself to be the was and is, so will he also come to establish his kingdom over the whole earth. The inversion there (who was and is, instead of, who is and was here) shews that the expression “who is” here does not indicate the whole nature of God,—does not express, like the name Jehovah, his eternal, absolute Being, but is limited to the living efficacious tokens of his Being at the present time, for which the manifestations of his Being during the past afford a pledge. To the same result, also, we are led by the simple fact that along with the “who is” we have here on either side the two expressions “who was” and “who comes.” In the original it is literally: from who is, and was, and comes. There was no room for flexion, because thereby the unconditional application of the three designations to the Lord would have been darkened, and also because the Greek has no participle preterite. And from the seven Spirits which are before the throne. That the Spirits are the Spirits of God, appears from ch. Revelation 4:5. The Spirit comes into consideration here, not according to his transcendence, but according to his immanence—not according to his internal relation to the Father and the Son, but according to his mission. This is indicated by the words: before the throne, here and in ch. Revelation 4:5, and from ch. Revelation 5:6, where mention is made of the seven Spirits of God, that are sent forth over the whole earth. The designation of the Spirits as seven is not derived from Isaiah 11:2, where the subject discoursed of is not as here the active powers of the Spirit, but his productions or the properties he calls forth. It is taken from Zechariah 4:10, where the operations of the Spirit of the Lord appear under the image of the seven eyes of the Lord, that run to and fro throughout the earth—comp. on ch. Revelation 4:5. The sevenfoldness does no violence to the unity, but merely points to the fulness and variety of the powers, which are enclosed in the unity, with reference to the manifold powers and agencies on the part of Satan and the world, which threaten the church with destruction (comp. Revelation 12:3), as also with respect to the church’s manifold straits and necessities, and perhaps to the seven number of the churches which constituted so many fields for the Spirit’s efficacious working. The allegation of Lόcke, p. 386, that there is here a contrariety to the Gospel of John, rests upon a misunderstanding: “While there all the different forms of the manifestation of Godhead are comprehended in the divine Logos, who diffuses himself as light and life in the world, and has become man in Christ, and is exhibited as oneness, here the manifestation of God is set forth in its organic variety as a sevenfold Spirit.” That the sevenfold character of the Spirits is not fatal to the oneness of the Spirit, but rests upon the basis of this—that here respect is had only to the manifold manifestations of one and the same Spirit (comp. 1 Corinthians 12:4-7) appears from ch. Revelation 2:11, Revelation 22:17, where simply the Spirit is spoken of. And that this Spirit, manifold in its unity, does not exist together with Christ, so that what is here attributed to the Spirit proceeds from Christ, is clear from this passage itself, as the seven Spirits are represented as employed in the service of the church of Christ, and still more decisively from ch. Revelation 3:1, according to which Christ has the seven Spirits of God, and on this account is almighty to punish or reward, and also from ch. Revelation 5:6, where the seven Spirits appear as the seven Spirits of the Lamb. The Spirit is not “the Holy Spirit, who is the principle of all knowledge and enlightenment, for there is nothing said about that here. Both the starting-point and the connection lead us to consider it as mentioned rather in respect to its physical, than its moral operations. We are confirmed in this also by the parallel passages Revelation 5:6 and Revelation 4:5, where the seven torches, which are the seven Spirits of God, make up, with the lightnings, voices, and thunders, the number ten. The seven Spirits form here a mighty bulwark against despair, a compact phalanx, on which all the assaults of the world-power against the church shall break to pieces. The seven Spirits press into the service of the church delivering and helping, overthrowing and destroying, even to the remotest corner of the earth. No distress is so deep, no feebleness so great, that it may not with them be rectified. Even in Zechariah 4:6-7, (where see the Christology), the Spirit of God appears as the power, which assists the feebleness of the church, and removes all the hindrances which the world throws in her way. The Spirit of God there carries the building of the temple to its completion in spite of all adverse machinations. It is the same Spirit that moved with creative energy on the waters of the primeval world, Genesis 1:2, “the source of life, from which creation draws its renovating powers, and without which all flesh withers, all life returns to dust, Job 34:14, Psalms 104:29-30.” (Kahuis, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit, I. p. 14.) It is that power, by which, according to Isaiah 4:4, God executes his judgments upon the earth. In the Gospel of John the Spirit is brought into view chiefly in respect to his moral and religious operations, in accordance with the evangelist’s subject. And the same precisely is done here also in ch. Revelation 19:10, Revelation 22:17, Revelation 1:10. The Spirit appears here, not less than the God of nature and Christ, as the well-spring of grace and peace. The threefold from: from him who is, &c., and from the seven Spirits, and from Jesus Christ, is deserving of notice in this respect, as it involves a position of equality. This implies a certain independence of the Spirit, beside the Father and the Son. The derivation of grace and peace from the Spirit not less than the Father and the Son points to the adorable Trinity, and establishes a close affinity here between the Revelation and the Gospel of John. With this affinity other things concur. As here Christ is represented as having the seven Spirits of God, (ch. Revelation 3:1, and Revelation 5:6), so in the Gospel the Son possesses not only the powers and properties of the Spirit (truth, life), but also the Spirit himself, (John 16:14-15, John 1:33, John 3:31). He is plainly subordinate, as to the Father who sends him, so also to the Son, since the latter also sends him, and since he does not speak of himself, but only what he hears (see Kostlin, p. 109-10.) There is a further point of agreement also in this, that the Spirit is predominantly viewed in respect to his operations outwards—comp. especially John 7:39, where it is said, there was still no Holy Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified Many of the older expositors, especially those belonging to the Catholic church, hold the seven Spirits here to be created angels, and identify them with the seven angels that stand before God, in ch. Revelation 8:2. But the usage in Revelation is against this opinion, as there the angels are never called spirits; also the passage, ch. Revelation 4:5, according to which the seven Spirits are the Spirits of God, ch. Revelation 5:6, where the Spirits appear as the seven eyes of the Lamb,[Note: Vitringa:—“Certainly the seven eyes of the Lamb are something in the Lamb which cannot be separated from him, by which the Lamb sees and provides for his church, and which, as is there said, is immediately sent forth by the Lamb into the earth. But that holds of the Holy Spirit, not of angels.”]the fundamental passage in Zechariah, the impossibility of angels being put on a footing of equality with the Father and the Son,[Note: Vitringa: “Who that properly considers the matter can persuade himself that John would solemnly implore grace to the churches from seven created Spirits, who could not of themselves bestow any grace, and that he would neglect to ask it from the Holy Spirit, who is the author and chief of all spirits, and verily has the power of bestowing grace; of whom mention is also made in ch. 2:11?”]and the circumstance, that Christ is first mentioned after the seven Spirits, which can only be explained on the supposition of essential equality, and that Christ was to be spoken of more at length. For otherwise the natural order would have been: Father, Son, and Spirit. Besides, there is no agreement with ch. Revelation 8:2, excepting in the number seven. The seven angels stand there before the throne as servants; here, on the other hand, the seven Spirits are before the throne. (Revelation 1:5) And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness. A faithful witness is a credible and veracious one (comp. Isaiah 8:2), who speaks what he knows and testifies what he has seen, John 3:11. Christ is called a witness, because he does not teach at his own hand, but gives testimony to the truth that is in God, to whom all in the Revelation as in the Gospel is traced up as to its origin. (Comp. John 3:32-33). The fundamental passage is Isaiah 40:4, where it is said of Christ, “Behold for a witness of the peoples I give him, as a leader and lawgiver of the peoples.” There just as here the witnessing is connected with the supremacy. The sphere of the witnessing, which of itself embraces the whole compass of doctrine and revelation John 18:37, “For this end was I born and have come into the world, that I might bear witness to the truth”—is here limited by the circumstance that grace and peace are sought from Jesus Christ to the church. Accordingly, the testimony of Christ comes here into consideration only in so far as it has specially to do with grace and peace. The same holds also from the connection of the two other predicates, which declare concerning Christ what is fitted to inspire the desponding church with courage in the presence of the world. Respect is had to the glorious promises, which Christ imparted to his church even during his sojourn upon earth, and some of which have been preserved by John in his last discourses; for example, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world,” “I am with you alway even to the end of the world,” “The gates of hell shall not prevail against my church.” Such promises are expanded in this book, which discloses the testimony of Jesus Christ; but only when much tribulation is experienced in the world will they make their due impression on the mind. And the first-born from the dead. The first-born in the Old Testament often occurs as another name for the first; for example in Isaiah 14:30. That here the idea of priority in time and precedence in rank is what is taken into account, as in Hebrews 12:23, appears from Colossians 1:15-18. There the first-born is explained by expressions, which are put as equivalent: who is before all, the head, the beginning, who has the pre-eminence. Accordingly, precedence in time and dignity is what alone can be understood to be indicated by the expression, and the figurative term of “the first fruits of them that sleep,” in 1 Corinthians 15:20, is substantially of the same import. That the passage before us does actually rest on Colossians 1:18, “And he is the head of the body, who is the beginning, the first-born from the dead, that in all things he might have the pre-eminence,” is clear from the following reasons: 1. The rather strange expression, “the firstborn from the dead,” is there only brought in through the preceding expression, “the first-born of all creation.” The prefixed explanatory epithet, “the beginning,” of itself intimates, that the mode of expression was somewhat peculiar. 2. There it is “from the dead,” but here simply “of the dead” (the ἐκ, which is to be found in some critical helps, has only flowed from the passage in Colossians). The from, out of, points to the fact, that Christ was the first in moving out of the state of the dead. The simple, “of the dead,” would scarcely have been used but for that other explanatory passage, according to which it is to be understood as meaning, the first among the dead, who have attained to life. Indeed, we have also, in 1 Corinthians 15:20, “the first fruits of them that sleep.” But the immediately preceding words there, “but now is Christ risen from the dead,” serves as a commentary, and shews in what respect Christ was the first-fruits, or the first among them that sleep. 3. The expression in ch. Revelation 3:14, “the beginning of the creation,” points back to the same in Colossians 1:15; and indeed so, that “the beginning,” which there comes into the place of the first-born, is derived from Colossians 1:18, This reference is the more remarkable, as it occurs precisely in the epistle to the Laodiceans, who were very closely related to the Colossians. Those who were brought to life again under the Old Testament and during the earthly ministry of Christ, were not then invested with immortal life, but only rescued for a few years from the domain of death. And even during that short period death gave continual proof of his power over them; they died daily. He who, after the lapse of four thousand years, first actually attained to life, must have been possessed of an invincible divine power, which from him flows also to those who are his. And as he was thereby proved to be the conqueror of bodily death in the particular frame, that was united in corporeal membership with himself, so must he also be the conqueror of death to his church; this has with him for ever risen out of the grave. For death to the church, since his resurrection, is only a passage to life. This is what from the connection we are here to make account of John was not in vain in the spirit on the Lord’s day. To Christ’s life out of death he points the church, again also at Colossians 1:18, as the pledge of her salvation. And the prince of the kings of the earth. The fundamental passage is Ps. 79:28, where it is said of the house of David, which had its culminating point in Christ, “And I will make him my first-born, the highest among the kings of the earth.” A comparison with Revelation 17:14, “These will fight with the Lamb, and the Lamb will overcome them, for he is a Lord of lords and a King of kings,” shews that one is meant, who, notwithstanding their opposition, their bitter contention, reigns over the kings of the earth; one who is master of their pride, and casts their opposition to the ground. How he proves himself to be the prince of the kings of the earth, is rendered manifest to our view by the representation given of the overthrow of Rome, whose vassal king, so proud and yet so impotent, ventures to his own destruction into a foolish conflict with Him of life and death. It is still farther exhibited by the description of the battle of the ten kings and the victory over them in Revelation 19:11 ss., in which Christ appears with the name written upon his vesture and his thigh, “King of kings and Lord of lords.” If Christ is the prince of the kings of the earth, how foolish must it then be to tremble and shake, whenever these kings make an assault against his church. Their end must be destruction, but the church through the favour of the prince of the kings of the earth shall certainly reach a condition of peace. “His princely title,” says Bengel, “overtops the majesty of all earthly monarchs. The world, indeed, does not regard it; the most insignificant person will often dishonour this incomparable heavenly majesty with oaths and curses, with secure proud thoughts lessen and destroy it. But it will by and bye display its power; and the longer it withholds, the more terrible will it be to those, who would not submit themselves reverently to it.” “Now from this God, from this Spirit, from this Lord is grace and peace imparted to us; and in the glorious designations now considered there is contained the cause why God both can and will impart to us grace and peace.” There is now in the form of a doxology an indication given of three other sources of consolation in Christ. First, to him who loves us—his love to us, which renders it impossible, that he should look with unconcern on our distress, and should not set his omnipotence in motion to bring us help. To fear and tremble in the midst of tribulation is to doubt of his love, and so, to rob him of his highest glory—to deny him what he has certified by so great and costly a pledge. To believe in his love, is to be sure of his salvation. The reading: who has loved us, ἀγαπήσαντι, which Luther follows, is the least supported, and has only come from the preceding: who has washed and made us. “Who loves us,” includes “who has loved us,” but at the same time expressly declares, what the other excludes, that the love waters the dry land of the present and the future, as it has done also of the past. Comp. John 3:35, “The Father loves the Son, and has committed all into his hand;” where the “he loves” in like manner expresses the abiding love, and comprehends the past, the present, and the future.[Note: Several suppose without foundation, that “who loves us” is put here for, “who has loved us.” If John had wished to express this meaning, it would have been more natural to put ἀγαπήσαντι in unison with the following λούσαντι.]The second ground of consolation in Christ is the glorious proof of his love, which he has already given believers to experience. He who has washed us from our sins with his blood, cannot suffer us miserably to perish, and give us up to the hands of the uncircumcised. Those, whom he has made righteous, he will also make glorious.” He who has not spared his own Son, but given him up for us all, how shall he not with him freely give us all things!” The washing marks the taking away of our sins by forgiveness, and the sanctifying power which has its root in this. That we must not exclude the latter idea, is clear from such passages as John 13:8, John 10:10; 2 Corinthians 7:1; and also from ch. Revelation 7:14 here, where the garments, are said to have been made not pure merely, but white. The less approved reading: who has redeemed (λύσαντι) has arisen perhaps from mere accident, but also perhaps from the prosaic mind of the scribe. The reading: who has washed us, is supported by the poetical mode of contemplation, by the parallel passages of the Old Testament, in which sins appear under the image of impurity, their extirpation under that of washing and sprinkling (see on Revelation 7:14), and also by a comparison of ch. Revelation 7:14, “The blood of Christ makes us pure (equal to, washes us) from all sin.” (Revelation 1:6) And has made us a kingdom, priests to God and our Father—this points out the third source of consolation.[Note: In regard to the καὶἐποίησεν after two participles going before, there is weight in what Delitzsch remarks on Hah. p. 77, “According to the remark of Ewald, all the scattered shades of meaning in a verb resolve themselves again in the quiet progress of a discourse into the two primary colours of the perfect and imperfect. So is it also with the participle, through which the verbal idea receives a relative colouring. It is a part of the fineness of the Hebrew diction to make verba finita follow the participle that has the tone-mark, and these verbs, through the influence of the relative idea concentrated in the participle, are to be construed as conditional statements.”]Instead of: a kingdom, priests, several MSS. read: kings and priests (βασιλεῖςκαὶἱερεῖς.) Besides being better authenticated, the other reading is confirmed. 1. By the greater difficulty; 2. the greater resemblance to the original passage in Exodus 19:6; Exodus , 3., the occurrence of ‘‘kings and priests” in ch. Revelation 5:10, whence it has evidently been imported here. That we are not to throw the two expressions, “a kingdom,” “priests,” into one, q.d., a kingdom of priests, appears from the “kings and priests,” in the parallel passage just referred to, which must be regarded as a commentary. Yet, that the kingdom and the priests cannot mark a double dignity, the one separate from the other, is shewn by the want of the and; on account of which the priests must be viewed as in apposition with kingdom. It also appears from ch. Revelation 5:10, where the words, “and they shall reign,” follows the “priests;” from which it is clear, that the priestly dignity and the kingly are most closely connected with each other. The corresponding word” kings” in Revelation 5:10 shews farther, that the βασιλεῖα, kingdom, is used in a passive, not an active signification; that it is not the realm, but the dominion, as in Revelation 17:12, John 18:36. The kingdom is likewise employed in an active sense in the fundamental passage Exodus 19:6, where the people of God are represented as a kingdom of priests, such a kingdom as is wielded by priests. The object of this ruling is the world. The people of God are, in consequence of their priestly dignity, appointed to govern the world. We have a commentary in Daniel 7:27, “And the kingdom and the dominion, and the power over the kingdom under the whole heaven, is given to the people of the saints of the Most High.” The idea of this power over the world occurs also frequently in the Books of Moses; comp. Genesis 49:10; Deuteronomy 33:26-29, concluding with the words, “And thine enemies shall feign to thee, and thou shalt tread upon their high places.” In the prophecies of Balaam also the ascendancy of the people of God, their absolute victorious power over the world, is the fundamental thought; comp. Numbers 24:8, “He will eat up the nations, his enemies, and shall break their bones, and pierce them through with his arrows;” but especially Numbers 24:17, ss., and my work on Balaam there. Even the Old Testament knows of an ideal priesthood beside the common one: comp. besides Exodus 19:6, especially Psalms 99:6 (where the obligations only of the ideal priesthood are brought into notice, but the privileges correspond to these), Jeremiah 33:18, Jeremiah 33:22. In the higher style those persons only would be called priests who possessed the essential distinction of the common priesthood, though without its external accompaniments. But the heart and kernel of the priesthood is its close and immediate connection with God. Whoever has attained to this, he has, along with the priestly dignity, the spiritual priesthood, at the same time acquired the kingly. The essential element in this is the exercising of dominion. But if nearness of relationship to God possesses dominion in God over every thing except God himself as its necessary consequence, as certainly as God is the Almighty and the faithful helper of his people, he cannot suffer them to be overcome by the world. Comp. Isaiah 61:6, where the priesthood in relation to God, and the authority to rule in respect to the world, appear as immediately and inseparably united, “But ye shall be named the priests of the Lord, men shall call you the ministers of our God; and ye shall eat the riches of the Gentiles, and in their glory shall ye be established.” From these distinctions the incorrectness of De Wette’s remark becomes manifest, that the kingdom here denotes “the empire of God, the perfected holy blessed fellowship with God and Christ, in which all shall be united.” Such a view, indeed, is annihilated the moment we glance at ch. Revelation 2:26-27, “And he that overcometh and keepeth my words to the end, to him will I give power over the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron,” etc.; or Revelation 3:21, “To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne;” or, Revelation 5:10, “And hast made them to our God kings and priests, and they shall reign upon earth;” or also Revelation 20:6, Revelation 22:5. Such passages plainly shew, that the kingdom is an active one, and possesses a polemical character. And they serve, at the same time, completely to dispose of the remark of Ewald, that we must not think of dominion over others, but only of maintaining the Christian life in a quiet and independent condition. But it is not this, it is the supremacy of the world, which Christ has acquired for his people. It is further evident, from the distinctions drawn above, that Onkelos and Jonathan have not given precisely the right rendering at Exodus 19:6 by: kings and priests; and also that the accusation raised by Ewald against John, of having misunderstood that passage, recoils upon its author. A kingdom of priests is a kingdom which is governed by priests as such. Finally, in what has been said, we have an answer to the question of the older expositors, how Peter should have happened, in his first epistle, 1 Peter 2:9, to put the kingly priesthood in the room of the priestly kingdom of Moses. For, we see there is no essential difference between them. The priesthood involves the kingdom, and the kingdom the priesthood Here, however, the emphasis rests on the kingdom, and the priesthood comes under consideration only as the necessary basis. The kingdom which Christ has acquired for his people was what, in the circumstances of the time, was fitted to console the dismayed minds of Christians. This kingdom was even then manifesting itself. Every heathen that was won over to the kingdom of God, every martyr who maintained with success the conflict with the world, was a proof of it. But, however important might be the conquests which were then in process of being made on the territory of heathenism, such were only a small pledge of the glorious realization, which should not reach its climax till the whole heathen world lay at their feet. A view of this royal priesthood and this priestly kingdom, and a spirit of fresh, undaunted courage before the persecuting heathen world, ought now to fill their bosoms. The more proudly the world lifted itself up, the nearer was it to its destruction. To him the honour and the power for ever and ever, Amen. We can understand the words either as a wish (to him be these), or as a declaration. The latter mode of understanding it is countenanced by the parallel passage 1 Peter 4:11, “through Jesus Christ to whom is the honour and the power for ever and ever.” The Amen is not against this view; for even in simple declarations this is used as an asseveration of the truthfulness of what is said. But even viewed as a wish the words can only be regarded as expressive of the destination to what is immoveably fixed. It is not a subjective wish, which would be properly in place here, but an unquestionable fact, on which anxious minds might erect and strengthen themselves. The honour in connection with the power is not the ascription of praise, but the glory. Christ’s glory and might shall soon indeed pierce through the thin cloud, which now conceals his face from his church. As an antidote against pusillanimity and despair under suffering, Peter also points, in 1 Peter 5:11, to the honour and the person of Christ. The agreement there with the passage before us is a perfectly literal one, extending even to αὐτῶ ?, to him, which here was not absolutely needed. And we can the less regard this as a matter of accident, since a leaning on Peter in the close of the salutation, whose doxology is imitated also in Jude 1:25, with an enlargement as here in ch. Revelation 5:13, corresponds to the leaning on Paul at its beginning. Such a leaning here was the more significant, as the epistle of Peter was also addressed to the churches in Asia. The chain-like connection of the later writings of the New Testament with the earlier, which is no more than the example of the Old Testament might have led us to expect, has hitherto received too little attention, or has even been made use of for false conclusions, as in regard to the first epistle of Peter in relation to the epistles of Paul. After the salutation, and before he comes to the main subject, John still gives two weighty and appropriate utterances. With two torches he sends a gleam of light beforehand into the dark abyss of terror and dismay. Revelation 1:7. Behold he comes with clouds, and all eyes shall see him, and they that pierced him, and all the tribes of the earth shall wail over him. Yea, Amen. John here looks back especially to Matthew 24:30, “And then will appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven, and then shall all the tribes of the earth wail, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory.” And this declaration of our Lord again rests upon the two passages, Daniel 7:13, “Behold one like the Son of Man came in the clouds of heaven,” and Zechariah 12:10, “And I pour out upon the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem the spirit of grace and of supplication, and they look upon me whom they have pierced, and they wail over him, as the wailing over an only one, and mourn over him, as the mourning over a first born.” From the latter passage in particular is taken the expression, “They shall wail,” and also” They shall see.” That John had the declaration of our Lord more immediately in view, is clear from this, that here, as there, the two passages of Zechariah and of Daniel are united together. Still, John also reverts to the fundamental passages, and more literally adheres to them. Instead of: in the clouds of heaven, we have here, with a more exact reference to Daniel: with the clouds; and the clause derived here from Zechariah, “and they who pierced him” is omitted by Matthew. While in the declaration of our Lord both the fundamental passages are woven together, here the territory of both is still preserved distinct. The clause, “Behold he comes with the clouds,” points to Daniel, the rest to Zechariah, the clouds with which, or accompanied by which, the Lord comes, are not” the symbol of glory, of elevation above all nature” (Hδvernick), but they are the shadow of the judgment. This even in the Old Testament is the regular signification of the clouds, when employed in such a connection. Isaiah says in Isaiah 19:1, “behold the Lord rideth upon a swift cloud, and cometh to Egypt; and the idols of Egypt are moved at his presence, and the heart of Egypt melts in the midst of it.” On which Michaelis remarks: “This is to be understood of a dark stormy cloud, which is charged with thunder and lightning. Swift clouds must be particularly stormy.” On Psalms 97:2, “clouds and darkness are round about him,” I remarked in my commentary, “The Lord appears surrounded by dark clouds, which announce his anger, and beget the expectation of a tempest of thunder and lightning breaking forth.” Again on Psalms 18:10, when the Lord is represented as coming down from heaven, and having darkness under his feet, “The Lord approaches marching on the dark thunder clouds. These are to his enemies a sign of his anger, and a proclamation of his judgment.” From these thick tempest-clouds break forth lightning, thunder, and hail, Psalms 18:11, ss. In Nahum 1:3, it is said, “Behold the Lord, in storm and tempest is his way, and clouds are the dust of his feet.” The Lord does not come once merely with clouds at the end of the world, but through all periods of the world’s history. Where the carcase is, there the eagles are gathered together. The truth, that the Lord comes with clouds, renews itself with every oppression of the church by the world. The opinion, which would confine the expression to an externally visible appearance of the Lord, is already excluded by the fundamental passages of the Old Testament. But of special importance for the right understanding of it is Matthew 26:64, where Jesus says to the high priest, “But I say unto you, from henceforth ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven.” There the Lord comes upon the clouds to the judgment of Jerusalem, as a manifest proof that we are not to think merely of his coming at the last day, and that the words do not point to a visible appearing. There also the Lord does not come merely to the proper catastrophe on the clouds; he comes from henceforth; so that his whole secret and concealed agency towards the destruction of Jerusalem is comprehended under his coming. But if there the coming on the clouds refers to the judgment on Jerusalem, and here primarily to the judgment on persecuting Rome, then we obtain the result, that thereby the judicial activity of the Lord in its whole compass, according to its different objects and manifestations, is indicated.[Note: The right view was long since given by Vitringa: “Nor is it necessary that the words of John should be restricted to the lust advent of Christ. For, Christ is said in Scripture style to come in the clouds of heaven, as often as he displays his glory, and shews himself us present to the church. And there are various gradations of that advent of Christ, in which he is seen by his hardened enemies, themselves with the greatest anguish and lamentation.”]The coming of the Lord with clouds is at once terrible to the world, and joyful to the church; it is the latter which here comes into view.” And when these things begin to come to pass, then look up and lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh;” it is written in Luke 21:28, after it had been said, “And then shall they see the Son of man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.” The fundamental passage of Zechariah treats properly of the penitential mourning of Jerusalem over the Messiah, who had been slain by its guilt. In respect to the relation of the passage before us, and of Mat 24:30, to that in Zechariah, it was remarked in my Christology: “These passages are a kind of sacred parody on that of Zechariah. They shew that, beside the salutary repentance of which Zechariah speaks, there is another Judas-like repentance of despair; that besides the free looking to him who was pierced, there is another not free, which it is impossible for unbelief to escape.” The awful sublimity of this allusion must be felt by every one. Quite similar is Habakkuk 2:14 in relation to Isaiah 11:9, “For full is the earth of the knowledge of the Lord, as the water that covers the sea.” In Isaiah the knowledge of the Lord is a free, loving, joyful one; in Habakkuk it is one of constraint, terror, and howling. Bengel: “They shall wonder and be terrified, that this Jesus, formerly so despised, and even in his glory not known, should appear in such a manner. There are two kinds of looking to Christ, and wailing over him and his pierced condition. The one is penitential and tender, the other constrained and painful. They who in the day of grace exercise the former, as the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, give themselves to sincere and heartfelt lamentations for sin, which caused the death of Christ; and such shall be the case, when all the tribes of the earth mourn. So that there is no one, who shall not have mourned over the sufferings of Christ, either before the last day for his good, or at the last day (more correctly, when the time of judgment has come; with terror” In place of “all the tribes of Israel” in the original passage, we have here, as in the declaration of the Lord, “all the tribes of the earth”—a clear proof that here, it is not, as De Wette thinks, the punishment of the Jews that is spoken of, with which also the church had little to do, when sighing under the heathen persecutions. The expression, “who have pierced him,” refers, according to the parallel passage. John 19:37,[Note: It is an important ground for the identity of the author of Revelation and of the Gospe1, that the latter also renders the original passage by Ὄψονταιεἰςὃνἐξεκέντησαν, while the LXX. put it quite differently, πιβλέψονταιπρόςμε, ἀνθ̓ὧνκατωρχήσαντο. It was pointed out in the Christology, that they followed the common reading, but attributed to the verb γχψ a figurative meaning (to pierce—to despise), because they regarded the common one as unsuitable. Inadmissible are the suppositions, by which some have tried to get rid of the consequences, that arise from the troublesome facts. Ewald’s allegation, that the LXX. had originally translated as the others, but that the text had been corrupted, can only be regarded as the result of extreme necessity. The allegation, also, that the agreement might easily have been accidental, since Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion coincide with John here and with each other, is likewise quite untenable. For the coincidence is limited there simply and alone to the ἐκκαντέω, while here the ὀ ?́ψομαι also is common; the LXX. and Theodotion have ἐπιβλέπομαι. Theodotion, too, not uncommonly leans on Aquila, Symmachus on Aquila and Theodotion—comp. Montfuncon Praelim. in Origenis Hex. p. 57. Aquila, however, knew the sacred books of the Christians, and was guided by polemical considerations in respect to them—as, for example, at Isaiah 7:14 he intentionally shunned the word παρθένος out of respect to Matthew 1:23, &c. But polemical considerations never stand alone. They always draw in their train also certain agreements. According to Epiphanius Aquila was for a long time a Christian; and an agreement with John in the rare ἐκκεντεῖν could scarcely be accidental.]to the piercing with the spear. “The piercing of the side,” says Bengel, “was the last and most noted injury, which the enemies of the Saviour inflicted on his sacred body.” But this piercing is considered here, not simply as the work of those, from whom in the first instance it proceeded. It appears rather as the common deed of those who are united with the proper doers of it by the common bond of a similar state of feeling, and who manifest it by what they perpetrate against Christ in his members. The immediate actors present themselves to the view of the prophet only as representatives of the multitude, who have feelings of enmity towards Christ. Over him, on account of what they have perpetrated against him, and what they have now in consequence to expect from him. The expression of affirmation in two words, Yea, Amen, serves, according to 2 Corinthians 1:20, to give it additional strength. The double Amen in the Hebrew and in John 1:52, is analogous. Such a liveliness of asseveration was here perfectly in its place. For the visible presented a strong objection against what was affirmed. Bengel: “This is just the state of the Christian, that, when he hears of the coming of the Lord Jesus, he can look for him with joy, and in delight call out yea, with all who love his appearing and wait for his manifestation.” Revelation 1:8. There follows now in Revelation 1:8 the second introductory statement of what the prophet had to say for the consolation of the church in its faint and distressed condition. I am the Alpha and the Omega, says the Lord God, who is, and who was, and comes, the Almighty.Luther follows here a double false reading. In a few critical helps, after the Alpha and the Omega, there is introduced from the parallel passages: the beginning and the end. In some also God is wanting after the Lord; a reading which has proceeded from the idea, that the person who speaks in the verse could be no other than Christ, to whom the title, the Lord God, is not applied. The Alpha as the first and the Omega as the last letter in the Greek alphabet, denotes the beginning and the end. Corresponding to this is “the first and the last” in ch. Revelation 1:17, Revelation 2:8. In ch. Revelation 21:6 the two expressions, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end, occur together; and in the full-toned conclusion at ch. Revelation 22:13, we have the whole three, Alpha and Omega, first and last, beginning and end. The fact that the beginning and the end never occur elsewhere but in connection with Alpha and Omega, while the latter, and the other expression also, the first and the last, are found alone, shews that “the beginning and the end” is only to be regarded as an accompaniment of Alpha and Omega. And these words are appropriated to this purpose, because they begin with the first and the last letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and so fitly indicate in what character the Alpha and Omega here come into consideration—only in respect to their place in the alphabet. The speaker is not Christ, but neither is it God the Father in contrast to Christ (against this decides, besides the relation to Revelation 1:7, the circumstance of the Alpha and the Omega being also attributed to Christ), but God in the undivided oneness of his being, without respect to the difference of persons. It may now be asked, in what respect God is here called the Alpha and the Omega? We are not to understand it of simple existence. For, then there would be no truth in the thought, that the personal existence preserves even the enemies by whom the church is brought into distress; and there could be derived from it nothing but a very small degree of consolatory power. The great question which then agitated the minds of believers, was about the superiority—whether the world would maintain the ascendancy, which it then claimed and seemed to possess; or whether it should belong to the God of the Christians. This question is answered by the declaration, I am the Alpha and the Omega. The emphasis is to be laid upon the Omega. It is as much as: I am as the Alpha, therefore also the Omega. The beginning is the surety for the end. The unconditional supremacy of God over the world, which is placed before our eyes by the Beginning, since God made heaven and earth, since he spake and it was done, commanded and it stood fast, is also brought again into notice by the end. If any one finds the end a cause of vexation, let him only lose himself in the beginning; let him dive into the word, “Before the mountains were brought forth, etc.” and his anxiety will disappear. Let the world enlarge itself in the middle as it may, the church knows from the beginning, that the victory at the end must be God’s. The designations of God serve the purpose of tracing up to a necessity in the divine nature the declaration, that he will maintain his supremacy, as at the beginning, so also at the end. The epithet, Lord God, corresponds to the Old Testament combination, Jehovah Elohim, i.e. Jehovah the only God, the sole possessor of Godhead, Jehovah besides whom there is no God and no Saviour—comp. on Jehovah Elohim my Betir. II. p. 311, ss. The words that follow in the latter part of the verse unfold what is contained in the “Lord God;” and with a twofold respect corresponding to each: “Who is, and who was, and who comes,” the substance of the Lord; and “the Almighty,” the substance of God. The Old Testament Zabaoth,[Note: Bengel: In the books of Samuel and Kings, in Chronicles and Psalms, in Isaiah, Jeremiah, and most of the minor prophets, before the Babylonish captivity and after it, very frequent mention is made of the Lord God of hosts. The LXX. render the epithet variously, but most commonly use παντοκράτωπ, ὁκύριος, ὁθεὸς, ὁπαντοκράτως. The word is nowhere found in the other books of the New Testament, excepting in 2 Corinthians 6:18, with an express reference to a passage in Isaiah. In the Apocalypse alone it frequently occurs. Such being the ease, the Heb. Jehovah cannot but answer to the third member, ὁὠ ?͂νκαὶὁἠ ?͂νκαὶὁἐρχομενος. For the epithet ὁπαντοκράτωρ is never put, without either θεὸς or Jehovah immediately preceding.]which corresponds to it, serves along with Elohim to prevent all narrow views respecting Jehovah, all that would shut him up into a limited sphere. It was such a God, that belonged to the beginning, and such also must necessarily belong to the end; and the church can smile at those who would put themselves in opposition to him. The Introductory section is followed by a narrative, Revelation 1:9-20, telling how John had received from Christ the commission to write to the seven churches, and containing an extended representation of the appearance of Christ, which was admirably fitted to prepare the minds of men for the contents of the epistles—to dispose sinners to repentance, and to kindle hope in the bosoms of the desponding.[Note: The section partakes of the character of the whole first vision, which is thus described by Vitringa: “The first vision exhibits the internal state of the universal church through all times under the emblem of the seven churches of Asia, from Revelation 1:9 to the beginning of ch. 4. Almost all the other visions have respect to the external state of the church.”]It proclaims with emphasis at once, Fear, and Fear not. Revelation 1:9. I John, your brother and companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. The “I John” is in imitation of Daniel’s style, who alone among the prophets says, “I Daniel,” Daniel 7:28, Daniel 8:1, Daniel 9:2, Daniel 10:2. While John in this manner attaches himself to Daniel, he presents himself as having a similar position to his, and so indirectly designates himself as an apostle. For prophets standing on a footing of equality with the canonical writers of the Old Testament could only be found in the circle of the apostles It is not accidental, nor to be explained from a mere subjective predilection, that John attaches himself in so very peculiar a manner to the last more eminent prophets of the Old Testament, to Ezekiel, Daniel, Zechariah. This is rather to be considered as having its ground in the serial character of the sacred writings generally, and those of the prophets in particular. As certainly as Scripture is no fortuitous assemblage, but an organic whole, John had the double purpose in view of connecting what he wrote at once with his New Testament predecessors, and with the last prophets of the Old Testament, whom in a sense he immediately followed as the author of the first and only prophetical book of the New Testament. John speaks of himself as the brother of those to whom he wrote. He might also have called himself their father, as in his epistles he addresses them as his children, 1 John 2:1, 1 John 2:18, 1 John 2:28, 3 John Revelation 1:4. But it was more fitting here to bring out the point of similarity, which is made sensible to the heart by nothing more readily than a common participation in suffering. Reference had already been made in Revelation 1:1 to the distinguished dignity of John. The also, which many critical authorities shove in, has arisen from a feeling of solicitude, as if John must here have somehow indicated the distinction betwixt himself and his readers. The tribulation could only consist in persecution. For John, the companion in tribulation, is on the island of Patmos, for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus. Besides, the “Jesus Christ” belongs not merely to the patience, but to all the three, the tribulation, the kingdom, and the patience. But the question may be asked, what is to be understood by the tribulation of Jesus Christ? The answer is, that here, as in the fundamental passage of Col 1:24, “Now I rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up in my body what is still wanting (to me) in the tribulations of Christ,” (John writes to the same circle of readers, and the whole verse before us is full of references to Paul’s epistles):—in both alike, the tribulation denotes what Christ suffered partly in person and partly in his members, and what he still has to suffer. We must not with Luther think merely of the first, the personal sufferings of Christ: “Paul calls his own sufferings the tribulations of Jesus Christ, because they were the same sufferings as those by which Jesus Christ was affected. John designates himself a companion of the tribulations, which Christ had formerly suffered.” In that case, Paul could not have called his sufferings tribulations of Christ without some farther explanation. And here the tribulation and the patience, or stedfastness, are manifestly the personal tribulation or stedfastness of John and of those to whom he wrote. A companion (συνκοινωνός only found in Paul and here in John) is one, who partakes along with others. But one cannot partake of the tribulation, which Christ himself has suffered. Had it been Christ’s personal sufferings merely that was meant, the natural thing here would have been a mere compassion, which would not be suitable. The sufferings of Christ also in 1 Peter 4:13, are not merely the sufferings which Christ personally endured. When we have determined the tribulation of Christ, we can no longer doubt what is to be understood by the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, the kingdom or empire of Jesus Christ can only be that which belongs to him, partly in person, partly in his members. In like manner, the patience of Christ is that, which he has personally manifested, and manifested in his members; and of explanations, such as Ewald’s, according to which the patience of Jesus Christ must be the patient hope respecting Christ, require no further notice. Under the patience, according to the remark of Bengel, is to be understood, “not only a good will, but a spiritual force and energy, whereby one is fortified to endure something, and bears up under it.” It is the stedfast endurance of things contrary to the faith and truth of the gospel—comp. 2 Timothy 2:12, where the patience stands in opposition to the denying, and Luke 8:15, where those who bear fruit in patience are contrasted with those, who believe for a time, and in the time of temptation fall away. The same three things as here are united also together in Acts 14:22, where it is said of Paul and Barnabas, that they confirmed the souls of the brethren, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that through much tribulation they must enter into the kingdom of God; comp. also 2 Timothy 2:12, Romans 8:17. In regard to the order here, the tribulation, the state of humiliation, has placed in immediate connection with it the kingdom, the state of exaltation; and then the patience will be thought of with an emphatic N.B, because the contrast presented by it to the natural connection between the tribulation and the kingdom of Christ has been torn asunder, and the bitterly won fruits of the former reaped. The mention of the patience is at the same time a reminiscence, and an indirect though important admonition. Bengel: “The things mentioned are singularly woven together. The kingdom stands in the middle, the tribulation before, and the patience after. This is the form of Christianity in this life. Through the tribulation the kingdom is pervaded with the patience of Christ, till the tribulation shall have been overcome, and no more patience shall be required. With carnal men, who have not entered into the kingdom of Christ, tribulation brings no patience, but rather occasions impatience. A raging wild beast, if it is not irritated, may be quiet as a lamb, but when any thing has excited it, it breaks forth in its fury.”[Note: The reading ἐνἸησοῦ ? has proceeded from those who could not understand the genitive, which has been munch tortured by expositors. The fundamental passage is against it, as also ch. 3:10.From the words, “I was in the isle Patmos,” the conclusion has often been drawn, that at the time John wrote the Revelation he was no longer in Patmos. And certainly the I was, if isolated, must appear remarkable, and cannot be explained by what was stated on Revelation 1:2 in reference to the expression: who has testified. John could not take for granted that the sojourn in the isle Patmos, at the time when his book was being read, had already come to a close. But the abrupt beginning in Revelation 1:10 shews[Note: One might have expected καὶ ? with the second ἐγενόμην, but it is the very omission of this which serves to indicate the inseparable connection of the double ἐγενόμην.]that we have here a mere Hebrew sort of connection between the clauses, which, with things that run into each other in meaning, simply puts them after one another: I was upon the isle Patmos, I was in the Spirit, for, when I was upon the isle Patmos, or during my sojourn there, I was in the Spirit. Comp. a quite similar synchronical Imperfect in Jonah 3:3. So that there remains only the second I was to be explained. But the remark already made at Revelation 1:2 is perfectly applicable here. The state of ecstacy was long since gone when the Book came to be read by the churches of Asia. That the Revelation in Patmos, besides, had not merely been received, but also written down, is evident simply from the send in Revelation 1:11. Only an arbitrary disposition and want of simplicity could have sought to separate what are most intimately associated together. How the writing was immediately joined to the hearing and seeing, may be discovered from ch. Revelation 10:4, Revelation 22:7; Revelation 22:9-10. Instead of: on the isle, which is called Patmos, several have merely: on the isle Patmos. But the omission was made by those who had in view the renown which Patmos had acquired throughout Christendom by this very Revelation of John. That till then it was exceedingly obscure, is manifest, as Bengel has justly remarked, not only from the clause “which is called,” but even from the designation of the place as an island, while in Acts 13:4, for example, we have simply the name Cyprus. Fiction would never have laid the scene in so obscure a corner. The proof that the words, “for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ,” refer to the martyr-sufferings of John, has already been given in the Introduction. In regard to the testimony of Jesus, comp. on ch. Revelation 1:2. The Appearance of Christ Revelation 1:10. I was[Note: The ἐγενόμην after the corresponding ἐγενόμην in Revelation 1:9, not: I became, but I was.](there I was) in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet. To be in the Spirit means being in the element and state of the Spirit. In a certain sense all Christians are in the Spirit, comp. Romans 8:5, Romans 8:9, Galatians 5:25. But here by being in the Spirit is meant being so in the highest sense, in a theopneustic state, in which the natural life is entirely overcome. Parallel is Paul’s being in a trance, Acts 22:17, comp. Acts 10:10, Acts 11:5. Opposed is Peter’s being again in or with himself γενόμενοςἐνἑαυτῳ ?͂ ?, in Acts 12:11, which is immediately preceded by: forthwith the angel departed from him. In vain has Zόllig denied that being in the Spirit could stand for being in a state of ecstacy. His exposition: I was on the Lord’s day in a kind of transport, is at once put to flight by ch. Revelation 4:2 : and immediately I was in the Spirit, where he must explain: presently was I there in a kind of transport. John also is here not in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, the day of the future judgment, but he speaks throughout from the stand-point of the actual present. There can be no doubt that the declaration, “I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day,” primarily refers only to the first series, which is a whole by itself. Hence at the beginning of the second series we have the corresponding: I was in the Spirit, ch. Revelation 4:2. It is naturally to be supposed, however, that the contents of the whole book were communicated on the same day. For the day of the Lord is, at least, quite as closely connected with the contents of the following visions. No other day is ever so much as hinted at. The half-hour in ch. Revelation 8:1 is a measure of time, serving to indicate, that in the space of a limited period the whole was shut up. Zechariah also receives the entire series of his visions, which are formally independent of each other, in a single night. The assertion, I was in the Spirit, is turned into a lie, whenever one assumes that the prophet had laboured long at his work. The word: he spake and it was done, applies also here. It is affirmed, that the book shews everywhere the marks of great art and careful preparation. But this is partly to be explained from the consideration, that in the state of ecstacy holy men were raised far above themselves, and must not be judged by a measure which is obtained from their ordinary condition. Then, much appears to us art, or even unnatural conceit, which was quite natural and easy to the sacred bards and seers, such as their arrangements according to symbolical numbers. In any other respect, the supposition of art and laborious preparation rests upon the arbitrary hypothesis of expositors, who have pressed their own conceits upon the book, in particular have substituted in place of a series of visions, formally independent of each other, a single whole arranged after a regular plan. Finally, John’s being in the Spirit was only the bursting forth for which a manifold and profound preparation paved the way. The key to the right understanding of the day of the Lord is supplied by Revelation 1:5, where Christ is called the first-begotten from the dead, and by Revelation 1:18, where likewise reference is made to the resurrection as the pledge that he will quicken his people out of death. These passages prove, 1. That the day of the Lord is the day of the resurrection, as the day on which Christ was manifested above all others as the Lord, comp. Romans 1:4. 2. That it was so named, not because of what the church should do on that day, but because of what the Lord did on it, as a figure and pledge of what he is still going to do on it.[Note: Augustinus: Dominicus hic dies ideo dicitur, quia eo die dominus resurrexit; vel ut ipso nomine doceret, ilium diem domino consecratum esse debere.]It follows, however, from what the Lord has done on that day, that it is to be sanctified by the church, and that John so responded to this call, so yielded himself to the death-subduing power of Christ, as thereby to make himself capable and worthy of receiving the Revelation. The only point regarding which a doubt can be entertained, is whether, under the day of the Lord’s[Note: The name was certainly in John’s time not in common use, but was first introduced by him; perhaps, the Lord’s day was formed after the Lord’s Supper in 1 Corinthians 11:20.the weekly or yearly celebration of the resurrection is to be understood. Both were even in the apostolic age singled out from the rest. The reasons for the weekly celebration have recently been set forth by Weitzel in his Christliche Passafeier der ersten drei Jahrhunderte. Even on the very first weekly return of the resurrection-day we find the apostles gathered together, in remembrance of that which had taken place eight days before, if haply the Lord might again appear; and the day was distinguished anew by a manifestation of the risen Lord, John 20:24-29. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 16:2, singles out the first day of the week as that on which the Corinthians were to lay past their contributions. On the first day of the week we find the Christians met at Troas to celebrate the Supper, Acts 20:7. Exactly seven days before had Paul arrived there: he would a second time observe the sacred day in the midst of them. The proof that the annual celebration of the day of the resurrection was also observed in a solemn manner from the first age, has likewise been produced by Weitzel. This follows, indeed, as a matter of course: the celebration of the weekly festival is hardly to be conceived without that of the yearly. Farther, from the connection of the oldest churches with the Jewish synagogue, there was only the choice left of keeping a Jewish or a Christian holyday. And finally, from the fully accredited tradition of an observance by John in regard to the Christian Passover, it appears on the most credible testimonies that the Passover-feast peculiar to Lesser Asia was introduced there on the authority of John. The knowledge possessed by the ancient church of the internal connection between the resurrection of Christ and his second coming, led to a particularly energetic, celebration of that yearly festival.[Note: Jerome on Matthew 25 : Dicamus alquid quod forsitan lectori utile sit. Traditio Judaeorum est Christum mediu nocte venturum in similitudine . AEgyptii temporis, quando Pascha celebratum est exterminator venit. Unde reor et traditionem Apostolicam permansisse, ut in die vigiliarum Paschae ante noctis dimidium populos dimittire non licent, expectantes adventum Christi; et postquam illud fempus transierit, securitate praesumta festum cunctis agentibus diem.]Beyond doubt, Easter day was a very suitable one for receiving the Revelation, the fundamental idea of which is that Christ will come to deliver his church from death. However, since it is certain that the weekly commemoration of the resurrection had then begun, every one must naturally think of that, when he hears of the day of the Lord, and the yearly festival could not have been designated in this simple manner, but must have had some mark of distinction, as it is called by the Fathers the holy, the great, the splendid day of the Lord. “On the Sunday,” says Bengel, “John received the Revelation, and a spiritual meditation of this book is truly Sunday work.” It is the proper Sunday-book. Every Sunday, if spent under its influence, will awaken in us the hope of the Maranatha, which is so full of consolation especially for our times. John hears behind him a voice. This took place because he must first hear. Had he immediately seen, he would not have been able to hear, but with a “Woe is me, for I am undone, because I am a man of unclean lips, and dwell among a people of unclean lips,” he would have fallen prostrate on the ground; comp. Revelation 1:17. But here the reference to the church must presently come forth. The great voice is as of a trumpet. Allusion is made to the Old Testament use of the trumpet as the sign for calling the people together, and intimating, that the Lord had something to say to them; comp. Numbers 10:2, Exodus 19:16-19, Joe 2:1, where in the immediate prospect of the day of the Lord Israel is called by the sound of the trumpet before an angry God, Joe 2:15, Matthew 24:31, 1 Thessalonians 4:16, where the trumpet calls the members of the church before the Lord at his second coming. So here also the voice of the trumpet announces that the Lord has important tidings to communicate to his church, and summons them straight to his throne, that they may there receive the word of warning and consolation. Revelation 1:11. Which said: What thou seest write in a book, and send it to the churches in Asia, to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamos, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea. Between spake and thou seest several critical helps have introduced, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last.” But Bengel has conclusively shown in his Appar. that these words have been derived from Revelation 1:8; Revelation 1:17. Zόllig would still defend them as genuine; but a glance at the beginning of his defence, “These words are wanting indeed in the best manuscripts,” renders it quite unnecessary to follow him farther. Where the external grounds are so decided, it is not worth while going more deeply into the internal considerations, which might be found to show the want of genuineness. We shall make but one remark, that it is only at Revelation 1:12 that John turns round to look after the voice which spake with him, consequently he could not yet know who the speaker was. The words would weaken the impression of the appearance and the surprise it occasioned. John must write what he sees, not what he may yet sec. The seeing has already begun; for according to the Biblical usage the hearing also is comprehended in the seeing in the larger sense. On the words in a book Bengel remarks, “Therefore all here makes up but one book. Not only is the address to each particular church to be sent to the angel of it, but the whole book is also to be sent to them all.” But this remark would only be right, if we were to understand by the all what is written to the end of ch. 3. For this portion alone belonged specially to the seven churches of Asia. Ewald’s attempt to delete the “seven,” on the ground of a few unimportant manuscripts omitting it, and indeed with little advantage, since the hook still remains specially directed to the seven churches of Asia, whether they might be expressly said to be seven or not, only shows to what difficulties they reduce themselves who understand by the book here the whole book, which from ch. 4 to the end bears an entirely oecumenical character. The name of the book (βιβλίον, properly, little book) affords no handle to this mistake. For, in ch. Revelation 5:1, we find the book with the seven seals; in Matthew 19:7 the same word signifies the writing of divorce; in 2 Samuel 11:14, 2 Kings 19:14, it is used of letters (Suidas: βιβλίονἡἐπιστολή ?), and in Macc. 1:44 of edicts. The corresponding Hebrewρτψ denotes any sort of written declaration. The law of the order of the seven churches, the seven, as is clear from ch. 2 and 3, falling into three and four, may with certainty be discovered. Ephesus, Smyrna, and Pergamos must stand together, and be separated from the rest. For, these three cities and these alone contended for the primacy in Asia.[Note: See the Appendix in Spanheim, de usu et praestantia nomismatum I. p. 636, ss.]The order in which they are placed here is also not arbitrary. Ephesus must stand at the head as the seat of John’s labours, and as such forming the centre of the whale circle. From Ephesus it proceeds northward to Smyrna and Pergamos. Then from Pergamos as the most northerly point it goes in a regular south-easterly direction down by Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, to Laodicea, which lies almost in the same parallel of south latitude with Ephesus, but considerably farther east.[Note: In the Itinerarium Antonini the four cities follow each other in precisely the same order, comp. Cellarius Schwδrtz II. p. 113.The apostle in his spiritual visitation takes the same course which he was wont to take in his actual visits (comp 2 John 1:12, 3 John 1:10). When John wrote to the seven churches, he had in his eye the example of the seven Catholic and the fourteen Pauline epistles (including the epistle to the Hebrews, which anyhow, even if not directly, flowed from Paul as its source.) That John was instructed to send to the churches, shows, notwithstanding the objections of Lόcke, p. 243, that he wrote out what he saw on the spot. That “the state of the seven churches of Asia appears as immediately present in the seven epistles,” indicates nothing to the contrary, for that belongs to the territory of the Spirit. Revelation 1:12. And I turned round to see the voice which spake with me. And, when I turned, I saw seven golden lamps. The seeing is to be taken in the larger sense. He wished to learn more exactly about the voice, namely from whom it proceeded. That his desire lay especially upon the latter point, is evident from the turning of his head. This does not need to have been a mere visionary turning (Mark). The internal sense moves after the form of the external. John sees first the churches and then Christ. By this it is implied, that he beholds Christ here only in a special respect, in his relation to the churches. That the seven churches are indicated by the seven lamps, is expressly declared in Revelation 1:20. Among the furniture of the sanctuary there was a candlestick with seven lamps, Exodus 25:37, which already appears in Zechariah 4 as an image of the church.[Note: Comp. the Christol. on Zechariah 4. We believe we must here repeat what was said in the Beitr. III. p. 643 regarding the import of the candlestick: “As regards the candlestick, we have a sure starting point in the oil. The oil throughout both Old and New Testaments is the symbol of the Spirit of God. But when we have determined the oil, we can easily determine also the candlestick; as the bearer of the Spirit of God it can only import the church, the covenant people. So also the light; it can only indicate the operations of the Spirit of God, the spiritual light, which streams forth from the Spirit-endowed community into the surrounding darkness. The symbol in the first instance declares what the church of God is, in the event of its corresponding to its idea, but along with this, at the same time, what it ought to be. The description carries in its bosom a call. This comes distinctly out in the explanation of the symbol, which our Lord himself gives. After saying in Matthew 5:14, “Ye are the light of the world,” he adds in Revelation 1:18, “Therefore let your light shine before men.” Besides, the Saviour again has respect to the candlestick in Luke 12:35, and in the parable of the virgins. So also Paul in Philippians 2:15. The seven number of the lamps points to the covenant relation. Seven is in Scripture, as the language itself bears evidence, the number of the oath, and consequently of the covenant. That the candlestick was of gold denotes the glory of the church of God. The blossoms of flowers, which were added as ornaments, were emblematic of the church’s joyful blossoming and prosperity.”]It is not accidental that here seven individual lamps are set before us. The candlestick with the seven lamps could not have been admitted here. For this since the time of Moses had been consecrated for all times as a symbol of the whole. But here the discourse is not of the whole church, but only of seven particular churches, in which the church was reflected indeed, though they still did not constitute the church—(comp. Revelation 1:20, where the seven lamps are said to be the seven churches; not the church at large, but seven individual churches selected from the whole. Without any proper right has Hoffmann (Weiss, und Erfullung, Th. II. p. 319) drawn from the passage before us the conclusion, that the seven churches of Asia must have had a symbolical character, a prophetical import, since otherwise they could not have been represented through the symbol of the whole church. But this is just what has not been done. The seer has avoided that supposed identification of the seven churches with the church at large, by not speaking of the candlestick with the seven lamps, but of seven separate lamps. But under the image of seven lamps even seven individual believers might have been represented, as may be seen from Philippians 2:15, and the parable of the ten virgins. Certainly the seven churches constitute one whole, for they have Christ in their midst, but only a whole of the kind described in the words, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them”—a separate section of the church, which stood under the superintendence of John, not the whole of the Christian church. Hoffmann has said, that any one who would see the matter more fully proved, will find in Vitringa all he can wish. But the reasons which have been advanced by the latter are equally untenable. He rests, first of all, upon the general contents of the entire book. According to Revelation 1:1 it contains what was shortly to come to pass. Whence the seven epistles also must be out and out prophetical, which can only be the case if the churches are understood to be types of the church of the future in its varied conditions. But what holds of the book in its general character and import, must not simpliciter be applied to every particular part. The first introductory and preparatory series must, according to the express declaration of Rev 1:19, be occupied with “what is,” as previous to and apart from that “which was afterwards to come to pass”—with a prophetic insight into the real state of matters in the churches of Asia, which was known only in a superficial way to common observation, and still unperceived in its proper depth. In this, what is said of the contents of the book in general, receives its limitation so far as the first portion is concerned. “Must then,” continues Vitringa, “the churches alone of the Lydian Asia have lain upon the heart of Christ, and not rather the churches of all Asia, nay the churches of the whole world?” For this reason he thinks those churches of Asia must have had a symbolical import. Unquestionably, the seven epistles addressed to them form part of a book, which is destined for the whole church. But nothing more follows from this, than that they also partake of the character attributed in 2 Timothy 3:16-17, to the whole of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, and without which indeed, holy Scripture cannot be conceived to exist: “All Scripture given by inspiration of God, is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished for all good works.” But our epistles bear this character, even if we give up their prophetic import in the narrower sense, and place them in the same rank with the other apostolic epistles, which likewise refer originally and primarily to special relations. In both cases alike it is the part of the church by means of its theological expositions to extract from the particular, the general, and again make application of this to the particular. The seven churches are no more representatives of all other churches, than were the churches to which the other apostles wrote. “What then,” asks Vitringa, “are the churches amongst whom Christ the Lord walks? Are they just those seven churches of Asia, or are they not rather all churches of all times and places?” But the walking of Christ among these seven churches is to be taken positively, not exclusively. One might just as well conclude, that the two or three, in the midst of whom the Lord has promised to be, must represent the whole church. When Thomas calls Christ his Lord and God, John 20:28, or when Paul says, that Christ lives in him, Galatians 2:20, no one surely will maintain, that they could only speak thus as types of the church. Finally, Vitringa still lays stress on the point, that the Lord concludes the epistles to the churches in Asia with a call that is addressed to all churches: he that has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. But this very circumstance shews, that the churches in Asia do not represent the whole church. Had they done so, the Spirit would simply have needed to address them. That there was only a special application and charge made to them of what, we are expressly told, belonged to the whole church, was purposely designed to teach, that they were only parts of this great whole. But against the strictly prophetical character of the seven epistles, there is also this very decisive fact, that they do not at all contain a full representation, even in its main features, of the state of the entire Christian church. It is especially to be noted in this respect, that of the two grand hostile forces against which the Christian church has constantly to contend, Judaism and Heathenism, standing related to each other as a false slavery and a false freedom of spirit, here it is only the latter which is brought into notice, and simply because this alone had then power and influence in the churches, to which the apostle wrote. Those persons, especially, who like Vitringa descry in the seven epistles a prophecy of the seven ages of the church,[Note: In opposition to which this alone is decisive, that, as already indicated, the order in which the seven churches stand, was determined by local considerations and others of a like outward nature.]must by this consideration be reduced to great straits. For, among these ages there sire some, in which the Judaistic element has wrought the greatest devastations in the church. But those also, who perceive in the epistles a pre-intimation of the church’s states in the last times, cannot easily dispose of this argument. For, Judaism has a very tenacious existence, and will assuredly never altogether abandon the field to heathenism. Revelation 1:13. And in the midst of the seven lamps one who was like a. Son of man, who was clothed with a long robe, and girt about the breast with a golden girdle. Bengel: “Just as Christ in heaven has not in himself the actual form of a lamb, or of a warrior on a white horse (Revelation 6:2, Revelation 19:11), so, though he has indeed the human form, yet he has not that precise fashion of it, in which he here presents himself with so much splendour as the head of his church.” The appearance here stands in the closest relation to the matter in hand. It presents before our view those aspects of Christ’s nature, which were adapted to the seven churches, and to all who are placed with them in similar states and circumstances, on the one hand to bring them to repentance, and on the other to fill them with consolation and encouragement. What he afterwards says to them in word, he prefigures to them in the first instance through his appearance—the regular relation of appearance and word to each other in the sacred Scriptures—so that the appearance bears throughout a onesided character. His glorious majesty, and his punitive righteousness, these are the aspects which here alone were to come distinctly into view, and these alone beam forth on us from the following description. Christ appears in the midst of the seven lamps as the guardian and the judge of the church. The expression, “like a Son of man,” refers to Daniel 7:13, “Behold upon the clouds of heaven came one like a Son of man,” and so, immediately suggests the most elevated representations. For to that person was there given the dominion, the honour, and the kingdom, and all peoples, nations, and tongues serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which does not pass away, and his kingdom has no end. In the expression itself there is involved a superhuman elevation. For, if he was only like a Son of man, there must have been another part of his Being, which far surpassed the human. The whole succeeding description serves as an explanation of the likeness to a Son of man, for every thing in it points to a superhuman nature and glory. With Christ the designation of himself as the Son of man had an apologetical import: be not offended at my human lowliness of form, but remember that the Son of God in Daniel had the appearance of a Son of man. Some, with an unseasonable remembrance of the expression as uttered by our Lord in the days of his flesh, understand by the Son of man precisely Christ himself; and explain the like by supposing that, Christ himself did not personally appear, but as Bossuet expresses it, “an angel under his form, and sent by his command.” Expositors of the Reformed Church have made use of this exposition in support of their party views.[Note: Mark: Homo Christi linesmenta Johanni bene cognita referens. Neque enim Christus ipse quem coelos capere oportet usque ad judicii diem, descendit in terram, sed speciem sui similem exhibuit Johanni.] A personal appearance of Christ here appeared to be dangerous to their doctrine of the Supper. But it is decisive against such a view, that here, as in ch. Revelation 14:14, it is not said, “like the,” but “like a Son of man.” The robe, or garment, flowing down even to the feet, was not the sign merely of sacerdotal, but also of kingly dignity—comp. Isaiah 6:1, where such a garment is represented as belonging even to king Jehovah, the Lord of Hosts. The whole of the following description exhibits Christ as king and judge, as was done also by the original passage from which the expression, “like a Son of man,” was taken. “A king,” says Bengel, “is more exalted than a priest.” Hence Scripture also, and in particular the Revelation, speaks much oftener of the kingdom, than of the priesthood of Christ, even as he was not Aaron’s, but David’s Son.” Both the long robe and the golden girdle have respect to Daniel 10:5, where it is said of Michael or of the Logos (see on Daniel 12:7), “And I lifted up mine eyes and saw, and behold there was a man clothed in linen,[Note: The áãéí, plural, not linen clothing generally, but a long linen garment.]and his loins were girt about with pure gold.” That the girdle is called golden in regard to its buckle, is clear from 1Ma 10:89, 1Ma 11:58, 1Ma 14:44, where the bearing of a golden buckle on one’s girdle, along with being clothed in purple, appears as the mark of royal state. In respect to the phrase: about the breast, Bengel remarks, “One who is busy girds himself about the loins, Isaiah 11:5. But he who girds himself about the breast, must be in a state of dignified repose. Jesus by his sufferings and death has overcome all, and so he now presents himself in his glory as one girt about the breast. What profound reverence should fill our hearts before this incomparable majesty!” Yet we can scarcely ascribe this meaning to the being girt about the breast. It was hardly to be expected, that a material deviation from Daniel should appear in the description. Christ, besides, appears here not in a state of rest, but of full activity. According to ch. Revelation 2:1, he walks amid the seven lamps. The seven angels also in ch. Revelation 15:6, while employed in active service, are girt about the breast. Revelation 1:14. But his head and his hair were white as white wool, as the snow, and his eyes as aflame of fire. The mentioning separately of the head and hair, while in Daniel mention is made simply of the hair of the head, is to be explained from the contrast in respect to the feet in Revelation 1:15—comp. 2 Samuel 14:25, where it is said of Absalom, that “from the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish in him.” In Revelation 1:13 we have the clothing, in Revelation 1:14-15 the uncovered parts. The fundamental passage for the first half, is Daniel 7:9, “I beheld till the thrones were placed, and the Ancient of days sat down, whose garment was white as snow, and the hair of his head as fine wool.” The blinding whiteness of the hair (the addition, “as snow,” supplies the idea of glittering splendour), denotes not the untarnished purity of Christ, which would be out of place here, where he appears to encourage and to frighten, but his holiness, majesty, glory, to which also we are led by the connection in which it stands with eyes like a flame of fire. Comp. upon whiteness as the colour of serene splendour, the symbolical representation of glory ch. Revelation 4:4, John 17:5, “And glorify me. O Father, with thyself, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was,” corresponds as to meaning. The second half rests on Daniel 10:6, where it is said of Michael, the Logos, “His body was as Tarsis, his countenance like the lightning, and his eyes as torches of fire, and his arms and his feet like burning brass.” According to this passage, by the eyes like a flame of fire, is denoted neither the power of vision or the omniscience of Christ, nor his beauty, but only the energetic character of his punitive righteousness, in accordance with the common symbolism of Scripture, which uniformly employs fire as the image of anger. For in that passage the eyes as torches of fire appear in the midst of warlike accompaniments, between the countenance like lightning, and the arms and feet like burning brass, ready to destroy everything that comes in their way. We are led also to the same result by a comparison of the other passage in Daniel 7:9 which forms the basis of the first half. After the words already quoted, it follows there, “His throne was pure flame of fire, and its wheels burned with fire;” comp. Daniel 7:10, “A stream of fire went out from him.” The Lord appears there to execute judgment on the world. His holiness and glory, shadowed forth under the colour of his clothing and his hair, shews that no one can escape out of his hand. His punitive righteousness imaged by the flame of fire shews that he possesses the energetic will to punish his adversaries. A similar combination of holiness and anger represented under the image of fire meets us in the descriptions given by Ezekiel, Ezekiel 1:27, Ezekiel 8:2, of the Lord when appearing for judgment. The parallel passages also in the Revelation itself shew that the eye as a flame of fire is the eye sparkling with indignation; that from it streams forth the fiery zeal, which shall consume the adversaries (Hebrews 10:27) as well within as without his church; so that there comes forth the admonition, Be afraid, and also, Be not afraid. In ch. Revelation 19:12 the words, “and his eyes are as a flame of fire,” are followed by; “and in righteousness he judges and makes war;” while in Revelation 1:15 he is represented as” having a sharp sword going out of his mouth.” In ch. Revelation 2:18, eyes as of a flame of fire, and feet like burning brass, are united together, and both appear as the ground at once of threatening and of promise to those in Thyatira. Woe to those who have against them him whose hair is white as wool and as snow, and whose eyes’ are as a flame of fire. Happy they who have him on their side. Though the whole world should be leagued together against him, he can laugh them to scorn. Revelation 1:15. And his feet like clear brass, as if they glowed in an oven, and his voice as the sound of great waters. On the first half Bengel says: “This has respect to his great power, with which he brings all under him, as with a bar of metal, which at the same time is burning hot, one can give a very powerful thrust. Oh, how will he tread down all his enemies!” Clear brass, in the sense of heated brass, Chalkolibanos, is an enigmatical term, formed by John himself in a peculiar manner. For which reason the words, “as if they glowed in an oven,” are added by way of explanation. And hence these words, being merely of an explanatory character, are wanting in the second passage, where the Chalkolibanos occurs, Revelation 2:18.[Note: There can be no doubt that the Chalkolibanos corresponds to the Nechoshet Kalal of Eze 1:7, where it is said of the Cherubim: “And they sparkle (in the feet) as the aspect of Nechoshet Kalal;’’ and in Daniel it is said of Michael: “And his arms and his feet like the aspect of Nechoshet Kalul.” In this expositors agree, only several suppose that Chalkolibanos at the same time corresponds to the Chasmal, ηωξμ, in Ezekiel 1:27, while they quite improperly identify this with the Nechoshet Kulal; see the proof given of the complete difference at ch. 4:3. If, therefore, we would determine the signification of Chalkolibanos, we must in the first instance settle that of Neehosbet Kalnl. This properly signifies clear or light brass. But in the two passages this is used not in the sense of shining brass, but of brass in a glow-heat, as was perceived by the old translators, the LXX. ἐξαστράπτων, Vulg. aes candens, Chal. ses flammans, Peschito fulgurans. That we must think not of glittering brass, but of brass in a glow-heat, appears, 1. from what precedes in Daniel, “and his face was as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as flames of fire.” 2. By comparing the passages in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 1:27; Ezekiel 8:2. “From the loins and under there was seen as the appearance of fire.” 3. By the πֹ ?φְ ?φִ ?ιν in Ezekiel 1:7, which signifies not glittering, but emitting sparks, scintillantes. With this result, which we have obtained by a comparison if Nechoshet Kalal, agrees the explanatory clause, “as if they glowed in an oven;” and also that other, “his feet are as pillars of fire,” in ch. 10:1. Having thus ascertained the sense, we shall not need to be in doubt as to the derivation. The only legitimate derivation is that from χαλκός brass, and μαπδ, whiteness, here used of the whitish glitter of mnch heated brass. μαο, according to Buitorf, means albare, album, candens, igninim reddere, candefacere; μαιο metallorum in igne candefuctio. Examples of similar bastard-words are given by Bochart Hieroz. III. p. 900, Lips. The supposition of such a peculiar composition is here attended with the less difficulty, as the fact of the words nowhere occurring except here and in ch. 2:18, places it beyond a doubt that John had formed it, and as the appended explanation also shows, that it was of an enigmatical description. Accordingly a quite ordinary derivation, such as that of Hitzig, who has revived the old exploded opinion that χαλκολίβανος stands for χαλκοκλίβανος, has the presumption not for, but against it. In the formation of χαλκολίβανος we are presented with a small image of the innermost nature of the Apocalypse. The singular manner in which the Hebrew and the Hellenic are fused together in it, proved anciently a stone of stumbling to the existing theology of the Greek church, on which many actually fell. Those whose calling it is to reveal the secrets of God, delight sometimes to stamp on their productions, even in the individual and the external, something of a mysterious, enigmatical character. In Isaiah, Jeremiah, Zechariah, not a little of this is to be found. Even the Gospel of John, and it alone among the Gospels, presents something similar to this; for example, Sychar for Sychem in ch. 4:5: see my Beitr. II. p. 25.After the descriptionof the more important features, there follows now what else seemed worthy of notice in the appearance—the voice, what he had in his right hand, and what proceeded out of his mouth, last of all his countenance like the sun, far transcending the splendour of the stars in his right hand. The voice, from the connection is that with which he chides his enemies whether within or without the church, and which for them utters the thundering and destructive cry, Thus far, but no farther. “The voice as the voice of many waters,” is from Daniel 10:6, “and the voice of his words like a great clamour,” coupled with Ezekiel 42:2, “And his voice was the voice of many waters.” Comp. also Psalms 92:3-4. The world-power breaks forth like a tempestuous sea; but more glorious than the sea with its swelling waves is the Lord in the height, and he loudly utters his voice. Revelation 1:16. And had seven stars in his right hand; and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his face shone as the sun in its strength. In accordance with the uniform symbolical usage of the Revelation, the stars denote rulers; comp. upon the stars as symbols of a ruler’s greatness and glory, at ch. Revelation 6:13, Revelation 12:4. By the explanation given in Revelation 1:20 the seven stars signify the overseers of the seven churches. The representations of these under this symbol certainly accords ill with the view of those, who maintain the democratic character of the Christian polity. “Pure society-officials, whose authority flowed from no other source than that of the church itself,” who “were simply the church’s presidents and nothing more,” could not possibly have been represented under the symbol of stars. This quite plainly betokens a power over the community, as does also the circumstance, that generally a double symbol is given for the rulers and the spiritual community, which strangely disagrees with the view now so much cried up; and still further, the strength and greatness of the charges, which are given in the epistles to the rulers, which necessarily imply the elevation of their office. For only to whom much is given, can much be required of them. It is equally at variance with the view now currently entertained, what Paul says, in Acts 20:28, to the elders of the church of Ephesus: “Take heed therefore to .yourselves, and to all the flock, over the which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God,” if only it is viewed with an unprejudiced eye, and not in the light of this present time, which is so much averse to all restraints both of law and authority. That Christ has the stars in his right hand, marks his unconditional power over them. No one can deliver them out of his hand, when he will punish; but no one can pluck them out of his hand, if they remain faithful. Comp. John 10:28-29, “And I give to them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any one pluck them out of my hand. My Father who gave them me is greater than all, and no one can pluck them out of my Father’s hand.” That we are not in a partial manner to lay stress merely on the protection, is clear from the two-fold respect in general that the descriptions of Christ bear. In ch. Revelation 2:1, the words, “who holds the seven stars in his right hand,” must lay the foundation for the threatening in Revelation 1:5 not less than for the promise in Revelation 1:7. But ch. Revelation 3:1 is quite decisive, as there threatening and judgment greatly preponderate. Out of his mouth goes a sharp two-edged sword. This is an image, not of the saving efficacy, but of the destroying power of the word, which proceeds from the Almighty. It denotes the resistless energy of Christ’s power in punishing his enemies, alike internal and external. This is clear from ch. Revelation 2:12, compared with Revelation 1:16, where the two-edged sword is directed against the false seed in the church, and from Revelation 19:21, where it brings destruction to the antichristian heathen power. The proper fundamental passage is Isaiah 49:2. There, the servant of the Lord Christ says, “And he has made my mouth like a sharp sword,” q.d. he has invested me with his omnipotence, so that my word, like his, brings irresistible destruction to my enemies. Comp. Isaiah 51:16, where the Lord says to his servant, “I put my word into thy mouth” (I endow thee with my almighty word),”that thou mayest plant the heavens and lay the foundations of the earth (mightest bring in an entirely new state of things, a total revolution, mightest introduce a well-ordered instead of a disordered world), and say to Zion, Thou art my people” (mightest raise the church from the dust of humiliation to a state of glory). Besides this undoubted allusion to the Old Testament fundamental passages, there is also, as appears, a reference to Hebrews 4:12, “For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than a two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and joints and marrow, and is a judge of the thoughts, and intents of the heart.”[Note: It is only in these two passages that the expression μάχαιραδίστομος occurs in the New Testament, Nor is there any passage of the Old Testament which is related in thought, like Hebrews 4:12, to the one before us.]The word of God, by which he excludes sinners of the present day from salvation, and dooms them to destruction, as he once did those of former ages (comp. Hebrews 4:5) is not a dead, impotent word, a mere threatening, but such an one as immediately carries its fulfilment along with it; according to that, “He spake and it was done.” By the sword being represented as going out of the mouth of Christ, or by the destructive power being attributed to his mere word, he appears as one possessing divine power. For it belongs to God to slay with the, word of his mouth, Hosea 6:5; in the Wisdom of Solomon, God’s almighty word is described as a sharp sword, which fills all with death; and the same subject is discoursed of in Hebrews 4:12. Other expressions are used to describe Christ’s participation in this divine prerogative, in Isaiah 11:4, “And he smites the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he slays the wicked,” and in 2 Thessalonians 2:8, which refers to that passage in Isaiah. Woe to the Seven Stars, if they have against them Him out of whose month proceeds a sharp, two-edged sword! But happy if he stands on their side! They shall then no longer faint before the world, however formidable may be the attitude it assumes against them! A glance to the sharp, two edged sword, and they are filled with consolation! The face of Christ[Note: That the ὁ ?́ψις is to be taken here in the sense of face, is plain from the parallel passage, ch. 10:1: καὶτὸπρόσωποναὐτοῦὡςὁἥλιος. John alone in the New Testament uses ὁ ?́ψις, and both here and in the other passages, Gospel 11:44, 7:24, only in the rare signification of face.]is as the sun shining in his strength, when no clouds, vapour, or damps, veil his splendour in the clear sky. On the sun as a symbol of the glory of the Lord, see on ch. Revelation 12:1. That the visage is here first thought of, can only have arisen from the respect had to the stars, which pervades the whole description of Christ’s appearance. “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars,” 1 Corinthians 15:41; and as the splendour of the sun is to that of the stars, so does the glory of Christ immensely transcend that of his servants in his kingdom. In ch. Revelation 12:1, also, the sun and a crown of stars are put together. Bengel: “In the visible world there is no brightness like the sun’s. A person born blind, who in other respects was richly endowed, declared that he would be content to be blind, if he could only see the sun for a little, as he had heard such wonderful things of it. We are in the constant habit of seeing this glorious body, but we cannot fail to regard it as preeminently an image of the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ. In the days of humiliation and suffering, his face was spit upon, struck, treacherously kissed; but now it is full of brightness. This King shall we sometime see in his beauty, and consequently shall be like him.” Revelation 1:17. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as one dead, and he laid his right hand on me, and said: Fear not. John understands the twofold aspect of the appearance, recognizes that the glory of the Lord and the energy of his righteousness have the church as well as the world for the field of their operations, and, forgetting his prophetical office, penetrated by the feeling of his personal sinfulness, sinks overwhelmed to the ground. But He, who once also in the days of his flesh, when he was transfigured before his disciples, and his countenance shone as the sun, and they fell upon their face and were greatly afraid, had in so gentle and powerful a manner touched them and said, “Arise, and be not afraid” (Matthew 17:6-7), the same here also laid hold of his servant. Bengel: “Before the sufferings of Jesus, John enjoyed such confidential intimacy with him, that he lay in his bosom during the feast of the last Supper; and now, scarcely sixty years after, was this elder, this aged apostle, so overwhelmed with a look. What a brightness must there have been in the appearance of the Lord!” How deep, we add, must the conscience of daily sin also be in the very holiest! That John, when he saw Christ, fell down at his feet as one dead, forms a practical commentary on his words, 1 John 1:8, “If we say, we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” That Christ laid his right hand upon him and said, “Fear not,” in this is found a proof of the truth declared in the words that immediately follow, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins, and purifies us from all uurighteousness.” Had John not been free from reigning sin, and truly penitent in regard to his sins of infirmity, he could not have received the comfort of the address, bidding him not to fear. Under the Old Testament, such immediate intercourse with heavenly beings, even with angels (Daniel 8:17-18, Luke 2:10), but most of all with the Lord and his Revealer, especially when he appeared in his glorious Majesty, filled with a profound terror the minds even of his holiest servants. The fervid appearance of the Lord’s glory which Isaiah saw, Isaiah 6 (comp. Isaiah 6:4, “And the house was full of smoke, from the fire on the golden altar), primarily had respect, not to him, but to the ungodly people to whom he was going to be sent as a messenger of wrath. Yet even he cried out on beholding it, “Woe is me, for I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, and mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 1:28, falls upon his face when the Lord appears to him in his burning glory, although the indignation was kindled not against him, but against incorrigible sinners, comp. Ezekiel 3:23, Ezekiel 42:3. Daniel falls down, Daniel 8:17-18, when Gabriel comes to him, in utter impotence on the ground, but the angel touches him and raises him up again, so that he is able to stand. But Daniel 10:7, ss., comes nearest to the passage before us. Daniel falls on the ground when he sees Michael, the angel of the Lord, in his burning glory, “and lo! a hand touched me and set me on my knees, and on my hands.” In regard to the laying hold here with the right hand, what Hävernick has remarked on that passage of Daniel is quite applicable: “As the result and object of the touching with the hand, we have not merely to think of the raising up of Daniel, which always presupposes a strengthening that had already been experienced, but the entire agency of the angel as manifesting itself in beneficent working toward Daniel (attactus sanitatem et vires conferens, Geier), of which the outward touch is to be regarded as the symbol.” Bengel says: “In former times the Lord Jesus had healed much sickness, and strengthened much weakness by the laying on of his hand, and in the same manner he imparts here to John a plentiful supply of living energy. How gently and graciously was this done to John!” Revelation 1:18. I am the first and the last; and the living, and I was dead, and behold I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of hell and of death. After the fear had been removed from the Seer, he is directed to the consolatory and elevated import, which the appearance of the Lord of glory has for him and for the church he represents, the care and burden of which he bears upon his heart, whose microcosm he in a manner was. Fear not, but rather hope, be confident and rejoice, for, etc. Three glorious predicates meet us here, which are each fitted to inspire a joyful hope, the first and the last, the living, the possessor of the keys of death and of hell. The expression, “I am the first and the last,” is used in Isaiah three times of Jehovah, Isaiah 41:4, Isaiah 44:6, Isaiah 48:12; and three times also in this book of Christ, comp. Revelation 2:8, Revelation 22:13. That it expresses what is included in full Godhead, appears from Isaiah 44:6, “I am the first and the last, and besides me there is no God.” That his being the first refers to the creation of the world, is clear from Isaiah 48:13, where the word is explained by “I, my hand has founded the earth, and my right hand has stretched out the heaven, I call to them and they stand forth together.” I am the first—for in the beginning was the Word; all things have been made by him, and without him was nothing made that was made, John 1:1 and so I also am the last: all that has been made shall at the end lie at my feet, and no one that abides in me needs to vex himself about it; comp. on ch. Revelation 1:8. The living is also a peculiarly divine predicate, and especially, he who lives for evermore. The latter is used in ch. Revelation 4:9-10, Revelation 10:6, of the Most High God on the ground of Deu 32:40. Purposely and intentionally, everything is in the Revelation attributed to Christ which belongs to the Supreme God, in order to exhibit the truth that he is equal to God in power and glory. The living is at the same time the life-giving; comp. on ch. Revelation 7:2. “If Christ lives, what can trouble me?” Christ himself said in John 14:19, “I live and ye shall live also.” His life is the pledge to his church that she cannot remain in death. That Christ had been dead, so far from subverting the truth, that he is the living and the life-giving, is rather a security for it. His life has the more gloriously manifested itself by the victory over death in the resurrection. And for his church it was through his death and his resurrection that he first properly became the source of life. Christ has the keys of death and of hell. He opens and no one shuts, he shuts and no one opens, according to ch. Revelation 3:7, and Isaiah 22:22, “And I give the key of the house of David upon his shoulder, and he opens and no one shuts, and he shuts and no one opens.” By virtue of his absolute power of the keys he shuts death and hell for his people, that they may not go thither; he opens them for Satan and his servants, and thrusts these down thither, comp. ch. Revelation 20:1, ss. From the connection, only that kind of death can be thought of which is a real evil, and the object of fear. But this bodily death in itself is not according to the New Testament point of view. We are led to the same result also by the connection of death with hell, Hades. In the Revelation, and generally, Hades is brought into notice only in respect to dead sinners; see on Revelation 6:8. This renders it manifest, that natural death is here to be thought of not simply in itself (since it may even be a great good, a passage into life), but in so far only as it is the punishment of sin and is associated with the second death. From this Christ keeps his own by keeping them stedfast amid the trials and persecutions which Satan and the world bring upon them, so that they are not tempted above measure. Bengel: “To these descriptions, contained in Revelation 1:13-18, the titles of our Lord in the epistles to the seven churches refer, especially those in the four first. Still, there is much in the description which is not expressly repeated in the titles, and much again in the titles, especially in the four last epistles, which is not to be found in the description.” Revelation 1:19. Write therefore what thou hast seen, and what is, and what shall be done afterwards. The therefore, which is wanting in Luther, is the connecting link with Revelation 1:11 : Since therefore thy fear has been removed, do what I now enjoin thee. Bengel: “After John had been raised up, the command to write was with emphasis repeated, and the discourse of our Lord, which had been interrupted, was continued.” The execution of that command is to be understood as first taking place at the end of ch. 3, after John had fully received the commission. Bengel says: “When this was uttered, John immediately wrote what with us forms the first chapter. The second and third chapters were afterwards dictated to him.” But according to this view the description of what John saw would not be connected with the salutation. John must first write what he saw. It is this which we find written in ch. Revelation 1:11-18. He had seen the Lord as light and as fire in his surpassing glory and in the glow of his fiery indignation, rich in help for his own people, threatening destruction to the world as hostile to God and Christ, and to the unfaithful among his professing people—had seen also the seven stars in his hand, and the seven golden candlesticks, in the midst of which he walked.—he must further write what is. He must unfold the internal state of the seven angels and the seven churches, as is done in the seven epistles. This also is an important object of prophecy, with which the holy men of the Old Testament occupied themselves as much as with the unveiling of the future. The reality of things is not less concealed from the natural eye than the future. Laodicea said, “I am rich and have need of nothing, and knew not that she was wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” “If you all prophecy, and there come in one that believeth not, or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all. And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on his face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth” (1 Corinthians 14:24-25). John, finally, must write what shall be done afterwards. This is the second part of the contents of the seven epistles. Along with discoveries of the real state of the churches, these contain announcements of the coming of the Lord, threatenings against the insincere, promises to those who should overcome, all in close connection with the condition of the particular angels and their several churches. The explanations of the verse that deviate from the one now given rest upon the supposition, already proved to be erroneous, that we have here the introduction to the whole book. They all agree in conceiving the words before us to contain the plan of the entire Apocalypse. But the groundlessness of this supposition can be easily pointed out. First, in Revelation 1:11, it is said, “What thou seest, write in a book.” Here, on the other hand, “What thou sawest, and what is, and what shall be afterwards.” The command here is a resumption of the command in Revelation 1:11, as the therefore plainly shews. So that all the three things named here must be comprehended under the description there of” What thou seest.” What was already seen were the seven lamps with the Lord in their midst, and the seven stars. The things described as being, and as going to be hereafter, cannot be referred to the indeterminate, but must be understood of the object of the seeing, and through this reference must receive their more immediate determination, and their inclusion in the “what thou seest” of Revelation 1:11. The word must point to the present state of the lamps and stars in their relation to the Lord and their future fate. Then, it is only in the view now adopted that Revelation 1:20 fits properly in to the preceding context. It drags behind in a quite unsuitable manner, if in the words, “what is and what shall be done afterwards,” the reference to the lamps and to the stars is given up. To these considerations we may still add the special reasons, which are furnished by the other explanations. Bengel and others refer the things which John saw to ch. Revelation 1:11-18; the “what is” to the seven epistles; the “what shall be hereafter,” to ch. Revelation 4:1 onwards to the end of the book. But the “what is” would very imperfectly indicate the contents of the epistles. These are taken up, in their promises and threatenings, with that also which shall be hereafter. Besides, the epistles represent “what is” not generally, but only in respect to the seven churches. But if we derive here the limitation from the preceding context, then we must also limit the import of” what shall be afterwards.” Finally, it is against the reference of this last clause to the portion Revelation 4:1 to the end, that we have there an entirely new beginning, new in respect to the state of inspiration and new in respect to the scene. Still weaker is another exposition: “what thou hast seen,” ch. Revelation 1:11-18, what (it) is, what is thereby signified, and “what shall be done afterwards,” ch. Revelation 4:1-11; Revelation 4:5. The necessity for shoving in an it is alone a proof of the arbitrariness of this mode of explanation; and then the contrast, what thou sawest, and what it is, is a strange one. John had seen nothing else than spiritual lamps, and spiritual stars. The are suits well, comp. Revelation 1:20, but not in the sense in which it is here taken. The what is, and the what shall be done afterwards, also plainly form a contrast—the present and the future that is yet to be developed out of it. Lastly, according to this exposition, the very thing would be passed over in silence, which comes out so prominently in what follows, the reference to the present state of the churches. The whole meaning of the epistles is destroyed by it. These receive the character of a non-essential intercalation, to which no respect is had in the plan. Revelation 1:20. The mystery of the seven stars, which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden lamps. The seven stars are angels of the seven churches, and the seven lamps are seven churches. John must write the mystery of the seven stars, and what in respect to them is now and shall come to pass afterwards. For only when this should have been written, would the mystery of the seven stars be fully brought out. We should know little of them if we merely learned what is said of them in the preceding description. Ch. Revelation 2:1, ss., is but a specializing of the command, which is given here generally; not: and write further to the angel, but: write therefore. The explanation: the seven stars are, etc. by this view comes in quite naturally and easily. The words “the mystery—golden lamps,” are not put as if for the purpose of attaching thereto the explanation, so that they perform the service merely of a peg. They are necessary in order to determine more exactly the sphere of the “what thou sawest, what is and shall be done afterwards,” and cutting off for the attentive every kind of false meaning. By mystery, secret is always meant in the New Testament (see for example Matthew 13:11, Ephesians 5:32, and here ch. Revelation 10:7, Revelation 17:5; Revelation 17:7), “the great secrets which only God’s Spirit can unfold”—the things and doctrines which are plainly inaccessible to the natural man, which cannot be apprehended excepting by fellowship with the Triune God and on the ground of his internal and external Revelation. It belongs to the nature of a mystery, that even after its objective revelation it should remain beyond the apprehension of those, who have not opened their heart to receive the Holy Spirit; as, in spite of the revelations given by John, the fleshly and impenitent in the seven churches still continued to grope on in darkness in regard to the stars and the lamps, entertaining concerning them the most earthly and superficial views. The mystery never consists of things, in which the difficulty is of a merely formal nature, and capable of being removed by an explanation. Such would be an enigma, but no secret. Accordingly, the mystery of the seven stars, and of the seven lamps, was not described or made known by the following explanation, but by the communications, which are contained in Revelation 2, 3—by the discovery there given of the most concealed depths of the heart, and the disclosure of the future, in regard to which mere natural knowledge is involved in the strangest illusions. The formal explanation of the stars and the lamps, which immediately follows, is only to be regarded as a sort of hasty sketch, serving to introduce and prepare the way for the more extended illustration of the secret which is given in Revelation 2, 3. In this formal explanation the question first of all arises, whether the discourse is of angels or of messengers of the seven churches. The ἀ ?́γγελος of itself can signify both; but there can be no doubt we must render: the seven stars are angels of the seven churches. In support of this there is, first of all, the fact that this word, which so often occurs in the Revelation, is always found in the sense of angel. Then the connection, in which in the Old Testament stars and angels not rarely occur, as forming together the heavenly hosts of God—comp. for example, Psalms 103:20-21. Further, when we explain here: the angels of the churches, we have no room to doubt from whom the sending proceeds; the angels are God’s messengers, the angels of the churches could only be the angels whom God had sent to the churches, and had entrusted with the charge of them. Comp. Matthew 18:10, “See that ye despise not one of these little ones, for I say to you, that their angels do always behold the face of their Father in heaven;” according to which the angel of any one is the angel to whom the charge of him is entrusted; Acts 12:15. But, on the other hand, the messengers of the churches could only be those whom the churches themselves had sent or their commissioners. We must then, with Vitringa and those who have followed him, think of an office in the Christian church, analogous to that which had existed in the Jewish, that of ωμιηιφαεψ,deputies of the church. Bengel was drawn into this opinion, and remarks, “There was in each of the seven churches, which were doubtless planted after the Israelitish stem, a single president, who was named by the Hebrews the angel or deputy of the church, and who by virtue of his office represented the church.” But this opinion, into which Vitringa was betrayed by his zeal for making out the parallel between the Christian and the Jewish constitution of the church, appears on every account untenable. There is no trace to be found elsewhere of such an office having been transferred to the Christian church. The historically known presidents of the early churches had nothing to do with the “deputy of the churches.” The place of the latter was quite a subordinate one, that of a mere clerk to conduct the devotions of the congregation. The symbol of the stars, which indicates an authoritative power over the churches, would have been altogether unsuitable as a designation of such a person. The angels or messengers of the churches appear throughout the seven epistles as the soul of these. But this “the deputies of the churches” were not at all, at least not as distinguished from the churches themselves, which are here indeed represented under a separate symbol, that of the lamps. Contradistinguished from the churches, which were represented by them, they had next to no importance. If, then, we must not think of “the deputies of the churches,” but only of the messengers of God to the churches, we must translate: the angels of the churches. But the further question arises: Is the name of God’s heavenly messengers merely transferred to his earthly ones, or are real angels meant? Were we to adopt the former opinion, then we could understand the object of the transference to be, to bring clearly and prominently out the principle from above, to remind the president of the dignity of his office, of the responsibility of his position, and the solemnity of his account. The idea of such a transference may the more readily be adopted, as we find also in the Old Testament undoubted examples and specimens of it. In Ecclesiastes 5:6, “Suffer not thy mouth to cause thy flesh to sin (by uttering a vow which thou hast not strength to fulfil); and say not before the angel, It is an error (think not, that thou canst undo the evil by an easy, It is an error); wherefore should God be angry at thy voice, and destroy the work of thy hands?” There the priesthood is denoted the angel, in order to mark His high dignity and the impropriety of any thing like levity in his presence. He stands as God’s representative, comp. 2 Corinthians 5:20, and the LXX. and the Syriac have precisely: before God. We must not render: before the messenger, for one knows not then, whose messenger. The angel, implies that the sending is of God. In Malachi 3:1, “Behold I send my messenger before thee,” it is better on account of the reference there to Exodus 23:20, to translate, “Behold I send my angel,” than “Behold I send my messenger.” From the subject it is impossible that any thing but an earthly messenger can be meant, the prophet, the whole band of divine messengers who should prepare the way for the appearance of the Saviour, and herald the approach of the kingdom of grace (see Christology on Malachi 3:1). But the name of the heavenly messenger was employed to designate the earthly, that the grace of God, the supernatural origin of the provisions connected with salvation, and the dread responsibility of rejecting what was to be provided, might be more distinctly brought into view. If we must, therefore, translate, “my angel,” which is also justified by the relation of the angel there to the angel of the covenant in what immediately follows, then we must understand of the angel of the Lord what is said in Malachi 2:7-8, “For the priest’s lips must keep knowledge, and they should seek the law at his mouth; for he is the angel (commonly, the messenger) of the Lord of Hosts.” For, the two passages stand closely related to each other. And if in these three passages the messenger must give way to the angel, so in Isaiah 42:19, we should also translate, “Who is blind but my servant, and deaf as the angel, whom I send? in Isaiah 44:26, “Who fulfils the word of his servant, and executes the counsel of his angel;” in Haggai 1:13, “And he spake to Haggai, the angel of the Lord, in a message of the Lord to the people”—the rather so as ξμΰκ, in so far as it is used of divine messengers, elsewhere always denotes only angels. The other opinion, that in the passage before us real angels are meant, has recently been defended by Zόllig and De Wette. The angel must be the guardian angel of the community, “as in Daniel every nation has its ruling angel, and according to the Rabbins an angel is placed over every people.” “But always,” remarks Zόllig, “are these angels in the mind of the poet himself nothing more than imaginary existences, and prosaically considered they are simply the personified communities themselves.” And De Wette also thinks that as to meaning the angel is the spiritual community, or the spiritual substance of the community, “so that one may say with Arethas, the angel is just the community or church itself.” We must, however, decide entirely for the first view, for the transference of the mere name of the angel to the overseers of the several churches. Against the view, which would understand it of real angels, and of these as figurative personifications of the churches, important considerations have been urged by Rothe (Th. I. p. 423): “There would therefore be one image or symbol used to express another, and the stars would be the symbol of a symbol. Besides, the angels and the churches would stand immediately beside each other, and of both it would be spoken in one and the same sentence, that they are to be understood under the symbols of the stars and the lamps; yet of these two symbolized objects must one only be a reality, and the other a mere symbol! And not only so, but this symbol be the symbol of the reality placed in immediate juxtaposition with it!” We add, still another consideration. No valid objection can be urged against the supposition of angels as purely ideal forms. Such ideal beings unquestionably occur in this book itself, in ch. Revelation 16:5, where mention is made of the angel of the waters in a figurative sense; in ch. Revelation 14:8, where the angel who has power over fire is spoken of; in ch. Revelation 21:12, where the idea of the Lord’s protecting guardianship over the new Jerusalem is viewed as embodied in the twelve angels that stand at its gates. To these passages may be added John 5:4 of John’s Gospel, which has proved so great a stumbling block to prosaic copyists and expositors, in which the symbolical mode of contemplation breaks forth in the midst of the simple narrative of facts, such as could only be expected with the Seer among the evangelists. But if the Seer introduced here such purely ideal angelic forms, it could only have been as embodiments and personifications of the power of God as exercised in behalf of the churches. Angels, however, as they are here considered beings of a higher sphere, to whom epistles are addressed, who are partly rich and partly poor, partly stedfast, partly lukewarm, partly admonished to be faithful, and to repent, who have a local habitation (ch. Revelation 2:13), who, as the admonition to be faithful unto death presupposes, could die—such are a nonentity for which not the least analogy is to be found in Scripture. Against the supposition that angels are personifications of the churches, it may further be stated, that the symbol of the stars is alone decisive, a symbol which does not fitly apply to the churches, but only to the presidents; as also the praise which is bestowed on the angel of the church of Ephesus on account of his contendings against false teachers—a feature which only suits those who had the charge and oversight. There are other things also tending in the same direction, such as the wife of the angel in Thyatira, Jezebel, which will come under consideration when we reach the particular parts. There is still a third question, whether under the angels of the churches single individuals are to be understood, bishops according to a wide-spread opinion, or rather the directorship in these, so that the angel, though in each case formally but one, still denoted in reality a number of persons. We must here decide for the latter view. It has on its side the passages already quoted from the Old Testament, in which, by the ideal person of an angel, the whole body of priests and prophets is denoted. But still more decisive is the argument that, by referring it to a single individual, the bishop, one cannot be right as to the grounds on which several expositors, from Salmasius downwards, have sought to shew, that between the angels and the churches no material difference could exist. The position of an individual, however important it may be, is still not of such a kind that through his person the community might be so immediately addressed, that he might so unconditionally be considered as its soul, and their repentance or their fidelity be regarded as so dependent on his. If, on the other hand, we understand by the angels the whole church officers, all without distinction who were set apart to the service of the church, this difficulty entirely disappears. Let it only be considered how John, in the narrative formerly given, makes the bishop responsible for individual souls, how Paul, in Acts 20:28, regarded the elders of Ephesus as those on whom the spiritual state of the church entirely depended, how he calls them to lay to heart the high responsibility of their office, so that only if they watched, tended, admonished every one day and night with tears, could they be pure from the blood of all men. Let the language also be compared, in which Peter in his first epistle, 1 Peter 5:1-5, writes to the elders as “ensamples of the flock.” We must not, however, stand merely at the college of the elders, the presbytery of 1 Timothy 4:14, as Polycarp begins his epistle to the Philippians: “Polycarp and the elders that are with him, to the church of God which dwells at Philippi,” but, on the ground of what is indicated in Philippians 2:19, we must also add the deaconship, as Ignatius, in the superscription of his epistle to the Philadelphians, says, “especially if you are at one with the bishop, and the presbyters and deacons that are with him.” If the angels are considered thus, the passage ch. Revelation 2:5 can easily be understood, “Repent; else I will come to thee quickly, and remove thy lamp out of its place.” If all that hold office in an organized church have become degenerate, the church itself must have sunk into a low condition, and every thing be ripe for judgment. As to the question regarding the age of episcopacy, nothing certain can be obtained from what is said here of the angels. Whether we have to think of the state, which presents itself to us in Acts 20, as still continuing,—a college of presbyters on a footing of equality, or whether a bishop with more or less of superior power already stood at the head, we have no sufficient data for determining. In conclusion, we must throw some light upon the view which has been set forth by Rothe, I. p. 425, “We have here, in fact, already the idea of an individual personality, in which the manifoldness of the church comes forth as in its true common expression and life-organ, as in its proper concrete oneness, and attains to its united consciousness; in short, we have the idea of the bishop though this idea had not yet found its realization—the bishop was still only a purely ideal person.” On the other hand we remark, that this connection of an idea and of a real existence, lamps or churches, would certainly be of a very rare description. Christ must then have had seven ideas in his hand. By snatching at this idea the real church officials would be left out of account. And then what was said against the actual bishop must equally hold against the ideal one: the identification of the angel with the community would be inexplicable, if by the former a single individual were meant. Between a particular individual and the whole of the community many differences, and even entire contrasts, must exist as to praise and blame. Introduction to the Seven Epistles Now follow the seven epistles, for which all after the three first verses has been only of an introductory and preparatory nature. The blessed Paul marks it in 1 Corinthians 14:25 as one of the most important purposes of prophecy to make manifest the secrets of the heart. Scripture declares salvation only to those who form the true church of the Lord, who live in the Spirit. But along with the promise the admonition always goes hand in hand, and always the more disposed the false seed are to appropriate to themselves what belongs only to the true. To Isaias, for example, the commission was given in the second part of his prophecies to comfort the people of God, by announcing the approaching manifestation of the Lord. But with the announcement of salvation the call to repent, and the admonition to be faithful, is constantly combined; comp. for example, Isaiah 50:1, “Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment and do justice, for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed;” Isaiah 58:1, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sin.” In the New Testament also, the proclamation of God’s judgment on the world, and his glorification of the church, goes hand in hand with urgent admonitions to the members of the latter to get themselves ready for the Lord’s coming, so that it may prove to them a blessing and not a curse. “Watch ye therefore, and pray always,” says our Lord in Luke 21:36, “that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” And Peter in his second epistle, 2 Peter 3:11, says, “Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness.” So also John, speaking of the Christian hope, declares that whoever has it, “purifies himself even as Christ is pure.” Here, John is going to show to the servants of Christ what must shortly come to pass, ch. Revelation 1:1, he is going to reveal to them the salvation that Christ has purposed to bring to his suffering church, avenging her of her enemies, and raising her from the dust to sit upon the throne of his glory. But before he is equipped by Christ for the fulfilment of this calling, which he accomplishes from the beginning of ch. 4 to the end of the book, he must prepare those committed to him for the purpose of Christ—not, as Bengel thinks, for receiving the Revelation, but for the great events of the future themselves. He must dissipate the idea, that the name of Christians forms the wall of separation between them and the world, call forth the spiritual state of things which alone can render the coming of the Lord salutary, awaken the slothful and unfaithful to repentance, admonish the faithful and diligent to a steady perseverance and continuance to the end; comp. Revelation 2:5; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 2:16; Revelation 2:25; Revelation 3:11; Revelation 3:19. In respect to the plan of the epistles Bengel gives a series of excellent remarks, which we deem it right to communicate in his own words.” The conception of the seven epistles is throughout similar. For in each one there Isaiah , 1. A command to write to an angel of a church. 2. A glorious title of Jesus Christ. 3. An address to the angel of the church; wherein is contained (1) a testimony regarding its present mixed, or good, or bad condition; (2) an admonition to repentance or to stedfastness; (3) an announcement of what is to take place, for the most part of the coming of the Lord. 4. A promise to those that overcome, together with the awakening words, he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.” The address in each epistle is couched in plainer language, while in the promise Christ speaks more in a flowery style. In the address the Lord Jesus Christ speaks primarily and immediately to the churches in Asia then existing, and more especially to the angels of them; the promise speaks in the third person of those who then and also in future times should overcome. “Of the seven angels of the seven churches there were two, those at Ephesus and Pergamos, in a mixed state, and two, those at Sardis and Laodicea, in a very corrupt one. Not only those whose state was bad, but also those with whom there was a lack, are exhorted to repent, as are likewise the followers of Jezebel at Thyatira, since she herself would not repent, and the angel there did not need for himself to repent. Two, those at Smyrna and Philadelphia, were in a very healthful condition, and on that account were not called to exercise repentance, but were only admonished to be stedfast. There is no mixed, or good, or bad state, of which we have not here a pattern, and profitable, salutary instruction provided for it. Whether one may be so dead as the angel of the church at Sardis, or may stand so well as that at Philadelphia, and the aged apostle John himself, this book is still fitted to be serviceable to him, and the Lord Jesus has something in it to say to him. “In the seven epistles there are twelve promises. In the third, fourth, and sixth, there is a double promise, and in the fifth a threefold one, which are distinguished from each other by a special word: I will give, I will not blot out, I will confess, I will write.In the promise for those that overcome, sometimes the enjoyment of the highest good, sometimes freedom from the greatest troubles is held forth. The one is included in the other, and when some one part of blessedness and glory is expressed, the whole is thereby to be understood (ch. Revelation 21:7). That part is particularly expressed which has reference to the virtues and deeds mentioned in the preceding address. In these promises notice is taken of various things, which are not again referred to in the Revelation, as the manna, the confession of the name, the inscribed name of the New Jerusalem, the sitting upon the throne. Some things carry a resemblance to what is afterwards found in the representations given of Christ, in particular, the secret name, ch. Revelation 19:12, the heritage of the nations, ch. Revelation 19:15, the morning star, ch. Revelation 22:16. Other things, again, occur afterwards in their own place, as the tree of life, ch. Revelation 22:2, freedom from the second death, ch. Revelation 20:6, the name in the book of life, ch. Revelation 20:12, Revelation 21:27, remaining in the temple of God, ch. Revelation 7:15, the name of God and of the Lamb on the righteous, ch. Revelation 14:1, Revelation 22:4.” What is said of the churches in praise or blame is completed in the number three. The Refrain: “Who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches,” has ten words, divided by three and seven, and the latter again by the three and four. The seven number of the epistles is divided by the three and four. For, in the three first, the call “Who has an ear,” &c., stands before the closing promise, while in the four last it follows after the other. Then, in the four last epistles, the closing promise itself has a peculiar construction: He that overcomes I give to him.[Note: Bengel: “In the four latter promises ὁνικῶν, as if it had the distinctive Hebr. accent, is marked with the greatest emphasis; in the three former τῶ ?ͅνικῶντι (as an equivalent for which in the second we have ὁνικῶν without οὐ ?͂τος) there is H closer union with the following verb.”] This division must have a quite definite ground, and has already been noticed under Revelation 1:11. Elsewhere also, in the seals, the trumpets, and the vials, the seven is divided by the four and three. In his latter days Bengel strongly recommended to those about him the careful meditation of the apocalyptic epistles. He said, “There was scarcely any thing that was so much fitted to affect and purify us.” The Epistle to the Angelof the Church in Ephesus (Ch. Revelation 2:1-7) The servants of Christ in the church at Ephesus, in which Paul had laboured for a longer period than at any other place, and which he afterwards committed to the charge of Timothy (1 Timothy 1:3), had not fully responded to the exhortation of Paul: “Therefore watch, and remember, that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one night and day with tears.” They had displayed great zeal in contending against dangerous heretics, who had appeared among them, “the grievous wolves” of whom the apostle had forewarned them; but with this zeal, which is first of all acknowledged, they had forgotten their first love. Hence they are impressively called to repentance. Revelation 2:2. I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them that are evil, and hast tried those who say they are apostles and are not, and hast found them liars. We have here, and in Revelation 2:3, a threefold three of acknowledgments before us, which the generous love of Jesus made to take precedence of the blame, that there might be obtained for this a more favourable ear and a more hopeful consideration. The middle three throws light upon the first and the third, and supplies a more limited application to what is there said in a general way. Accordingly, the works, the labour, the patience or stedfastness there refer to the zeal that had been shewn against false teachers. If this is not perceived, then the reproach in Revelation 2:4 of their having lost their first love, will be incomprehensible. For, where the first love has ceased, there a praiseworthy zeal in some particular line may for a considerable period easily be found, the love that still remains concentrating itself in that direction (a dead orthodoxy, however zealous, would certainly not have received such praise from the Lord); but it is in the nature of things impossible that Christian works, labour, and steadfastness generally could have been found there deserving of praise. With the cause the effect also is sure to cease. In like manner the patiently borne sufferings in Revelation 2:3 are such as were encountered in their zeal against the false teachers. In Revelation 2:6 all the praise, which in Revelation 2:2-3 had been conferred on the angel at Ephesus, is collected into the one point, that he hated the deeds of the Nicolaitans. There is great danger when the church is called by the pressure of circumstances to give special heed to some one important matter, that all her vigour shall be concentrated there; and also great danger that the accusations of conscience regarding the neglect of other things shall then be silenced by fixing the eye exclusively upon the exertions made in the one department. It was in that extremely perilous condition that the angel of the church at Ephesus now stood. And when in such a condition, if the call to repent is resisted, very soon also will all that is properly Christian in the one remaining virtue be imperilled. All one sidedness ends in the loss even of the one side itself. It is dying life only that survives in a single organ. When the other members have become cold, the heart will not continue long to beat. The expression, “I know,” occurs seven times; “I know thy works,” four times according to the genuine text; and, according to the right division of the seven, mention is made thrice of another object of knowing, “I know thy tribulation,” Revelation 2:9, “I know where thou dwellest,” Revelation 2:13, “I know thy love,” Revelation 2:19. Regarding the works with the labour and patience as forming the first three, it is certain that here the discourse can only be of good works, or more definitely of Christian exploits against the teachers of erroneous tenets. We must not conclude from the circumstance of the expression, “I know thy works,” occurring also there, where they were only the object of blame, that works are used indifferently, and that only the divine omniscience in general is brought into view. From its connection alone with the labour and the patience the knowledge indicated respecting the works, though in itself indefinite, receives a more specific determination. The labour against the heretics did not belong to the whole community, but to those that were in office; comp. 1 Timothy 5:17,”Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine.” The patience in connection with the labour and the not being able to bear the evil can only be active patience, stedfastness. In this way alone do we get rid of the otherwise troublesome repetition in Revelation 2:3. The badness of those who were evil consisted precisely in this, that they maintained they were apostles and were not, but lied. Bengel remarks on the words, “and canst not bear them that are evil,” as follows: “Many would regard the pastor as a keen and contentious man, and cry out against him as one who would not keep terms with others that were still not to be rejected. But the Lord praises him. There was in him a pure and tender regard for the truth. In his patience there was a laudable impatience. To be able, with a cold unconcern about the good, to bear those who are sunk in impurities, is not good. It is not only said, Cleave to that which is good, but also, Hate and shun that which is evil. Here one must not be indifferent. What is meant is not a self-willed intolerance, but a just hatred against the evil, feeling the existence of such characters to be a burden. For, where there is love to God, and something of an adverse kind comes in the way, zeal will doubtless be awakened thereby. Paul had testified beforehand, that after his departure pernicious wolves would come in, and from among themselves perverse teachers would arise; in dealing with these the angel of the church had enough to do and to suffer.” The trying stands opposed to a superficial enthusiasm, which at once takes all for gold that glitters. It corresponds to the proving (δοκιμάζειν, comp. John 6:6, 2 Corinthians 13:5) in 1 John 4:1-3. These passages are throughout strongly analogous. The angel at Ephesus is here commended for having done what the apostle there enjoined his readers to do. That the false teachers here are identical with those in Revelation 2:6 is clear, for the simple reason, that otherwise no more specific description of these would be given, which still could not be wanting, since this epistle is not destined merely for the Ephesians, but forms an integral part of the entire book, which belongs to the church at large. How little the book itself contains of definite marks for distinguishing the heretical teachers, is manifest from the vacillating to and fro and want of unanimity on the part of those who confine themselves to it. Further, Revelation 2:6 obviously points back to what had already been said in Revelation 2:2-3. What belonged as matter of praise to the angel at Ephesus is fully declared in Revelation 2:2-3; and, after the sharp reproof has been administered, the commendation is only once again resumed for the purpose of pouring balm into the wounds, and to prevent the painful sense of sin they might feel from generating a mistaken view of their excellencies. If in Revelation 2:6 a new subject had been introduced, something more particular would have been said regarding it, than simply “this thou hast.” It would rather have been, “Besides what I have already acknowledged, thou hast so and so;” in which case, however, it would have been introduced in a very unsuitable way. A third reason is, that only when by the false teachers here we understand those who sought to bring Christianity and heathenism nearer to each other, consequently the Nicolaitans, in Revelation 2:6, do we find a proper explanation of Rev 2:3, where the Ephesians are commended for their patience under sufferings, which befel them precisely on account of their decided resistance against every attempt to confound the boundary-lines between Christianity and heathenism. Now, whenever it is understood that the false teachers are identical with those in Revelation 2:6, not merely does this verse itself receive a more definite sense, but the epistles also to the angels in Pergamos and Thyatira afford supplementary aid, and the image of the false teachers presents itself to us in clear outline from the scattered traits, as was quite necessary, if the epistles were to answer their destination as sources of instruction and warning for all times. For in that case they behoved to provide the means for ascertaining with certainty what might afterwards arise of a similar kind. But if we indeed have here before us, not Judaizing heretics, but the same ethnicizing seducers, whom we afterwards also meet with, then it is unquestionable that in the whole seven epistles we have escaped in respect to false teaching from the territory of St Paul’s time. Paul had always to do chiefly with Judaizing heretics, the ordinary and the philosophical. That the latter in particular had exercised a considerable influence in the churches of Asia, is manifest from the epistle to the Colossians, and, as regards the church at Ephesus in particular, from the first epistle to Timothy—comp. Neander’s Apost. Zeitalter, I. p. 465, Baumgarten AEchtheit der Pastoralbr. p. 171, ss. This fact, that the power of the Jewish form of error appears as entirely broken among the Gentile churches and gone (with which it is quite compatible that Justin should have known particular Gentile Christians who could plead for the observance of the Mosaic law), presupposes that at the time when the Revelation was composed Jerusalem already lay in ruins. On the powerful influence which this must have exerted on the formation of the Christian church, Rothe has made some excellent remarks in his Anfΰnge der Christlichen Kirche, Th. I. p. 341, ss. “The Christian churches stood now perfectly independent. And, indeed, it was the Host High himself who had made them independent, since by the lightning-stroke of his Omnipotence he had torn asunder the sacred bond by which they had been entwined with the institutions of the Old Covenant. Therefore now, when once the sanctuary of the Old Covenant was laid in the dust, the Jewish Christians must have been set more free from their Judaism, and felt more drawn toward their fellow Christians of the Gentiles. The divine judgment inflicted on Israel was God’s solemn rejection of Israel and their religious institutions. From that time Judaism everywhere lost its real power and importance. With the fall of the temple at Jerusalem fell also the wall of separation, which had divided the people of God from the nations of the earth, and from the nature of things the Pauline universalism must rise to the ascendant, with which at first the Jewish particularism, supported by the authority of Peter and James, had so earnestly contended.” From that period other dangers and temptations threatened the Christian church, which sprung from heathenism, and which even in Paul’s age had begun to operate, but were then only of subordinate importance (Hymenaeus and Philetus turned only some persons from the faith); the danger it threatened was chiefly in respect to the future. In the Apocalypse the Christian church appears quite escaped from the influence of Judaism. All tendency in that direction, such as everywhere meets us in the times of Paul, has entirely ceased. The Christian church stands opposed to Judaism as the synagogue of Satan, which internally possessed no longer any power over her, and by which she was externally assailed, only that the heathens might be stirred up against her. The apostles, who are named without any notification of the person who sent them, could only be pretended apostles of God and Christ; and a reference to the supposed sending of the church at Jerusalem would require to have been indicated, even if Judaizing heretics had been the class of persons alluded to. Bengel remarks: “So it was still the apostolic age, otherwise there could no longer have been false apostles in the field. Among the properties belonging to an apostle it was one, that he should have seen the Lord Jesus Christ. So that false apostles were persons, who not only broached false doctrine, but also set this forth with an apostolical air, as if they might have seen Christ, or perhaps falsely pretended to have done so.” But we are only led by this to conclude, that the apostolical age had not yet entirely come to an end, as the heretics still did not come forth in the name and the systematic style and form of science, like the later Gnostics, but under a pretended call to a higher mission and enlightenment; comp. John 4:1, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but prove the spirits, whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world.” That in this sense the apostleship was laid claim to by these heretics, appears from Revelation 2:20, where Jezebel, the representative of such, calls herself a prophetess. The property made so much of by Bengel did not belong to the apostle Paul, to whom these false teachers constantly appealed, as the Rationalists to Luther. He had not seen the Lord in the flesh. Revelation 2:3. Remember, therefore, how thou hast received and heard, and keep it and repent. If thou wilt not therefore watch, I will come as a thief, and thou wilt not know at what hour I shall come on thee. Remember therefore, since the case is so bad with thee You must not merely theoretically remember what you have received, but you must lay it to heart, and seriously consider in what opposition your life has stood to the pure doctrine delivered to yon, which requires living faith and cordial love. The how refers not to the manner of receiving and hearing, but to what has been received and heard; q.d. what is the nature or tendency of what ye have received. Of the simple manner of delivery we cannot think with Vitringa, as it is not the delivery, but the receiving and hearing that is spoken of. The passages 1 Timothy 6:20, 2 Timothy 1:14, Colossians 2:6, “As therefore ye have received the Lord Jesus, so walk in him,” refer to the same subject. John appears to have had distinctly in view the passage last quoted. There, as here, it is pressed that the walk should be in unison with what had been received from Christ In regard to the keeping, comp. on Revelation 2:26. The second therefore (which is wanting in Luther, while he has upon thee too much) joins to the exhortation, Repent: If thou, therefore, since thou so greatly needest repentance or a change of mind. There undoubtedly exists a reference to the declaration of our Lord, Matthew 24:42-43, “Watch, therefore, for ye know not at what hour your Lord comes; but know this, that if the goodman of the house had known in what watch the thief would come, he would have watched.” How deep an impression this word of our Lord had made upon the minds of his disciples, is manifest from the allusions made to it elsewhere, 2 Peter 3:10, 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:4, where the coming of the day of the Lord as a thief in the night is described as a thing which was already quite well known to the Thessalonians. The passage before us, and that in ch. Revelation 16:15, so far come nearer to the original one than the others, as in these two the coming of the Lord himself is compared to the coming of a thief, while in the other passages it is to the coming of the day of the Lord. Revelation 2:4. But I have against thee that thou hast left thy first love. Bengel: “I have against thee. This is thrice said in the way of exception against those, who along with their good were chargeable with shortcoming, Revelation 2:14; Revelation 2:20. We have a similar form of speech in Matthew 5:23. If we must make it up with a brother, how much more with the Lord, and that without delay.” That in the place of the first love we must not put the earlier, appears from Revelation 2:19, where the last works are set over against the first; also from 1 Timothy 5:12, and especially the original passage Jeremiah 2:2, “I remember the holiness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, thy walking after me in the wilderness, in a land not sown.” That first love we see still flourishing so long as Paul’s connection with the Ephesians lasts. Nothing in the context leads to a limitation of the love, as for example in Ephesians 1:15, Colossians 1:4, where the subject discoursed of is love to all the saints; so that we must take it in its largest compass, as at Matthew 24:12, and the more so with John, as it is one of his characteristics to combine together the love of God, the love of our neighbour, and brotherly love; comp. 1 John 4:16. That the love here is not the mere love of feeling, but active love, is clear not only from Revelation 2:5, where the first works are spoken of, but also from Revelation 2:19, where those of Thyatira are commended for that in which the Ephesians here are blamed. There the most unwearied application to active service is mentioned as the great proof of love. Still these are but the particular manifestations, and the grand point always is, that the living source actually exists within; for where this fails, the works that are done are only outwardly and seemingly good. The misunderstanding of Rev 2:2 could not fail to give rise to false views also of the verse before us. Thus Vitringa supposes, that in Revelation 2:2-3 the earlier state of the church was described, and here the present one. But against this is the, “Thou canst not” in Revelation 2:2, and the “Thou hast,” in Revelation 2:3; and so also in Revelation 2:6. Others, after the example of Grotius, would restrict the love to deeds of kindness toward the poor, a view that is opposed by what has been already advanced, by the fundamental passage in Jeremiah, and by a comparison of the Epistle to the Ephesians, comp. Ephesians 3:18. Also according to Revelation 2:5, the shortcoming is not of a special nature; it concerns the ground-work of Christianity. The root itself was dying away. Revelation 2:5. Remember therefore from whence thou hast fallen, and repent and do the first works. But if not, I will come to thee (shortly), and remove thy lamp out of its place, if thou repent not. Bengel: “After a backsliding it is needful and salutary to repent,” ch. Revelation 3:3. That from which the angel had fallen, is the earlier glorious state, the engaging time of youthful love. Allusion is made, as appears, to Isaiah 14:12, “How art thou fallen from heaven, thou fine morning-star!” The shortly is wanting in several MSS., and has probably been pressed into the text from the parallel passages, Revelation 2:16, Revelation 3:11, Revelation 22:7; Revelation 22:12; Revelation 22:20. The shortly is perhaps too strong here. If the lamp is removed from its place, the church vanishes from the number of the churches of Christ. The promises, which are given to the whole of Christ’s church, grant no charter to individual churches to become lukewarm and to fall away; as, notwithstanding the glorious privileges and promises of Israel, the greater part of them were cast out of the kingdom of God and given over to perdition; Matthew 21:43, comp. Revelation 22:11, where our Lord declares, that the same thing should be repeated on the Christian field. Bossuet: “If the life of the gospel goes out in some one region, it is not therefore extinguished, but is only removed elsewhere, and transferred to another people.” Revelation 2:6. But this thou hast, that thou hatest the works of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate. Where there is room for reproaching any one for the want of love, it too readily happens, that he thinks he should love, where the word and spirit of God command him to hate. Therefore, the commendation given in the earlier part is here again expressly resumed. But it is well to notice, that the recognition has respect to hatred against the works of heretics. This does not exclude love to their persons, and desire for their salvation; comp. 2 Timothy 2:24-26. The more lively the hatred is against the works, the more powerfully will love prompt to do what is possible for their personal deliverance from perdition. That the subject discoursed of is not the doctrine of the Nicolaitans, but their works, is to be explained from the circumstance, that their doctrine had a practical issue and aim, viz., fleshly freedom, unrestricted liberty as to all authority and all law. It was the moral strength of Christianity at which they especially took offence. Their doctrines themselves were works, deeds, as still all antichristian errors are; and works immediately proceeded from them, such as the eating of meat offered to idols, fornication, and a heathenish mode of life. Then in the works the seductive acts of the false teachers are also comprehended, their attempts to spread their pernicious doctrines. The hatred is to be taken in its full force. Disapproval in such matters is not enough. Strong abhorrence is demanded, comp. Psalms 139:21-22, “Do not I hate, O Lord, those who hate thee, and abhor those that rise up against thee? I hate them in right earnest, they are enemies to me.” We have a commentary on the hating in 2 John 1:1, “If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed; for he that biddeth him God speed, is partaker of his evil deeds.” The name of the Nicolaitans is an enigmatical one, the solution of which is given in Revelation 2:14-15. According to this the Nicolaitans are those who hold the doctrine of Balaam. The name of Balaam signifies, Destroyer of the people.[Note: The grounds for the derivation of Balaam from αָ ?μַ ?ς devouring, and ςָ ?ν people, have been given in my work on Balaam, p. 20, ss. Against Hoffmann, who after Ewald explains the name as a formation of αָ ?μַ ?ς with a as ΰαιν, it is enough to adduce the one consideration, that the city of the same name, 1 Chronicles 6:56, elsewhere occurs under the name of Jibleam, Joshua 17:11, Judges 1:27, 2 Kings 9:27, compounded of the fut. of αμς and ςν. But proper names with ςν sometimes before and sometimes after are very common; comp. Ewald, § 270, for example, Jeroboam and Jeroboam, people, rich and people increased.]As such Balaam shewed himself especially in the transaction recorded by Moses in Numbers 25, comp. with Numbers 31:16, the seduction of the Israelites through the women of Moab and Midian to licentiousness and participation in the service of idolatry. The Moabites and Midianites had directed their attack against the strong side of the relation, and had been obliged to withdraw with shame and disgrace; Balaam betrayed to them the weak side, and how cunningly his plan was devised appeared in the great success with which it was at first attended. Nicolaus signifies, conqueror of the people. The choice precisely of this name, rather than one that should have literally corresponded to Balaam, was occasioned by the name Nicolaus being one in current use among the Greeks. The point of comparison, by which the prophet was led to name false teachers of that time Nicolaitans, that is Balaamites, appears from Revelation 2:14. It was the smuggling of heathenism into the church of God to the corruption of the latter: “who taught Balak to throw a stumblingblock before the children of Israel, to eat things sacrificed to idols, and to commit fornication.” Balaam and Jezebel were the Old Testament representatives of this ungodly tendency, which revived anew in the false teachers of the time. Ch. Revelation 2:26 serves also as an explanation, “And he that overcomes, to him will I give power over the heathen,” in opposition to the power of the heathen over God’s people, which they experienced through the Balaam that had risen up anew in Greek clothing. The reasons against a historical explanation of the name of Nicolaitans, and its derivation from a sectarian of the name of Nicolaus, which led some of the ancients to think of the blameless Nicolaus in Acts 6:5, the only person of that name mentioned in New Testament history, have been considered in my treatise on Balaam already referred to. Against the opinion Isaiah , 1. The style of the Apocalypse, which constantly rises above the lower territory, and, with the quite necessary exception of the author’s own name, employs not historical, but only symbolical names. 2. The analogy of the woman Jezebel in ch. Revelation 2:20. 3. Had the leader of a party been understood, Nicolaus, the author would have spoken of him at ch. Revelation 2:15, and not of the Nicolaitans, as his name would have been the proper parallel to Balaam’s. But he seems to know nothing of a Nicolaus, but only of the Nicolaitans. So also in Revelation 2:2 he speaks not of a false apostle, but of false apostles. There is no weight in the objection, that the name stands here, where it occurs for the first time, without any explanation, and must therefore have been a common one, quite intelligible of itself to the readers of the book. It was perfectly natural that the mystical, enigmatical name should here for the first time have been used by itself, and that afterwards, in what follows, an insight should have been given into its import, for the purpose of confirming or of justifying what had already occurred to the mind of each If we gather up the scattered particulars, we arrive at the following deliverance regarding the false prophets. The mystical names of the Nicolaitans or Baalamites, and of Jezebel, point to the heathenish origin of the heresy, as do also the fornication and the eating of flesh sacrificed to idols, in Revelation 2:14; Revelation 2:20, and the promise of the authority to rule over the heathen in Revelation 2:26. The false teachers pretended to have been favoured with higher revelations, Revelation 2:2; Revelation 2:20, and promised to bring people acquainted with profound knowledge and secrets, Revelation 2:14; Revelation 2:17, and to raise them to a glorious state, Revelation 2:28. Allusion is made to the name of the Gnostics in Revelation 2:24, and also to their antinomianism and their false, delusive show of liberty. So also to their sensuous indulgences in Revelation 2:7; Revelation 2:17. The first small kernel of these aberrations we find in the church at Corinth. They appear in a more developed form in the two epistles to Timothy. There certain heretical teachers are discoursed of,” whose perverse course is thrice described in the same words (“they have made shipwreck of faith, have erred concerning the truth, faith,” 1 Timothy 1:19-20, 1 Timothy 6:20, and 2 Timothy 2:16-18, 2 Timothy 2:25), and of whom we learn, that they professed a gnosis falsely so called, and maintained it with vain talk and insolent opposition to the apostle, so that they even pushed their heresy to blasphemous lengths, and were cast out of the church by Paul. Of the principles of their gnosis we are informed only in respect to one point, that held by Hymenaeus and Philetus as to the resurrection being past already—meaning, that it is to be understood only in a spiritualistic sense, that there is to be no resurrection but that which Christians have in their souls undergone” (Thiersch, Versuch, p. 237.) Peter and Jude in their epistles combated the error of the ungodly (2 Peter 2:16), who in abuse of St Paul’s doctrine turned the grace of God into lasciviousness (2 Peter 3:16), promised freedom, while they themselves were still the servants of corruption (Jude Revelation 2:4, 2 Peter 2:19), walked after the flesh, and thought themselves raised above all constituted authorities, as well as delivered from the law, nay even denied the Lord Jesus Christ himself (2 Peter 2:10, Jude Revelation 2:4). The identity of the false teachers, whom John contends against in his epistles, and the Nicolaitans, cannot be mistaken. There also every trace fails of any reference to Judaizing errors; the power that was imperilling Christianity was heathenism veiling itself in a Christian dress. The conclusion of the first epistle, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols,” serves as a sort of key. There, too, an entire abandonment of the Christian basis and principles is in question, 1 John 2:19; while the false theories that were propagated carried along with them a bad practice, a walking in the lusts of the flesh; comp. in regard to the intimate connection between the two especially, 2 John 1:6-7. Fleshly indulgence is common to the Apocalypse with the epistles. In a theoretical respect there is a distinction so far, that the denial combated in the epistles of the reality of Christ’s life, work and sufferings, is not noticed here. That heresy, however, stands in the closest connection with the antinomianism, which is here also brought into view. The common root of both was the disposition to set one’s self free from a power that should control the life, in order to indulge the flesh and walk after its carnal lusts. With this view the law was decried as a Pharisaical yoke, comp. Revelation 2:24, and Christ changed into a shadow. It is worthy of remark, in unison with ch. Revelation 2:24 here, how extremely common is the use of γινώσκω in the epistles, in opposition to the Gnostics, who had it constantly in their lips. In contrast to their false gnosis John puts the true, comp. 1 John 2:4; 1 John 3:6. Revelation 2:7. He that has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches: he that overcomes, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of my God. Bengel: “There is a remarkable difference between the address and the promise. The address has immediate respect to the seven churches in Asia and their angels, and consequently also to all churches and pastors, who might be similarly circumstanced with them in good and evil, in all times and places; the promise, on the other hand, is given forth to all spiritual conquerors, though not excluding such in Asia.” In this promise, as the close of the epistle, the churches must be reminded, that they came into consideration only as a part of the whole, that they were but churches, and must not imagine themselves to be the church, notwithstanding that the last of the apostles stood in a peculiar relation to them. The words, “He that has an ear let him hear,” form a striking point of connection between the Apocalypse and the three first gospels, more especially the first of the three. There, in the discourses of our Lord, who also speaks here, the words” He that has an ear to hear let him hear,” and” He that reads let him understand” (comp. also the quite corresponding expression, “He that can hold, let him hold,” in Matthew 19:12), are not a mere call to attention, but they also intimate, that to the apprehension of what had been delivered, more was necessary than the outward ear; it was a demand for the deeper spiritual understanding (see the proof in my Beiträge I. p. 261.) In this sense the call here stands very suitably in connection with promises made to the church, which were in themselves mysterious, and required a spiritual exposition. In place of the ears in Matthew 11:15, Matthew 13:9, Matthew 13:43, we have here, and again in ch. Revelation 13:9, the ear. The spiritual sense of the mind can be denoted by the singular, because it is only one, and by the plural, because of the corresponding bodily organ. And in repetitions of this sort such a change is perhaps occasionally introduced to show, that the appropriation of the language is fresh and independent. That the expression, “What the Spirit says,” is as much as, what I through the Spirit say to you, is clear from this, that in what follows the address is spoken from the person of Christ: I will give; and then: which is in the paradise of my God. (The omission of the my in some critical helps, which Luther follows, arose from people considering the address of Christ and of the Spirit as standing in contrast). John was in the Spirit, ch. Revelation 1:9, and only through the medium of the Spirit could Christ after his departure communicate himself, and his admonitions and promises. In the Gospel of John” the Spirit is promised as a new principle, which was to go between Jesus and the church” (Köstlin, p. 198.) The Lord had spoken of the Holy Spirit to his disciples as of one that should teach them all things, John 14:26. Of the victory John speaks very frequently in his Gospel, his Epistles, and the Apocalypse. The victory must be won against all opponents, of whom there are many, and in particular against the Nicolaitans, whose desire of sensual enjoyment is met by the promise of eating spiritual, heavenly food. The angel of Ephesus still wanted a good deal to obtain the true victory over these. The victory hitherto won was in good part only an apparent one, since it was purchased with the heavy loss of the first love. By the construction: “he that overcomes, to him,” the overcoming being detached from any immediate connection with the following words, comes prominently out, and appears as an indispensable condition to participation in the promise. Bengel: “A Christian must overcome as Jesus Christ has overcome, ch. Revelation 3:21, Revelation 5:5. He that overcomes is found in all the seven epistles, and afterwards is only repeated once, ch. Revelation 21:7.” The prosaic expression for, “I will give him to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of my God,” we have in 1 John 2:25, “And this is the promise, which he has given us, eternal life.” For, that here a participation in eternal life, eternal blessedness, eternal salvation is what is promised, is evident alone from the analogy of the other promises. The figurative expression alludes to Genesis 2:9, Genesis 3:22, according to which in the primeval world the tree of life stood in the midst of paradise, the fruit of which was designed to secure to man the possession of eternal life, if he continued faithful to God. “The first thing promised,” says Bengel, “in the seven epistles, is the last and highest in the fulfilment, ch. Revelation 22:2; Revelation 22:14; Revelation 22:19.” No precise locality is denoted by the paradise. According to ch. 22 the tree of life belongs to the glorified earth. In ch. Revelation 7:17 it is already said of the provisional heavenly blessedness of the elect, “And he will lead them to fountains of waters of life.” According to Ezekiel 47:6 ss. (where on both sides of a stream of life many trees grew, which bore their fruit every month, and the fruit of which served for food, and their leaves for medicine), and according to ch. 22 the tree of life is inseparable from the waters of life. We everywhere find the image of the earthly paradise, where the blessedness is spoken of that belongs to the elect of God when actually enjoyed by them. Three times mention is made of paradise in the New Testament, Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 12:4, and here. “Of my God,” says Jesus Christ here and in ch. Revelation 3:2; Revelation 3:12, but elsewhere he calls him in these promises his Father. Both are a very glorious designation, John 20:17.” Bengel. The Epistle to the Angelof the Church in Smyrna (Ch. Revelation 2:8-11) Bengel: “The angel of the church at Smyrna was in a good state. No such great things, indeed, are recorded of him as of that at Ephesus; but still the angel at Ephesus, with all that was spoken in his commendation, had to repent, while the angel at Smyrna, though such great things are not said of him, is yet spared the call to repent. It is only said to him, Fear not, be faithful. Nothing even is mentioned about great works, but only about fidelity.” Revelation 2:9. I know thy tribulation and thy poverty (but thou art rich), and the blasphemy of those, who say they are Jews and are not, but are of the school of Satan. Luther has: I know thy works and thy tribulation, etc. But the words: I know thy works and have certainly arisen from the efforts of the copyists to produce uniformity. They are wanting in the best manuscripts, and internal reasons also concur in strengthening the external ones. Works do not suit here. For they could only be mentioned if good or bad works had been found in the context, to give a definite meaning to the term. But there the discourse is only of sufferings. Farther, the number three, on which what follows the “I know” always completes itself, would thereby be destroyed. Bengel: “The description given respecting this angel is only of what he suffered, not of what he did. Suffering tends much to purify, and it had been experienced by this angel of various kinds: he had suffered tribulation from Jews and heathens, and also poverty. But thou art rich, says the Lord, namely, in heavenly treasures. The pastor would not think highly of himself because he was described in such glowing terms, but the Lord used such language respecting him, because in his humility he could bear it.” That the poverty (to this sense of the word we must adhere for the sake of the contrast with riches) must bear respect to the persecutions suffered for the cause of Christ is clear from the circumstance, that it stands between the tribulation and the blasphemy. Now several consider the poverty as arising out of the persecution—comp. Hebrews 10:34. But in that case the word spoiling would rather have been used. James 2:5-7 serves as a commentary, “Has not God chosen the poor of this world, rich in faith? Do not the rich oppress you, and draw you before the judgment-seats? Do not they blaspheme that worthy name by the which ye are called?” We can scarcely doubt that allusion is made to this passage. It has in common with the one before us, poverty, riches in God, blasphemy. Now, according to it, poverty comes into consideration in so far as it rendered the Christians helpless and oppressed. The Jews brought against the Christians false accusations before the heathen then magistrates (blasphemy), and as they had ample pecuniary means ready to support their accusations against the Christians (poverty), the Christians were thrown into great straits, were in a state of oppression corresponding in James to the drawing before the judgment-seats. The riches, which the angel possessed in the midst of his poverty, refers to riches in heavenly goods and rewards, treasures in heaven, Matthew 6:20, Matthew 19:21, comp. Luke 12:21, which in due time would be conferred on him. This is manifest from James 2:5, where the persecuted poor are spoken of as “heirs of the kingdom, which God has promised to those that love him.” Allusion is made, as appears, to the name Polycarp was rich in fruits; comp. the remarks on the name Antipas in ch. Revelation 2:13. With the blasphemy the Jewish adversaries must be content; the persecution could only come from the heathen. Even at the martyrdom of Polycarp the Jews inflamed the malice of the heathens, Euseb. IV. 15), and sought to prevent his corpse from being given to the Christians. The Jews were proud of their name, Jews and children of the kingdom, members of the Lord’s flock, Numbers 31:16, were all one in their account. In this sense there was a pretension in the name they took to themselves. There were no other real Jews than such as possessed the true and internal marks of fellowship in the kingdom of God; and these were no other than true Christians; comp. Romans 2:28-29, Romans 9:6. The school of Satan (properly, community, synagogue, what in James 2:2 is used of the society of Christians, acquired on account of the passage before us a bad secondary meaning; people were accustomed to place the synagogue of the Jews in opposition to the church of the Christians), was an epithet applied to the Jews on account of their hatred to the true church. Satan appears in this book pre-eminently as the persecutor of the righteous, according to the character which he acquired even in the most ancient times, since he instigated wicked Cain to murder righteous Abel, John 8:44. This is certainly to be regarded as the fundamental passage. Revelation 2:10. Fear not what thou wilt suffer. Behold the devil will cast some of you into prison, that ye may be tried, and ye shall have tribulation ten days. Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life. “As foreseen evils hurt and terrify less, it is a proof of our Lord’s fidelity that he shews the rod before the smiting took place, Luke 9:23, John 16:1, John 16:33.” The announcement of the suffering suggests a twofold source of consolation—first, the persecution will be shortened, and then those who suffer in it will attain to blessedness. It is in itself of general import: times of persecution are always followed by times of revival; God’s protecting hand, which defends the church, makes itself known by causing the persecution always to come by fits and starts. What would have become of the church, if all the persecutions of heathen Home had followed one another in immediate succession? And to those who are faithful unto death, God in every age gives the crown of life. But that this general truth should have been applied precisely to the angel of the church in Smyrna, in this certainly lies an indication of the particular fate that awaited him, or rather the man who formed the soul of those who bore rule in that community. Polycarp was faithful even to the death, and was therefore “crowned with the crown of martyrdom,” as was said in the church’s report of his martyrdom, doubtless with allusion to what was written here. And with his death the ten days’ persecution came to an end: the report says, that Polycarp had by his martyrdom, as it were, given the seal to the persecution, and finished it (Euseb. IV. 15.) In the preceding verse Satan was the subject of discourse; here the author of the persecution is called the devil, διάβολος, properly the Calumniator. Zόllig: “This adversary was quite properly called a calumniator by the LXX. in reference to the part he acted in the book of Job, and Zechariah 3. In the relation of the Jewish adversaries of Jesus towards his followers, the designation of Satanism (antagonism), as a calumniating, diabolical one, was the more suitable, as their malice could only vent itself in calumniating their opponents before the heathen magistrates.” Also in ch. Revelation 12:9-10, where Satan and the devil are likewise connected together, respect is had to the internal difference of the two names. If we understand here by the devil the calumniator, a closer connection will be found to exist between this verse and the preceding one, where the blasphemies or venomous slanders of the synagogue of Satan are spoken of. In a series of passages, Justin, in his conversations with Tryphon, describes the Jews as the chief authors of the calumnies against the Christians, which in his time were still current. “How little,” remarks Hoffmann justly, “this would suit the time when the Jewish war made the whole Jewish people be suspected of a rebellious disposition, is self-evident;” and the Apocalypse must have been composed during that war, if it belonged, according to the modern supposition, to the reign of Galba.—“Trial,” says Bengel, “is on the devil’s part of an evil and dangerous nature; but on the part of the Lord it is good and salutary. An old, well-tried warrior is worth far more than one who is new-fledged and without experience.” Ten days, among short periods a long one; comp. 1 Samuel 25:38, Daniel 1:12, Genesis 24:55, where the ten days are beyond doubt, as here also, used as a round period. There is an indication of shortness in the employment of days, and a certain length also in the shortness, neither very great nor very small, in coupling with the days, not an unit or an hundred, but a ten. By the death we are to understand from the connection a violent one. The till has respect, not to the continuance, but to the high degree of the required fidelity. The angel must follow the example of Christ, who, according to Philippians 2:8, was obedient unto death, even the death of the cross; comp. ch. Revelation 12:11. The crown, is here, as in ch. Revelation 4:4, Revelation 6:2, Revelation 9:7, Revelation 14:14, not the crown of victory, but the badge of royal dignity. We are not on this account, however, to suppose with Zόllig, that the subject of discourse is the kingdom of the conqueror. The kingly crown here is brought into view rather as something of a very rich and glorious nature—“the crown of life,” as much as, life, eternal blessedness; comp. on the idea of life at Revelation 7:17, which is so glorious a possession, that the splendour of all kings’ crowns pales before it. So, as the image of the glorious the crown is not unfrequently used in the Old Testament; for example, in Isaiah 62:3, “And thou art a glorious crown in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of thy God;” Isaiah 28:3, where the crown of Ephraim is but another name for his glory.[Note: Gesenius Thes. s v. ςθψϊ: coronae autem imagine designatur quidquid alicui ornamento est et dignitati, Job 19:9, coronam detraxit de capite meo, Proverbs 12:4; Proverbs 14:34, etc.]Death is not to be feared, where it is the passage to a glorious life. In a wonderful manner does the Apocalypse here discover itself as the closing book of the New Testament. It makes allusion to the declarations of Paul, Peter, and James, in which a crown of glory is promised as a reward to faithfulness. Paul speaks of “a crown of righteousness, which the Lord will give to him, and to all those who love his appearing,” 2 Timothy 4:8; and Peter comforts faithful elders with the incorruptible crown of glory, which they shall receive, at the time of the good Shepherd’s appearance, 1 Peter 5:4. James speaks of God (James 1:12) as having promised the crown of life to those who love him. John here had specially in his eye this passage of James: “Blessed is the man who endures temptation; for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord has promised to those that love him.” For here also a preceding temptation is spoken of, and the expression, the crown of life, is common to the two passages, and to these only. In Revelation 2:9 an undoubted allusion is again made to the epistle of James and the one reference confirms the other. There is never any reason for thinking of the crown of victory, unless perhaps in 1 Corinthians 9:25. In Peter nothing is said in the context of the conflict and the crown. Images from heathen life (and such an one is the crown of victory), must not be resorted to without necessity, least of all in the Apocalypse, which clings so fast to holy ground.[Note: The anthor would be quite an alius a se ipso, if Ewald’s supposition were right: Inprimis hic respicitur ad ludos Olympicos, ab Hercule institutos, in quibus victores publice donati sunt coruona.] Revelation 2:11. He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches: He that overcomes, shall not be hurt by the second death. He that overcomes, not only obtains a glorious good, but he also escapes a dreadful evil. Let him ponder well, when a choice is set before him between the bodily death, as it is usually called, and the second death, or eternal damnation, which they have to expect who are not faithful unto death. Matthew 10:28, “Fear not those who kill the body,” etc. coincides in thought. The second death is explained in ch. Revelation 20:14, Revelation 21:8, by the lake of fire, hell. The expression is confined in Scripture to this book, in which it occurs four times. But before John’s time it was not unusual in Jewish theology.[Note: Vitringa: It doubtless arose in the school of the holy men, who after the return from Babylon explained the faith and the hopes of the church. It is in frequent use in the Chald. Paraphrase of the books of the Old Testament: for example, Deuteronomy 33:6, Vivat Buben, et ne moriutur morte secunda.]Our Lord frequently uses for the same thing the word Gehenna, Matthew 5:29-30, Matthew 10:28, Luke 12:5. The Epistle to the Angel of the Churchin Pergamos (Ch. Revelation 2:12-17) Züllig: “More praise than blame; only a little not quite as it should be. The church is characterised as faithful, amid the difficult relations in which it lived. However, there was there also the mischief of the Balaamites, in regard to which a warning is addressed to it and a threatening appended.” Revelation 2:13. I know where thou dwellest, where Satan s throne is, and thou holdest fast my name, and hast not denied my faith, even in the days, in which Antipas (was) my faithful witness, who was slain among you, where Satan dwelleth. Copyists bent on uniformity have here also shoved in “thy works and,” after “I know.” Besides the external grounds, there are also internal ones against the insertion. For what immediately follows is no work, and the threefoldness of the points noticed is made up without it. There can be no doubt that Pergamos is called the throne of Satan from being a principal seat of persecution against the Christians, or rather the principal seat in Asia. For, in Revelation 2:10, Satan had also been mentioned as the author of persecution, and in a similar respect the throne of Satan is brought into notice in ch. Revelation 13:2. But how the persecuting malice should have concentrated itself exactly in Pergamos, cannot with certainty be determined. The circumstance of its being the seat of a higher court of judicature has been thought of as a reason.[Note: Pliny, H. N. L. v.c. 33: Longeque clarissimum Asiae Pergamum. Pergamena vocatur ejus tractus jurisdictio. Ad eam conveniunt Thyatireni, Mygdones, Mosyni, etc., aliaeque in honorae civitates. Comp. Strabo, L. xiii. p. 623: “Ἐ ?́χειδέτιναἠγεμονίανπρὸςτόπουςτούτουςτὸΠέργαμον, ἐπιφανὴςπόλιςκαὶπολὺνσυνευτυχήσασαχρονοντοῖςἈτταλικοῖςβασιλεῦσι.”]But this is not a sufficient reason, as the other leading cities of Asia had such courts also. It has been supposed that Pergamos was inordinately devoted to the service of idolatry above all cities in Asia. But there is no proof of this, though Pergamos is known to have had a famous temple to AEsculapius. The reason is most probably to be sought in individual persons, who were peculiarly animated by heathenish fanaticism, as the reason also of the internal differences that subsisted among the churches of Asia is to be sought in the existence, or the absence of leading persons more fully penetrated by the Spirit of Christ. The faith of Christ not unfrequently stands for faith in Christ, comp. Ephesians 3:12. We must not expound: True and faith toward me. For πίστις, as fidelity, never occurs in the New Testament, and the expression, “Thou hast not denied my name,” in ch. Revelation 3:8, corresponds. After: in which Antipas, my faithful witness, is simply to be supplied: proved himself to be such, delivered his testimony. In this Hebraistic abbreviation (a similar one occurs, for example in Genesis 14:1-2), many copyists have lost themselves; and hence, they have either left out, “in which,” or, “who.” Luther adopts the latter reading: even in the days, in which Antipas my faithful witness was slain by you. Bengel remarks on the expression, “even in the days,” “the great trial is sometimes experienced both in the evil and the good. He who despises, as Esau did with his birth-right, is in danger of suffering an irreparable injury; he who walks uprightly, as Abraham did in the offering up of Isaac, as Phinehas with his spear, as Joshua and Caleb, to him will it be reckoned for a perpetual blessing. In this manner a preceding valorous conduct is placed to the account of the angel of this church. Dear reader, when special circumstances befal you, consider well with yourself. In peaceful times it is easy to confess the name of Christ; but it is another thing in times that endanger the very life, and where a hard conflict has to be maintained, to deny not Christ but one’s self.” According to the common opinion, Antipas is the proper name of a man who suffered death in the persecution of the time. But there are strong reasons for deciding otherwise. All other names in the Apocalypse are of a symbolical character. No historical Antipas is to be found, unless the name is to be regarded as such here. We find in the epistles the symbolical names of the Nicolaitans and of Jezebel. Farther, in a period of general bloody persecution, only such a person could be specially noticed as occupied an important position in the church—one who enjoyed an apostolical, or almost apostolical dignity. But it must appear extraordinary that no mention is made in history of an Antipas. For that the notices which we possess regarding him of very late origin, are pure inventions, is as clear as day. Tertullian adv. Gnos. c. 12, drew his knowledge of Antipas merely from this passage. There has been no want of expositors, who have viewed the name as a symbolical one. Saskerides, an expositor of the Reformed church, explains it as meaning one who is against all. There can be no doubt of the justness of this derivation. Antipas is formed precisely as Antichrist, and probably in imitation of it. A commentary on the Antipas, as similar to Antikosmos, is given by Jeremiah 20:10, Jeremiah 15:10, “Ah! my mother, that thou hast borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole land.” If we have been followed thus far, it will not be reckoned too bold if we should hazard the supposition, that Timothy was the person here designated Antipas. The two names “Fear God,” and “Against all,” are closely connected with each other. One cannot truly fear God without standing forth against the world, which lies in wickedness, and having it also standing against us—comp. James 4:4, Acts 4:19, Acts 5:29. Elsewhere also in the New Testament we find stress laid on the name, as in Acts 4:36, and particularly in John’s Gospel, John 9:7. He puts his own name also in connection with the love of Jesus toward him, John 13:23. Allusion is probably made here in ch. Revelation 2:9 to the name of Polycarp; and in ch. Revelation 3:1 a similar allusion to the name has with great probability been supposed to be made. The martyrdom of Timothy (comp. Tillemont mem. II. 1, p. 266), places his death in the year 97, when John was still at Patmos, and represents it as following on an affair, in which he truly showed the spirit of an Antipas: on a public solemnity he must set himself in strenuous opposition to heathenish disorder. The circumstance of the scene being transferred to Ephesus, is easily explained from the influence of the New Testament reports. It is not improbable that Timothy, when John took up his abode at Ephesus, removed to one of the two other chief cities in Asia, in order there to undertake the immediate oversight of the church, as being both important in itself and endangered by the prevalence of false teachers. Revelation 2:14. But I have a little against thee, that thou hast there those that hold the doctrine of Balaam, who taught for Balak to cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, to eat things offered to idols and to commit fornication. Bengel: “By this it is indicated, that if the angel of the church had done his part, the vexatious Balaamites would either not have come up, or would have been again put down. Oh! if a pastor in the present day considers what sort of people he has to do with, he must be appalled!” The blame is represented as a little thing. It shows that the angel himself was pure and free from any participation in the dangerous heresies, only that his resistance of these should have been more energetic. Such a representation could not have been given of the angel of the church at Ephesus; he had himself fallen from his first love. Instead of, for Balak, Luther has, through Balak, following an incorrect reading: ἐντῶ ?ͅΒαλάκ. It properly means, who taught to Balak. According to the common opinion, this must be a Hebraistic expression for Balak. But in Revelation 2:20 we find the verb to teach construed quite regularly with the accusative; and this is done also in the Hebrew with the solitary exception of Job 21:22. We must rather suppose, that to “Balak” is as much as, in the interest of Balak, or for pleasing Balak. Bengel even in his day drew attention to the fact, that this Dativus commodi occurs very often in the history of Balaam: curse to me this people, etc. The history is quite silent about Balaam’s teaching Balak. It is said in Numbers 31:16, as a reason why Moses reproved the army sent forth against the Midianite host for neglect of duty in sparing the women, “Lo, it was these, who at the word of Balaam taught the children of Israel unfaithfulness toward the Lord in the matter of Peor, and judgment came forth upon the congregation of the Lord.” It was, therefore, the women whom Balaam taught. Here it is not expressly said, whom he taught, but there is to be supplied from the connection: Balak’s people. According to Numbers 24:25, indeed, Balaam no more met with Balak—see my work on Balaam. The last look of Balaam was directed toward Balak; expecting to obtain from him the reward, when the stratagem succeeded. But he did not venture to apply directly to him. The charge here undoubtedly has respect to existing relations. As remarked by Bengel, “The Balaamites at Pergamos also courted the favour of heathens in high rank.” The same trait, which appears in these false teachers, of seeking to win the favour of ethnicizing heathens (as indeed the breaking down of the limits between the church and the world is in all ages the consequence of such designs), discovers itself even in the epistles of Peter and Jude. In 2 Peter 2:15, it is said, “They follow after the way of Balaam, who loved the wages of unrighteousness.” And in Jude Jude 1:16, “Their mouth speaks proud words, and they have respect of persons for the sake of profit.” To cast a stumbling-block before the children of Israel, was to employ a temptation by which they might be made to fall, or be brought to destruction; comp. Isaiah 8:15. In reference to the expressions of “eating things offered to idols and committing fornication,” Herder remarks: “the temptation they occasioned did not consist in a literal eating of things offered to idols but licentiousness; for this is only a symbol drawn from the history of Balaam. In whatever manner they caused stumbling and defiled the sanctuary with heathenish pollutions, they were Balaamites; that is, they were seducers, idolators, whoremongers.” But this is only so far right, as among the different kinds of participation in heathenish ways those are here brought specially into notice, which made their appearance even in primitive times. It admits of historical proof, that these very forms of corruption were currently practised by the heretics, whom John has in view, nay that with such they occupied the foreground. To eat things offered to idols or not to eat them, was even in St Paul’s time the Shibboleth between the lax and the stricter party at Corinth (1 Corinthians 10). At that time, those who ate stood upon the ground of being permitted to do so, from the insight they had obtained into the nothingness of idolatry, and from their Christian liberty. But at a later period, the eating of such offerings was defended by the Gnostics, on the ground of that free and mighty spirit they possessed, which nothing could defile, which might handle and taste every thing, nay must do so, in order to give proof of its invincible power; and on the ground also of a false spiritualism, which held everything corporeal to be indifferent. The Jew Trypho in Justin throws it out as a reproach against the Christians, that many of them ate things offered to idols, under the pretext that it did them no harm (Dial. Tryp. 35). Justin’s reply is, that they who did so, Marcianites, Valentinianians, &c., were only Christian in name, and had no proper connection with Christ and his church. The latter, therefore, could not be answerable for what they did. In Eusebius IV. 7 it is stated, as matter of reproach against Basilides, that he had taught it was an indifferent action, if in times of persecution one should taste what had been offered to idols, or had unwarily abjured the faith. And that the Gnostics did not stand even at this, that without any plea of necessity they participated in the heathen festivals and idol offerings, is clear from Irenaeus I. 6, “They eat without hesitation the idol-offerings, because they do not reckon themselves to be thereby defiled. And at every festive diversion of the heathen, which they observe in honour of their gods, they are the first to assemble.” Fornication also appears in the resolution of the council at Jerusalem (Acts 15:20), in connection with the idolatrous feasts, as something which the Christians might easily be supposed to fall into from their contact with heathenism. From the licentious character of the heathen festivals it went hand in hand with the eating of things offered to idols. Irenaeus, in the passage already referred to, reproaches the Gnostics, after having mentioned their eating of what was offered to idols, with giving full satisfaction to the lusts of the flesh, and proceeds to speak of their licentiousness. According to Eusebius, B. IV. c. 7, those who went farthest even taught “that the basest deeds should be perpetrated by those who would attain to a perfect insight into their secret doctrine.” “Those people availed themselves of the wicked spirit as a helper, in order to make such as were deceived by him the miserable slaves of corruption; whilst to the unbelieving heathen they gave great occasion to slander the true religion, as the ill report proceeding from, them imparted a bad odour to Christianity at large.” Revelation 2:15. So hast thou also those who hold the doctrine of the Nicolaitans likewise. The sense is, So and in like manner as Balaam formerly taught and his disciples found, hast thou also those who hold fast by the doctrine of the Balaamites of the present time. The likewise (which many copyists did not understand, and hence out of ὁμοίως made ὁμισῶ ?; Luther: which I hate, as for a similar reason some expositors would connect it with the following verse), corresponds to the so, and it is added for the purpose of rendering prominent the abnormal, the surprising and frightful nature of the fact, that now again an evil should have become rife, which had formerly and for all times been so decisively marked with the divine judgment. According to some expositors the angel must here be reproved for having, beside the Balaamites, a second class of heretics, the Nicolaitans, in his church. They explain so, by just as well as the Balaamites, and thou hast also, by not less than the angel at Ephesus. But this exposition is on every account untenable. What sort of writing would it be: So (as the Balaamites) hast thou also (as the angel at Ephesus), and then again the likewise, which must refer back to the Balaamites! The so and the likewise would be a mere Pleonasm, if the Balaamites and the Nicolaitans were different. The reference of the also to the angel at Ephesus is inadmissible. For not to mention, that the epistle to the angel of the church at Smyrna comes between, the angel at Ephesus had no Nicolaitans, but had driven them out of his community, and nothing more remained for him to do in this respect, he is charged with no blame, nor is any call addressed to him to repent. According to the view in question, we should know only the doctrine of the Balaamites, only the name of the Nicolaitans, which cannot possibly be supposed. The next verse too decides against it. The with them, there shews, that in Revelation 2:14-15 it must be the same enemies of the truth that are spoken of. For, it would be quite unsuitable to have two different parties abruptly thrown together, and one of them thrown out again. The sword mentioned there has reference to the fate of Balaam, and loses its significance if the intervening Nicolaitans are different from the Balaamites: the Balaamite doom shall follow the Balaamite guilt. So that it is quite plain, from the whole passage, that the Nicolaitans are those who hold by the doctrine of Balaam, and consequently that we are right in the explanation we formerly gave of the name. Revelation 2:16. Repent, therefore; but if not, I will come to thee quickly, and will fight with them by the sword of my mouth. The therefore, which rests on the best authorities (comp. Revelation 2:5, Revelation 3:3; Revelation 3:19), is omitted by Luther. The quickly Bengel would remove without sufficient external proof, perhaps, in favour of a pre-established opinion. He says also, “If men, especially pastors, rebuke the evil, the Lord Jesus will spare them, so as not to visit them with rebuke; but if they are careless and negligent, he will come the more sharply against them.” If the angel listening to the admonition exercised repentance, and showed greater zeal, many of the heretics, or, at least, of those who had been deceived by them, would still be delivered. But in that case the Lord would not have come to him, so as to have rendered the appearance, which was intended for the properly guilty party, a subject of terror also to him. Bengel: “Neither here nor elsewhere does the Lord add what he would himself do to the angel of the church. But the conflict with the Balaamites would bring punishment to him also.” Till now the angel could not say with Paul, “Wherefore I take you to record this day, that I am pure from the blood of all men” (Acts 20:26); and so he must tremble, when he thought of Eze 3:17, ss., to which Paul alludes, at the words: I will fight with them. If he did his duty, the backsliders would either be reclaimed to the truth, or they would be expelled from the church. The expression: “I come to thee quickly, and will fight with them,” to one not acquainted with the language of Scripture, might seem to indicate a visible appearance of the Lord, and a palpable execution of judgment by him. But the Lord often, and indeed usually, exercises his power secretly; and it is the method of Scripture to designate by such strong expressions even, that concealed action, in order to rouse fleshly security out of its indolent slumber. The fighting with the sword of the Lord’s mouth, as we have said, refers to the history of Balaam. “Like sin, like punishment.” In Numbers 31:8, it is said, “And the kings of Midian they slew upon their dead, Evi, etc., the five kings of Midian; and Balaam, the son of Beor, they killed with the sword.” In Joshua 13:22, “And Balaam, the son of Beor, the enchanter, did the children of Israel kill with the sword, to their slain.” The author of the seductive plan and the seducers alike fell by the sword of the Israelites. That behind this was concealed the avenging sword of God and of his Logos, appears from Numbers 22:23, “And the ass saw the angel of the Lord in the way, and his drawn sword in his hand.” Numbers 31:8 stands related to this as the fulfilment to the threatening.[Note: At Numbers 31:8 the Sept. version has, not μάχαιρα, but, is here, ῤομφαία.]Revelation 2:17. He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches: He that overcomes, to him will I give to eat of the hidden manna, and will give him a white stone, and upon the stone a new name written, which no one knows but he that receives it. The words: to him will I give to eat, makes allusion to the eating of the idol-offerings. “On this heavenly bread,” says Bengel, “they must lose their relish for the things offered to idols. In the world men are in many ways guilty of imprudence in their desires to make trial of this and that; but whosoever yields himself up in the denial of self and of fleshly delights, he will come to experience much in spiritual, heavenly, supernatural things, of which others must be deprived.” In John 6 Christ represents himself as the true manna, which his people partake of, and obtain thereby life everlasting. Here, the manna is the life itself, consisting, however, in nothing else than close fellowship with Christ. Such free allusions indicate still more clearly the identity of the author than the most explicit agreements. For, in the latter there is the possibility of a borrowing. Manna was the wilderness-food of the Israelites, which ceased when they reached Canaan (comp. John 6:31); and according to the typology of Scripture, the wilderness corresponds to this life, and the possession of Canaan to the next. Accordingly, some expositors refer this first promise to what the Lord imparts to his people in this life, and the second to the future recompense; as also, indeed, in 1 John 3:1-2, we find set beside each other what Christians have now (“that we are the children of God”), and what they shall receive hereafter (“we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”) So Bossuet: “Manna is nourishment in the wilderness, and the secret consolation with which God supports his children during the pilgrimage of this life.” But against this view is the condition, “he who overcomes,” which can only refer to the completed victory, and is explained in Revelation 2:26 by the additional words, “and keeps my works to the end.” So also the analogy of the other concluding promises, which all have respect to the life to come. Hence we must suppose, that the character of the manna as food for the wilderness is here left out of view, and only its character as heavenly food taken into account (comp. Psalms 78:24, Psalms 105:40, John 6:32), in contrast to the poor enjoyments which the earth yields for the satisfaction of the flesh. Still, the promise does not on this account lose its reference to the present life. Scripture knows nothing of an absolute contrast between the present and the future. According to its mode of contemplation, there is only a completing there of whatever has been begun here, and he only that already has, shall have given to him hereafter—comp. John 4:14, John 5:24. The manna is represented as hidden. This predicate has not respect to the natural manna, which is rather the manifest, the palpable, but only to the spiritual, to the blessed life in fellowship with Christ, “the sweetness of which the world knoweth not, and no one knoweth saving he that tasteth it.” We may compare the hidden treasure in the field, Matthew 13:44, and Colossians 3:3, “Our life is hid with Christ in God.” The foretaste of this hidden manna is given to the faithful in this present life. What the Lord said to his still inexperienced disciples, “I have a bread to eat which ye know not” (John 4:32), they may repeat before the world. As the eating of the manna, so this designation of the manna itself as the hidden is employed with reference to the Nicolaitans; and in such a manner, that what in this first promise forms only a subordinate point, becomes the main one in the second, and that the predicate which is here attributed to the manna is the link of connection between the two promises. The Gnostics wished to introduce something of the heathen mysteries into Christianity; they boasted, in the spirit that has ever characterised worldly wisdom, of possessing what was hidden and known to none but themselves, and thereby drew many after them. As heavenly stand opposed to their sensual enjoyments, so do the true and important secrets to their false and miserable ones. And the connection of both references with each other is the more natural, as with the Gnostics there existed a combination of sensual lust and trafficking in mysteries, and their pretended discoveries especially had fleshly-indulgence for their object. The words, I will give him a white stone, are isolated by many expositors, and regarded as a promise apart by itself. But this is entirely unsuitable. The promise can be only a double one here, else were the number twelve destroyed. If the white stone is supposed to have been named only as writing material, the promises of the verse are united together by the bond of the secretness belonging to both. But if, on the other hand, an independent value is attached to the white stone, the promises fall asunder. The new name is written on the white stone. But the white stone cannot first have a separate worth of its own, and then again serve as means to an end. If this last cannot be denied, then the first must be abandoned. Further, if we ascribe to the words an independent value, they would contain a reference to a heathenish custom, as all are agreed who do so. The supposition of such a reference, however, we must be extremely cautious of admitting generally into the Revelation; and the more so here, as this supposed second promise in any case is closely intertwined with the third, which bears a genuine Israelitish stamp. (Ewald even could not avoid remarking: More Graeco mire cum Hebraeo mixto.) Then, the reference to the heathenish custom here would want the necessary clearness and explicitness, as appears alone from the diversity of opinions adopted by the expositors as to what custom was really in the eye of the prophet. Finally, we obtain from this view no satisfactory meaning. What would most readily occur are the judicial stones; but the objection to this is, that the white or exculpatory stones of the judges were not given to the accused, but cast into an urn. In that case too, it would be acquittal before the divine tribunal that would be marked. But this, from the connection, would be too small a boon, and wants, besides, the reference to the Nicolaitans, which undeniably exists in what precedes and follows, and which is also continually found in the promises made to the churches that were infested by these heretics. We must, then, connect the words closely with what follows. The antiquarian clement that comes here into consideration is simply the fact, that in ancient times they were wont to write much on small stones. To the new glorious name corresponds the white stone. The λευκός, white, is not, as used in the Apocalypse, the simple white, the colour of innocence, but the shining white; comp. on ch. Revelation 4:4. “The word new,” says Bengel, “is a truly apocalyptic word: new name, new song, new heavens, new earth, new Jerusalem, all new, ch. Revelation 14:3, Revelation 3:12, Revelation 21:2.” The word has a sweet sound for those, by whom the old has been felt burdensome and oppressive. It is derived from Isaiah 62:2, “And the heathen see thy righteousness and all kings thy glory; and thou art called by a new name, which the mouth of the Lord hath spoken;” comp. Isaiah 65:15, “And he will give to his servants another name.” Neither here, nor in the fundamental passages, is any particular name meant; otherwise, it would certainly have been mentioned. It is enough, that the name is a new one, that it is much more glorious than the old one, that the state which it indicates has nothing in common with the earlier one, so full of tribulation, hunger, thirst, heat, and tears. Parallel is ch. Revelation 3:12, “And I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem—and my name the new.” There, to whom the conqueror in the new state of things belongs, here, the new name which he himself receives. In 1 John 3:2 the new state which is expressed by the new name, is described by the words, “But we know that, when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” No one knows the new name but he who receives it. It is a secret unspeakably more precious than the secrets of the Nicolaitans, so much praised and yet so worthless. The name of Christ in ch. Revelation 19:12 corresponds, as being one which no one knows but himself. Also, according to 1 John 3:1-2, the blessed state of Christians, what now belongs to them, and much more than that, what they shall possess hereafter, is one that the world cannot understand—one that, with all its boasted knowledge, it so little understands, as still to be ignorant of God, and Christ, and those who believe upon his name (John 15:21, John 16:3). The Epistle to the Angelof the Church in Thyatira (Ch. Revelation 2:18-29) One of the roads formed by the Romans from Pergamos to Sardis led by Thyatira, which the apostle could not but have travelled in his earlier visitation-rounds, and which he now again walked in the Spirit. It lay fifty-eight miles from Pergamos toward the south-east, and from Sardis thirty-six miles toward the north-west. Thyatira, according to Strabo, was a colony of Macedonians, and, on that account, from the constant intercourse it gave rise to with the mother country, it is perhaps to be explained, that we find Lydia the seller of purple from Thyatira at Philippi, Acts 16:14. From this Lydia, whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended to the things spoken by Paul, probably arose the first beginnings of the church at Thyatira. She is named in the Acts a seller of purple of the city of Thyatira, not from the city, and was therefore still at Thyatira; and if as a traveller she formed with her house a centre (Acts 16:40), it was the more to be expected, that she would afterwards at her proper home labour with zeal and success. We might, perhaps, regard the woman Jezebel as her Satanic counterpart. The Nicolaitans in the church at Thyatira had attained to greater power and importance than at Ephesus and at Pergamos. “Here,” remarks Züllig, “much sharper and stronger threatenings are uttered against those adversaries of the good cause than in the preceding epistle.” This is explained from the character of the angel of this church. The angel at Thyatira formed a contrast to that at Ephesus. As the spiritual life of the latter had spent itself too partially in the defence of orthodoxy, the vindication of pure and sound doctrine, so the angel of Thyatira, in accordance with the female origin of the church, exhausted his energy in works of love, and showed himself weak in those duties of his office, in which the angel at Ephesus had shown himself strong. Bengel: “The one could not bear the evil and hated the works of the Nicolaitans, but left his first love and his first works; but the other was rich in love and had always abundance of works, though he did not resist the evil doers with becoming vigour. The former, not the latter, is upbraided as having fallen, and commanded to repent; but the Lord has something against both.” Revelation 2:19. I know thy love and thy faith; and thy service and thy patience; and thy last works more than the first. Here also the senseless desire after uniformity has introduced, after “I know,” “thy works and.” Then, the desire for brevity has thought that the service must be omitted together with the love. These corruptions, which are discovered to be such by strong external grounds, have been admitted into Luther’s translation. We have here a threefold pair before us—love and faith, service and patience, the first and the last works. If we do not keep by this pair-like arrangement, the faith separates in an improper way the love and its manifestation, the service or deaconship-agency from each other, and the patience remains indeterminate and swims in the air. Love forms the prominent feature. Therefore it stands first. Faith is only paired with love, since this, wherever it is worthy of the name, springs from faith as its root—comp. 1 Timothy 1:5. The love here also is not to be limited (comp. on 1 Timothy 1:4). Still the second pair shows how it exercised itself. The deaconship-service, the Christian ministration of help to the members of the church (comp. 1 Corinthians 16:15), was much attended to amid the various discharge of official duties in Thyatira, “so much so, indeed, that the other official members of the church wrought into the hands of those commonly called deacons (since in Acts 6), whose place in this church we have to think of as standing very high. That the patience here, as in Revelation 2:2, is active patience, is evident, from its connection with the deaconship. And this same connection shows that here also, as in Revelation 2:2, the discourse is of perseverance in a definite sphere. By the works, according to the connection, are to be understood pre-eminently works of love. A reference is here made to 2 Peter 2:20, “For, if after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the latter end is worse with them than the first.” The close of the verse before us stands in literal agreement with these last words, excepting that instead of χείρονα, worse, there is πλείονα, very similar in sound, though directly opposite in sense. The allusion can the less be regarded as accidental, as in St Peter also the subject of discourse has respect to the Nicolaitans, and to these the prophet comes in what immediately follows; q.d. that does not hold of thee, which is true of the Nicolaitans. If thou hast unfortunately left them too much freedom, if thou hast sinned in not opposing them with sufficient vigour, they still cannot deprive thee of thy glory. The passage in Peter again rests on Matthew 12:45. Revelation 2:20. But I have against thee, that thou sufferest thy wife Jezebel, who says she is a prophetess, and she teaches and seduces my servants to commit fornication and to eat things offered to idols. After, “I have against thee,” some codices have introduced “little,” (Luther: “I have a small thing against thee”), and others “much;” but the most and best have neither the one nor the other. The origin of both readings is explained from Revelation 2:14, even that of the latter. The feeling, that the style here is sharper than in the preceding epistle, gave rise to the opinion, that a contrast to the small there, was here in its proper place. Other departures from the genuine reading have been occasioned by the harsh and unclassical character of the construction.[Note: Text: The received text: “Ὀ ?́τιἐᾶςτὴνγυναῖκαἸεζαβὴλτήνλὲγουσανἐαυτὴνπροφῆτινδιδάσκεινκαὶπλανᾶσθαιἐμοὺςδούλους, at first sight betrays this to have been its origin.]In particular, people could not understand, the “thou sufferest” (namely, to teach and seduce), and “she teaches;” comp. ch. Revelation 11:3, “And I shall give my two witnesses (to prophecy) and they shall prophecy.” But the most important deviation has been, that frequently for “thy wife,” is substituted “the woman,” which Luther also has adopted. That the external reasons in support of the first reading greatly preponderate, is clear alone from its admission into the text of Lachmann. How the omission of the thy took place, may be learned from De Wette, who rejects it as “unsuitable.” How should any one have thought of thrusting in this thy, the cross of expositors, into the text, if it had not originally existed? It is enough, that it still remains untouched in so many and such important critical helps. Bengel remarks on the expression, thou sufferest: “There are people, who have a hearty love for the good, and occupy themselves with all that is lovely, delight in it and rejoice in the Lord Jesus Christ as their portion. But the evil may still for them have its progress.” Jezebel, the daughter of Ethbaal, the king of Zidon, the wife of Ahab of Israel, who as a murderer of the prophets, introduced the worship of idols into Israel, is after Balaam the second chief representative in Old Testament times of the heathenish seduction that found its way into the church of the Lord. There can be no manner of doubt, that it is not some particular seductive woman, who is designated by the name of Jezebel, as manifesting somewhat of her nature in the church at Thyatira; but that the Jezebel was a symbolical person, the personified heresy and heathenish false doctrine; so that 1 John 4:1, “Many false prophets have gone out into the world,” as to meaning exactly corresponds. To this conclusion, first, the whole character of the seven epistles points; for to this it would be quite foreign to introduce such minute particulars, as a reference here would be to a “certain woman.” Certainly, “it has nothing against it, to suppose that there was a woman at Thyatira,” etc.; but it has a great deal against it, that John should have assigned so important a place to such a woman in a book consecrated to the church of all times. Farther, the analogy of Balaam leads in the same direction, as to this corresponded not a single individual in the prophet’s own time, but a whole class of false teachers. Then, the mention of adulteries and children in Revelation 2:22-23, with which even those who defend the reference to a “certain influential woman,” have no patience; De Wette, for example, who remarks, that “her children, can scarcely he taken in the natural sense, but must mean scholars, followers.” But it is quite decisive, that here the discourse is not indefinitely of a woman, but of the wife of the angel. If it is a fixed point, that the angel is an ideal person, or a collective, then under the woman we cannot understand a single individual. We must rather understand by it the weaker half (1 Peter 3:7), that part of the governing body who were infected with the heresy, whether it might be, that there were such among those, who actually held office, or that these, represented by the angel, had false teachers beside them, who exercised a considerable influence on the church, and in point of fact had a share in the direction. Jezebel is represented as one, who said, that she was a prophetess. We have already drawn attention to the false pretensions to inspiration, which were put forth by the Gnostics at the first. Vitringa has shewn, that in a certain sense the Old Jezebel assumed the character of a false prophetess. To this especially points the enchantments attributed to her, 2 Kings 9:22, the enthusiastical conduct of the servants of the Baal-worship which she introduced with fanatical zeal, and the fact, that her father, according to a fragment of Menander’s translation from the Tyrian annals in Josephus, was originally high-priest of Astarte. Little as we can think of identifying the angel with the church, we are still farther prevented from doing so by the circumstance, that the wife also of the angel calls herself a prophetess, teaches and seduces, and the laity, who adhere to the false doctrine, are distinguished from her. That the committing of fornication forms the commencement here otherwise than in Revelation 2:14, is to be explained from the circumstance, that in reference to the Old Jezebel the history makes express mention only of adultery; whereas in reference to Balaam the seducing also to eat of things offered to idols is mentioned. In 2 Kings 9:22, Jehu’s answer to the question of Joram, “Is there peace, Jehu?” was, “What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel, and her witchcrafts continue?” There it is primarily spiritual fornication that is meant; but this went hand in hand with the bodily, especially in the worship of demoniacal excitement, like that which was promoted by Jezebel; and 2 Kings 9:30, compared with Jeremiah 4:30 shews, that in Jezebel’s case also this connection existed. The fornication here, too, bears this double meaning. If this is not kept in mind both here and in Revelation 2:21, the transition in Revelation 2:22, where the discourse comes to be of spiritual adultery, will be too sharp. Revelation 2:21. And I have given her time to repent, and she will not repent of her fornication. The destination to punishment is regarded as a seal of her impenitence, which God sets upon her bad conduct. John lays open another point of view. Bengel: “The adulteress was hardened, her deceived followers were expressly called to repentance: the spiritual overseer will then himself, with his abiding good sense, come right.” Revelation 2:22. Behold I throw her into a bed, and those who commit fornication with her into great tribulation, if they do not repent of their works. Revelation 2:23. And her children will 1 put to death; and all churches shall know, that I am he who searcheth the reins and hearts; and I will give to every one among you according to your works. “From the bed of infamy they shall be brought to a sick-bed of pain,” Bengel. The following expression: into great tribulation, serves as an explanation. On the words: they who commit adultery with her, comp. Ezekiel 23:37, “with their idols they have committed adultery.” Any one that grew familiar with these antichrists, broke the covenant which had been made with God in Christ. Several expositors would distinguish between the adulterers and the children, understanding by the first the assistants, by the others the scholars. But it is better to understand by the adulterers and children, the followers and children. As the governing body only had teachers formed by the woman, the distinction is too fine a one, the difference too impalpable. In the Old Testament the children stand for the recipients of false doctrine generally; comp. Isaiah 57:3, “Ye sons of the sorceress, the seed of the adulterer and the whore,” a passage to which special reference is probably made here. Through the poetical representations of the Old Testament such figurative expressions had become so naturalized, that even in prose they occur in the New Testament. John calls the believers of his diocese his children, 3 John 1:4, as Peter also names Mark his son. In his second epistle John personifies a church as a woman (so also Peter in 1 Peter 5:13), comp. 3 John 1:9, the associated church as a sister, and its members as children, comp. 3 John 1:13, “The children of thine elect sister greet thee.” Instead of: I will put to death, it is literally, I will kill with death. Many expositors would here understand by death the pestilence. But this is never designated so (comp. on ch. Revelation 6:8), and such a meaning does not properly suit here with the eyes of flaming fire, and the feet as of glowing brass, nor to what is said in the Old Testament of the death of the literal Jezebel. The appended expression, “with death,’’ must be regarded as showing the earnestness there was in the threatening, just as one says, to burn with fire, in order to place vividly before the eye the scorching heat of the fire.[Note: Text: Allusion is made to the Mosaic formula ξψϊιεξϊ, which is particularly used in reference to adultery, comp. Leviticus 11:10, “The man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, he shall die the death, both adulterer and adulteress.” The phrase ἐνθανάτῳ ? serves the same purpose as there the prefixed infin. LXX.: Θανάτῳθανατούσθωσαν.]The word, and shall know, must be regarded as emphatic. It forms an irony on their gnosis, comp. the “have known” in Revelation 2:24, and the common use of knowing in the first epistle of John. This would be a profitable gnosis, instead of that unprofitable sort, which they lauded. They should help all churches in Christendom to the right gnosis, and must do so, though in a very different manner from what they wished to have done. For, apart from the judgment of God in their personal experience, the Lord has made an end of their error, while the simple divine truth constantly blooms forth anew. The object of that profitable gnosis is, that Christ “searches the reins and hearts.” The original passage is Psalms 7:9, “Let the wickedness of the wicked come to an end; and establish thon the righteous, and prover of the hearts and reins art thou, O righteous God.” “It is God,” remarks Bengel, “who, as is also testified in the Old Testament, searches the hearts and reins, and this divine property the Lord Jesus Christ here ascribes to himself.” The proving in the original passage, and here also the searching comes into view, not as an indication of the divine omniscience, but of the divine righteousness. The words point to God’s righteousness, according to which he does not keep himself in a state of indifference toward good and evil, but constantly exercises the divine energy, which can penetrate into the very inmost heart, in order to discern both the one and the other, and to visit it accordingly with blessing or with punishment. Comp. Jeremiah 17:10, Jeremiah 20:12. The practical character of the searching of the hearts and reins shows itself here in the giving to each according to his works. Perhaps here also there is some reference to Gnosticism. The Gnostics expressed themselves with great contempt of common Christians, as persons who stood merely at superficial attainments, while they themselves penetrated into the innermost nature of things—comp. Revelation 2:24. Now, however, they must have to do with one, who can penetrate into their inmost being, and how shall they tremble before him, since even their exterior presents so many spots and blemishes! On the words, “I will give—according to your works,” Bengel remarks, “We shall not easily find a saying that more frequently occurs in Scripture than this; Ps. 63:13, Matthew 16:27, Romans 2:6.” It is especially appropriate in the presence of the lawless, 2 Peter 3:17, who think that they can do what they please. Revelation 2:24. But to you I say, the others that are at Thyatira, who have not such doctrine, and who have not known the depths of Satan, as they speak; I will not throw upon you another burden. Revelation 2:25. But what you have received hold fast till I come. Instead of, “to you the others,” Luther follows the reading, “you and the others.” According to this there would come forth, behind the ideal oneness of the angel, the concealed real manifoldness: to you, my true servants in the church and the members of it. But the shoving in of the and has too little of external support to justify its adoption. The others are, therefore, those who have kept themselves free from the teaching of Jezebel.”The bad state of matters at Thyatira,” remarks Bengel, “is ascribed not to them, but only to the overseer, as also at Ephesus and at Pergamos the Lord holds the overseers responsible for the evil.” The Gnostics, probably taking occasion from 1 Corinthians 2:10, were constantly keeping the depths in their mouth, perpetually talking about going into the depths with Satan, not less than with God.[Note: Text: Comp. Tertullian adv. Valent. c. 1.: Si bona fide quaeras, concrete vultu, suspenso supercilio, allum est siunt. Iren. I. 1: Καὶταῦταεἰ ?͂ναιτὰμεγάλακαὶθαυμαστὰκαὶἀπόῤῥηταμυστήρια. II. 38: Vere caecutientis, qui profumln Bythi adinvenisse se dicont c. 39: Profunda dei adinvinesse se dicentes. c. 18: Irrationabiliter antem inflati audaciter dei mysteria scire vos dicitis.]But only in respect to Satan did they in a certain measure attain to this. While they set forth the principle that one must, in order to know the depths of Satan, become familiar with everything shameful, they at least succeeded practically in getting an intimate acquaintance with Satan. The nature of these Satanic studies of the older Gnosticism is made plain to us by what is said in Eusebius, II. 13, of the Simonians, “those deeper secrets, of which they say that he who hears them for the first time would be astonished and confounded, are in truth full of things, at which one must be astonished, full of folly and madness. They are of such a nature that a discreet person cannot write of them, nor open his lips about them on account of their horrid filthiness and obscenity.” This was the theoretical result of their practical inquiries. According to the current explanation the expression, “as they speak,” must only refer to the depths, and John puts Satan in the place of God. So Bengel: “The false teachers said, that what they taught were deep things. This the Lord admits, but with the addition, that they were not divine but Satanic depths—just as he had conceded to the Jews the name of a synagogue, but a synagogue of Satan, Revelation 2:9.” But it is arbitrary and without example to refer the words, “as they speak,” which are also wanting at the synagogue of Satan, merely to the depths. Nor is the thought thus obtained at all suitable, as the heretics did not confine themselves in their knowledge to the depths of God, but rather stretched their Gnosis over all points of Christian doctrine, and even to Satan himself. The chief point must lie in the having known, which the heretics took in an exalted and laudable sense, but which the apostle used in a low and scandalous one. That their knowledge only of the depths of Satan is here mentioned, was owing to the circumstance, that here the horse-foot in them became particularly manifest. By the other burden most expositors understand a new suffering. Bengel: “He who is plagued in one part, will on this account have something withheld from him in other respects. Christ will not let too heavy a burden come upon any of his own.” But in opposition to this view, there is the circumstance, that in the preceding context nothing had been said of a burden in this sense, which the Christians at Thyatira had already borne, or were yet to bear. Against Bengel’s remark, that they “had a sufficient burden in Jezebel and her followers,” it is enough to say, that the existence of heretics in the church had been represented in the preceding context as a matter of guilt. Reference has been made to the patience in Revelation 2:19, but only by a false style of exposition. The threatening has respect simply to the apostate party, not to the true. The other burden, which was not to be laid upon them, must therefore form the contrast to what they now had and should hold fast. Our Lord says in Matthew 23:4 of the Pharisees, “They bind heavy and intolerable burdens, and lay them upon the necks of men.” In Acts 15:10, Peter says to the Judaizers, “Wherefore, then, do you tempt God by laying on the necks of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear.” Now, it was an artifice of the lawless party, that by an abuse of St Paul’s doctrine of liberty (comp. 2 Peter 2:19 with 2 Peter 3:16) they were constantly ready with the charge of Judaism and Pharisaism; that they applied to the moral law what bore respect only to the ceremonial law. (Mark: Cantilena scil. perpetua impuri gregis erat Christiana libertas, quam praedicabant et praetexebant suis impuritatibus.) In opposition to them Christ says: They are always speaking of burdens which one seeks to lay upon you. I will lay upon yon no other burden; but one is indispensable, that ye hold by the command which ye have received from the beginning. This does not admit of your flying off with the lawless under the pretext of Christian liberty; for whosoever releases himself arbitrarily from this “burden,” he will have occasion to repent of it bitterly at my appearance for judgment. Receiving to yourselves such a burden, you shall lose salvation. There is a striking reference to the decree of the apostolic council at Jerusalem, in which also Paul had a part, Acts 15:28-29, “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us, to lay upon you none other burden (βάρος), but only these necessary things, that ye keep yourselves from things offered to idols, and from blood, and from strangled, and from fornication, from which, if ye keep yourselves, ye do well.” There, among other things, the eating of things offered to idols, and fornication, were interdicted, which the lawless party gave out for an unprofitable burden. On Revelation 2:25 comp. 1 John 2:24, “Let that therefore abide in you which ye have heard from the beginning; if that which ye have heard from the beginning shall remain in you, ye also shall continue in the Son and in the Father.” Revelation 2:26. And he that overcomes and keeps my works to the end, to him will I give power over the heathen. In regard to the first and, which is wanting in some copies, Bengel remarks: “With this little word the present alone begins of all the seven promises; whence we may conclude that this addition has a peculiar connection with the preceding address.” To the and at the beginning corresponds the expression: and keeps my works to the end, as a resumption of what had been said previously about keeping what they had till the Lord came. The keeping forms the contrast to the self-willed or thoughtless forgetting; comp. Revelation 1:3. The: to keep the command, the word, or such like, is a form of expression of which John is particularly fond. Bengel: “My works.” In these I have gone before him with my example, and in doing them he, as my servant, obeys my commands. These works may be learned from the opposite things in ch. Revelation 22:15. Elsewhere it is said simply, “He that overcomes;” but here there is subjoined, “and keeps my works to the end.” So long as a man still lives on the earth, however far he may have attained, he cannot say, I have overcome.” For each individual the end is the period of his death, when the Lord comes for him. For the church at large it takes place in the fullest sense at the Lord’s advent and appearance for judgment. The end, however, and the Lord’s appearance for judgment, often takes place beforehand in a provisional manner, at the close of every dispensation or epoch, such, for example, as the judgment on Jerusalem—comp. Matthew 10:22; and the judgment likewise on heathen Rome bore a similar character. The promise given to conquering fidelity, is power over the heathen. By an abuse of 1 Corinthians 8:9, 1 Corinthians 6:12, the Gnostics continually had in their month the power or dominion over the world, and under the pretence of this they led the Christians, who adhered to them, into the service of corruption (2 Peter 2:19), of heathenism. “Only a small pool of water (they said, according to Porphyry in Neander’s Church History, ii. p. 665), can be defiled by anything filthy being thrown into it, not the ocean which receives everything, because it knows its own greatness. So, it is only the little man that is overcome by food; but he who is an ocean of power, receives every thing into himself, and is not defiled.” “If we (they said, according to the same passage of Porphyry) fly from food, then we are in bondage to the sense of fear; but all must be in subjection to us.” “We must,” so spake these valiant spirits, according to Clemens of Alexandria, in Neander, p. 664, “through the gratification of lust overcome lust. For, there is nothing great in restraining lust, if one has not tried it; but the greatness lies in not being overcome by lust, when one has experience of it.” In opposition to these false and destructive sentiments, the Lord declares that he who stoutly resists them, and abides stedfast by the law, which they mock and nullify, shall come to the possession of a glorious power, to the ascendancy over heathenism and the heathen world. This promise has been gloriously fulfilled. The Christian church, because it conquered and kept, overcame heathenism, while in so far as it imbibed the principles of Gnosticism, and sought power in the way of a false freedom, instead of doing so in the way of obedience, soon disappeared, without leaving a trace of its existence. Revelation 2:27. And he will tend them with a rod of iron, and as a potter’s vessels will he dash them in pieces, as I also have received of my Father. On the tending of the heathen with a rod of iron, comp. on ch. Revelation 12:5, Revelation 19:15. Revelation 2:28. And I will give him the morning-star. De Wette thinks it is difficult to say why the promise here should have been made so exceedingly strong, as the victory was still not to be looked upon as one so peculiarly hard and extraordinary. But that the Nicolaitan seduction was exceedingly formidable in Thyatira, follows as a certain consequence from the richness of the promise, and is confirmed by the length and earnestness with which the heretics are treated of in the preceding context, and also by Jezebel’s being named the wife of the angel. That the words, “as I also have received of my Father,” must be supplied here too, is evident from ch. Revelation 22:16, where Christ is designated “the bright morning-star.” It is but a slight difference, that there Christ receives the designation on account of his glorious dominion, and here the glorious dominion itself is so designated. That the morning-star is here the image of a glorious dominion, admits of no doubt, as star in the Revelation is constantly employed in the sense of dominion; as the star here occurs in connection with the rod or sceptre, and in the prophecy of Balaam, in Numbers 24:17, “A star comes out of Jacob, and a sceptre rises out of Israel and shatters,” &c., the star likewise denotes dominion over the heathen. So also in the original passage, Isaiah 14:12, the bearer of the world-power, the king of Babylon, on account of his glorious dominion is named the bright morning-star. When the church of Christ remains stedfast, the world must change places with it. With every other explanation of the morning-star, the oneness of the promise is also destroyed. For, the dominion over the heathen is the subject discoursed of in what precedes; and again in ch. Revelation 22:16, Christ is called the morning-star in connection with other descriptions of his royal supremacy. That he was to be ruler of the heathen was announced at the first by the star of the Magi—as I have shewn in my work on Balaam, p. 177. It appears that here also allusion is made to the delusive pretensions of the Nicolaitans. These persons promised to their hearers a new light, the dawn (one may just remember J. Böhme’s Aurora), or the morning-star of knowledge; and they also called themselves shining stars, destined to dispel the darkness of the Christian church. Instead of this wretched morning-star the true one is promised to the faithful. A similar allusion is made, as appears in the epistle of Jude, in Jude 1:13 (comp. 2 Peter 2:17), where the false teachers are described as “wandering stars,” “for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness for ever.” They called themselves shining stars. But now, since they had the predicate of “wandering” applied to them, the most fearful darkness is announced to them, with a reference to Isaiah 14:12-15, precisely as if one should call the “Friends of light” by the name of “Friends of the ignis fatuus.” Introduction to the Seven Epistles Now follow the seven epistles, for which all after the three first verses has been only of an introductory and preparatory nature. The blessed Paul marks it in 1 Corinthians 14:25 as one of the most important purposes of prophecy to make manifest the secrets of the heart. Scripture declares salvation only to those who form the true church of the Lord, who live in the Spirit. But along with the promise the admonition always goes hand in hand, and always the more disposed the false seed are to appropriate to themselves what belongs only to the true. To Isaias, for example, the commission was given in the second part of his prophecies to comfort the people of God, by announcing the approaching manifestation of the Lord. But with the announcement of salvation the call to repent, and the admonition to be faithful, is constantly combined; comp. for example, Isaiah 50:1, “Thus saith the Lord, Keep ye judgment and do justice, for my salvation is near to come, and my righteousness to be revealed;” Isaiah 58:1, “Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sin.” In the New Testament also, the proclamation of God’s judgment on the world, and his glorification of the church, goes hand in hand with urgent admonitions to the members of the latter to get themselves ready for the Lord’s coming, so that it may prove to them a blessing and not a curse. “Watch ye therefore, and pray always,” says our Lord in Luke 21:36, “that ye may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that shall come to pass, and to stand before the Son of man.” And Peter in his second epistle, 2 Peter 3:11, says, “Seeing that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness.” So also John, speaking of the Christian hope, declares that whoever has it, “purifies himself even as Christ is pure.” Here, John is going to show to the servants of Christ what must shortly come to pass, ch. Revelation 1:1, he is going to reveal to them the salvation that Christ has purposed to bring to his suffering church, avenging her of her enemies, and raising her from the dust to sit upon the throne of his glory. But before he is equipped by Christ for the fulfilment of this calling, which he accomplishes from the beginning of ch. 4 to the end of the book, he must prepare those committed to him for the purpose of Christ—not, as Bengel thinks, for receiving the Revelation, but for the great events of the future themselves. He must dissipate the idea, that the name of Christians forms the wall of separation between them and the world, call forth the spiritual state of things which alone can render the coming of the Lord salutary, awaken the slothful and unfaithful to repentance, admonish the faithful and diligent to a steady perseverance and continuance to the end; comp. Revelation 2:5; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 2:16; Revelation 2:25; Revelation 3:11; Revelation 3:19. In respect to the plan of the epistles Bengel gives a series of excellent remarks, which we deem it right to communicate in his own words.” The conception of the seven epistles is throughout similar. For in each one there Isaiah , 1. A command to write to an angel of a church. 2. A glorious title of Jesus Christ. 3. An address to the angel of the church; wherein is contained (1) a testimony regarding its present mixed, or good, or bad condition; (2) an admonition to repentance or to stedfastness; (3) an announcement of what is to take place, for the most part of the coming of the Lord. 4. A promise to those that overcome, together with the awakening words, he that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches.” The address in each epistle is couched in plainer language, while in the promise Christ speaks more in a flowery style. In the address the Lord Jesus Christ speaks primarily and immediately to the churches in Asia then existing, and more especially to the angels of them; the promise speaks in the third person of those who then and also in future times should overcome. “Of the seven angels of the seven churches there were two, those at Ephesus and Pergamos, in a mixed state, and two, those at Sardis and Laodicea, in a very corrupt one. Not only those whose state was bad, but also those with whom there was a lack, are exhorted to repent, as are likewise the followers of Jezebel at Thyatira, since she herself would not repent, and the angel there did not need for himself to repent. Two, those at Smyrna and Philadelphia, were in a very healthful condition, and on that account were not called to exercise repentance, but were only admonished to be stedfast. There is no mixed, or good, or bad state, of which we have not here a pattern, and profitable, salutary instruction provided for it. Whether one may be so dead as the angel of the church at Sardis, or may stand so well as that at Philadelphia, and the aged apostle John himself, this book is still fitted to be serviceable to him, and the Lord Jesus has something in it to say to him. “In the seven epistles there are twelve promises. In the third, fourth, and sixth, there is a double promise, and in the fifth a threefold one, which are distinguished from each other by a special word: I will give, I will not blot out, I will confess, I will write.In the promise for those that overcome, sometimes the enjoyment of the highest good, sometimes freedom from the greatest troubles is held forth. The one is included in the other, and when some one part of blessedness and glory is expressed, the whole is thereby to be understood (ch. Revelation 21:7). That part is particularly expressed which has reference to the virtues and deeds mentioned in the preceding address. In these promises notice is taken of various things, which are not again referred to in the Revelation, as the manna, the confession of the name, the inscribed name of the New Jerusalem, the sitting upon the throne. Some things carry a resemblance to what is afterwards found in the representations given of Christ, in particular, the secret name, ch. Revelation 19:12, the heritage of the nations, ch. Revelation 19:15, the morning star, ch. Revelation 22:16. Other things, again, occur afterwards in their own place, as the tree of life, ch. Revelation 22:2, freedom from the second death, ch. Revelation 20:6, the name in the book of life, ch. Revelation 20:12, Revelation 21:27, remaining in the temple of God, ch. Revelation 7:15, the name of God and of the Lamb on the righteous, ch. Revelation 14:1, Revelation 22:4.” What is said of the churches in praise or blame is completed in the number three. The Refrain: “Who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches,” has ten words, divided by three and seven, and the latter again by the three and four. The seven number of the epistles is divided by the three and four. For, in the three first, the call “Who has an ear,” &c., stands before the closing promise, while in the four last it follows after the other. Then, in the four last epistles, the closing promise itself has a peculiar construction: He that overcomes I give to him.[Note: Bengel: “In the four latter promises ὁνικῶν, as if it had the distinctive Hebr. accent, is marked with the greatest emphasis; in the three former τῶ ?ͅνικῶντι (as an equivalent for which in the second we have ὁνικῶν without οὐ ?͂τος) there is H closer union with the following verb.”] This division must have a quite definite ground, and has already been noticed under Revelation 1:11. Elsewhere also, in the seals, the trumpets, and the vials, the seven is divided by the four and three. In his latter days Bengel strongly recommended to those about him the careful meditation of the apocalyptic epistles. He said, “There was scarcely any thing that was so much fitted to affect and purify us.” The Epistle to the Angelof the Church in Sardis (Ch. Revelation 3:1-6) The angel at Sardis has a name, that he lives, and is dead. After being solemnly called to repent, the Lord addresses himself to the few living Christians, who still remained there. Those who in such circumstances were sorely tried, are exhorted to be faithful, in consideration of the glorious recompense which awaited them. Revelation 3:2. Be wakeful, and strengthen the rest that is ready to die; for I have not found thy works complete before my God. “Death and sleep,” remarks Bengel, “are in natural things like one another, and in spiritual they are almost one. It is the commencement of true salvation to a soul when it is awakened from its sleep of death.” In Eph. also, Ephesians 5:14, sleep and death are conjoined with each other. The “be wakeful” here implies more than the “awake” there. It calls them to be awake, and to remain awake. The γρηγορωῖν is not to awake, but to keep awake, to watch, the opposite of a state of sleeping, 1 Thessalonians 5:10. “Watch, therefore, because ye know not at what hour your Lord comes,” the Lord had said to his disciples (Matthew 24:42, Matthew 25:13). “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation,” he had also said to John and the two other disciples who stood nearest to him (Matthew 26:41). That John here, as Peter in 1 Peter 5:8, refers to that word, is clear from Revelation 3:3. The rest, besides the angel or the overseers, are the members of the church, or the laity, who not less than the overseers were in danger of death. Allusion is made to Ezekiel 34:4, “The weak have ye not strengthened, and the sick have ye not healed; the wounded have ye not bound, the wandering have ye not fetched, and the lost ye have not sought.” There, too, it is the rulers of the church who are addressed. Their careless keeping of the Lord’s flock is complained of. A testimony is furnished by this also, that the overseers of the church are to be understood by the angel, and that these are to be carefully distinguished from the church itself. Through the special allusion here made to Ezekiel, the whole lamentation raised by him over the bad shepherds is applied to the angel. Intentionally the verb is taken from the first member of the representation, primarily applicable to the neglect of the shepherds, and the object from the last.[Note: The ἃἔμελλονἀποθανεῖν does notcorrespond to πδμεϊ but to ΰαγϊ, as Vitringa supposes.] In this manner is the entire representation appropriated. From the original passage also has the neuter been adopted: the rest. There the feminine is used, referring to the sheep. The LXX. also have rendered the feminines by neuters.The works, by which at last every thing is to be determined, Matthew 7:21, John 14:21. The complete, full (comp. made full in John 17:13, 1 John 1:4, 2 John 1:12), forms the contrast to the deficiency, under which the works laboured, though more in respect to their soul, the impelling motives, than to their external appearance. The expression: before my God, implies that they were still not justified, however they might appear pure before the eyes of men, and their own slumbering consciences. Revelation 3:4. But thou hast a few names in Sardis, who have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white garments, for they are worthy. On the expression, “thou hast,” Bengel says, “These, from being so very few, had not withdrawn themselves, otherwise they would not have belonged to the angel of the church. Yet they did not owe it to him, that they had not defiled their garments, but it was a matter of blame to him that there were so few of them.” According to the passages, Numbers 1:2, Numbers 1:18, Numbers 1:20, Numbers 3:40, Numbers 3:43, Numbers 26:53, Acts 1:15, Revelation 11:13, it might be thought, that by the names here simply persons were meant. But, 1. This mode of speech is found elsewhere only in numberings and lists, in which persons are taken account of only in respect to their names. 2. It is a natural supposition, that the names here have respect to the declaration: thou hast a name that thou livest, and art dead, in Revelation 3:1. It is better, therefore, to suppose, that the few names, which had not defiled their garments, the few in whom the name had its foundation in the reality (for to be a Christian is, at the same time, to keep one’s self unspotted from the world), stand here in reference to the great number of those who might adopt the saying, Nos numerus sumus. Names enough! but only a few among them, of which the bearers did honour to their names; whereas there should have been as many true Christians as there were names in their church. The defiling perhaps alludes to the name Sardis: Sardes has become Sordes. “These are they who have not denied themselves with women,” in ch. Revelation 14:4, corresponds as to the meaning. For there women are figuratively used as a name for sin. Upon the garments as a symbol of the state, see on ch. Revelation 7:14, where it is said of true Christians, “They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Hence with the early Christians the pure state of the baptized was represented outwardly by the white garments they wore. Because the saints have not defiled their garments, but washed them and made them white, therefore they are to receive white garments for a reward, ch. Revelation 6:11, Revelation 7:9. The appropriation of forgiveness and life in sanctification is followed by blessedness and glory. On the words, “for they are worthy,” Bengel remarks, “Oh how much more blessed is this worthiness, than that which is spoken of in ch. Revelation 16:6!” Comp. 2 Thessalonians 1:5. Vitringa is disposed to conclude from this verse, that at Sardis also the heresy of the Nicolaitans had obtained a footing, which is also probable on this account, that they had made such devastations in the neighbouring churches. But neither here, nor at Laodicea, is there the least reference to the Nicolaitans. The reproach of very extensive sinful defilement, which is brought against the church at Sardis, cannot be regarded as such. It is not to be overlooked, that what was sinful in Gnosticism proceeded from the general corruption that pervaded heathen life; and that this could not fail to press into the Christian church under different forms, wherever Gnosticism was in process of formation, and the love of the world or the service of Mammon had obtained a footing. It is very remarkable, that precisely the two churches, which are represented as the moat debased, the most complete contrasts to faithful Smyrna and Philadelphia, Sardis and Laodicea, had no Nicolaitans in them. A warning lies concealed here, that amid the dangers arising from speculative errors, we should not overlook those which are still greater. In speculative errors there still is always a spiritual element, however unspiritual or counter-spiritual it may be. The conflict with it quickens, while common worldliness and indifferentism naturally exerts a deadening influence. For the followers of false doctrine itself the spiritual excitement not rarely forms a transition to spiritual life. Revelation 3:5. He that overcomes, the same shall be invested with white garments; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life; and I will confess his name before my Father and before his angels. The promise here is threefold. The few names that had not defiled their garments in the midst of a merely nominal-Christian society, whose corrupting influence flowed in upon them from every side, needed a particularly strong encouragement. The whole of the three promises run into that of 2 Thessalonians 1:5, he will be deemed worthy of the kingdom of God, for which he has suffered, or of Act 13:48, he shall be of the number of those who are ordained to eternal life. The second promise rests upon Psalms 69:28, “They shall be blotted out of the book of life, and shall not be written with the righteous;” on which I remarked in my commentary, “To be blotted out of the book of life, of which mention is made for the first time in Exodus 32:32, is as much as to be devoted to death, with reference to the untimely and sudden death threatened against the wicked in the law. As here, in regard to a temporal existence, so in the New Testament with regard to an eternal one, we read of the book of life, Philippians 4:3, Revelation 20:15. To be written with the righteous is a parallel expression. For it is just in the book of life that the righteous are written, they are ordained to life.” According to ch. Revelation 20:15, those who are not found written in the book of life shall be thrown into the lake of fire. The third promise has the faithfulness of the few chosen ones in confessing the truth for its foundation, whose light shone all the brighter on account of the surrounding unfaithfulness that inseparably attends lukewarmness and worldly-mindedness. It rests especially on Matthew 10:32-33, “Whosoever confesses me before men, him will I confess before my Father in heaven; but whosoever denies me before men, him will I also deny before my Father in heaven;” and Luke 12:8-9, “Whosoever confesses me before men, him will also the Son of man confess before the angels of God. But whosoever denies me before men, he shall be denied before the angels of God.” Matthew mentions only the Father in heaven, Luke only the angels, but here both are found. We shall the less think of ascribing this to accident, if we keep in view the undeniable reference to the words of Christ in Revelation 3:2-3. Herder already remarks, “The whole epistle is in the words of Christ, which he spake while yet upon the earth.”[Note: There is an allusion also to the same declaration of Christ in John 12:42, bearing respect to the failure of its object; so also, perhaps, in John 1:20, where there is the same contrast between confessing and not denying. The ὁμολογεῖν is here used with the accusative of that, to which one confesses, as in John 9:22; Matt. and Luke have ἐν.] Revelation 3:6. He that has an ear to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The Epistle to the Angelof the Church in Philadelphia (Ch. Revelation 3:7-13) Justin in his discourse with the Jew Tryphon, § 17, thus reproaches the Jews: “Other nations have not so much guilt in their unrighteous dealings toward us and Christ as you, who are also the authors of the bad prejudice which they raise against the Holy One and us, who are sprung of him.” (Comp. § 133 and the first apology, § 31.) From this bitter feeling of hostility on the part of the Jews the feeble community at Philadelphia—feeble in a worldly respect—had much to suffer. But the Lord calls out to them: Faint not thou little weakling, and lays open to her the wellspring of rich consolation. No Jew shall be able to rob you of the kingdom of God, ye to whom it belongs, Revelation 3:8. On the contrary, many of that nation, who now in proud infatuation give themselves out for the only true people of God, shall one day humbly sue for reception into the calumniated church of Christ, as the only church of God and the one region of safety, Revelation 3:9. Your stedfastness in persecutions from the world secures your preservation in the judgment, which is soon to take place, Revelation 3:10-11. And at the end of your course eternal blessedness shall burst upon your view, Revelation 3:12. Whoever has an ear for such glorious promises, he will not faint, but fight with vigour, Revelation 3:13. Revelation 3:8. I know thy works. Behold I have given before thee an open door, and no one can shut it; for thou hast a little strength, and hast kept my word, and hast not denied my name. Here also we have three points of commendation: the works, the keeping of Christ’s word with a little strength, and the not denying of his name. But the specializing of the works is entwined with a declaration going before, which establishes the connection with the predicates that were attributed to Christ in Revelation 3:7. We are not to inclose that declaration in brackets, although certainly as to the meaning the works are more nearly described in the words: thou hast a little strength, &c. If it is certain, that the opening and shutting in Revelation 3:7 refers to personal membership in the kingdom of God, then the opened door, which no one can shut, which serves to the Philadelphians themselves for an entrance into the kingdom of God, is spoken of in the same respect, and as a ground of consolation to them before the Jews, who would deny them any share in the kingdom of God; the Lord himself had received them into his kingdom, and no Jew could prevail to exclude them from it. By the open door is usually understood “a free scope for proclaiming the gospel, or for active exertions to bring men to the faith,” with reference to 1 Corinthians 16:9, 2 Corinthians 2:12, where the opened door is the door of active operations. But here the door is more exactly determined by the connection with Revelation 3:7 as an entrance into the house of David or the kingdom of God. Then, the view in question is opposed by, “I have given,” in contradistinction to, “I give,” in Revelation 3:9. A space for active labour had still not been given to the angel at Philadelphia; otherwise his strength would not have been small. But the preterite does not suit with a prophetical view of the words. On the contrary argues the progression from the preterite to the future through the present, accompanied by the thrice-repeated Behold. By the little strength is meant not small official grace, but, as appears from Revelation 2:9, the weak beginnings and depressed circumstances of the church, which made it easy to match them on account of the wealth of their Jewish adversaries. Revelation 3:9. Behold, I give out of Satan’s school of those that say, they are Jews and are not, but lie. Behold I will make them, that they shall come and supplicate before thy feet, and know that I have loved thee. To that which God has already given, and which no one can cause to return again, there is here subjoined what he gives: to the proper participation of Christians in the kingdom of God, a humble and express recognition of the church of Christ, as the true and only church of the Lord, on the part of those who proudly raised themselves above it, and denied it any part in the Lord. From this respect in the “I give,” to the “I have given,” it is clear that here also the discourse is of a gift of the Lord: Behold I give (to thee; or to the Christian church, and so to thee also) some of Satan’s school,[Note: See, in reference to the common omission of the tome before the îï in Heb., Gesenius’s Thes., p. 800.&c.; that the giving does not stand in the sense of making, so that “I will make,” might be considered as a resumption of the “I give.” The kind of giving is certainly determined more accurately by what follows. It is clear from this, that they were in so far to be given to the church as their hostility was to be changed into reverential love. It is carefully to be observed, that it is not said: I give the synagogue of Satan, but that it is only members of this that are spoken of—those in it who should give to the Lord a seeing eye and a hearing ear, recognising the vanity of their own pretensions and the worth of that salvation which was presented to them in the church. This serves as a limitation of what Paul says regarding the conversion of “all Israel,” Romans 11:26; shews that thereby the remaining of a sediment behind, the continuance of a synagogue of Satan even to the last, is not excluded. Nor indeed could it be otherwise, unless one were to give up human freedom, and fall into the unscriptural doctrine of the restoration. Just as the present: I give, connecting itself with the time then being, refers to a purpose presently fulfilled, so: I will make, points to the execution as what was to take place in the future. That we are not to overlook the distinction of the three tenses, is obvious from the corresponding thrice Behold. This second half of the verse rests upon Isaiah 60:14, “And there come bending to thee the sons of thy oppressors, and all thy despisers throw themselves down at the soles of thy feet; and they call thee the city of the Lord, Zion of the holy Israel.” The reason of such lowly prostration there, and hence also here, may be learned, not only from the name by which they called her, but also from Isaiah 45:14, “And they shall throw themselves down before thee, shall supplicate to thee: only in thee is God, and there is no God besides.” They prostrate themselves before the church, because they acknowledge that the Lord is in the midst of her, that in her is the only source of salvation, and in connection with her the only true blessing. We are led here also to the same result by the words, “and know that I have loved thee,” and hence that only in fellowship with thee there is salvation for those who now think thee excluded from the kingdom of God. The Jews were wont to refer those old promises to the synagogue; but a good part of them, as many as were ordained to salvation, would acknowledge that they belonged to the church. They shall therefore renounce the claim of homage from others, and come themselves willingly and cheerfully to do homage. But why should we be troubled at the scornful pride of those of whom we know that they are soon to be found lying at our feet? We must not complain, that in regard to the fulfilment of the prophecy we are left without the light of history. As most of the blessings of Jacob in Genesis 49 and of Moses in Deuteronomy 33, which have respect to the particular tribes only in so far as they were part of the whole people, so what is written here is only an application of what belongs to the whole Christian church, to a particular section of it. The fulfilment would have taken place, even if in Philadelphia itself there had been no remarkable transition from Judaism to Christianity. What belongs to the whole is shared in also by the part. That the church of Christ is the true church of the Lord, has been proved to be the case by the attractive power she has exerted over the members of the synagogue, while Judaism has lost all attractive influence since the period of Christ’s appearance. We are to regard the thought, As surely as I am the holy, I am also the true, as pervading the whole verse. On this solid foundation the promise is raised. Revelation 3:10. Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the world, to tempt those that dwell upon the earth. Bengel: “This is spoken to the heart! So can the Lord Jesus single out his own. When it goes hardest with the world, it shall be the best with them. Noah in his ark was borne softly through the waters, when all the world besides were engulphed around and beneath him.” The word of Christ’s patience, according to the common view, must be the whole range of Christian doctrine. So De Wette, “The word, which partly from its subject and spirit, and partly on account of the duty of confessing and obeying it, demands stedfastness such as is peculiar to me and my people.” But the unnaturalness of this exposition is written on its very front. The word, which among many other things requires also patience, cannot be simply described as the word of patience. Far more natural is the explanation, which refers it to certain declarations of Christ, which enjoin patience and stedfastness. This is the rather to be adopted, as in other parts also of these epistles references occur to particular words of Christ contained in the Gospels, and which is the more natural, as it is Christ here also who himself speaks. For this explanation there are special reasons. As, first, that patience is frequently enjoined in the discourses of Christ, and is strongly inculcated, Luke 21:19, Luke 8:15, and especially the kernel-declaration, “He that continues (has patience) to the end, shall be saved,” Matthew 10:22, Matthew 24:13. Then, again, both here, and in those original passages, patience is described as a preservative against participation in the judgments that threaten the world. He that remains stedfast in his internal separation from the world, and makes no concessions to it, he shall also be separated from it externally, he shall not suffer with it. My patience, that of Christ—comp. “the patience of Jesus Christ” in ch. Revelation 1:9.[Note: The μου here serves to confirm the reading there ἸησοῦΧριστοῦ ?, and shows the ἐνἸησοῦ ? to be a gloss.]In the passages alluded to the subject discoursed of is specifically Christian patience. In Luke 21:19, for example, the patience meant is stedfastness in bearing hatred and persecution for the name of Christ This is what shall secure deliverance from the judgments which shall come upon an ungodly world. In the keeping or preserving the idea of deliverance is included. And from this is explained the: I will keep thee (exempting or delivering thee) out of, etc.[Note: The τηρεῖν with ἐκ only here and John 17:15, where, on account of the preceding ἐκ, we can hardly translate the ἐκ by from. An explanation is given by John 12:27 : Πάτερ, σῶσόνμεἐκτῆςὥραςταύτης. The τηρεῖν is used in the Gospel of John at once of the conservative activity of believers, and of what corresponds thereto, the conservative activity of God and Christ.]What is more exactly intended by the keeping is to be understood from Revelation 3:7. According to the fuller explication there given it is of a double sort—consisting in the protection which the Lord causes to be extended to his faithful people amid the plagues that fall upon the earth, after the example of the preservation given to Israel amid the plagues that desolated Egypt; and in the enjoyment of the future inheritance of glory. Scripture usually speaks of temptations only in respect to believers, because only in their case can there be found a proper proving, so that the matter may turn out either one way or another; whereas in respect to the world, which has but one impelling principle, the result is certain from the first. Yet the idea of temptation is not on this account to be understood as having no reference whatever to the world. For it is of importance that even what may be understood of itself should be brought clearly to view, because so many are disposed to deceive themselves in regard to it, and suppose that still some other result may be attained than what is grounded in the nature of things. In Deuteronomy 4:34 the Egyptian plagues are described as temptations. So also in Deuteronomy 7:19, Deuteronomy 29:3. (Michaelis: Deus enim experiri voluit plagis suis, vellentue persistere in impietate necne.) The result of this trial stands written in ch. Revelation 9:20, Revelation 16:11-21; they did not repent of their deeds, they blasphemed God on account of the plagues, etc. While with believers the proving renders manifest their faith and love, it only serves with worldly people to bring to light their impenitence and hardness of heart, and the whole abyss of their perdition becomes naked and open to view. The “whole world,” and “the inhabitants of the earth,” do not of themselves indicate the non-Christian part of its people, but only in the present connection, since the Christians are to be kept out of the temptation. For we have not here a separate promise for Philadelphia, but, as is shown by ch. 7, and also by Revelation 3:9, only an individual application of what is of force throughout the whole Christian church; rendered prominent here, because the church of Philadelphia had to suffer very much for the sake of Christ, and stood especially in need of consolation. Christ sets before his people the alternative, either to suffer from the world, or to suffer with the world. Whosoever would have himself exempted from the one, he must certainly fall under the other. But he that willingly and cheerfully undergoes the former, has a refuge from the latter. The heart and centre of the whole world at that time was formed of the Roman empire, of which we must mainly (though not at all exclusively) think, on this account alone, because from it primarily proceeded the transgression, which had to be visited by the temptation; and also because it was there the Christian church, which was to be delivered from the temptation, had its seat. Some expositors entirely fail, under the temptation, to think of a Christian persecution. Revelation 3:11. Behold I come quickly. Hold what thou hast, that no one take thy crown. Bengel: “For this overseer a crown was prepared and exhibited, as if it was said: This crown belongs to N., the angel of the church at Philadelphia, and if he but perseveres, no one can take it from him. If we only are careful in respect to that which God has intrusted to us, we need not be solicitous about that which remains for us with him. Whoever has anything let him think on this word, Hold what thou hast.” The Lord comes primarily in the judgments that are executed on this world, which in Revelation 3:10 were announced in the plan (it is from its connection with Revelation 3:10 that the “ I come quickly” here receives its more precise determination), and more at large in the vision of the seven seals—comp. ch. Revelation 6:2. The word: I come quickly, is applicable to all times. Where sin is, and hostility toward the church of the Lord, there also the Lord is near. On the expression, “Hold what thou hast,” comp. ch. Revelation 2:25, “Hold what ye have, till I come.” The crown is the crown of life in ch. Revelation 2:10, the eternal blessedness, which the chosen already possess in faith, and which God faithfully keeps for them, that he may bring it forth to them in his time. This crown is not actually bestowed on them before the coming of the Lord, but it may before that period at any time be lost. Jews and heathen may rob us of it, if we are not on our guard. But, oh! who would be afraid of these, and out of regard to them deny his faith, when he knows how soon their day is coming! The more difficult they make it for us, the nearer the day is, and the more foolish would it be to yield to them, in order first to be judged with them, and then to be despoiled of our crown. The mention of the crown naturally leads to the concluding promise. Revelation 3:12. He that overcomes, him will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall not go out any more. And I will write upon him the name of my God, and the name of the New Jerusalem, the city of my God, that comes down from heaven from my God, and my name the new. On the temple as a figurative designation of the church, comp. in ch. Revelation 11:1. Here the temple can only be the church triumphant. For, the concluding promises to the churches refer always to that future existence, and here in the second promise it is the New Jerusalem that is discoursed of, in contrast to the Old Jerusalem, the militant church. That we are not to think alone of the regeneration, Matthew 19:28, the church on the glorified earth, that it rather points to the state of final blessedness in heaven, appears from ch. Revelation 7:15. This alone might be understood, with Bengel, according to ch. Revelation 21:22. However, it is more simple to say, that the discourse there is of a common material temple, and only this is denied to have a place in the new Jerusalem. For the temple here is manifestly contemplated as one perpetually abiding, and must consequently denote the triumphant Christian church in its two states of existence, which in the Apocalypse are constantly represented as an internally united whole. That by the pillar only one thing is brought into view, the unchangeable stability, is made perfectly plain by the explanatory clause, which excludes all doubt, “and shall no more go out.” Those who have sought to find more in the image, have not considered, that it is spoken not of some peculiarly distinguished Christians, but of Christians generally (for to be a conqueror and to be a Christian is the same thing); also, that in the second promise a simple participation in the kingdom of glory is what is certified; and that the concluding promises generally unfold only what is common to all Christians, eternal blessedness. Substantially what is said in John 8:35, coincides with the promise before us, “The servant does not remain in the house for ever (the spiritual house, the church), the Son remains for ever.” The expression, “my God,” occurs in the verse four times, no doubt intentionally—perhaps, with a respect to the four letters in the name Jehovah, which must now be disclosed in its whole depth to the elect. Upon him, upon the conqueror, not upon the pillar. For the latter was no longer the subject of discourse in the immediately preceding context; the not going out, only suits the conqueror, not at all the pillar; and in ch. Revelation 14:1 the chosen have the name of Christ and the name of the Father written on their foreheads. That the chosen are distinguished by the name of the Father, points to this, that the most high God is over them, that they dwell as his dear property, ch. Revelation 7:15. That they bear the name of the New Jerusalem (comp. on ch. Revelation 21:2), characterizes them as its citizens. That Christ’s new name is also written on them, which, according to ch. Revelation 19:16, runs, “King of kings and Lord of lords,” imports that they must be received into fellowship with the new state, which is marked by the new name, that they shall “reign with him for ever,” Revelation 22:5. Revelation 3:13. He that has an ear let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. The Epistle to the Angelof the Church in Laodicea (Ch. Revelation 3:14-22) The angel of the church at Laodicea, and this church itself, for which Paul had fought a great fight (Colossians 2:1, Colossians 4:15, ss.), had become lukewarm, blind and naked. In their own imagination they were the foremost, but in reality they were the farthest from salvation. Instead of what they vainly conceived themselves to be, there must be repentance. Thus alone can they find life and full satisfaction here by intimate fellowship with Christ, and hereafter participate in the glory, which awaits the true confessor. Would they but have a hearing hear for the great secrets, which only God’s Spirit can disclose, and out of regard to these suffer themselves to be drawn to repentance! Revelation 3:15. I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot. I would that thou wert cold or hot! Coldness here is the love produced by self, heat that which is kindled by the fire of the Holy Spirit’—comp. Luke 12:49, Acts 2:2-4, Romans 5:5. The latter is called in the Song the flame of the Lord. Son 8:6, “Its glow is fiery and a flame of the Lord, so that even many waters cannot quench love, nor can the floods drown it.” It may seem extraordinary that the coldness is here placed higher than what stands mid-way between it and the being hot, lukewarmness. According to the common threefold division of the praise and blame, the not being cold appears also as a reproach. And what is still more, it is the wish that the angel at Laodicea would be either cold or hot, which is expressed. With the common remarks, “thou shouldst then be more easily brought right,” or that the “I would” should not be taken too stringently, etc., we plainly cannot be satisfied. One always conceives a considerable amount of one-sidedness to cleave to the matter when so represented. Out of the coldness, apart from fellowship with Christ, one may, on applying himself generally to Christ, become a lukewarm person. The lukewarm in the church of the Old Testament were the Pharisees. But the Lord could never have given utterance to the wish that the Pharisees would become Sadducees. There is only one solution of the difficulty. The Lord speaks here only of the condition of those who stand in a relation to himself. In regard to others the word in 1 Corinthians 5:12 holds good. So that we can only think of being cold in such a manner, as has connected with it the painful consciousness that one is cold, a hearty desire to become hot. To the saying: Blessed are they who are poor in spirit, this: Blessed are they who in their own feeling are cold in spirit, goes hand in hand. In order to become warm, one must first have been cold; and even if one has become warm, the being cold still does not lose its signification; every advance is conditioned by the being cold, and proceeds in exact proportion to it. In a manner similar to the being cold here, the being blind occurs in John 9:41, “Were ye blind (q.d. did ye but feel yourselves blind) ye should have no sin; but now ye say, We see, therefore your sin remains.” Accordingly, the being cold is an absolutely preferable state to the being lukewarm. The latter is also not to be tolerated as a transition-state. It does not, like the being cold, lie on the path of a healthful development, but is degeneracy, sickness, in many cases a sickness to death. Where the work of salvation proceeds, there a direct transition to warmth is never experienced, but the first stage is always that of coldness. Would that thou wert cold, the Lord is also saying to our Laodicean age! Were it but come to that, the warmth would soon appear of itself. Revelation 3:16. But because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Lukewarm water provokes to spuing. There is nothing more common than for lukewarmness to be cast as a reproach against others by those who are lukewarm in the truth themselves. How many of the orthodox in the seventeenth century acted so! But it not rarely happens with anxious minds, that they regard themselves as lukewarm without actually being so. “One must not always,” Bengel remarks, “estimate what they have of the heat of life by their own feelings. A person in a state of bodily health may have a lively heat or warmth in his body, and be himself unconscious of it, while another, who takes him by the hand, readily perceives it. So in spiritual things one, who is accustomed to spiritual ardour, may be without much sensibility, such as may appear somewhat strange and wonderful to another of little experience in the divine life. It belongs also to the fundamental constitution of the soul, that when it burns with a fervent zeal for God, the fire within shall never say: It is enough.” Revelation 3:17. Because thou sayest, I am rich and have enriched myself and need nothing; and knowest not, that thou art wretched and miserable, poor, blind, and naked. The accusation of lukewarmness has its ground here. We are not to take this verse as a premiss, and Revelation 3:18 as a conclusion: Because thou sayest, etc., therefore I advise thee. For so long a premiss does not suit the excited character, which belongs to the discourse here. And the kind of periodical diction in question is ill-suited in general to the Hebraistic style of the Apocalypse. A view is given here of lukewarmness, which is full of consolation for humble and vexed souls. The severe judgment of the Lord against it has not respect to wants and weaknesses in themselves, toward which the Lord manifests infinite compassion; it has respect to them only in connection with a high-minded conceit, a state of self-satisfaction, the want of any sensible convictions of sin, or of earnest desires after pardon and sanctification. The palpable contrast between imaginary riches and actual poverty requires, that the riches should lie on the same territory that the poverty does, that it must be spiritual riches which are meant—comp. 1 Corinthians 1:5, 1 Corinthians 4:8, 2 Corinthians 8:9. The comparison of the original passage, Hosea 12:8, “Ephraim says, I have become rich, and have found substance,” shews, that there is no substantial difference between the two expressions.” I have become rich” and “I have enriched myself.” Only by varying the words the idea of great wealth is expressed. It is possible, that the Laodiceans had low ideas of the calling of Christians, and so regarded the most miserable attainments as splendid riches. But it is also possible (and this is much more probable from the existing position of the Christian church), that they could point to showy virtues. How one can have and do everything, and still be lukewarm, appears from the example of the Pharisees, to whose “I thank thee, etc.,” the Laodiceans responded, and received also along with them the condemnation of heaven, “Ye are they who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your heart;” see also 1 Corinthians 13:1, ss. The three actual wants correspond to the three imaginary distinctions. But beforehand the whole condition of the Laodiceans is condensed into the, par excellence, “wretched and miserable.” The reproach of blindness, comp. Matthew 15:14, Matthew 23:26, shews, that the Laodiceans were disposed to pride themselves also on their knowledge. But while they undertook to search the depths of Godhead, and dreamt of the treasures of knowledge, as it appears also from the epistle to the Colossians, that a tendency existed at a very early period among the Christians in that region to pretend to a higher knowledge, they could not see what lay immediately before their eyes, did not at all know themselves, imagined themselves to be superlatively rich, though they actually were in a state of beggary. Revelation 3:18. I counsel thee, to buy of me gold, that has been purified in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white clothing, that thou mayest put on, and that the shame of thy nakedness may not appear; and eye-salve, to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see. The buying is from Isaiah 55:1. The merchandise consists in giving up the imagination of their own excellence, of the already accomplished aim, which had not attained to a knowledge of the coldness, and therefore could not come to a possession of the warmth, in having a heartfelt desire, zealous endeavours, fighting and striving, and all with the conviction, that in one’s own strength nothing is done. The gold, which is purified with fire, signifies tried faith. This is also in 1 Peter 1:7 compared with gold, that has been purified in the fire; and the former explanation is to be obtained by viewing it in connection with that passage—comp also James 1:3, where likewise faith appears as an object for trial and purification. We are not to think of the riches, which may be found in the service of the Redeemer, nor generally upon any objective spiritual good; for that the discourse is of a subjective property is plain from the expression: purified in the fire. It was in faith, too, that the Laodiceans placed the chief part of their imaginary wealth. But their faith was not of such a kind, as that it could go through a period of trial. It was rather a faith of the fancy than a heart-faith. The white garments are the Christian virtues, which can only be found in fellowship with Christ—comp on Revelation 3:4. The third thing is true spiritual knowledge, as contrasted with a superficial show-knowledge. The eye-salve is the illuminating grace of the Holy Spirit. Revelation 3:19. Whomsoever I love, them I rebuke and chasten: be zealous, therefore, and repent. In these words, says Bengel, “the penetrating force of the preceding address is represented, yet not quite immediately, only after it had wrought its necessary effect.” The contrast between the former and the present times is shown by the remark of De Wette, “The blame and the threatening are not meant in so bad a sense, as is evident from the loving affectionate exhortation;” whereas the older expositors point with one consent to the greatness of the longsuffering and goodness of God and Christ that here displays itself toward sinners. They speak of these being manifested now under the New Testament, just as formerly they had waited in the days of Noah (1 Peter 3:20), if by any means a better feeling might be awakened in the minds of sinners; while still they unfold the truth that it is just love, which holds out in prospect a terrible condemnation for those who will not be brought to repentance through the reformatory discipline. It may certainly be gathered from the “whom I love,” that Laodicea had still not reached the last step.[Note: Vitringa: “That church wan therefore still in some respect loved by the Lord. He desired to preserve it as loved, not to destroy it as reprobate,” etc.] But this indeed is presupposed by the fact, that its candlestick had not yet been removed from its place. Allusion is made to Proverbs 3:11-12, “My son, despise not the chastening of the Lord, and be not impatient of his correction; for whom the Lord loves he corrects, and as a father the son, in whom he delights.” This passage is also quoted in Hebrews 12:5-6. We can the less regard the coincidence with it here as accidental, as in what immediately follows there is also a reference to the writings of Solomon. The words: Be zealous and repent, are not placed in a sort of reverse order. For repentance is not a mere insight into one’s poverty and nakedness, but a change of mind, a transition from lukewarmness through coldness to the fervent zeal of love. The call to repent, added to the exhortation to be zealous, implies that Laodicea could attain to true zeal only by undergoing an entire change of mind. Revelation 3:20. Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any one hear my voice and open the door, I will go into him, and sup with him, and he with me. The first part of the verse alludes to the Son 5:2, “I sleep, but my heart wakes. There is the voice of my beloved who knocks: Open to me my beloved, my sister, my dove, my undefiled.” The reference does not lie merely in the particular words. The spiritual state of the person addressed is the same in both passages. The bride is between sleeping and waking, incertum vigilans (comp. Revelation 3:2), corresponding to the state of lukewarmness here: she cannot at first overcome her slumbering inactivity, and delays to let the bridegroom in. This mere allusion to the commencement calls up before the trembling soul all that follows; how repentance seizes her, and she would then open to the bridegroom, while he meanwhile has gone away: “I sought him but 1 found him not, I called, but he answered not;” how she hied after him, and was beaten by the watchmen. The grief of a soul, that has driven the Lord from it, could not be more graphically exhibited than it is there. The second member of the verse, as well as the first, points to the Song. There the supper is spoken of which the Lord will hold with the soul and it with him. Immediately before the passage of Canticles just referred to, in Son 4:16, the bride speaks to the bridegroom, “Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits;” and the bridegroom says in Son 5:1, “I am come into my garden, my sister, my spouse; I break my myrrh together with roots; I eat my honey with my comb; I drink my wine with my milk.” This is the foundation for the saying here, “I will sup with him.” In the Song, Son 2:3, the bride says, “As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so is my beloved among the sons. I sit under his shadow, which I desired, and his fruit is sweet to my taste.” This is the foundation for the other clause, “and he with me.” In what the supper consists, which the bride prepares for the bridegroom, and he again for her, is rendered plain by the Epiphonem of the sacred bard, with which the whole piece concludes, that Son 4:16 belongs to, and after which we find the commencement of a new part at Son 5:2, presenting Sulamith to our view in another and less joyful situation: “Eat, O friends, and drink, and be drunk of love.” It is love, to the enjoyment of which the bride invites the bridegroom, and which she enjoys again of him. We have substantially the same thing as this mutual supping between Christ and the believer in John 14:21, “He that loveth me, shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and manifest myself to him.” This passage and that of Joh 14:23, “He that loveth me, will keep my works, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him,” stand in the closest relation to the one before us, though of such a kind, that we cannot think of imitation. They, too, in their tender sympathy, in their sweet and affectionate tone, point back to the Song. Aversion to that portion of Scripture, however, has led some to deny that there is here any reference to it. The objection is urged, that no references are anywhere else to be found in the New Testament to Canticles. But it is enough to point in reply to John 7:38, “He that believeth on me, as the Scripture says, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” The reference is to Son 4:15, where the bride is called “a garden-spring, a well of living waters, and they flow from Lebanon;” comp. Son 4:12, where she is called “a spring shut up, a fountain sealed.” The belly, which has respect to an Old Testament mode of representing the relation between the Lord and his church, only to be found in Canticles, is from Son 7:3, combined with Son 4:15. Accordingly, whenever we meet with the bride there, we are to think of believers. The formula, with which the Lord quotes the passage, “as the Scripture says,” should be heard as the cry, “Put off your shoes, for it is holy ground,” by those who are yet incapable of understanding the book, or even abuse it to improper purposes. To that Song our Lord farther refers in Matthew 9:15, when he compares himself to the bridegroom; and likewise in the parable of the bridegroom and the ten virgins. John the Baptist points to it in John 3:29, and Paul in 2 Corinthians 11:1, Ephesians 5:27, comp. with Son 4:7, “Thou art altogether beautiful, my beloved, and there is no blemish in thee.” There are other parts of this book also, which refer to the Song; the bride in ch. Revelation 22:17, Revelation 21:2; Revelation 21:9, the marriage supper of the Lamb in ch. 19. And it confirms the reference to the Song here, that the passage, Son 4:15, which is quoted by our Lord in the Gospel of John, that of Son 4:16, which forms the ground for “I will sup with him,” and Son 5:2, on which the clause, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” rests, are all quite contiguous to each other. The Lord stands at the door for every one who belongs to the number of his people, and has not yet committed the sin against the Holy Ghost; he did so even for Judas the traitor up to the moment when Satan entered into him, so that there is no occasion for the remark of De Wette, “If he still stood so near to them, their state could not have been so very perilous.’’ The more perilous the state was (if only it was not absolutely hopeless), the more must the Lord have stood at the door, and knocked the more loudly. The knocking, with which we are to associate calling, because this among the ancients was commonly connected with knocking, unless we may take the knocking itself as a symbolical calling, which, perhaps, is the simpler way:This knocking is accomplished in various ways, by the word of God, and by the providences which stir emotions in the soul. Here it is done more immediately by this epistle. In the promise respect is not had to what may be experienced in a future state of being, which is first brought into view in the following verse; but, as appears also from the parallel passages of the Gospel, to a relation to Christ, which may exist even in this troublous world, and with all true believers is found to be as a heaven upon earth, and that a light illuminates their darkness. Revelation 3:21. He that overcomes, to him will I give to sit with me on my throne; as 1 have overcome and have sitten down with my Father on his throne; Revelation 3:22. He that has an ear let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. When Christ’s people have continued stedfast in the conflict against all temptations, he will receive them at last into the participation of his dominion, and triumph over all hostile powers, and they shall see lying prostrate under their feet all that afflicted them with pain and trouble during the course of their present life. Comp. on ch. Revelation 1:9, Revelation 2:26-28; and in regard to the words, “as I have overcome,” etc., ch. Revelation 5:5, Revelation 7:17, Revelation 22:1, Philippians 2:9, Hebrews 12:2. THE SEVEN SEALS The seer is snatched up to heaven, and sees there a holy assemblage, in which all points to the judgment, which, for the benefit of his sorely oppressed church, the Lord is going to execute upon the ungodly world, ch. 4. What the whole scene was of itself fitted to suggest is then brought clearly out in ch. 5, where a book with seven seals is delivered to Christ for the purpose of being opened, containing the judgments to be inflicted on the world. This opening follows, and the judgments- one after another become manifest in ch. 6 and in ch. Revelation 8:1. Ch. 7 forms an intermediate episode, in which is represented the preservation of the faithful in the midst of the judgments which alight on the world. Revelation 4:2. And immediately I was in the Spirit, and behold a throne lay in heaven, and upon the throne one sat. The expression: I was in the Spirit, is purposely a literal agreement with ch. Revelation 1:10, in order to intimate, that here the second vision begins. Bengel: “He was at once lifted above all that is natural and placed amid divine things, had his whole soul filled, illuminated, and occupied by these.” By his being in the Spirit, is marked his complete entrance upon the state of ecstacy. Without some previous partial experience of this state, John could not have seen the door that was opened in heaven. Züllig’s exposition: “And presently I was [there, in heaven] in a sort of ecstacy, my spirit was snatched up thither, while my body remained upon earth,” deserves no refutation. Bengel improperly remarks on being in the Spirit, “this extends to all the seals, trumpets, and vials.” This vision does not extend beyond the seven seals. A quite new series begins with ch. Revelation 8:2. We have here not a representation of the usual heavenly state, but an assembly of counsel and judgment, in which a decision is come to regarding the ungodly world. To this view we are led by ch. 5, according to which all turns on the opening of the book with the seven seals, which has respect to the punishment of the world, for its enmity to God. To the same conclusion points also the representation given in this chapter of the scene itself; all the traits have at once a threatening and a consolatory character, are adapted to frighten the persecutors, to raise the persecuted to a joyful hope; they perfectly accord with the humour of John, as one who was in the isle that is called Patmos, for the word of God and testimony of Jesus Christ, and of the companions in tribulation for whom he wrote. Representations of similar councils of judgment are to be found in 1 Kings 22:19, Isaiah 6, Daniel 7:9, ss., where the thrones were first set. It is not said elsewhere: a throne lay in heaven. The throne did not stand upon the earth, but it rested on the cherubim, which, according to Revelation 4:6, were in the midst of the throne.[Note: That to lay is used here simply for standing, cannot be proved from Jeremiah 24:1, LXX., John 2:6; John 19:29. For what holds of baskets and vessels does not hold of a throne with feet.]On the words: upon the throne one sat, Bengel remarks, “That it is the Father, whose majesty here shines forth on the throne, is sufficiently clear from this consideration, that here as elsewhere, he is distinguished from the Lamb, and from the seven Spirits, as we read in Revelation 4:5 of this chapter, and in ch. Revelation 5:13. The kingdom is originally the Father’s, and remains his. For, Christ sits on the Father’s throne, ch. Revelation 3:21, on the right hand of the Almighty Father.” it is otherwise in Ezekiel. There one sat upon the throne, who resembled the Son of man. He does not distinguish between the Father and the Son, or the Father makes himself known in the Son. But Daniel 7:13 is similar, as there one like the Son of man comes to the Ancient of days in the clouds of heaven. That the name of the person sitting is not given, is not to be explained with Herder, from his glory being such as to transcend all description (“the soul has no image to name him, language no word”), but simply because here only what was seen is described. In Ezekiel too, in Ezekiel 1:4-27, for a like reason no name is given. Both hearer and reader must supply it. Revelation 4:3. And he that sat was to look upon like a jasper and sardius stone; and a rainbow was round about the throne in sight like to an emerald. It is God’s infinite glory that is here displayed, his grace toward the church, his punitive righteousness; all properties, which at the present stage come forth into action, and are fitted to inspire with courage the fainting souls of believers. The punitive righteousness presages destruction to the enemies of the church; the compassionate grace promises deliverance to the church; the holiness takes from those who stand under grace, all despondency, all hope from those who stand under wrath. As in the rainbow the colour of the precious stone was doubtless indicated, so is it also in respect to the jasper and the sardius. And according to the fundamental and parallel passages, afterwards to be noticed, which have this also in common with the one before us, that they describe an appearing of the Lord for judgment, we may reasonably expect that the two precious stones represent two different properties of God. Now the jasper is of diverse colours. But what sort the seer had in view is plain from the addition, “clear as crystal” in the later passage, ch. Revelation 21:11. According to Revelation 21:23 of that chapter, the light of the city, which by Revelation 21:11 was like a crystal-clear jasper, “the most precious stone,” (the first foundation stone in Revelation 21:19 is a jasper), is the glory of the Lord, his essential nature, the kernel of his personality, which, according to ch. Revelation 4:8, is his holiness, not in the doctrinal, but the scriptural sense. Comp. also ch. Revelation 22:5. It is this which is represented here by the jasper. By σαρδιόςLXX. render the Heb. ΰγν, the etymology of which already points to the red colour. The sardius, or carnelian, is “red, as red flesh, dark-red, tile-red, clay-red.” Orpheus, de lapid. xvi. 5, speaks of the “blood-coloured sardius;” and Epiphanius says, “it is of a fiery red appearance and blood-like,” (ἐστιδὲπυρωπὸςτῶ ?ͅεἰδεικαὶαἱματοειδής).That the sardius is here employed to represent the punitive righteousness of God, his anger, cannot be doubted when we look at the fundamental and parallel passages. The red colour, according to Meyer in his Hesperides, is “the light in its internal expansion, light in warmth, light in love or its opposite, anger. It must be stimulated by an object in order to appear so, and its appearance is its conquering.” One might take the red here as the colour of blood, in the shedding of which the punitive righteousness of God manifests its energy, comp. Revelation 6:4, Revelation 12:3, Revelation 17:3, Isaiah 63:1-2. But it is better to take it as the colour of fire. For the fire of the divine anger suits admirably to the radiating light of the divine holiness; and then fire is quite a standing image in Scripture of the divine anger, and as such is employed particularly in the original passages of Ezekiel and the parallel passages of the Pentateuch. These passages we must come to consider more closely. In Ezekiel 1:4 it is said, in the description there given of the threatening and judgment-looking appearance of the Lord: “And I looked, and behold a whirlwind came from the north, a great cloud, and complicated fire and brightness to it (the cloud) round about (from the fire shining through), and out of the midst of it to look upon as chasmal, out of the midst of the fire.” The chasmal denotes here the kernel of the personality, the holiness. That it betokens something of the brightest splendour there can be no doubt from the ζαψ, light-lustre, which is put by the prophet as parallel to it in Ezekiel 8:2. The LXX. render it by electrum, a metal distinguished by its brightness, and composed of gold mixed with a fifth part of silver.[Note: This Chasmal is different from Nehoschet Kalal. The three times it is used it is applied to the person who was throned upon the cherubim. It is on no account to be supposed that the feet of the beasts were so exhibited as if they were an immediate image of the person who was enthroned on the cherubim.]In Ezekiel 1:27 it is said: “And I beheld, and it was as chasmal, as the look of fire, that was enclosed round about (comp. Genesis 15:17, like devouring fire); from the loins upwards (he was like chasmal) and from the loins downwards I saw as the appearance of fire.” At Ezekiel 8:2, “And I beheld, and lo! there was the appearance as fire, from his loins downwards he was of the appearance of fire, and from his loins upwards he was to look upon as light-splendour, as the look of chasmal.” The meaning of the last passage is excellently given by Zόllig, “Below, toward the earth, the person on the throne appeared to me in the glowing ire of his function as judge and avenger, above in the pure splendour of his calm, untroubled, heavenly majesty.” The fire is placed in the front of the description, because the main object was to present an image of God’s anger toward Jerusalem; comp. Deuteronomy 4:24,”For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, a jealous God,” Deuteronomy 9:3, and the remarks on fire as a symbol of the anger of God on Psalms 50:3. In Daniel 7:9-10, the garments of the Ancient of days were white as snow, and the hair of his head as pure wool; his throne was a flame of fire, and his wheels burning fire, a stream of fire went forth from him. The majesty and holiness there indicated hy the clear brightness is not less appalling to the guilty than fire. It takes from the enemies of the church all hope of escaping the fire. In the Revelation 1:14 we find the head and hair white as white wool, as snow, but the eyes like flames of fire, and the feet like burning metal. In Revelation 10:1 the countenance is like the sun, the feet like pillars of fire. From these original and parallel passages it is also to be supposed that the colours of the two precious stones did not intermingle with each other through the whole appearance, but that they respectively belonged to different parts of it. The rainbow round about the throne—in respect to which Bengel says, “Not the head merely of him who sat upon the throne, but the throne itself, in its whole height and breadth, was surrounded by it—indicates that the judgment was to be an act of grace for the church. The “round about the throne” is not said without meaning in respect to the rainbow and the seats of the four and twenty elders. These, the symbol of the church, are to be understood as enclosed in the circle, so that the church is represented as the object of the tender grace of God. The fundamental passage for this here and ch. Revelation 10:1, where the rainbow appears on the head of the angel, is Ezekiel 1:27-28. There, around about the manifestation, which was radiant with the glowing brightness of fire, was a splendour; “as the appearance of the rainbow which is in the cloud in the day of rain, so is the appearance of the brightness round about.” The truth symbolized is given thus by Grotius, “However strict the divine judgment may be, it still will not destroy the remembrance of the covenant made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Isaiah 54:10 may serve as a commentary, “For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” But the rainbow is not the symbol of grace generally; it is the symbol of grace returning after wrath. This is indicated in Ezekiel by the cloud; comp. the “great cloud” in Ezekiel 1:4 and Revelation 10:1. Lange, in his Vermischten Schr. i. p. 5, says excellently, “The rainbow is the coloured reflection of the sun breaking forth upon the dark cloud as it withdraws, the triumph of the sun over the floods; the brightness of the sun, of fire, of light, imprinted, as it were, on the cloud itself in token of its subjection.” Accordingly, we are to suppose that the colour of the emerald, the green, is here named, not as the only one, but as that which predominated. This is even self-evident. For a simply green rainbow would be no rainbow at all. Bengel remarks, “Green is of all colours the most agreeable. If other things have made the eyes weak and tender, we find them refreshed by turning them on the green. The colours of white and red affect the vision much more, and if we hold long before us anything of a fiery red or a shining white, the sight is soon injured; but the green colour is intermediate between the two, and of a chaster description. When God represents himself as the jasper and sardius, he exhibits himself in his holiness and glory, in which respect he is frightful to men. But the green rainbow is a mark of the divine condescension, placability, and forbearance, which prevent us from being injured or consumed by those attributes of God, which are terrible to men. . . . We are not able to fix our eyes on the divine majesty and holiness, they frighten us away; but the friendliness of God allures us and inspires us with an assured confidence. We must present God to our view, not only as he shews himself in some one aspect, but in all that he makes known to us; there will still remain much behind of his infinite perfection. The testimonies which he has disclosed to us respecting himself, we must carefully put together, that we may attain to a complete knowledge, adoration, and service. If we look, for example, to grace alone, we shall soon obtain confidence; but this confidence may speedily in hearts like ours break forth into impiety. But if we have respect also to the majesty and holiness of God, we shall continue in a profound reverence, and our confidence in grace itself shall thereby be increased.” Excellent observations in themselves, but too much overlooking the concrete reference of the vision; not taking into account the circumstance, that everything in it is directed to revive the church’s confidence after having been deluged by the world. To him, for whom the rainbow is adapted, the jasper and sardius are also consolatory; but, on the other hand, the emerald also is terrible to him, for whom it is not Zόllig is inclined to explain “the image of a single-coloured green rainbow as an unnatural one. There should at least have been also yellow and red. For, green, yellow, and red, these are the fundamental colours, out of which are formed the seven well-known shades of the rainbow. But observe, it is precisely these two other colours that we have already found in the jasper and the sardius of the main figure. There can be no doubt, also, that these colours are combined together, and form with each other a composite arch, in such a manner that the green is not to be thought of as divided by a certain space from the main figure, but only as its outermost radiation.” The whole image, then, must consist of a rainbow! The two inner colours give to the seer his image of Jehovah, the outer one the lustrous glory connected with it. But that we are not to think of a one-coloured green rainbow, that only the chief colour is rendered prominent, while the others are still supposed to exist, we have remarked already. But a singular image the rainbow, of him who sits upon the throne! The person sitting there is manifest, and according also to the fundamental passages in Ezekiel and Daniel, he is a person, from whom there issues so bright a splendour, white and red, that only this splendour can be seen. The significance of the rainbow is also overlooked by such a view; it can never be a lustrous glory. Since Genesis 9 it has been unalterably consecrated as a symbol of grace returning after wrath. Revelation 4:4. And round about the throne four and twenty thrones; and sitting on the thrones four and twenty elders, clothed with white garments, and on their heads golden crowns. Bengel: “Here now we have a description of those who are about the Lord. We must here represent to ourselves not a half, but an entirely circular ring. Beside the chief throne, then, four and twenty other thrones with so many elders are appropriately added; but elsewhere the four beasts are nearer than the four and twenty elders, and both nearer than the many angels, ch. Revelation 5:11.” The elders sit round about the throne, within the span of the rainbow. They are mentioned before the fuller description of the throne and of the cherubim, to indicate that the whole assembly has respect to the affairs of the church. Where the representatives of this sit in judgment with God, there only a favourable decision for them can be expected. The beasts are inseparable from the throne itself, which rests upon them; they are not merely round the throne, but also under the throne, according to ch. 6. That the elders are representatives of the church, there can be no question; is quite plain from ch. Revelation 5:8-10, where they hold in their hands golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of saints, and sing a new song and say, “Thou art worthy to take the book and to open its seals, for thou wert slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of all kindreds and tongues and peoples and nations”—a passage which shews that we cannot think of angels. That the four and twenty come into consideration as the double twelve, is rendered probable alone by ch. Revelation 7:4, ss., where the twelve appears as the signature of the church generally, and according to which the twelve tribes of Israel are perpetuated in the church of the New Testament. Now, if we should seek for each of these tribes a double head, in accordance with the two oeconomies, there will very naturally present themselves the twelve patriarchs and the twelve apostles. The same four and twenty we find again in ch. 21. At the gates of the New Jerusalem there stand, according to Revelation 21:12, twelve angels, to which it is added, “and names written, which are the twelve tribes of the children of Israel,” the ideal representatives of the twelve tribes, the shadowy forms, as it were, of the twelve patriarchs. On the twelve foundations of the walls are the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. We meet with the first twelve also in ch. Revelation 12:1 : the woman, the church, has before the birth of Christ a crown of twelve rulers. The second twelve, the twelve apostles, who were manifestly chosen by Christ as the New Testament counterpart to the twelve patriarchs, we obtain from the undeniable reference of Christ to the declaration of our Lord in Matthew, Matthew 19:28, comp. Luke 22:30, “Then shall ye also sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel;” and from Revelation 20:4, where a still more manifest reference to these passages is found, “And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them.” The right view was given by Bossuet, “It is the totality of the saints of the Old and the New Testament, who are here represented by their chiefs and their leaders. Those of the Old appeared in the twelve patriarchs, and those of the new in the twelve apostles. The same totality of saints is represented afterwards in the twelve gates of the holy city, on which were written the names of the twelve tribes; and in the twelve foundations of that city, on which were written the names of the twelve apostles, Revelation 21:12; Revelation 21:14. In a word, one sees in these twenty-four elders the whole church represented in its leaders.” If the apostles formed the one-half of the heavenly senate of the church, the Apocalypse can only have been composed at the close of the apostolic age. According to the common supposition, the number four and twenty here must allude to the four and twenty classes of priests formed by David: the elders must be as it were the family-heads of the heavenly priesthood. But in addition to the separation this would make of the passage from ch. Revelation 12:1, and Revelation 21:12; Revelation 21:14, and the want of any other point of connection in the book, there are strong reasons against the supposition. It is in itself not probable, that the author of the Apocalypse would refer to that purely human arrangement, which never received any special divine sanction. The remark of Zόllig, that “the book hardly ever alludes to anything not biblical,” has a wide application. Farther, although the elders were also priests, yet, appearing as they do here in a judicial scene, in the introduction to the seven seals, which God, in fellowship with his high council, suspends over the world for the good of his church, they are not employed in their proper character, but in a kingly capacity. To this latter points also the sitting on thrones, the bearing of golden crowns, and, as is clear from subsequent statements, the being clothed with white garments, which have been falsely regarded as a mark of the priestly character. In this connection also, where a sitting in judgment is the matter in question, the name elder designates only the governing character, the civic dignity; the elders correspond to the princes, who stood nearest to the throne of the earthly king in Israel, comp. Ezekiel 8:11. Another conjecture, that the twelve number was doubled with respect to the admission of the heathen, must be wrong even on this account, that without any sure foundation it has proceeded from a doubtful suggestion, and runs counter, besides, to a fundamental view of the New Testament, and in particular of the Apocalypse, according to which believers from heathenism do not constitute a second party to those from Israel, but that there is only one Israel, which perpetuates itself in the Christian church, and into which believing heathens were inserted—comp. on ch. Revelation 7:4. Here, therefore, a modern representation has been violently pressed on Scripture. There are two original passages in the Old Testament for the form of representation here adopted. First, Isaiah 24:23, “And the sun blushes and the moon is ashamed, for the Lord reigns, the Lord of hosts, upon Mount Zion, and at Jerusalem, and before his elders (to whom he will impart of his own glory) is honour.” The elders appear there as the ideal representatives of the church in the time of salvation. The difference which Ewald was the first to suggest, that in Isaiah the elders appear on earth, here in heaven, is of little moment. For here also the abode of the elders is only provisionally in heaven. Then, Daniel 7:9-10. There, around the throne of the Ancient of days thrones are placed, the judgment sits, and the books are opened. Commonly it is the angels, who are thought of as being there the assessors of the divine judgment. So still Hδvernick, “The great throne of God is surrounded by a multitude of elevated seats for the higher servants of God, the hosts of the elect ones that are round about him, Isaiah 6, Job 1, Revelation 4.” But everywhere else the angels appear as servants in accordance with their name, and their designation as” ministering spirits sent forth to minister,” in Hebrews 1:14; but never as judges. The passages, Daniel 4:10, Daniel 4:14, to which Maldanat has referred, must not be compared, for they belong to the dream of Nebuchadnezzar, who intermingled his heathenish modes of thought with what was given of God. In Daniel’s explanation nothing is said of the angels.[Note: Ode, de angelis, c 735: Hunc errorem correxisse videtur, Daniel 5:21, ubi illud non vocatur decrctum vigilum, sed Excelsi, sc. Eei.]The right view, that the representatives of the covenant people, as assessors in the judgment held upon the ungodly world, is the idea represented, was recognised even by the ancient Jews.[Note: Tanchumma, fol. 52: Rabbini nostri dicunt: quid hoc est: sellae positae sum? Res pondetur: tempore futuro Deus S. B. sedebit, et angeli dabunt sellas magnatibus Israelis, et illi sedent. Et Deus S. B. sedet cum senioribus tanquam ΰααιϊγιο, priuceps senatus, et judicabunt gentiles.]That the crowns are crowns of kings, is plain, especially from Revelation 4:10, where they cast their crowns before the throne—the kings humble themselves before the King of kings—and also from the connection with the thrones; comp. Matthew 19:28, where the apostles sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. So also as an insigne of royal dignity the crowns occur in ch. Revelation 6:2, Revelation 9:7, Revelation 14:14; comp. Matthew 27:29, John 19:12. White in the Revelation, as in Scripture generally, is the colour of bright splendour, the symbolical shadow of glory. One might Say with perfect truth: white is like holy, but holy only in the sense of Scripture, not that of the current doctrinal theology. We are not to think of simple white, but of a glittering white—the white of light and snow; comp. Matthew 17:2, “And he was transfigured before them, and his face did shine as the sun, and his raiment was white as the light;” Mark 9:3, “And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them;” Luke 9:29, “And as he prayed the fashion of his countenance was altered, and his raiment was white and glistening,” λευκὸςἐξαστράπτων. Besides, Matthew 28:3, Luke 24:4, Acts 1:10, comp. with Acts 10:30. In the Apocalypse, see ch. Revelation 1:14, “His head and his hair were white as white wool, as snow,” and the interchange between white and glittering in ch. Revelation 19:8, and Revelation 15:6, comp. with Revelation 19:14. As the symbolical representation of glory, white is the predominant colour in the manifestation of Christ, Revelation 1:14, Revelation 6:2, Revelation 19:11, the colour of the throne of God, Revelation 20:11, of the angels as the holy ones in the scriptural sense, the exalted and the glorious. We must further take into account the colour of the righteous, especially of the perfect, who shine forth in the splendour of their virtues, Revelation 3:18, Revelation 19:8, Revelation 7:14, and of the glory of God imparted to them, in imitation of that which was imaged forth at the glorification of Christ, and in fulfilment of the saying of Christ, “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of the Father,” comp. Revelation 3:4-5. In the passage before us, it is best to regard both as united, as also in Revelation 7:9. The connection, however, with the thrones and crowns shews that at all events the latter, which are ascribed only to the perfectly righteous, and do not at all belong to persons in this life, decidedly predominates. As the colour of innocence white is never used in Scripture. The purified high-priest receives, in Zechariah 3, instead of his filthy garments, not white but clean ones. In ch. Revelation 7:14 of this book a distinction is made between washing and making white. The four and twenty elders appear also in ch. Revelation 11:16, as co-regents with God: “the four and twenty elders who sit before God on their thrones.” ‘But they are invested with this dignity as the representatives and the highest concentration of the whole church of believers. For of this, as a whole, it is said in ch. Revelation 3:21, “He that overcomes will I give to sit with me in my throne, as I have overcome, and have sitten down with my Father in his throne.” And in ch. Revelation 2:26, “He that overcomes and keeps my works to the end, to him will I give power over the heathen, . . as I have received of my Father.” Where there has come to be a hearty concurrence of will with that of the Sovereign Ruler, there one is received into the partnership of his government of the world, his judgments, his victories. It is the precious privilege of the Christian, that nothing comes to pass which he does not will, every thing that he does will—that he triumphs in God over all hostile powers, and with him rides upon the high places of the earth, and sees the whole world lying under his feet. Revelation 4:5. And from the throne proceed lightnings, and voices, and thunders; and seven torches of fire burn before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God. The lightnings, voices, and thunders are pre-intimations of judgment. That this is to be exercised for the good of the church, is clear from the connection with Revelation 4:3-4. Bengel: “To the saints on earth light and protection are thereby imparted, but to the enemies terror and destruction. The king’s children should not be afraid of what he has in his arsenal.” They are still not the judgment itself, but the matter-of-fact or symbolical announcement of it; as in Exodus 19:16, voices, and lightnings, and thunders were seen and heard on the mount, as an indication beforehand of the awful judgment of God that was sure to overtake the transgressors of the law, insomuch that the people trembled in the camp. So also, in Psalms 97:2-3, before the scene of judgment itself begins, clouds and darkness are round about the Lord, and glowing fire issues from before him; and in Psalms 50:3, a fire devours before him, and all is tempestuous round about him (comp. also Psalms 18:8, and my commentary on these passages). The seven seals are the embodiment of the judgments prefigured here and exhibited to view. In the same annunciatory character are lightnings mentioned in ch. Revelation 8:5; and in ch. Revelation 11:19, Revelation 16:18, they serve as a designation of the judgments actually inflicted. But the lightnings, etc., are everywhere the precursors of the divine judgment, or this itself; never is” the praise of the Almighty in heaven” sounded by them, as Bengel supposes. Nor will the Old Testament fundamental passages suffer us to think of such a meaning. There thunders and lightnings are the standing symbol of God’s manifestations of anger. The voices are constantly put in immediate connection with the thunders, and so indeed as to precede the other. In John 6:1, John 14:2, mention is made of the voice of thunder, and here in ch. Revelation 10:3 the seven thunders utter their voices. All this, together with the Old Testament usage, shews that we must not separate the voices from the thunders, and that we are not with Zόllig to understand by them the inarticulate thunder-claps as contrasted with the audible sounds from heaven. It is best to regard the thunders as the kind, and the voices as the species, which here come more particularly into view. Bengel remarks excellently, “Whoever gives attention to what precedes in the weather, he knows, that thunder sometimes spreads itself far in the clouds, and continues for a considerable time (like the hollow roar of the sea), while sometimes there is a quick, sharp crack, which may more especially be considered as a voice, that merely peals on the ear. Thunder, however, in the proper sense is accompanied also with a shaking. These things are of a frightful nature, and yet at the same time agreeable. Frightful in respect to enemies, agreeable for such as are at one with God, and stand in his grace.” John 12:28-30 may be compared. That the seven torches of fire, which are the seven Spirits of God, are connected as to the things indicated with the lightnings, voices, and thunders, might be inferred alone from the circumstance that the seven in them with the three of the latter together make up ten. They do not mean the Spirit of God in himself. Against that is, not only the plural, but also the expression “before the throne,” here and in Revelation 1:4, where the Seer wishes grace and peace to the church from him who is, and who was, and who comes, and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne. The statement also in ch. Revelation 5:6, that “they are sent upon the whole earth,” is against the view in question. What we are to understand are the operations of God’s Spirit, which is at the same time the Spirit of Christ (ch. Revelation 5:6), and which is united to the Father by essential oneness of being; his operations ad extra, and here indeed more especially as bringing chastisement and destruction. This is indicated by the πύρος, shewing that the discourse is of torches of fire, and fire being in the Apocalypse the standing symbol of God’s anger and judgment, comp. for example Revelation 1:14, Revelation 2:18, Revelation 19:12, Revelation 10:1, Revelation 20:10, Revelation 21:8, Revelation 14:10. In the Old Testament also torches of fire are only mentioned where respect is had to consuming and burning, Zechariah 12:6; Judges 15:4-5; Daniel 10:6. Comp. Revelation 8:10, where mention is made of a great star burning like a torch. This is confirmed by the juxtaposition with lightning and thunder, and the context generally, where every thing bears a frightful character to the world, and hence a consolatory one to the church of God. Thoughts like the following, “They mark the multifariousness of the gifts which are bestowed on the church of the New Testament,” (Vitringa); or, “They stand before the throne, that at the nod of their Master they may communicate themselves to any human spirit,” (Zόllig); or, “God himself makes all clear about him through his Spirit,” (Hoffmann), do not at all suit the connection What follows also leads to the same result. The sea of glass, according to ch. Revelation 15:2, mixed with fire, is the product as it were of the seven burning torches of fire, which are the seven Spirits of God. Even Isaiah in Isaiah 4:4, speaks of the Spirit of judgment and of burning, of the Spirit of God which judges and burns—comp. Malachi 3:3. Revelation 4:6. And before the throne as a sea of glass, like crystal. And in the midst of the throne and roundabout the throne four beasts, full of eyes before and behind. Bengel says, “Mention is made of the seven lamps of fire and of the sea together; and it is said, as respecting that, so also respecting this, very emphatically, before the throne. Afterwards, at ch. Revelation 15:2, there is again the appearance as of a sea of glass; and instead of the seven torches of fire being brought into connection with it, the sea itself is mingled with fire.” We have already remarked that the distinct connection of the torches of fire and the sea together is to be explained from the latter being the product of the former. God by his Spirit brings about the execution of what is right. The import of the sea we apprehend from the song, which in ch. 15 was sung by those who stood on it, and which forms a commentary on the symbol, after the manner of Scripture generally, in which sign and word go together. Accordingly, it denotes the great and wonderful works of God, his righteous and holy ways, his just deeds become manifest. The sea of glass appears there as an antitype to the Red Sea, in which the Seer beheld an image of the great judgment of God. The original passage for the one before us, and for ch. Revelation 15:2, is Psalms 36:7, “Thy judgments are a great flood.” The judgments there are the judicial acts through which God destroys the wicked and aids his people. The comparison with the sea denotes, according to the connection, measurelessness. Against the flood of human wickedness stands the great flood, the broad ocean of the divine judgment (Genesis 7:11, the only other passage where the expression great flood, γαδϊδεν, occurs). The great flood has reference to the deluge, in which the judgment of God appears as in reality a great flood. Twice had the sea served as an embodiment of God’s judgments, which are here described as immeasurable under its image,—at the deluge, to which the fundamental passage refers, and when the Egyptians were drowned in the Red Sea, to which reference is made in ch. 15. The words, “before the throne,” rest on Psalms 89:15, Psalms 97:2, “righteousness and judgment are the foundation of thy throne,” that is, God’s dominion maintains itself on the territory of what is just and righteous. These two passages in the Psalms again, rest on Exodus 24:10, “And they beheld the God of Israel, and under his feet there was like the work of white (clear glittering, comp. on Revelation 4:4) sapphire, and like the heaven itself in purity.” They give an explanation of the symbol there. Upon the fundamental passage and the two passages in the Psalms again rests, Ezekiel 1:22, “And there was on the heads of the beasts something like a cloud, like the look of crystal, terrible (Michaelis: the splendour of which is so great that it blinded the eyes of the spectator), expanded over their heads above.” Above this cloud stands the throne of God, according to Ezekiel 1:26, From this passage we see the import of the crystal here in Ezekiel. It signifies the terribleness (comp. Habakkuk 3:2, “Lord, I heard thy doing, I was afraid”), the awe-inspiring greatness and glory of the divine executions of judgment. Also according to ch. Revelation 22:1, “And he shewed me a stream of water of life, clear as crystal,” it is not the transparency, but the shining clearness of crystal that is brought into consideration (comp. Revelation 21:11). The glass is different from the crystal. That designates the rectitude and purity of the divine judgments—comp. ch. Revelation 21:21, “as transparent glass,” and ch. Revelation 21:18, “like pure glass.” In Exodus 24:10 too there is found a double point, the clear splendour and its purity. To the purity of glass, as indicative of righteousness and truth, corresponds in ch. Revelation 15:3 the righteous and true are thy ways, thou king of saints.” And to the clear and blinding glitter of crystal, as indicative of the frightfulness and glory of the divine acts of judgment, corresponds the “Great and wonderful are thy works, Lord God Almighty. Who would not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name!” It is this also to which respect is had in the present symbol: the measureless character of the divine judgments, their absolute rectitude, their terrible glory—a view, if dreadful to the world, most consolatory to the church, which cannot look enough into this glorious mirror, and in the depths of this sea should lose all its cares, and sorrow, and pain—whole eye should be delivered from its tears, the moment the cloud vanishes which conceals this sea from its view—and whose highest problem it is to keep the eye shut in regard to the sea of the nations, and have it open for this holy sea before the throne of God. (Bossuet: “The sea commonly signifies in Scripture agitation and trouble; but here the idea is changed, and changed by the transparence and the likeness of crystal.”) In the midst of the throne, that is, under it, and round about the throne—since the throne does not quite cover them, and their heads appear from below it[Note: That the Cherubim here do not, us Zόllig supposes, stand merely beside the throne, is clear, not only from the ἐνμέσῳ ? which is violently rendered by him, but also from the ἐ ?́κειτο in Revelation 4:2.—the Seer perceives four beasts; or, more exactly, living creatures, full of eyes behind and before.[Note: Bengel: “Ζῶον and θηρίον essentially differ, φύσειςζώωνκαιθυμοὺςθηρίων, Sap. vii. 20.”]These are the Cherubim, which meet us in the Old Testament, especially in the symbolical forms of the law and in Ezekiel. The signification of this symbol discovers itself from the name here given to the Cherubim. They are called ζῶα, living beings, corresponding to theηιεϊ of Ezekiel. Consequently they are the representation of living beings, of all that is living on the earth. God appears as enthroned above the Cherubim, in order to impress on the minds of those, who stand in awe of him, his absolute supremacy over all that is earthly. When the earthly creature of the church of the Old Covenant became alarmed, it had only to direct its eye to him, who sat enthroned on the Cherubim, and its fear vanished. To this representation of God corresponds the epithet, God of Hosts, Zebaoth, pointing quite as exclusively to the dominion of God over the heavenly powers, as the other to his dominion over the earthly. The God—exclaims here to the Seer and to the church the sight of the Cherubim under the throne—who is preparing to judge the world, is the God of the whole earth, whom all that lives and moves on it obeys, and who can turn all it contains into weapons of vengeance against the apostate. Woe to him, who has this God for his enemy, happy he who has him for his friend! The same object is served in the main by the appearance of God above the Cherubim in Ezekiel, Eze and Ezekiel 10, where God comes to execute judgment on apostate Israel. There, beside the living beings, which are more immediately denoted by the Cherubim, the powers of nature are also symbolized by the wheels beside the Churubim, the import of which is partly explained by Ezekiel 10:13, “the wheels, they were called the whirlwind in my ears,” (comp. Psalms 18:10, where the wind is connected with the cherub, “He rode upon the cherub and did fly, and floated on the wings of the wind,” God comes in the full glory of his being, as the Lord of the beings and powers of nature); and partly also from Ezekiel 10:6, where the fire that was to burn the wicked city Jerusalem, is taken from the midst of the wheels. To the wheels in Ezekiel corresponds in Psalms 148:8, “Fire and hail, snow and vapour, stormy wind, that fulfils his word.” For the refutation of those, who would understand by the Cherubim superior angels, what was advanced by Vitringa is quite sufficient: “These four creatures are throughout this vision connected with the assembly of elders, and are distinguished, not only from the angels, but also from all angels, as is done in ch. Revelation 7:11. In ch. 5 the whole heavenly assembly that was before the throne, is divided into two choruses or classes. The beasts and the elders formed the one chorus, Revelation 4:8, and the angels the other, Revelation 4:11.” Everywhere we find the territory of the Cherubim put in marked separation from that of the angels. The Cherubim never do the service of the malakim or messengers, never do the part of ministering spirits sent forth to minister. Their business is only that of being, first, under the throne of God (of a material supporting we are not to think either here or in Ezekiel), then of symbolizing the truth, that God is the God of the whole earth, the God of the spirits of all flesh, or of praising and glorifying God. This was done, not only here, but also in Ezekiel, when the prophet, Ezekiel 3:12, heard a loud voice saying, “Praised be the glory of the Lord (who now rises up) from his place.” For their existence was a matter-of-fact celebration of God’s praise (comp. the call made on all in heaven and earth to praise God, as bearing on it the marks of God’s glory, in Psalms 148, and the poetical change from the matter-of-fact praise into a verbal one in Psalms 19:2, Psalms 103:21), and he was farther entitled to it for the benefits conferred by him on his creatures upon earth. Finally, in addition to these two functions of the cherubim, they have a part to do in prefiguring the judgments, which are to fall upon the earth, as at the opening of the seals in ch. Revelation 6:1, ss., they call out to the Seer, “Come and see,” and in ch. Revelation 15:7, they stretch out the seven vials to the seven, angels. They come forth here as representatives of the earth, which is to be affected by the divine judgments. That the Cherubim are merely symbolical figures, is manifest from their whole bearing. They have always but a few words to utter. From these functions of the Cherubim, and especially from the circumstance of their being under the throne of God, the God who sits enthroned upon the Cherubim, all such notions are exploded, as that they are the four evangelists, the most eminent teachers of the church (so Vitringa, who labours in vain to dispose of the troublesome fact, that the beasts are nearer the throne than the elders), the office-bearers of the church, etc. These notions, besides being untenable in themselves, are quite unsuitable here, where the object was to impart consolation in the presence of a seemingly omnipotent world, and pledge the certainty of a victory being gained over it; and equally so in Ezekiel, where the object is to dispel the illusions of those, who dreamt they could escape the vengeance of an angry God. So that it were entirely out of date to attempt any revival of them now. That the Cherubim were four, arises from four being the signature of the earth. Bengel already remarks, “Scripture often describes visible nature by the four quarters of the world, Psalms 89:13, and in Revelation also mention is frequently made of the four corners of the earth, ch. Revelation 7:1, Revelation 21:13.” In Psalms 148, of those who must praise the Lord on the land, there are four times four, and four in particular of living creatures, because four is the signature of the earth. We find the same four of living creatures in Genesis 7:21, Genesis 7:23. In Ezekiel the number four has still greater play: the four beasts have each four faces and four wings, Ezekiel 1:6. The beasts are full of eyes before and behind. In the first description of the Cherubim, Ezekiel merely says in Ezekiel 1:18, that the felloes of the wheels connected with the cherub were full of eyes, while in the second description, Ezekiel 10:12, he says in perfect unison with John, “And their whole flesh, and their backs, and their hands and their wings, were full of eyes round about.” The meaning of the eyes we learn from Revelation 5:6, according to which the Lamb has seven eyes, “which are the seven Spirits of God that are sent forth upon the whole earth”—comp. Zechariah 4:10, where the operations of the Lord’s Spirit are set forth tinder the image of the seven eyes of the Lord, which run to and fro in the whole earth. The eye is the organ, and, as such, the corporeal image of the Spirit. The Cherubim being full of eyes indicates, that the whole living creation is inspirited. According to the doctrine of Scripture, all life, not merely the intellectual and spiritual, but the physical also, is of God, the source of life, the God of the spirits of all flesh, Numbers 16:22, Numbers 27:16; Hebrews 12:9; comp. Genesis 1:2, Genesis 2:7; Ecclesiastes 12:7, “The spirit returns to God who gave it;” Psalms 104:29, “When thou hidest thy face, they are frightened, when thou gatherest their breath, they vanish and return to their dust.” The eyes of the Cherubim, considered as symbolical of the powers of God working in creation, contribute to the matter in hand; they serve as an encouragement to the pious, as a source of terror to the wicked. So understood, we can also understand how in Revelation 4:8 there should be a repeated allusion to the eyes in connection with the song of praise by the Cherubim: this song forms a commentary on their being full of eyes, round about and within. The exposition of Bengel and others, by which the eyes denote wisdom and knowledge, is quite erroneous. Revelation 4:7. And the first beast was like a lion, and the second beast was like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man, and the fourth least was like a flying eagle. It is certainly not accidental that the lion and the eagle should begin and close the series, the less so as the order here is different from what we find in Ezekiel. These are the most warlike among the four beasts, therefore the strongest matter-of-fact prophecies of that destruction which was impending over the world; the fittest representatives of that power of God, which here especially comes into view. He who made the lion and the eagle, will also unfold his power of judgment, and rebuke in his dispensations towards his people—comp. in regard to the lion Isaiah 21:8-9, in regard to the eagle here ch. Revelation 8:13. It is worthy of remark, that in the second place, it is not the ox that is mentioned, but the calf, as was the case also in Ezekiel 1:7.[Note: That the μόσχος here denotes the calf, is clear alone from the fundamental passage of Ezekiel, where, ςβμ is the corresponding word. Comp. Psalms 68:30, where the bulls of the princes are set against the calves of the people.]This shows, that where the ox is mentioned in the descriptions of the Cherubim, it is employed only as a representative of cattle generally. Hence the old Jewish saying (Schoettgen, p. 1108), “There are four which take the first place in this world: man among the creatures, the eagle among birds, the ox among cattle, and the lion among wild beasts;” and Bengel’s homologous remark, “The lion is the first among wild beasts, among those that are tame the ox, among all creatures that have a living body man, and the eagle among birds.” Right against those, who instead of considering the individual living beings as representatives merely of their several classes, take them as symbols of the particular manifestations of the fulness of life that is in God (as the ox, for example, according to Bδhr in his Symbolik, I. p. 343, the symbol of creative, or productive power). In that case the calf or young ox could not possibly have been used instead of the ox. This shows, that in the other places also where the ox is put, we are not to think of its productive power. Such a view, besides, loses itself in the territory of mere opinion, while it admits of no doubt that the lion holds the first place in the forest, the eagle among birds (comp. Job 39:27, ss.), the ox or calf among tame animals. To this result we are also led by the designation of “flying” being attached to the eagle. This must refer not to the act of flying, but only to the power of flight, and shows that the eagle appears here as the representative of all winged creatures.—“In the third beast,” says Bengel, “a peculiar mode of expression is used: it had the face as of a man; whence we may infer, that this beast had the resemblance of a man, not throughout, but only in the face.” But the fact is plainly not given correctly here; the right conclusion, as Vitringa perceived, is, that the other beasts were not throughout, but only in the visage, unlike man. Each of the beasts had his peculiar visage, and the third that of a man’s countenance; but the human form belonged to them all. This is implied in its being said of the third, not that it was like a man, but that it had the face as of a man. The likeness of a lion, an eagle, and a calf, in the others, is confined by this to the face. In Ezekiel 1:5 it is expressly said, “And this is their appearance, they have the form of a man.” They have there a man’s erect gait and his hands. In Revelation 5:8; Revelation 19:4, the beasts fall down with the elders before the Lamb and worship, which had been incongruous, if two of them had been quadrupeds. From the whole position, which was given to man in the Mosaic history of the creation among the living creatures, there could not be a simple co-ordination of his form along with the forms of the other and inferior parts of the animal creation. The human type must predominate in the personification of all living, and the rest be content with a representation in the countenance alone. In regard to the point, in what does the description given of the Cherubim in the Revelation really differ from that in Ezekiel (as distinguished from the false differences in Zόllig), we simply quote the just remarks of Vitringa, “The Cherubim of Ezekiel have each the four faces of these beasts. But this as to the substance is not of essential moment. For these beasts, most intimately connected together, form, as it were, one beast-existence, which Ezekiel calls δηεδ, the living (Ezekiel 1:20-22), and it is a matter of indifference, whether all the properties are represented as belonging to each of the four, or singly in each.” Revelation 4:8. And each of the four beasts has six wings, and round about and within they are full of eyes, and have no rest day and night, and they say: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty, who was, and who is, and who comes. The Cherubim here have not four wings, like those in Ezekiel, but six, like the Seraphim in Isaiah, Isaiah 6. The wings also in this connection must serve for the glorification of God, as a terror to those who are enemies to him, a consolation to those who are friends; and this is confirmed by a comparison of the fundamental passages, from which the wings are borrowed, and from which, since this borrowing cannot possibly be without meaning, we must also adopt what is there said regarding their import and design. Bengel remarks briefly, “The chief virtues are thereby indicated, in the exercise of which the heavenly watchers give honour to the divine holiness, namely, fear or respect, since they do not look boldly, humility, since they veil themselves before that splendour, and alacrity in obeying the divine commands.” And again more particularly: “By the three pairs of wings and their diverse use, is indicated the chief excellences in a holy creature, which has either not erred through sin, or has been again purified from it, and becomingly serves the great God. These excellences are respect, humility, and the spirit of obedience. The Seraphim cover their faces, so that they may not boldly look upon the divine Majesty, but with the profoundest reverence; as they also do not say, holy art thou, but speaking one to another of the divine Majesty, holy is he. They cover their feet, that they may in some measure be concealed from God’s sight, though free from all sin, yet still in a feeling of proper creaturely abasement. They fly and move about in full activity, praising the Lord and executing his will.” But all this serves not for the glorifying of the Seraphim and the Cherubim, but of God. How glorious must he be, how rich in supplies of help for his people, how mighty for the destruction of his enemies, before whom the concentration of created life so profoundly humbles itself, and with deepest reverence obeys! Thus understood, the wings of the Cherubim are found to be on the same line with their eyes, and their thrice exclamation of “holy.” The clause “they are full of eyes round about (in front) and within (in the back parts),” would be a needless repetition, if it did not stand in close connection with what follows; and because they are wholly penetrated by the powers of God, therefore, etc. The words, “they have no rest day and night, saying,” alludes to Psalms 19:3, “Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night shows knowledge.” The simple thought is, that the heavens with their starry host unceasingly show forth God’s glory; while by day the sun shines, by night there are the moon and the stars. As the heavens without ceasing declare the glory of God, the God of hosts, so also do the Cherubim or the creatures upon earth. The “holy, holy, holy,” which is taken from Isaiah 6, and is found also in Psalms 99, is at the same time a threefold woe to the world which has this God for its enemy (comp. Revelation 8:13), and a threefold “Lift up your heads” to the church, which stands under his protection. Holy, holy, holy, according to his glory as manifesting itself in our state of being. That we must supply thus, is clear from the connection with the words: they are round about and within full of eyes; and also from what follows in Revelation 4:9, according to which the beasts not only give honour and glory to God, but also thanks, which they could only do if they celebrated God’s holiness on the ground of their own existence. That holiness is not merely the highest purity in God, that it rather denotes the infinite exaltation of God above all that is created and finite (see what is said in my Comm. on Psalms 22:3), is clear alone from the reference the Cherubim make to their own existence, and also from the epithet, the Almighty,” which has respect to holiness as its ground: holy, because all-ruling and almighty. The right view was given by Bengel. Among other things he says, “Holy, in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, is as much as separated; and when God is called Holy, his quite separate, his peculiar excellence is thereby indicated—that, namely, which is composed of his divine properties, throwing by their splendour everything else into the shade, since he is incomparably and indescribably removed, not only from all that is impure, but also from all that is creaturely. God stands apart from all: he is, and he works by himself, from himself, in himself, through himself, for himself. See 1 Timothy 6:15-16. Therefore he is the first and the last, the one and eternal, living and blessed, infinite and unchangeable, almighty, all-seeing, wise and true, righteous and faithful, gracious and compassionate. Hence it comes to pass that holy and holiness are of much the same import as God and Godhead; and as one says of a king: his Majesty, so the Scripture says of God: his Holiness, Hebrews 13:10. The Holy Spirit is God’s Spirit. The holy is often used as a name, when God is spoken of, Isaiah 40:25; 1 Samuel 2:2; Exodus 15:11. And as God swears by his name and by his soul, so he also swears by his holiness, that is by himself. He is sanctified when he is known and worshipped as the true God. This holiness is often named the glory; often are his holiness and glory celebrated together, Leviticus 10:3; Isaiah 6:3.” Bengel further remarks on “the Almighty,” &c., “This is the description of him to whom the epithet, Holy, was applied, and at the same time the reason why it was applied. The beasts say: God the Almighty, for which the elders say: our God, Revelation 4:11. The Almighty! he is very often so named in the Revelation, because he there peculiarly shows himself in his power over all—in his glory over all that is visible and invisible.” The expression: who comes, refers, according to the parallel passages (see in ch. Revelation 1:4), to the future developments and triumphs of the kingdom of God, who, as he has shown in the past and present what he was and is by displays of his glory and almightiness, so he will also come to introduce the kingdom over the whole earth—comp. ch. Revelation 11:17, “We thank thee, Lord God Almighty, that thou hast taken thy great power and reignest.” On the ground of the declaration, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God the Almighty,” prophecy may be said to be based. He that has preserved his holiness will also come, without any one being able to prevent his arrival.” His work can no one hinder, his work will no one neglect, if he will do what is for the good of his children.” So that all that is in the verse, the wings of the Cherubim, their eyes, their ceaseless holy, holy, holy, serves the purpose of reviving the languishing spirits of the church, in the presence of a persecuting and apparently omnipotent world, and to lay a foundation for what is announced in detail, in the following vision of the seven seals. Whoever has for his support Him who sits upon the Cherubim, can find nothing in a whole world of opposition which should make the giant shrink into a dwarf. Revelation 4:9. And when the beasts give[Note: The future denotes here, after the Hebrew usage, that which repeats itself, continued action, that which regularly and continuously exists—comp. the ζήεται in Matthew 4:4, the δικαιώσει in Romans 3:30, and ἀδυνατήσει in Luke 1:37.glory and honour and thanks to him, who sits on the throne, who lives for ever and ever, Revelation 4:10, the four and twenty elders fall down before him who sits on the throne, and worship him who lives for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, and say, Revelation 4:11, Lord, thou art worthy to receive the glory and the honour and the might; for thou hast made all things, and through thy mill they were and are created. In the Old Testament style, glory, strength, greatness, &c., are given to the Lord, in the sense of being ascribed to him—comp. Deuteronomy 32:3, “Give greatness to our God;” Psalms 29:1, “Give to the Lord, ye sons of God, give to the Lord glory and power;” Psalms 96:7. So, here glory and honour are given in the acknowledgment of God and ascription of thanks to him, as they are also received in Revelation 4:11.[Note: On the λαβεῖν there, we are not to compare ch. 11:17, but ch. 5:12. This is evident from the article alone.]According to this usage, glory and honour, which refer to what is peculiarly God’s, might properly be joined with the thanks, which proceed from the Cherubim; the former are given in the acknowledgment of God, the latter in the offering of praise. In the elders’ song of praise, likewise, power might be put in the room of thanks. The Cherubim, in whose formation divine power has unfolded itself, give thanks for this unfolding, the elders satisfy themselves with a simple ascription of praise on account of it. In regard to the words, “they cast their crowns before the throne,” Vitringa remarks, “This refers to the Oriental custom. For eastern monarchs, as they love to rule over kings, and to be styled kings of kings, doubtless did not admit these to testify their homage, and hold intercourse with them, unless they laid aside their crowns. This is in itself probable, and the Roman emperors also desired such honour to be given to them.[Note: “An example is given in Tiridates, king of the Parthians in Tacitus, Annal. 1. xiv. c. 29: Progresus ille ad sedem, quae effigiem Neronis susstinebat, caesis ex more victimis, sublatam capite diadema imagini ubjecti. Another is given by Josephus in Herod, when going to supplicate Augustus, Ant. 1. xv. c. 10: Κάπειδὴκατέπλευσενεἰςτὴνπόλινἀφήρητομὲνδιάδημακ.τ.λ.”] But it is not to be overlooked, that here it is not said, the elders laid aside their crowns, but that they cast them down; shewing, that it was in a manner heavy and burdensome for them to wear their crowns in the presence of God. So lively was the feeling in them of their own littleness and unworthiness; so profound their reverence toward the divine Majesty. It is peculiar to all, who truly reign with God and Christ in the church, that, conscious of their own unworthiness, they venerate with the deepest reverence the majesty of God and Christ; and wish to arrogate no glory or honour to themselves in the church.” Bengel remarks, “The four beasts do not precisely say, thou art holy, etc., but they turn away a little out of profound reverence, and say: ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord.’ But when the four and twenty elders fall down, they venture to exclaim: ‘Worthy art thou.’” The adoration of the Cherubim turns on God’s almighty power as manifested in creation; and so does that also of the elders. That the doxology of the elders has respect to the same fact as that of the Cherubim is indicated by the article, the glory, etc., shewing that they simply respond to the doxology of the Cherubim. There is also a reference in the background to the glorious completion of his kingdom, which God must as certainly bring about as he made the world. The adoration is given to him as sitting on the throne, and addressing himself to the execution of the world’s judgment. In a like respect has the creation already been mentioned in the New Testament, being “the foundation and basis of all other displays of goodness, which are in a manner the continuation of it,” (Vitringa). So in Psalms 104 the celebration of God’s praise from the works of creation is intended to awaken confidence in the church in regard to the final victory of the righteous over the wicked, of the church over the world, which had the ascendancy at the time the Psalm was composed. In Jeremiah 10:11 it is said, “The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth, these shall perish from the earth and from under heaven.” Comp. also Isaiah 43:1; Acts 4:24. In the Revelation itself, the creation appears as a pledge for the completion of the kingdom of God, in ch. Revelation 10:6, “And he swore by him that lives for ever and ever, who made the heavens and what is therein, and the earth, and what is therein, that henceforth there should be no more delay;” and ch. Revelation 14:7, “Fear God, and give him the glory, for the time of his judgment is come, and worship him who made heaven, and earth, and sea, and the rivers of water.” The Creator must necessarily be the Redeemer of his people, and the judge of the apostate. If any one holds fast by the article of the creation, he will be assailed by no doubts regarding the completion of God’s kingdom. The expression: Thou hast made, marks the creative energy of God. As this was accomplished by a mere word, it was quite appropriate to bring out the result by the express words, which have been found a difficulty by many expositors, “They were and are created.” In Genesis 1:7 also it is said, “And God made the firmament, and divided between the waters under the firmament and above the firmament, and it was done so.” See besides, Psalms 119:90, “Thou hast established the earth, and it stood;” Psalms 33:9. The general predominance of the number three in Revelation 4:8-11 is noticeable: Holy, holy, holy; the Lord, God, Almighty; who was, who is, and who comes; glory, honour, thanks; they fall down, they worship, they cast; thou hast created, they were, and are created. We quote Bengel’s remarks at the close of his exposition of this chapter: “Such is the prophet’s description of the divine holiness and glory, and the manner in which these are celebrated by those who are so near him, and yet look upon us as their companions. Now, if we only consider in what a filthy world we are situated, what an abyss of sin, what a bog and pool it is, how can we avoid feeling the greatest disgust?[Note: That the ἠ ?͂σαν and ἐτικσθησαν refer to the preservation (Bengel), is opposed by the fundamental passage, Psalms 148:5, “He commanded, and they were made.” Ewald’s predilection for the ill-supported reading οὐκἠ ?́σαν, cum non erant creaia sunt, destroys the three number.] Isaias exclaimed in such circumstances, Woe is me, I am undone, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. But on this very account we must strive after the true purification, and keep ourselves unspotted from the world. The representation there given of God’s holiness would be a frightful thing to us, if we had to do with him alone, without a mediator. We should have to say, who among us can dwell with a consuming fire? who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings? But the Son of God has provided a way of access for us. Still, before so great a God we must maintain a becoming reverence and respect, and his holiness and glory ought to make a profound impression on us, so that his word may lead to such blessed fruits in our experience as it yields in obedient spirits. With many, indeed, there is the want of any right knowledge of God. Could we lay open souls, as we do a corpse or a fruit-tree, oh! what a sad state should we often have disclosed to us! Had people such thoughts of divine things as accorded with the truth, they would not so readily lose themselves in the concerns of time, be swallowed up of the flesh, and be so regardless of salvation. One cannot properly express how meanly many conceive of the great God. They imagine to themselves a mighty Lord in heaven, whom they must regard on account of their bodily nourishment, so that he may send to them good weather and the like, and who deem it matter of praise if they say a good word for him from time to time, and sometimes keep themselves pious and retired. For the rest, there is no need of being so exact, he will be satisfied with what has been done. Then they think that, when they can no longer remain upon the earth, they shall still have time to lay hold of his grace, as he will not deal with them in severity. Ah! it is another thing to meet God aright! He is a holy God with whom we have to do. If the beings who dwell so near about his throne act so reverentially toward him, how much more humbly does it behove us to conduct ourselves who dwell in cottages of clay! Were our hearts but penetrated with a just dread of him, we should also come to possess an assurance of his favour, confidence in him, desire after him, delight in him, and a more zealous endeavour to do what is pleasing in his sight.” Chap. 5. Vitringa thus indicates the contents of this chapter: “First the presentation of a book, sealed with seven seals, which is delivered to the Lamb, that is, Jesus Christ, to be opened, Revelation 5:1-7; then, the celebration of Jesus Christ as the Lamb who was slain and must open the book with the seven seals, consisting of doxologies and songs of the heavenly hosts, Revelation 5:8-14. The doxologies belong partly to the beasts and the elders, Revelation 5:8-10, partly to the angels, Revelation 5:11-12, and partly to all creatures, Revelation 5:13. The sequel to this solemn glorification is the response of the beasts, and the worship of the elders, Revelation 5:14.” It would be more correct to say that Revelation 5:9-12 contain the celebration of the Lamb’s praise by the four beasts, the elders and the angels, and that in Revelation 5:13-14 the Father and the Son are glorified by all creatures, through the concurring voices of their representatives, the elders and the beasts. Revelation 5:1. And I saw on the right hand of him who sat upon the throne, a book written within and without, sealed with seven seals. Schφttgen: “That book records the sentence, which is given by the judge and his councilors against the enemies of the church. But the vast number of the divine sentences of condemnation is indicated, these being supposed to exist in such a multitude, that the parchment was written within and without.” We have the prototype of this book in Ezek. Ezekiel 2:9-10 (a passage which again rests on Jeremiah 15:16), “and I looked and lo! a hand was stretched out to me, and behold in it a book-roll. And he spread it out before me, and it was written before and behind, and in it was written lamentation, and mourning, and woe.” The book contained the divine word, which Ezekiel had to announce, and was the archetype of the book of his prophecies. The book here likewise is the archetype of the book or section of the seven seals in the Revelation. Besides the passage before us, ch. Revelation 10:2, also rests on that of Ezekiel, and indeed still more closely. For there, as in Ezekiel, (1) the subject discoursed of is an open book (“he spread it out before me;”) (2) that book also respects the fate of a degenerate church, has to do with the world in the church, while the book here contains the judgment upon the world by itself; (3) and that book, like the one of Ezekiel, was eaten by the prophet. The question now arises, whether this book, which Bengel describes as “a concealed sevenfold order of very copious and manifold contents,” “one in accordance with the dignity of the theatre disclosed to our view in the preceding chapter, and with the solemnity of all that we are to see and hear in this chapter,” whether it is the archetype of the whole of the Revelation from chap. 6, or only of the section of the seven seals, Revelation 6:1-8:16. The former opinion is most commonly embraced, but the latter is the only correct one. It becomes perfectly established, whenever it is understood, what is elsewhere to be proved, that the seven seals, with which the book alone has to do, come entirely to an end at ch. Revelation 8:1, that the Revelation is composed of a series of independent portions, and that an entirely new series begins at ch. Revelation 8:2. If this book were to be regarded as the archetype of the whole Apocalypse, we should have nothing new to begin that second book with at ch. 10. Its being written within and without—pointing to the rich and varied contents of the book—cannot be pressed against the limitation to Revelation 6:1 to Revelation 8:1. We have only the sketch in what the prophet communicates to us of the contents of the book. There is a great deal to be read between the lines. The judgments which he marks in rough outlines, consist each of a vast assemblage of many single calamities, which were fully noted in the original. It may still be urged, however, that Revelation 4, 5 appear to be too large and majestic as an introduction for a single series: the building seems too little for such a porch. But it is to be borne in mind that this series is the very first after the preliminary portions, and substantially the introduction belongs to the whole. There is this further objection also against the reference of the book to the whole, that the whole runs out into an extended description of the New Jerusalem. But this could not have existed in the book with seven seals; it could be occupied with nothing of a minute and extended nature but what respects the enemies of the church. “Not merely,” says Zόllig, “is it much, but it is also frightful; for this is implied in the reverse side being also written, because such was done in the exemplar referred to in Ezekiel, where there was nothing but lamentation, and mourning, and woe.” It has appeared, that the whole of the preparatory vision in ch. 4 bears a threatening character, that it suspends nothing but judgments over the enemies of the church. The book was written within and without; properly, within and behind. Book-rolls were usually written only within. Only when from the fulness of matter the inner side did not suffice, the exterior was also brought into use. The book was in the right hand of him who sat upon the throne[Note: Properly, toward the right hand; comp. the ἐπί ? likewise in ch. 3:20, 15:2, 20:1; Matthew 27:29, where the other reading ἐντῆ ?ͅδεξιᾶ ?ͅ ? is only to be taken as explanatory.]; indicating that the book had not its settled place there, but that only for this action was it found in the hand of him who sat on the throne. The Seer beholds it still in motion, as it were, to this place. The expression: out of the right hand, in Revelation 5:7, corresponds to: in the right hand, here. Accordingly, the right hand comes into view simply as that to which any thing is presented. If it were understood with Bengel, as “the overruling might of God,” we should still not be able even then to say with him, “This indicates the divine power, since the great God has every thing visible and invisible in his power, as the Creator and Governor of all, and shews his unspeakable majesty in all his works;” but the idea would simply be, that God alone absolutely possesses the knowledge of future things. That the book was in the right hand of him, who sat on the throne, shews, that its subject was of a judicial nature, as is clear also from the entire contents of ch. 4. That the judgment affects the enemies of the church, was plainly intimated by ch. Revelation 4:4. “We would meanwhile,” writes Vitringa, “with the utmost confidence draw from this remarkable image the conclusion, that nothing takes place in the world and the church, which has not been determined in God’s counsel and judgment. This may well administer the greatest consolation to the church in times of trouble.” The book appears as sealed with seven seals. The signification of this sealing is well given by Vitringa, as meaning that” the divine decrees before they are carried into execution, or have by God been antecedently disclosed, are discoverable by no one of the immortal angels or of mortal men; they are shut and concealed from all.” The figurative representation rests upon several passages in the Old Testament, in which a shut and sealed prophecy is all one with the dark and incomprehensible Isaiah 29:11; Daniel 8:26, Daniel 12:4, Daniel 12:9 (see my Beitr. Th. I., p. 215, ss.) The seven seals denote, not “the carefulness, firmness, and holiness of the sealing” (Zόllig), but that the darkness, which rests upon the future, was not a partial, but a complete one: the book-roll was sealed above, below, and all over in the middle. This is clear from the single fact, that whenever a seal was removed, a portion of the contents became known. The seven seals are, so to speak, not the material, but the theological cause of the inaccessible character of the book. Whenever a seal was taken away, a portion of the contents became known. It is to be observed, that it is not the reading which is spoken of in regard to particular seals, but merely that by opening each seal a new part of the book-roll was disclosed to view, another and another portion of God’s decrees or his judgments upon the world were made manifest. A too material view here has involved interpreters in great difficulties, and led them into untenable propositions. A book sealed with seven seals appears to have become accessible only when the whole seven seals were removed; but here a portion of the contents is disclosed with the removal of each particular seal. Grotius, Vitringa, and their followers, hence suppose, that the book was composed of seven leaves, each of which had its particular seal. But this extraordinary circumstance would have required to be mentioned, and John also would not have been able to speak of having from the first seen seven seals. The book had without doubt the common form: a roll, on which outside seven seals were impressed. Others think, that what was communicated at the opening of the particular seals, had not formed a constituent part of its contents. The part that became manifest only with the opening of the last seal, must alone be “the secret of the future world.” But according to this view we should properly learn nothing regarding the contents of the book within the series itself. As certainly as this series stands by itself, so certainly must what was seen at the opening of each seal indicate the contents of it. With the mere fact that the opening was an object of great desire with John, the church, which was sighing under the persecutions, “Lord, how long,” was no way benefited. According to ch. Revelation 1:1, God gives to Jesus Christ the revelation of the future, that he might show to his servants what should come to pass. Nor can we perceive what relation the things reported at the opening of each seal stand in to the book, if they do not constitute its contents. And for any other contents we shall search elsewhere in vain for the least trace. That the book alone contained the final consummation, is but an arbitrary supposition. That it was professedly occupied simply with what is reported at the opening of each particular seal, namely, with God’s judgments on the enemies of his church, is clear alone from the preparatory vision in ch. 4. The book, according to many expositors, was publicly presented, “not merely that it might be made publicly known, but also that the things written in it might be executed.” At the opening, such expositors remark, there is put forth the performance of this act, the realization of what the book contains. But there is not the least ground to support this notion. The fundamental passages in the Old Testament respecting a shut or sealed book, or prophecy, refer only to its darkness, or the difficulty of understanding it. In Revelation 5:3-4 the opening of the book is brought into notice only as the condition of the seeing. And merely the insight into the future, not the actual accomplishment of the things belonging to it, could possibly have been represented in the manner here employed. The whole book is the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to shew to his servants, what must shortly come to pass. In it, therefore, what we have to expect is, not the executing, but only the making known of God’s decrees. Revelation 5:2. And I saw a strong angel proclaim with a loud voice: Who is worthy to take the book and to break its seals? The strength does not indicate the angel as one of higher rank (Züllig), which was not required for this purpose; but a strong angel was chosen for it, because of the loud voice, which was to be heard in the heavens above, in the earth, and even under the earth; hence in all regions of being, and also in a powerful manner. Bengel: “The voice of a strong man is heard farther than that of a child; and by the strong angel’s voice those, who heard it, would be the more speedily forced to think of their impotence.” By Ewald’s groundless hypothesis, that the call was not directly addressed to the creatures in the different departments of creation, but to the assembled representatives or angels around God’s throne, the strong angel with a loud voice is rendered superfluous. Revelation 5:3. And no one in heaven, nor on the earth, nor under the earth, could take the book and look therein. The inhabitants of the three kingdoms of creation are, in like manner, united together in Philippians 2:10, “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth;” and also with the same design of showing the subordination of all to Christ; so that it is quite natural to suppose the Seer might have the passage in his eye. The book contains the decrees of God. To know these one’s self, and with perfect clearness and certainty, pre-supposes the closest intimacy with the being of God, from whom these decrees proceed, such as can belong to no created being, but only to Christ, the Word, who was in the beginning with the Father. In perfect agreement with the mode of representation here adopted, in the conviction that all essential knowledge of a religious kind can only be attained through fellowship with Christ, who in this respect also is the one mediator, John says in his Gospel, in John 1:18, “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” And that this conviction has grown out of the doctrine of Christ, is clear from what the Lord says to Nicodemus in John 3:11-13 : he alone could give certain intelligence concerning heavenly things, because he sprung from heaven, and is in heaven, and even in his state of humiliation was still, as to his divine nature, in the closest fellowship with God. Likewise Matthew 11:27, where the Lord says, “All things are committed to me of my Father. And no man knows the Son but the Father, and no man knows the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him;” one of those numerous declarations in the first Gospel, which were quite suited to John’s profound vein of thought. Revelation 5:4. And I wept much, that no one was found worthy to take the book, nor to look therein. The tears of John arose from no such unsatisfied curiosity, as is represented by many of the older interpreters, who kept their eye too much upon the pre-intimation of particular circumstances, which goes hand in hand with the desire to get at the corresponding facts in history. The tears proceeded from the same cause as those of Mary, in John 20:11, ss., “They have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him;” and with the grief of the disciples on the way to Emmaus (Luke 24:21). “But we hoped that it had been he, who should have redeemed Israel; and besides all this, to-day is the third day since these things were done;” to whom the Lord spake, “Oh fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken, “and beginning at Moses, and going through all the prophets, he expounded to them what had been written of him in the Scriptures.” The whole terrible power of the Roman empire had thrown itself upon the church, and threatened to crush it; comp. ch. Revelation 13:7, “And it was given to him to war with the saints, and to overcome them; and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations.” John himself, who here represents the church, found himself in solitary banishment. It seemed as if matters were coming to an end with the kingdom of Christ; the present was despaired of; the future was dark; no answer could be found to the anxious question, “What shall be the end thereof?” The weeping of John implied the weakness of his faith. Without that he would not have wept at the inability of all creatures to open the seals, but would have turned with joy to Christ. Without it, also, the book of the future, after all that the prophets of the Old Testament had written, and our Lord had said, would not have been entirely a shut one. It went with him, in regard to his earlier acquired knowledge, precisely as it had done with the disciples in Luke 24. He might have said, I have indeed heard the words, but my faith in them has failed. The Lord had taken from him all that he formerly possessed, in order to penetrate him more thoroughly with the conviction, that he had nothing but what was given to him, given to him by Christ alone through undeserved grace, that he might more gloriously experience the power of divine consolation. The Revelation is a book of consolation, but the consolation takes for granted the grief of those who were to receive it. According to the Apocalypse there is still also to be much weeping Christ must constantly perform to his servants anew, what he here performed for the Seer and the church. Scripture alone cannot do it. It must itself be shut up by Christ, and opened again with living power. The word, “I wept much, “can only be understood by those who have lived in great catastrophes of the church, and entered with the fullest sympathy into her sufferings, and thus from their own experience have become acquainted with the heights and the depths of the life of faith. Not a weeping, but only an indifferent weakness of faith, is unbecoming toward a holy God.—“Without tears,” says Bengel, “the Revelation was not written, neither can it without tears be understood.” Itself the answer to the heartfelt and painful longing of the Seer, it will only be apprehended aright by those who participate in the same longing. Whoever goes to it merely as an interesting production of the apostolic age, he will everywhere stumble in darkness. Only if we take this view of the weeping shall we get rid of the idea, that detailed disclosures of the future are given in the seven seals; and shall come to regard them as given rather for the more general purpose of inspiring the soul with confidence respecting Gods judgments on the world, and the victory of faith. Revelation 5:5. And one of the elders spake to me: Weep not; behold the lion, who is of the tribe of Judah, the root of David, has overcome to take the book, and to break its seven seals. The presbyter represents the whole church of the completely righteous. From the testimony yielded by this to Christ, out of rich experience consolation first comes to the fainting Seer, and a fainting church on earth, and then also from the action of Christ himself. The overcoming is taken here by some in the weaker sense of getting, or attaining.[Note: Vitringa: “The Hebrew word ζλδ, in the later times of the Hebrew commonwealth, was most frequently used in the sense of deserving, being worthy, or being reckoned such; nay, even simply to obtain, to get a province, or an office to be administered This suits well here. For the elder wished to signify to John, that there was one who was counted worthy of administering that work, for which John wept that none was equal to.”]But that the idea of overcoming, of a victory, must be retained, may be inferred even from the designation of Christ as” the lion of the tribe of Judah.” For, this is in itself a warlike image; and in the fundamental passages Judah appears as a warrior and a conqueror under the image of a lion. David also was a hero and a conqueror. The comparison also of Rev 5:9 confirms the view; for there the being slain, etc., corresponds to the conquering here. And, finally, John 16:33, and generally the standing use of νικᾳ ?͂ω, conquering, in the writings of John, where it occurs more frequently than in any others, gives farther confirmation. But the conquering cannot be understood here directly of Christ’s victory over sin, the devil, and the world. The connection is against this, as the conquering is immediately joined to the opening: he has overcome to open, or in opening.[Note: See on the Infi. as used to determine more closely the meaning of a verb, the so-called infin epexegeticus, Matthiac, § 532, and Winer, § 45.Hence, by the overcoming here can only be meant the overcoming of the difficulties which stood against the opening of the book. For this, it was necessary to tread a long and arduous path, requiring the exercise of gigantic power. An indispensable condition was the victory over sin and Satan, through death and blood. For by this alone was Christ worthy to open the book. The enemies that were first to be conquered, before the book could be opened, are indicated in Revelation 5:9. The opening of the book is, therefore, a reward for having finished redemption. So that this victory has that for its foundation of which John has written in his Gospel. The designation of Christ as “the lion of the tribe of Judah” rests on Genesis 49:9. There Judah himself appears as a lion, on account of his warlike and victorious energy. But, according to that word of the dying patriarch, Judah must one day find his culmination in the Messiah. Typically he had once already culminated in David, in whom the lion-nature of the tribe became strikingly manifest. Ingenious, though not sufficiently grounded, is the opinion of some expositors, that the patriarch Jacob is the elder who said to John, “Weep not.” etc. The second designation of Christ, as “the root of David,” is in perfect accordance with the preceding one. In Christ the race of David, as the hero and conqueror, lived anew—that David who boldly said, “By thee can I dash in pieces the warlike people, and by my God I leap over walls. I pursue after mine enemies, and overtake them, and turn not again till I have consumed them” (Psalms 18). This might be said with still greater truth by Christ, to whom David himself also there points, in whom he saw the highest perfection of his being and his race; see my Comm. on the Psalms 18. The root here, and in ch. Revelation 22:16, where the Lord says, “I am the root of David,” marks the product of the root, that through which the root makes itself seen, its shoot, as seed, is very often used for the product of the seed. This appears by comparing the original passage, Isaiah 11:10, where the Messiah is designated the “root of Jesse” Isaiah 53:2), with Isaiah 53:1 of the same chapter, where he is more fully called, “a shoot out of his roots.” In what sense the Messiah is named, in Isaiah 11:10, the root of Jesse, as the one in whom the family of David, that had sunk into the lowest condition, again flourished, is rendered manifest by the parallel passages, Isaiah 11:1, and Isaiah 53:2, where, under the likeness of the shoot of a plant, reference is made to the origin of the Messiah as sprung from a family which had once resembled a proud and stately tree, but now had become one of the lowest. The designation: the root of David, here and in ch. Revelation 22:16, takes for granted all that is said in the Gospels of the genealogy of Jesus in connection with the house of David, and the humble condition of his parents. Revelation 5:6. And I saw (and lo!) in the midst of the throne and of the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders, a Lamb standing, as if it had been slain; and it had seven horns, and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of (rod, sent into all lands. Vitringa: “What the elder had announced to John is now in fact and reality exhibited to him.” The Seer beholds Christ in the midst of the throne, with the four beasts, and in the midst of the elders. The form of expression is Hebraistic; see Ewald’s Gr. § 217, q. The meaning is, that Christ stood in the space between the throne with the four beasts, and the elders. “In the innermost part of the circle,” remarks Bengel, “was the throne with the holy creatures (inseparable from it), and in a wider circle were the elders. But the lamb was between, as the Mediator between God and man. The elders are a selection, and represent in a sense the whole of mankind;” more properly, the whole church. Ewald: “In the fittest place which the Messiah could occupy, standing close to God, and elevated far above the elders.” John saw Christ in the form of a little lamb. Bengel: “He appeared to John under the aspect of a small tender lamb. Lovely image! What this appears to derogate from the majesty of Christ, is at the beginning once for all ascribed to him under the image of “the lion out of the tribe of Judah.” Patience and strength meet in him. The elder had pointed John to a lion, and yet John beholds only a little lamb. The Lord Jesus is named only once in this prophecy a lion, and this precisely at the beginning before he is culled a lamb. Whence it appears that, as often as we think of him as a lamb, we should also regard him as the lion of the tribe of Judah. He is not called simply a lamb, but properly a little lamb, and this with an especial respect to the elders. The elders are beyond doubt, in part at least, the patriarchs. These, especially the first (?) among them had attained to some, nay many (?) hundred years of age; but the Lord Jesus, on the contrary, was slain in his thirty-third year. Under the Old Testament, lambs were, for the most part, taken when a year old for sacrifice; and the age of the Lord Jesus may be regarded as that of a year-old lamb in respect to those fathers. Reference is also made in ch. Revelation 12:5 to the tender age and the untimely removal of the Saviour. The image of a lamb is found only with John among the Evangelists; and according to him it was first used by the Baptist He represented Christ to his disciples as the Lamb of God, who was to take away the sins of the world, John 1:29, John 1:36. The contemplation of Christ as the Lamb of God took such hold of the Evangelist, that in John 19:36 he transfers to Christ, without farther remark, what was written in the Old Testament of the Paschal lamb. Even the word little lamb(ἀρνιόν dimin. from ἀρνήν, Bock) is common to the Evangelist and the passage before us. It occurs only once besides in the whole of the New Testament, John 21:15. That Christ appears here in the form of a slain lamb, was done out of respect to the occasion: his appearance imaged that through which he had conquered to open the book, his sufferings as the God-man, by which he had made reconciliation. The lamb comes here into consideration primarily as a beast for sacrifice. But of all the beasts used for sacrifice the one was chosen which most fitly represented the glorious properties of Christ, his innocence and righteousness (1 Peter 1:19), and especially the eminent graces which he manifested under his sufferings, his quiet patience and meekness. Comp. the fundamental passage Isaiah 53:7, according to which the servant of God is led as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep that is dumb before the shearers, and opening not his mouth, Acts 8:32. The prophet sees the lamb standing as if it were slain. Bengel: “This lamb was now no more dead, but living, and yet stood so that one could see it had once been slain. The marks appeared of the slaughter, comp. Revelation 1:7. Just because the lamb had been slain, was it worthy to open the book (Philippians 2:8-9), and that for the joy of his people, for the terror of his enemies. Our Lord Jesus, after his resurrection, had still on his hands and feet the wounds he had received in his crucifixion, and the opening that had been made in his side by the spear was still such that Thomas could put his hand into it. It is a matter of renown rather than otherwise for a warrior to have his body marked with wounds and scars. So it is a great glory to the Lord Jesus that he shows himself as a slain lamb; and to those who follow him it is a perpetual admonition to them to do what he has done for them. The lamb was slain, Luther translates, erwόrget (choked), an expression he also uses frequently for such as had perished by the sword. The word slain, however, is much better, and agrees both with the kind of death Christ underwent, and with his designation as a lamb. To be choked or strangled implies that the blood remains in the suffocated body; while by slaying, the blood was separated from the body; and when the Jews killed their sacrifices, the bodies were drained of their blood.” The lamb has seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God. The latter clause, beginning with οἱ ?́εἰσι, whether viewed grammatically or in regard to the sense, can only be referred to the eyes, but not to the horns. As the lion precedes the lamb, so here again allusion is made to the entire fulness of divine power and strength with which Christ is famished for the destruction of his enemies and for the deliverance of his people. The horns are a standing symbol in the Old Testament for victorious power—comp. Psalms 148:14, and the passages there referred to in my Commentary. The number of the horns being seven, shows that this strength was combined in him with the greatest fulness. On the eyes as a symbol of the powers of God put forth in creation, see on ch. Revelation 4:6. The reference of the eyes to his wisdom or omniscience tears this passage asunder from that, and from the fundamental passages of the Old Testament, and is also disproved by the declaration: which are the seven Spirits of God; for the Spirits of God cannot possibly be limited to wisdom and omniscience. That the lamb has the seven Spirits of God (comp. ch. Revelation 1:4, where these Spirits are represented as the medium through which God gives grace and peace; and ch. Revelation 3:1, where the Saviour is said to have the seven Spirits of God, as well as the seven stars), has respect to this, that the Spirit of the Father is also the Spirit of the Son; that all divine powers stand in him; that he is furnished with the whole plenitude of divine omnipotence. Bengel: “This Spirit is also the Son’s Spirit, of whose divine glory we have even here a strong testimony, for our joy and assurance of our faith in him. It has been already shown, that the naming of the seven Spirits of God does not refer to the nature of the Spirit of God. For in that respect there is but one Spirit, as is expressly said in Ephesians 4:4; and therefore the seven point to gifts and operations. Here, therefore, we are told that all power in heaven and on earth is given to Christ, as he testified himself before ascending to heaven. As he also said before his return: All that the Father hath is mine; so it can in particular be said, that the seven Spirits of God, namely, of our Heavenly Father, are also the eyes of the Lamb. The Spirit of the Father is also the Spirit of the Son; and this manifests the divine glory of our dear Redeemer.” The seven Spirits are described as being sent over all the earth. On this Bengel remarks: “The seven Spirits are frequently mentioned, but this is the only passage where such a message is ascribed to them.” This notification, resting on Zechariah 4:10, puts it out of doubt that it is not the spirit of God in himself that is here discoursed of, not that Spirit in the oneness of his being, but in the multi-fariousness of his operations. It forms a mighty bulwark against despair in the church on account of the threatening power of the world. Should even the whole earth rise against her, Christ, her head, has the seven Spirits of God, that are sent over the whole earth, and whose secret, often deeply concealed, yet irresistible influence, nothing on the earth can resist, however loftily it may exalt itself. Revelation 5:7. And he came and look the book out of the right hand of him that sat on the throne. The secrets of the future could never in themselves be concealed from him, who has the seven Spirits of God. The Word, who in the beginning was with God, has part in everything that is God’s. He did not need to acquire through blood and death an insight into the secrets of God; not as the lamb that was slain did he first receive it. But here another point is under consideration, the communication of that knowledge of God’s secrets to the church, and the awakening of a joyful confidence in her eternal continuance, in spite of all the persecutions that may threaten her destruction. The lamb takes the book out of the right hand of him that sits upon the throne, to open it and impart its contents to his servant John, and through him to the whole church. But all these hang on the atonement effected by Christ, this is the foundation of every gift and endowment conferred on the church of the New Testament. The Spirit, who among other things imparts to the church whatever insight she has into the future, and dispels the mists that envelope it, was first poured down after Christ had ascended to the right hand of the Father. In John 7:39, it is said, “But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive; for the Holy Ghost was not yet given, because that Jesus was not yet glorified.” Further, in John 16, “Nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is expedient for you that I go away. For if I do not go away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you But when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will lead you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself, but what he hears that will he speak, and he will show you things to come.” The proof can still be made every day. Only if any one is truly in Christ, and, in so far as he is so. he has a clear look into the future. And so John, who represented the fainting church of his time, being for the moment not in Christ, was so oppressed by the heavy burden of suffering’s and persecutions, that he wept as if no one were able to open the book. Revelation 5:8. And when he took the book, the four beasts and the four and twenty elders fell down before the Lamb; having every one harps and golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of saints. Bengel: “Hereupon were heard many and various songs of praise, by the description of which the narrative of the taking of the book and the opening of the seals is interrupted. These songs of praise, of which this chapter is full, proceeded along with that, which the Lamb did with the book. As we have then to note it as a leading point, that in this prophecy two things are written that were done simultaneously, so the one is divided, the one half being written first and the other last, while that which took place at the same time is put in the middle. Here now, in such wise, along with that which the lamb did, when he took the book and opened the seals, proceeds the heavenly music.” But that the songs of praise and the opening of the seals went on together, is not once indicated here, and there is no collateral reason for supposing it to have taken place. The order therefore should rather be: first the taking of the book, then the solemn ascription of praise, finally the opening. It has been thought extraordinary that the four beasts should here fall down. Züllig sees in this a confirmation of one of his untenable hypotheses, “We have remarked above, that in the Apocalypse the Cherubim do not, as in Ezekiel, themselves bear the throne, but only as mutes (!) stand around it. That such was actually the case, is perfectly obvious here, since otherwise they could not have fallen down without the throne also falling.” But the falling down of the beasts will lose its extraordinary aspect, if it is considered that the Cherubim never in the proper sense bear the throne, not even in Ezekiel: how could they in that case fly with it? That the throne moves above them so as to admit of its being said in a certain way to be borne by them, only images the truth, that the Lord is the absolute ruler of the earthly creation. The words: and having every one, &c., refer immediately to the elders only, not to the Cherubim. For the harps, human instruments, are found elsewhere in the Apocalypse only in the hands of members of the church (comp. ch. Revelation 14:2-3, Revelation 15:2); the golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of saints, are only suitable in the hands of the heavenly representatives of the church; a celebration of the deeds of Christ so copious is nowhere else found in the mouths of the Cherubim, and does not appear to suit them, rather indeed opposes their nature and signification, and their own peculiar song of praise is addressed only to God as the almighty Creator, Revelation 4:8; finally, all doubt is taken away by the words in Revelation 5:9, “Thou hast redeemed us, &c.,” which are not suitable in the mouth of the beasts, and oblige those, who defend their participation in the songs of praise, to resort to a change in the text. But, on the other hand, we must not exclude the four beasts from any participation in what follows, after their being said to fall down, along with the elders, before the lamb. Though the falling down does not justify us in supposing, with many expositors, that the Cherubim had a full participation with the elders, yet a sort of counterpoise might have been given in what follows, by its being expressly remarked that the elders alone had part in it. Farther, a merely dumb prostration, where all besides, not excepting the angels, sing praise, appears unsatisfactory. The natural supposition is, that the elders came forth as the speakers of the chorus, which was formed of them and the four beasts. Both are connected together by an internal bond. The elders represent the church, which is redeemed from the earth, “out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.” They are the bloom of the earthly creatures represented by the Cherubim, specially of the human race. So that both the two is natural—that the Cherubim should have also come forth, and that they should have allowed the elders to speak, who were more immediately partakers of the grace bestowed on the earthly creatures, the human race. The benefit respects primarily the earth, and more especially the church. Hence the four beasts and the elders come forth first, before the angels, with their song of adoration and’ praise. The elders have each harps and golden vials full of frankincense, the prayers of saints. The difficulty has here been raised: “The instrument-player, who requires both hands for the purpose, could not at the same time hold the vessel of incense.” And to solve it the elders have been supposed to hold the harps and the vials alternately in their hands, or else to have given the vials to the Cherubim. But all such questions are out of place in the Apocalypse. We have to do in it, not with gross material forms, but with airy images, circumstances of a light and ethereal nature. The gently indicated vials float softly on the hands, as do also the harps. The harps and the golden vials full of incense go together. The harps accompany the new songs, the prayers proceed on this, that occasion had been given to them. Even till now the church has in the one hand a harp, and in the other a vial. Without vials no harps. Without prayer no occasion for thanks. Without harps no vials. Only where one can pray, can one also give thanks. The harps here take precedence, because the subject has mainly to do with adoration and praise, because the new song, mentioned in Revelation 5:9, must be accompanied with the harp. Smoking sweet-smelling frankincense is in Scripture the common symbol of believing prayer, which is precious in God’s sight; comp. Psalms 141:2. “Let my prayer be acceptable before thee as the incense-offering;” Ezekiel 8:11 : “every one his censer in his hand, and the prayer of the cloud of incense went up,” Revelation 8:3; Luke 1:10; also my Beitr. Th. III, p. 645. The words: which are the prayers of saints, can be grammatically referred only to the vials, not as Vitringa thinks, to the incense. But the vials are brought into notice in connection with their use. Prayer is here, not prayer in the most general sense, but supplicatory prayer, úôìä. The great object of the prayers of the saints, is, according to the historical starting-point of the book and the parallel-passage, ch. Revelation 8:3-4, the support of the church in the midst of persecution, its completion, and the execution of judgment upon the enemies; comp. ch. Revelation 6:10, Revelation 11:18, Revelation 18:20. In the time of the Revelation this was the business which engaged all minds. The cry: “Hear the prayer of our distress,” went incessantly up. By the saints are primarily to be understood the saints on earth—comp. ch. Revelation 13:7; Revelation 13:10—who sighed under the hardships of persecution, and were members of the militant church. Still, there is no reason for excluding the saints in glory—comp. ch. Revelation 11:18, Revelation 18:20. These look down upon the sufferings and conflicts of their brethren, who are still in the flesh, and entreat God to accomplish their redemption and perfect his church. Bengel: “Whether the saints were those in heaven or those on earth, is not specified. The text makes no distinction, and we also make none. The saints in both regions are brethren. The saints in heaven are now entirely without sin, and if the saints on earth are still in this miserable tabernacle, they yet have forgiveness of sin, and so are accepted before God as well as the others. Now, prayer rises as a precious incense. It gives a sweet savour before God, and draws great power along with it.” The elders as representatives of the church only present their prayers before Christ. Bengel: “The elders are not mediators; for there is but one God and one Mediator between God and man, here as also the Lamb, that had been slain, is himself worshipped by the elders as Mediator.” They fall down with the Cherubim before the Lamb, extol him by their songs on their harps, direct to him their prayers for redemption: all a proof of the true and essential Godhead of him, to whom has been given a name above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee might bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth. Revelation 5:9. And they sing a new song, saying: Thou art worthy to take the book, and to open its seals; for thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation. Revelation 5:10. And hast made us kings and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. The elders sing a new song. Bengel: “new work, new song, Isaiah 42:9-10, Isaiah 43:18-19; and in the Psalms once and again (Psalms 33:3, Psalms 40:4, Psalms 96:1, Psalms 98:1). So also Revelation 14:3.” The subject of the new song is not the blessing of redemption already old, but the opening of the book, the new act of grace, which has been bestowed on the church for the revivication of her hope and confidence, at a time when her way was hedged in, and her right appeared to have been forgotten by her God, when she bitterly wept because no one could open the book and break its seals. The elders say: Thou art worthy (and able) to open the book and break its seals, because thou wast slain and hast redeemed us. They speak in the name of the church which they represent—comp. the they in the next verse, where the change intentionally points to this, that the elders appear not as individuals, but as representatives of the church; and also ch. Revelation 1:6. The reading αὐτούς, them, for ἡμᾶς, us, corresponds to the ἡμᾶς,us, and the βασιλεύσομεν,we shall reign, in the following verse. It has been thought, either that the us here must be conformed to the them there, or that the they in the next verse: they shall reign, must be conformed to the us here, because the relation of the elders to the church was not perceived. The kindreds, tongues, and peoples, point to the tables in Genesis 10—comp. there Genesis 10:5, Genesis 10:20; Genesis 10:31-32. This shows that the spiritual territory is co-extensive with the natural one, excludes all partiality, marks the �cumenical character of the work of Christ, and of the church of Christ, in contrast to the kingdom of God under the Old Testament. In the same direction points also the number four, which was also intentionally used by Moses in Genesis 10—comp. Genesis 10:5; Genesis 10:20; Genesis 10:31, being the signature of the earth.[Note: Bengel compares 8:9, 11:9, 13:7, 14:6, 10:11, 17:16, and remarks: In these passages tongues, nations, peoples, are always mentioned; but in place of θυλῶν, ὀ ?́χλοι once, kings once. The number four is therefore always preserved, having reaped to the four quarters of the earth.]That by the kindreds we are not, with Bengel, to understand the tribes of Israel, is clear by comparing Genesis 10:5, Genesis 10:18, Genesis 12:3 in the Sept. translation. The tone of the Revelation is one so thoroughly �cumenical, that so much of a special respect to the Jews would be quite unsuitable to its character. On Revelation 5:10 Bengel remarks: “They do not say: Thou hast made us thereto, and we shall reign, although they themselves must be understood in what is said. Thou hast made them, namely the redeemed, a kingdom and priests by virtue of this very redemption.” Bengel preferred the reading, a kingdom, to that of kings, on the ground that it was unseemly for those, who were in the presence of the great King, to call themselves kings, as they also cast their crowns before him. But the reading: kings, is best supported, and there are no internal considerations against it: they confess here also that they hold their crowns only in fief; they wonder that Christ has conferred such honour on such persons, with the same humility that David praises the grace of God, in Psalms 8, in granting royal dignity to his poor creature, man. But if the elders, as representatives of the church, in ch. Revelation 4:4, bear golden crowns on their heads, Christians might here also be called kings. We may compare also the diversity in the two readings at ch. Revelation 1:6. Zόllig remarks on kings falsely: such as shall one day be such, comp. on ch. Revelation 1:6. We must rather explain: kings even now, but kings still more gloriously in the future, when the meek shall inherit the earth. The kingdom of the saints has its stages, as that of the Lord, comp. ch. Revelation 11:17. That the words: and they shall reign, follows the designation priests, shews, that the priestly and the royal dignity are most closely conjoined together; on the spiritual territory he who is priest is also king; nearness of relationship to God has dominion in God over all that is out of God as its necessary consequence. On the words: they shall reign, Vitringa remarks: “If we take into account the feeble beginnings of Christianity, and the circumstances of the times, this must have appeared quite incredible and beyond all hope. The saints, however, taught by the Word of God, anticipated with their hope that great revolution of things, which at last began to take effect under Constantine, and sought especially to learn this out of the book before us.” The fundamental passage is in Daniel 7:27, “And the kingdom, and the dominion, and the power over the kingdoms under the whole heaven is given to the people of the saints of the Most High.” We can either explain: they shall reign over the earth, by comparing ch. Revelation 2:26, Matthew 2:22; or: on the earth. Even if we follow the latter meaning, according to Revelation 5:13, we need not exclude ch. Revelation 20:6, according to which the already completed number of the saints shall reign in heaven with Christ for a thousand years. For its being said to be on the earth does not necessarily require the seat of the kingdom to be on the earth; this only is implied, that the earth is the sphere of their government, their domain. But ch. Revelation 22:5 points to the final consummation. Revelation 5:11. And I saw, and heard a voice of many angels round about the throne, and about the beasts and the elders, and their number was ten thousand of ten thousands and thousands of thousands. Bengel: “The many angels make a circle; this circle surrounds the throne, and the beasts, and the elders. The holy beasts are like a part of the throne itself, although they are no carved inanimate figures, but living. The elders, however, are nearer the throne than the angels. It is a question, on account of the comparison between angels and men, which form of the two orders of creation is the more excellent in its nature. The angels, because they are spirits, so far agree more with the nature of God than ours. But because the Son of God has become man, men also have an honour which the angels have not; and one might almost say, that an angel might wish to be a man, so that he might be like the Son of God in his humanity. There can be no doubt, then, that there is at least somewhat of man nearer to God than the angels.” But the elders here are nearer to the throne, because the matter in hand concerns the church on earth. The question of rank, therefore, has nothing to do here. But that the angels encompass not merely the throne of God with the beasts, but also the elders on every side, arises from this, that they are the servants, not merely of God, but also of the church, or God’s servants for the good of the kingdom of his anointed upon earth—comp. Psalms 34:8; John 1:52; Hebrews 1:14. The original passage is Daniel 7:10, “Thousand of thousands served him, and myriads of myriads stood before him.” That here the thousands stand after the ten thousands, while we would have expected the opposite order, is to be explained from the consideration, that in enormous multitudes distinctions vanish. Bengel’s supposition, that the smaller numbers being added to the greater is a proof that the former must be taken exactly, is quite too little. After the myriads stand also the thousands in Psalms 68:18, where in like manner reference is made to the angelic hosts as agents in the administration of God’s kingdom on earth. Revelation 5:12. And they speak with a loud voice: The Lamb that was slain is worthy to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing. We must supply: and so to open the book. For, it is in regard to the opening of the book, that the praise of Christ is here celebrated. Bengel: “In Revelation 5:9 it is said: Thou art worthy, and now: The Lamb is worthy. And so again in Revelation 5:13. The songs more immediately belong to the Lamb.” Here, the mode of representation is more an objective one, there the direct address carries more of feeling. The encomiums mentioned are seven, corresponding to the same number of God in ch. Revelation 7:12, and the ten number of encomiums in regard to God in 1 Chronicles 29:11-12.[Note: Vitringa: “The formula approaches nearest to that used by David in 1 Chronicles 29:11-12, where he publicly praised God before an assembly of the Israelites. Which is itself a proof, that the personage, whose praise is celebrated here, is not merely illustrious, but a partaker of true Godhead,” Schöttgen: “But those who are unwilling to concede divine properties to Christ’s human nature, can be most easily refuted from this passage. For, Sephiroth, or properties, which belong only to God, which neither the Jews nor any of the sacred writers ever ascribe to any but God, are here ascribed to the Lamb, which without doubt is Christ.”]Bengel: “We should pronounce these seven encomiums as if they were but one word, because they all stand together under a single article.” The Lamb is worthy to take or receive the power, etc., they ascribe to him, in the acknowledgment and celebration of it—comp. on ch. Revelation 4:9. Mention is made also in Ephesians 3:8 of “the unsearchable riches” of Christ. On account of these riches he possesses glorious gifts, which are discoursed of in Ephesians 3:9-10, and can impart them to our poverty. Comp. John 1:16-17, “And of his fulness have we all received grace for grace. For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” The blessing denotes in an objective sense manifold blessings, for example Romans 15:29, where the blessing of the gospel is spoken of. But that it is used here in the sense of an encomium, appears from the corresponding thanks in ch. Revelation 4:9, and the connection in which it stands with the thanksgiving in ch. Revelation 7:12. The word is intentionally placed here at the end, and in Revelation 5:13 at the commencement of the whole enumeration. It points to this, in what sense the power, etc., are taken, in the acknowledgment. Revelation 5:13. And every creature, that is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and in the sea, and what is in them, heard I all saying: To him that sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb, be blessing, and honour, and glory, and honour for ever and ever. Revelation 19:1, the proclamation of God’s glory is attributed to the stars, as being a matter-of-fact celebration of it. From these analogies the praise of the Lamb can here also be ascribed to all the different parts and orders of creation, only in so far as he participated in the creation of the world. It is thus in unison with John 1:3, “All things were made by him, and without him was nothing made that is made;” John 1:10, “The world was made by him;” comp. John 17:5, “And no, O Father, glorify me with thyself, with that glory, which I had with thee before the world was;” also 1 John 1:1, and Hebrews 1:2, “By whom also he made the worlds,” Hebrews 1:3, “He upholds all things by his mighty word,” Colossians 1:15-17. In this book itself Christ appears as the first and the last, Revelation 1:17, the beginning of the creation of God, Revelation 3:14. Those, who will not accede to this view, according to which even those under the earth, the devil and the lost must praise Christ—for their existence and the gifts with which they are furnished, are a speaking proof of his greatness and love—have only to resort to a poetical figure without any profound substantial meaning.[Note: De Wette’s remark, too light for a solemn subject, “To him upon the throne and to the Lamb—therefore no Trinitarian representation,” is disposed of by what has been said. The apparent separation of the sitter on the throne and of the Lamb is by John himself again resolved into unity, when in ch. 7:17 he speaks of the Lamb in the midst of the throne.]Here there is no more mention of the opening of the book, but the whole scene runs out into the general praise of God and the Lamb. Bengel: “There are many creatures on the earth, many in the sea, rational and irrational, blessed and cursed. Each has its proper dwelling and abode. And now all, that are in the four great regions, are summoned together, even though they should be in hell. All must honour the Son, as they honour the Father. The great regions are four, and the encomiums are also four.” The addition: and is in them, points to this, that we are not to think merely of the great parts of creation—for example of the earth in its mountains and valleys, but also in its smaller things, which have their abode in it. The all, πάντας, not everything,[Note: Bengel in his Apparatus: “The reading καὶτὰἐναὐτοῖςπάνταἤκουσαλέγοντας, is supported by the greater number of codicis. A few turn πάντας, or even λέγοντας, into the neuter.”]is used on account of the personification. The blessing, which ends Revelation 5:12, forms the beginning here. Revelation 5:14. And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together, and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. That the heaven is the heaven of the princes is clear from what has been already remarked in the two preceding verses. The heaven is used so not merely in Isaiah, but also in Haggai. Vitringa has remarked, “The image of the heaven rolled together denotes the annihilation of the whole civil and ecclesiastical system of the empire, here under consideration. For, in the prophetic style the whole body of the rulers of a people have the designation of heaven applied to it; but the people that are subject to the rulers, are represented as the earth.” A book rolled together is in a manner vanished, since nothing can any longer be seen and read in it. The figure of the sea as a designation of the world and the nations was found already in use by the Seer; see on this figure my Commentary on Psalms 107:23, and the passages there referred to; and with himself it is quite common, see at Revelation 7:1, Revelation 8:8, Revelation 10:2, Rev. 12:18, Revelation 16:3, Revelation 20:13. It is a farther extension of this image, when particular kingdoms are denoted by the islands, along with the current designation by mountains. So, besides this passage, in ch. Revelation 16:20. But here also the Seer connects himself with the Old Testament. Isaiah makes very frequent mention of the islands, more frequently than might have been expected, had he followed the common phraseology. In Isaiah 12:1, Isaiah 49:1, Isaiah 51:5, he places the islands and the nations together. In Isaiah 11:11 he puts “the islands of the sea” as a compound expression after the enumeration of a series of particular kingdoms. Also in Isaiah 24:15, under the islands of the sea are most suitably understood the kingdoms of the earth. Likewise in Isaiah 42:4, “And on his law shall the islands wait,” where the LXX. and Matthew in Matthew 12:21 have nations instead of islands. “To the islands will he repay their gifts,” it is said in Isaiah 59:18. Before, the prophet had been speaking of the adversaries and opponents of the Lord. But the islands in the common sense were not specially leagued in the impious resistance to the Lord. The same figurative use of the islands also occurs in Zephaniah, Zephaniah 2:11. The islands of the heathen there could only mean their countries in general. For, in the parallel clause are the gods of the earth, and the inland territories of the Ammonites and Moabites belong to the islands. These are the particular, while under the name of islands a rise is made to the general. It is a similar expansion of the image of the sea, when in Psalms 107:23-32, and Isaiah 42:10, the inhabitants of the world appear as sea-farers, and when, in Revelation 8:9, men are spoken of as creatures in the sea, and their habitations, villages, and cities as ships. Revelation 5:15. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the captains, and the rich and the strong, and every bondman and every freeman hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains. Revelation 5:16 And say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him, who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. Revelation 5:17. For the great day of his wrath is come, and who is able to stand? In the kings and other magnates we have the explanation of the stars in Revelation 5:13, of the heaven in Revelation 5:14, and see that by these was meant all that is brilliant, great, and mighty. In Revelation 5:12-14 we had what was done towards them, but here it is, how they were thereby affected. Bengel remarks, “The very people who were least afraid on earth, who were themselves most feared, and in this sought their great glory and joy, stand foremost.” The classes named number seven altogether, divided by the three and the four—the three the governing party, with the king at their head, then the possessors of dignity in civil and military life. Along with the seven number there is the four, as the signature of the earth, the king and three pairs, beside “the possessors of dignity in civil and military life,” the “notables also, whether through wealth or power, and the people, bond and free.” With the enumeration here we may compare that in Mark 6:21 : Herod gave on his birth-day a feast to his great men, and captains, and principal men of Galilee. The principal men there (πρῶτοι) are here the rich and the strong. Bengel: “The great are those who have most to say in matters of policy, sit at the helm of the state, execute important commissions and other things of moment. In Spain they bear precisely the name of grandees, elsewhere of magnates, senators, members of Parliament, etc., and often indeed exercise more power than the kings themselves, and rule over kings. The rich and the strong are often self-willed and insolent persons, who are full of confidence in themselves, and ask nothing after God the Almighty. Then come at last all bondmen and free, consequently all men, even those who have no peculiar distinction. Every individual is either a bond person or free, though servitude and freedom have different stages among the higher and lower ranks of society. They know not whither to betake themselves. What in times of outward security were the most frightful places, those they now flee to for refuge, and that in vain. . . . Sometimes in summer, when a heavy storm, charged with lightning, thunder, and wind, breaks forth, how frequently will men, even those who are naturally courageous, and in fields of slaughter and other warlike encounters are undismayed, be seized with a fear and trembling, even creeping into vaults and such like places, because God now causes something to appear of his majesty, although it is still the time of his forbearance! How shall it then be, when the Almighty in full earnest strikes terror into his enemies! How insupportable must it be to the wicked!” The kings, according to the more exact import given by the connection, are such as breathe hostility to God and Christ. For, we have here a phase of God’s judgment on the ungodly world. The bondmen, according to ch. Revelation 13:16, also receive the mark of the beast. There, and in ch. Revelation 19:18, it is “free and bond,” but here “bond and free,” that the whole might not find its termination with the bondmen, who can here occupy but a subordinate position. Here respect is had mainly to those who stood in the more prominent places. Slaves were not the object of dread on the part of those for whom John prophecied; these had to suffer especially from kings and men of power; and if persons in a state of bondage became afraid and found themselves in a miserable condition, such was less to be wondered at, and not so striking a proof of the power of the Lamb. Julian’s exclamation: O Galiletin, thou hast conquered, was a fulfilment of our prophecy. But the course of history furnishes many that must unite in this confession, and at the present time especially it is again extorted. Those who shortly ago lifted themselves proudly up against him who sits on the throne and against the Lamb, the advocates of Rationalism, who robbed God and Christ of their honour, the persecutors of the true church, are fain now to hide themselves in caves and clefts of the rocks. In what form the wrath of the Lamb manifested itself in regard to the immediate object of the prophecy against the all-dominant Roman power of St John’s time, will be found in ch. 17 in connection with the ten kings, whom he armed against Rome. But to stand simply at that would be no better than if one should confine the declarations of Christ regarding his coming for judgment to Jerusalem, which, as being the hostile power at the time, was more immediately respected in them. The words, “they hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains,” refer to Isaiah 2:19, “And they (those who during the time of forbearance were such proud enemies of God) go into the holes of the rocks and into the caves of the earth for fear of the Lord and for the glory of his majesty, when he ariseth to shake terribly the earth.” The next clause, “And they say to the mountains and to the rocks, Fall on us and hide us,” points to Hosea 10:8, where it is said in regard to the apostate ten tribes, “The high places of Aven, the sin of Israel shall be destroyed; the thorn and the thistle shall come up on their altars; and they say to the mountains, Cover us, and to the hills, Fall on us.” This word had already been transferred by our Lord from the Old to the New Covenant, Luke 23:30, where he says, after announcing great tribulations on Jerusalem, “Then shall they begin to say to the mountains. Fall on us, and to the hills, Cover us.” The carrying of the Old Testament prophecies, which had primarily another object, over to the New, is a manifest proof how inadmissible it is to confine the prophecies of the New Testament to their more immediate object, and provides us with a kind of finger-post for the right understanding of them. We are not, with Zόllig, to suppose that there was properly a first and second thought: “Their first thoughts, therefore, must have been to withdraw themselves there, in the most secret and inaccessible hiding-places, from the judgment of the approaching avenger; but afterwards, when they saw that he could also reach them there, they sought in the anguish of despair rather to be buried under the precipitated mountain-rocks than to suffer the recompense due to their misdeeds.” We should rather take the two together: They concealed themselves there indeed, but the misery of their existence and the distress which accompanied them there, gave birth to the wish that they might be buried under the rocks. It seemed better to them to die at once than to continue in being. Zόllig remarks on their call to the rocks to fall on them, “They wished it, but it did not take place, at least not here, because in this preparatory vision there was still no actual infliction of judgment;” more correctly, because we are here still at the sixth seal and not the seventh, where the judgment comes finally to an end. Ch. Revelation 9:6 is parallel as to the meaning; it is said there at the first woe, the fifth trumpet, the locust plague, “And in those days shall men seek death and not find it, they shall desire to die and death will flee from them.” On the expression: before the face, Bengel remarks, “which is set against evil-doers,” Psalms 34:16; Revelation 11:18; Psalms 2:5. It has been affirmed without the least reason that the name of the Lamb suits better in the mouth of followers than of adversaries. Here it is quite in its place. It points to the quiet patience and meekness of Christ (see on ch. Revelation 5:6), which had encouraged them to set themselves against him, instead of allowing themselves to be thereby drawn to repentance. Now they must feel to their horror that the Lamb is also the Lion. As much as: him whom we thought we could venture to despise on account of his mildness and leniency, but who to our dismay manifests the other side of his character. In Revelation 5:17 the expression, “it is come,” indicates the assured conviction: it is already as good as present. For, in reality the day was still not come, since they could not in that case have continued in life; and as certainly as we are here only at the sixth seal, it cannot be till the seventh, that the judgment of the world actually arrives. But at the beginning of the end they feel as if the end itself were present. The same anticipatory character belongs to the, “it is come,” in ch. Revelation 11:18. The great day is from Joe 2:11, “Great is the day of the Lord and very terrible, and who can bear it?” We find “the who can stand,” also in Malachi 3:2, “And who shall abide the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears,” comp. Luke 21:36. The standing is in contrast to the sinking down together of the guilty out of distress and fearful apprehension of what was coming. That these could not stand appears too well from the preceding verses, in which their misery and despair are delineated. Bengel remarks on this part, “Now many treat it quite lightly. But it is no joke. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God, and to seek, yet without being able to find, a refuge from the Almighty as an enemy, when heaven and earth are convulsed together. On the other hand, for those who have passed from wrath to grace, it is a matter of great joy that things cannot always continue as they are with the world, but that all shall be broken up, and a new order of things arise.” Chap. 6. Bengel in his “Erbaulichen Reden” gives utterance to a sentiment, which is of importance for judging in regard to the historizing mode of interpreting the Revelation adopted by him in common with many others: “Thus far we have considered five chapters, and have not met with much of human history, although it was the substance and design of the book to shew what was to come to pass. But now such things come. And from the quality of the persons here present, it is not possible to say much respecting them.” Bengel thus felt that the Revelation, in respect to its main subject, could not through his exposition be enjoyed by the vast majority of Christians, and remained dark in spite of all disclosures. This should have led him to subject that mode of interpretation to a severe ordeal. For, it is scarcely at the outset to be imagined, that a book, which is so decidedly ecclesiastical in its contents, should have been intended for the narrow circle of the learned. And if we consider more closely, it would not thus be really fitted to serve the interests and necessities of that class. For what renders a book unintelligible to the unlettered Christian, also renders it unedifying to the learned.[Note: There are not wanting expressions in Bengel which show that he himself felt this; as at ch. 9:1, ss., “The preceding context might indeed be regarded, as if little edification was contained in it since a woe is therein described, which is already long since past,” &c.] First Seal Revelation 6:1. And I saw that[Note: It is properly: And I saw when, that is, I was a beholder when. It is better to explain thus than with several: And I beheld, when the Lamb dad opened one of the seven seals, then I heard. The hearing can certainly be comprehended under the seeing, in a more general sense. But where, as here, there is merely something to be heard, and nothing properly to be seen, the: I saw, could scarcely be so employed. But the opening of the first seal was of itself, and apart from its contents, of such moment, that it was proper for the Seer to say in regard to it, that he saw.]the Lamb opened one of the seven seals. And I heard one of the four beasts say as with a voiceof thunder: Come and see. Bengel: “The four first seals have apparently a special resemblance to each other and a close connection, as hare also the three last. In the four first the four sacred beasts exclaim after each other to John: Come; and on each occasion John saw a horse of a certain colour, and a certain power that either belonged, or was now given to him that sat on it. But in the three last seals the four sacred beasts are not mentioned, and neither is there any horse.” Expositors for the most part remark, that one of the four beasts may be as much as the first, and that this, according to ch. Revelation 4:7, may be the lion. But in harmony with only one of the four beasts and not the first being here named, is the circa instance, that there is no evidence whatever of the particular beasts being taken into account. But why generally should such appearances of the beasts hare been announced? The answer is: because they are the representatives of the earth, on which the judgments were to be inflicted, or rather of all living beings on the earth. To the same conclusion points also the expression in Revelation 6:6 : in the midst of the four beasts. The words: as with a voice of thunder, are used only of the first in the series, and as to the meaning also appear to belong only to this. For, this distinction corresponds with the surpassing elevation of the object. With a voice of thunder was he announced, whose voice, according to ch. Revelation 1:15, “is like a voice of many waters,” of whom it is said in ch. Revelation 10:3, “And he cried with a loud voice as a lion roars, and when he cried the seven thunders uttered their voices.” The voice of thunder is a suitable announcement of the God-man conqueror, who, with invincible might, carries everything before him. Especially in the third of the series the thunders would have been unsuitable. They are elsewhere found also only in connection with the greatest transactions. The second thing peculiar to the preparation for the first appearance is the “Come and see” (in the following seals, it is merely: Come), which is spoken here to John as the representative of the whole church, which must be instructed through him regarding future events. This also points to the higher dignity of the first appearance, to the “great sight” (Exodus 3:3; Acts 7:31), which was presented in it. Bengel falsely: “This word see is put only at the first seal and its joyful contents. In the three following seals it is merely said come. They are of mournful import.” In this respect there is no difference between the first seal and the others, according to the right exposition. The appearances are all joyful for the church, all terrible for the world. There exists here a wonderfully close resemblance between the Revelation and Gospel of John. The “come and see,” which rests as to its ground on Psalms 66:5, “come and see the deeds of God,” and often occurs in the Talmudic and Cabbalistic books as an invitation to the attentive consideration of some important matter (see Schφttgen) is found also in John’s Gospel with reference to Christ. According to John 1:40 the “come and see”[Note: The want of the καὶἰ ?́δε in several important manuscripts, which has led some recent critics to omit them in the text, has no weight. For, we can perceive the reason of the omission to be, that in other codices the words are added at the second, third, and fourth seals. People sought in various ways to bring the seals into agreement with each other. For the originality of the καὶἰ ?́δε there is the parallel mark of distinction in the first seal of the voice of thunder, and the agreement with John 1:47.was the second word which was heard from Jesus by John along with his companion Andrew (see the proof for John’s being the unnamed disciple of the Baptist, who on his testimony followed Jesus with Andrew, in Lampe Proleg. i. c. 2, § 2.) That word had indelibly impressed itself on the thoughtful mind of the apostle. Through him probably had it come to Philip, and here it is once more sounded forth again. Revelation 6:2. And I saw, and behold a white horse, and he that sat on him had a bow, and a crown was given him, and hemarched out conquering, and that he might conquer. Bengel remarks: “Much such another, one quite peculiar and incomparable rider upon a white horse, is to be seen in ch. Revelation 19:11; but this one in the first seal had to be exhibited in some proportion with the riders in the second, third, and fourth seals, that there might be only some distinguishing traits in him as compared with the others.” The desired “proportion” must, no doubt, be found, but there is no proof of its needing to stand in the circumstances indicated by Bengel. Even if we understand by the rider on the white horse here, in accordance with ch. Revelation 19:11, Christ, there still exists between this seal and the others both a formal agreement and a matter-of-fact one also, in so far as the appearance here, as well as the others, threatens destruction to the anti-christian world, and brings it. This essential and indispensable point of unity is entirely left out of view by Bengel. According to him it was the appearance of the reign of Trajan that was represented, and so the church, instead of getting an answer to her anxious and sorrowful question, “Lord, how long?” gets only a bald proof of the omniscience of God: “Trajan’s reign could have been guessed by no human sagacity, and yet the things which were to take place under it shortly after the vision of John in Patmos, were so clearly announced beforehand.” That by such an interpretation the connection is quite broken between this appearance and what follows in the other seals, is clear as day. But for the identity of the rider on the white horse here with that in ch. Revelation 19:11, “And I saw the heaven opened, and behold a white horse, and he that sat upon him is called true and faithful, and he judges and makes war in righteousness,” there are the following reasons. 1. The agreement with ch. Revelation 19:11 is of the greater moment as the end of Christ’s war and victory there corresponds with the beginning here. 2. That the rider here is no other than Christ is clear from the unmistakeable reference of this passage to the Messianic Psalms 45, which is distinctly referred to Christ in Hebrews 1:8. The royal dignity, the sitting upon a horse, the bearing of a bow, the going forth to fight, the fulness of victory, all, excepting only the white colour of the horse, presents itself there again. 3. The original passage for the whole first four seals is Zechariah 1:7-17 (where see the Christology). The starting-point there, too, is the prosperity of the world, the distress of the church; and the subject is the announcement of the impending judgment on the world. That judgment the prophet there also incorporates under an equestrian figure. He sees a proud rider on a red horse in the myrtle bush of a deep valley, surrounded by red, bay, and white horses. He recognises in the rider at the head the angel of the Lord, and in his attendants the angels that serve him. In that portraiture also the angel of the Lord, the Logos, appears at the head. 4. Only if Christ here appears at the head will the design and import of the following appearances become clear. They then present themselves as means for accomplishing the victory of Christ, which they must necessarily be from the starting-point of the whole book and from the connection of the introductory chapters, in which everything serves as a preparation for an exhibition of the victory of Christ over the world. In the second, third, and fourthhorses by themselves there is only a fact set forth which can be contemplated from several points of view. We take the right one only when we refer Revelation 6:2 to Christ. In Zechariah also the signification of the symbol would have been doubtful if the angel of the Lord had not been at the head, whose appearance as such announced the salvation of the church, the destruction of the world. Comp. John 17:9. 5. The difference, along with the agreement, between the first appearance and those that follow, discovers itself in the “voice of thunder,” the “Come and see,” and “there went out another horse,” in Revelation 6:4, which is said in respect to the second horse only from its relation to the first, and must, therefore, point to a diversity. 6. The crown is not the victor’s crown, but the badge of royal dignity. This shows that the first rider cannot, according to Zόllig’s opinion, be like the rest, “a plague-spirit,” and points to Christ, who, according to ch. Revelation 19:16, has a name written upon his garments and upon his thigh: “King of kings and Lord of lords.” That the discourse here cannot be of a victor’s crown is evident alone from the consideration that he receives it before he goes out to fight, and in ch. Revelation 14:14 also he appears having a golden crown on his head. The white, λευκός, luceo, to enlighten, shine, is throughout the Revelation the colour of lucid splendour, the symbolical image of glory. Comp. on ch. Revelation 4:4, and hence the prevailing colour in the appearances of Christ; comp. ch. Revelation 1:14, “But his head and his hair white as wool.” The white horse has respect to the glory at once of his person and of his operations. Vitringa distinguishes unnecessarily between things that are most essentially limited. That the latter could not be excluded is plain from the analogy of the other horses, the colours of which foreshadow what was to be done by the riders, as also from the analogy of the horses in Zechariah in the passage already referred to, and in ch. Revelation 6:1-8. The crown is given to the rider, materially, that he may bear it in his warlike and victorious march. The king wears the royal crown only when he is engaged in kingly actions. We must not interpret: conquering and so that he conquered; but only: conquering and that he might conquer. Victory and nothing but victory! The expression: and that he might conquer, is a substitute for the annexed infinitive absol. in Heb., which “describes vividly unceasing progress.” Ewald, § 280, b. It might also have stood: conquering and conquering, or, so that he conquered and conquered. The object of the victory can only be the world as hostile to Christ. Viewed in regard to it, the affirmation, “This is no image of terror but of joy,” must be changed into the opposite. We must not, also, determine the relation of this horse to the following ones, so as to imply that this brings victory and these three misfortune. The description of a court of judgment opens the whole group. The book with the seven seals is the book of the judgment which God suspends over an ungodly world for the deliverance of his people. This character of it must necessarily come out to view in the first vision. Then in support of this view is the analogy of ch. Revelation 19:11, where also the appearance of him who sits upon the white horse is terrible and appalling to the enemies. Finally, if we were to regard this first appearance as one altogether cheering and joyful, we must destroy its connection with the three following, and overlook the fact that the three last riders form the sequel to the first, are the instruments of his victory. (Bossuet: “In his train march the three scourges of the wrath of God, as they were presented to David, 2 Samuel 24:13, war, famine, and pestilence.”). Behind the punishment there is salvation also for the world, if they submit to the punishment, and the case referred to in ch. Revelation 9:20, and Revelation 16:11, does not enter, of salvation being hid. The book is primarily a book of consolation for the church. This in all its feebleness and tribulation shall be revived by having the image of its heavenly King placed before its eyes, as he goes forth with invincible might to win a sure and glorious victory. Second Seal Revelation 6:3. And when he opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say: Come.[Note: The words: and see, which Luther here, and in Revelation 6:5; Revelation 6:7, has added, hive no critical support of any importance, and are taken from Revelation 6:1, without regard to the difference between the first appearance and the others.]V er. 4. And there went forth[Note: Several expositors: and there drew out, with reference to the ἐξήλθε in Revelation 6:2. But we can scarcely say of a horse what can be said of a rider. We must, therefore, understand the word here of the going forth, the in scenun prodire, an opposed to its being hitherto enclosed in the sealed book.]another horse, which was red, and it was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another; and there was given him a great sword. The supposition of Vitringa, that here the rage of the heathen emperor against the innocent confessors of the truth, with their bloody martyrdom, is here represented, proceeds on an entire disregard of the connection. Here, in the contemplated judgments, which under the leadership of Christ, God suspends over the world, as opposed to Christ and his church, war takes only a subordinate place. The seven trumpets are occupied fully and at large with this. But the object of the passage before us, is a threatening of bloody discord; it is one of the chief punishments which alight upon an ungodly world; one of the chief means of Christ’s victory. It breaks the might, the confidence, the security, the arrogance and fury of the antichristian world; it disposes the princes of the world to peace. Therefore the Christian should not be frightened if he sees this judgment realizing itself anew and still proceeding. It should be to him a harbinger of the victory of his Lord. When wars find terrors overspread the earth, he should see in them the dawn of the church’s triumph. On red as the colour of blood, see on ch. Revelation 12:3. To this view the whole points, and in particular the words: there was given him a great sword; so that Hoffmann’s remark: it means shedding of blood and burning, is to be rejected. Only such a colour is here naturally indicated as agrees with the natural colour of the horse. The redness of the fox-coloured horse suffices for the representation of blood redness. Third Seal Revelation 6:5. And when he opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say: Come. And I saw, and behold a black horse; and he that sat thereon had a pair of balances in his hand. Revelation 6:6. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say: A measure of wheat for a denarius, and three measures of barley for a denarius; and do not hurt the oil and the wine. The blackness of the horse indicates, not as Bengel and others suppose, “black hunger as the Greek and Latin poets called it;” but it is employed simply as the colour of mourning. This appears from the analogy of the black horse in Zechariah 6. It appears also from the fact that it is not hunger which is discoursed of, but only scarcity. This judgment forms only the stepping-stone to the fourth, where hunger in the proper sense enters, in fulfilment of Mat 24:7. The balances are mentioned here only as a symbol of scarcity. For, according to what follows, the corn is not weighed but measured.” Where there is a superfluity, there people count and miss not (Genesis 41:49), but where they weigh anything, it is a sign there is not too much.” Original passages are Ezekiel 4:10, “And thy food which thou shalt eat (thou must eat) by weight, twenty shekels a day,” and Ezekiel 4:16, “And he said to me, Thou son of man, Behold I break the staff of bread in Jerusalem, and they eat bread by weight and in sorrow,” which passages again rest on Leviticus 26:26. In regard to the voice heard, the only question is, what it proclaimed, not whence or by whom. It is hence unprofitable to seek to determine this. The sound came from “the midst of the four beasts,” the midst of the representatives of the living beings on the earth, because the report concerns these. Those who take up wrong views of the Cherubim, who, for example, understand by them the evangelists, or the leading men in the church, or the four offices, know not what to make of” the midst of the four beasts.” A measure, choenix, of wheat is stated by Suidas to be the daily support of a man (ἡμερήσιοςτροθή ?). Herodotus makes a reckoning in B. VII. c. 187, how much corn was needed for the Persian army, if every one received a choenix of wheat per day and no more, showing that this was the necessary daily allowance. A denarius was the usual day’s wages, according to Matthew 20:2. The price of the corn is therefore certainly a high one, but still it cannot be a case of absolute famine. If barley bread were to be eaten, the common food of the poorer sort of people (John 6:9, John 6:13), which is three times cheaper than wheaten bread, a family could still be brought through with difficulty. On the words: “and the oil and the wine hurt not,” Bengel remarks, “Barley and wheat are earlier than oil and wine. Here the discourse is of a time which is better for oil and wine than for barley and wheat. This, along with the other, points to a moderate scarcity: take heed, since the deficiency in the one kind can be made good by fulness in the other. Wheat and barley, oil and wine, are the most common and necessary means of life. The use of oil is considerably more common both in oriental and southern countries than with us.” Ewald thinks that the wine and oil are here not hurt by a sort of irony. “The greater the want there is of corn, the most necessary of all the means of support, the more painfully we feel a superfluity in a kind of provision, not profitable to us, such as oil.” But in this it is overlooked, that in oil and wine countries these productions have a quite different value from what they have with us in the north of Germany. Corn, oil, and wine, are put together as the three chief products of Palestine, and the three essential necessaries of life, in Deuteronomy 28:38-40, Micah 6:15, Ezra 3:7, and even the failure of the two latter we reckon there a calamity to the country. It is father overlooked, that even the wheat and barley are not represented as perfect failures, but only as high priced.” Where the means of support are wanting, there certainly it cannot avail, that there is still enough of oil and wine. But here the price is still pretty moderate. Should it come to pass, that oil for the preparation of food and wine retain their usual price, the scarcity is undoubtedly sufficient to press upon the poorer class, but still is not insupportable. But then the fundamental passage of Exo 9:31-32, is left out of view; on which Zόllig remarks, “We have there the seventh Egyptian plague, the hail, smiting the flax and barley, but sparing the wheat and rye; and that because, as is expressly mentioned, the barley was already in the ear and the flax was boiled, while the wheat and the rye being later of growth escaped injury.” If the sparing of the wheat and rye is there a mitigation of the divine judgment, so also here must be the sparing of the wine and oil. From the relation too of this seal to the following one, we can only think of a mitigation being intended. The subject here is not of a single divine judgment of the kind indicated, so that we should need to search in history for a particular period of scarcity, during which the representation here given was realized; but the prophecy has respect to an entire species of divine judgments, and the fulfilment is one that runs through all history. We have here just a prelude of the fulfilment of Mat 24:7, “There shall be famines in divers places.” Bad crops and scarcity are one of the scourges in the hand of God, with which he chastises unbelief and enmity to Christ and his church through the whole course of centuries, and punishes and breaks the arrogance of an apostate and rebellious world, so as to prepare the way for Christ’s dominion. Bengel: “The balances of this rider serve as a sign, that all the fruits of the ground, and consequently all heaven with its progressive influences, all the seasons of the year and the course of events, with their manifold changes and vicissitudes, are subject to Christ. They do well, who diligently mark the course and issues of things, as connected. among other things, with the divine judgments, which are accomplished through failures of crops, scarcity, pestilence, earthquakes, waterfloods, fire, hail, thunder and lightning; and those chronicles and narratives, which are devoted to the collection of such materials, are to be highly prized. For they celebrate the work of the Most High, whose hand leaves wonderful traces behind it, not only in the operations of war and peace among earthly states, but also in the course of nature.” Fourth Seal Revelation 6:7. And when the fourth seal was opened, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come. Revelation 6:8. And I saw, and behold a pale horse, and he that sat on him, his name is death, and hell followed after him. And power was given him to kill the fourth part on the earth, with the sword, and hunger, and with death, and by the beasts of the earth. Bengel: “Here we have combined together and increased indeed, what in the preceding seals was set forth by particulars, and in a less oppressive form.” Certainly we have here a junction and an aggravation of the two preceding plagues; but the first seal is also improperly combined with them by Bengel. War, and indeed such a war, as scatters death and destruction far and wide, appears here in connection, not merely with scarcity, but with absolute famine, and along with that also disease and wild beasts. Striking as regards the relation of the fourth seal to the second and third, is the passage in Matthew 24:6-8, “Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that ye be not troubled ; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. For nation shall rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. All these are the beginning of sorrows.” The for in Revelation 6:7 indicates, that this verse is to be regarded as a higher gradation of what is said in the preceding verse. There scattered wars were spoken of, but here a universal warfare, a kind of general uproar spreading over the whole earth. They were not to consider wars and rumours of wars as the immediate harbingers of the end. For before this should take place, there must be a rising of people against people, etc.; and even this should not bespeak the immediate approach of the end, but only the beginning of sorrows; as here, after the fourth seal, there are still then more to follow. The second seal corresponds to the wars and rumours of wars in Revelation 6:6, and also the third; as the scattered wars appear like heralds of the universal warfare, so the scarcity is like the herald of the famine. The pale[Note: Χλωρός properly green, is used even by Homer in the sense of pale, II. vii. 479, where χλωρὸςδεός is pale fear; comp. Artemidorus i. 77. Constantius, the father of Constantine the Great, according to Zonaras, was called Chlorus, on account of the paleness of his countenance.]horse images wan death. As the rider under the fourth seal has the name of death, the second is personified war, the third personified scarcity. In the train of death hell appears; Greek, Hades Bengel: “The four seals turn upon living men; and so death, by which they are carried off, is most prominently represented, but hell, only in so far as he receives those who have been cut off by death, acting as death’s hearse, on which account no separate horse is assigned him.” He further remarks: “By the German word Hφlle (hell), two Greek words are expressed, which are widely different. The one is Gehenna, and means in particular the place of fire and torment; the other is Hades, and corresponds to the Hebrew Scheol. Here it is the word Hades that is employed, which generally signifies the state of the dead, whether the soul may have gone to peace or may be under wrath.” This remark cannot be held to be just. The word Hades is used in the New Testament only in reference to dead sinners—see my Commentary on the Psalms, vol. III. p. 86. (Eng. Trans.), and especially Luke 16:23, where to be in Hades and in torment are inseparably connected together. This usage prevails especially in the Revelation (comp. ch. Revelation 1:18, Revelation 20:13); in the latter of the passages referred to it is the ungodly alone that are spoken of; Hades appears as their temporary receptacle after they leave the world. Now in the passage before us, there is no reason why we should take Hades in the Old Testament meaning. The subject of discourse is the judgments to be executed upon the ungodly world as opposed to the kingdom of Christ. For such to die and to go into hell is all one. Of the elect no account is made here. How it was to fare with them in the midst of these judgments, first appears in ch. 7.[Note: It is from misapprehending the proper import and position of this seventh chapter, that Bengel makes the following remark here: “Whether and how far the servants of God were to be spared from the judgment, is not mentioned; for these are secured by the sealing in ch. 7, not from what is spoken of here, but from what follows under the trumpets.” Ewald still more distinctly goes against the connection, when he represents the plagues mentioned here as affecting the Christians not less than others, and even specially intended to put their faith to the proof. The analogy of the Egyptian plagues should have kept commentators from such irrelevant remarks, which would substitute the judgments on the Church for that of the world, for which alone preparation wan made in ch. 4 and 5.If Hades were used here in the Old Testament sense, there would have been no occasion for specially mentioning him after .death. It is appropriate only as the place of torment, and is fitted to deepen the impression of terror. The fourth part of the earth is the fourth part of the human race. The judgment is a frightful one, especially when it is considered that where so many are carried away by death, untold sorrows must also be experienced by the rest. Even yet, however, it is not the end of all things. That only the fourth part is destroyed points to this, that fearful judgments were still to come, as we have yet but the first four of the seven seals of that book, which was filled with terrors. The instruments of death are comprised in the number four. They stand in a certain relation to each other. Famine and pestilence not rarely break out in the train of war, and in the lands which have suffered depopulation by such causes ravenous wild beasts take possession, and become formidable to the people that are left (2 Kings 17:25). The original passage is Ezekiel 14:21, “My four sore judgments, the sword, and famine, and the noisome beast, and pestilence, I send against Jerusalem, that I may cut off from it man and beast,” (comp. what is said more at length regarding them in Ezekiel 14:12-20). The result here is exactly the same as in Ezekiel, only that the noxious beasts, which were threatened so early as in Leviticus 26:22, take here the last place, because relatively they produce the smallest devastations. Hunger, war, pestilence, appear as the three great judgments of God in 2 Samuel 24:11, ss. By death here the pestilence must be understood, according to many expositors. Nor can there be any doubt that pestilence must be chiefly meant, by comparing the original passage in Ezekiel, and others, in which the pestilence is named as a main instrument of judgment. Still, since death is employed and not pestilence, λοιμός, which might so naturally have occurred from the discourses of our Lord, also because of the parallel passage ch. Revelation 18:8 (comp. besides ch. Revelation 2:23), and because in the classical authors no trace is to be found of the supposed special signification of the word death, nor does the Sept. version, when more narrowly examined, afford any proof of it,[Note: When the LXX. render, as they often do, γαψ by θάνατος, it was not because they employed the latter simply in the sense of pestilence, but because they took the Heb. word in a general sense, as the word itself indeed properly means destruction in general, and is only to be taken in the more special sense of pestilence when the connection clearly determines it to be so used.]the word death must be taken as a comprehensive expression, which besides pestilence includes other things that tend to produce a general desolation. So already Bengel, “Death properly means pestilence, and yet we can also understand by it earthquakes, destruction by fire and water, inasmuch as multitudes of men are violently killed by these.” There are not wanting examples in Scripture of the general being thus mentioned in the midst of the particular. Perfectly analogous is Genesis 1:26, “Have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of heaven, and over the cattle, and over the whole earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth.” The expression: over the whole earth, is put in the room of: over the wild beasts of the earth, but at the same time includes in itself whatever might be on the earth besides the things specially named. Then also Genesis 15:21, where the mention of the Canaanites has led to the groundless supposition of there being a separate race with that name, from the manner of Scripture in this respect not being attended to. The general term introduced in such cases among others of a special nature, shews that the different kinds named are only to be regarded as representatives of the whole species. All the judgments mentioned here are directed to the one point of chastising and breaking the pride and insolence of the world, restraining its persecuting zeal, and converting out of it what is to be converted, and laying it at the feet of Christ the conqueror. The fulfilment pervades all history, and is ever renewing itself before our eyes: as often as the world’s hatred against Christ and his church breaks forth anew, the commission is also again given to him who bits upon the pale horse, and whose name is death. It is a spectacle of fearful magnificence to see him riding on through centuries. Bengel: “We know not what sorrows may come upon the earth even in our days, and much yet remains to run its course. O, how needful is it for us to make sure indeed of the love of the Lamb and his gracious protection! Come what may, there shall assuredly be safety and blessing to his true people.” Fifth Seal Revelation 6:9. And when the fifth seal was opened, I saw under the altar the souls of those who were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they had. Revelation 6:10. And they cried with a loud voice and said: How long, Lord, thou holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth! Revelation 6:11. And there was given to every one of them a white garment, and it was said to them that they should rest yet for a time, until their fellow-servants and their brethren, who should also be killed as they were, should fulfil. The book is the book of the Lord’s judgments against a hostile world and for his church. With every particular seal that is opened, a part of its contents, a phase of the judgment must be laid open. At the head of the whole we see Christ marching forth as conqueror. All that follows must connect itself properly with this victorious emblem; nothing can happen which does not disclose Christ as a conqueror. We have not to do here with the signs of Christ’s coming in general. Agreeably to the starting-point, the oppression of the church through the world-power, and the despairing thoughts this gave rise to in believers, the judgments that belong to this portion are the preliminary ones, that give indication of the end, in which the whole is to be consummated. Now, all the rest really bears this character. Only the seal before us forms an apparent exception, which yet cannot be suffered, without interrupting the symmetry of the whole, and imputing to the holy Seer a kind of thoughtlessness. If we should, for example, suppose with Hoffmann, that there is here set forth “the persecution of those who keep and maintain God’s word and the testimony of the Lamb,” as a sign of the end ( which, however, is opposed by the circumstance of the persecution not being described, but pre-supposed as done, and only the question raised, when the time of recompense was to come), we should then place this seal out of the compass of the introductory vision in ch. 4, in which all announces the judgments of God on the ungodly world. The same may be said also of Ewald’s view: “It is intimated that those plagues shall be especially destructive to the Christians, and that already many martyrs have fallen under them;” by which, also, the import of the preceding seals is wholly misapprehended. The plagues of the four first seals have respect merely to the world; under them the blood of the martyrs is not shed; but they are the beginning of revenges for that blood. The difficulty vanishes whenever it is perceived, that the question, “How long dost thou not judge and avenge our blood?” which was spoken at a determinate period of time, had its occasion in the circumstances of the time, and inasmuch as it presupposes these to come into consideration here. The impending provisional judgments are so frightful, more frightful even than those described in the first four seals, that they impel the mind to think of the approaching final judgment. In the fourth seal only the fourth part was carried away; with all its terribleness it bears only a partial, provisional character. But here a general judgment begins to come forth on the inhabitants of the earth. The shaking of the foundations of the ungodly power appears to announce its final overthrow. Yet an indication is given, that, notwithstanding present appearances, this was not to take place quite immediately; and so the prayer of this seal has a definitive relation to the sixth, and prepares the way for it. What here begins to be vigorously entered on, is accomplished afterwards under the seventh seal, after the premonitory signs have under the sixth assumed an extensively threatening character. The cry of the martyrs, therefore, stands in a similar relation to the circumstances of the time, as Daniel’s prayer, in Daniel 9, occasioned by the overthrow of Babylon, that the Lord would fully execute his promises. The substance, in short, of the fifth seal is, such catastrophes as bring to view the final judgment on the world, and in connection with that the glorification of the church. Here, as in the preceding context, the Seer has primarily in view the Roman world, for it was this which in his time shed the blood of martyrs; it was this which primarily had led him, for his own interest and that of his companions in tribulation, to place himself on his watchtower, and look forth for what God might speak to him, and what he should answer to his complaint (Habakkuk 2:1). Great shakings of the Roman empire were what the cry of the martyrs, “how long,” immediately called forth for the inquiring and expecting prophet. But the prophecy does not reach its end with the immediate fulfilment. It comes to life again, so soon as a new antichristian power, which the Seer himself indicates in ch. Revelation 20:7, ss., though certainly in a very general manner, treads in the footsteps of the old Roman power, and provides consolation for the church that shall then groan under its persecutions. It is quite characteristic of the groups of the seven seals and the seven trumpets, that every thing in them bears a general and comprehensive character, nothings refers specially or at all exclusively to the Roman empire. The special references to this belong to the later groups. According to Lόcke, a rebuke is given to the martyrs for their impatience, as seeking not to gratify their revenge, but to call down the judgment of God from heaven. But there is no symptom of a rebuke. The idea is, that the judgment, which through its surpassing frightfulness seemed to bring the end immediately into view, still did not carry this import, but only of a presage, that the final judgment was only to come when the world, through the continued persecution of the church, had filled up the measure of their sins; comp. Matthew 24:6, “But ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that ye be not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.” Whenever it is perceived that the introduction of the martyrs is of a purely poetical character, it becomes manifest that there can be nothing of impatience and rebuke. These souls had already cried for vengeance, and it was the hearing of their cry that is reported in the four first seals. But that was still not the vengeance itself, which could be satisfied with nothing short of the entire overthrow of the adversaries, but only a prelude of it. Now, however, the circumstances have entered, which place the full vengeance distinctly in view. The souls of the martyrs in Revelation 6:9 are not the souls in the intermediate state, as expositors commonly suppose; the souls are meant of which it is said in the Old Testament, that they are in the blood—the animal souls (see, for example, Genesis 9:5); they are murdered souls; but the blood itself might as well have stood, and in Revelation 6:10 indeed is actually put instead of the souls here. This is plain from comparing the original passage, Genesis 4:10, where the blood of Abel cries to God from the ground. (Zόllig: “Only a dramatizing of the thought: your blood demands vengeance, according to Genesis 4:10, Genesis 9:5, etc.”) It is in accordance with the phraseology of the Old and New Testament, in which everywhere the spirits only, not the souls of the departed are spoken of—see my Commentary on the Psalms, vol. III. p. 87. Trans. It is shown by a comparison of the parallel passage, ch. Revelation 20:4, where the discourse is of the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and where the prophet sees them live again. It is plain, finally, from the fact, that the souls were seen under the altar, in reference to Leviticus 4:7 (comp Leviticus 5:9), “And the whole blood of the bullock shall he pour out at the bottom of the altar of burnt- offering, which is before the tabernacle of the congregation.” Accordingly, since the place under the altar has nothing to do with souls in the higher sense, we can only understand by the souls the animal souls, which perish with the body. The introduction of the souls of the martyrs here, therefore, is a purely poetical one. They are in reality as little living, as the blood of Abel in reality cried to God from the earth. Life is only lent to them here, that they might utter what the thought of them, combined with the relations of the time, tended to as a result. The altar is that of the heavenly sanctuary. For heaven is the stage on which all here proceeds—comp. ch. Revelation 4:1. Two altars occur in the Revelation, namely, the golden altar of incense, and the altar of burnt-offering, which is not said to be golden. That is treated of in ch. Revelation 8:3-4, Revelation 9:13; this in ch. Revelation 14:18, Revelation 16:7. Here it can only be the altar of burnt-offering that is meant. For this, as being the more public of the two, accessible, and open to the view of all, is always the one intended in Scripture, and especially in the Revelation, when the altar simply is mentioned, and without any further addition (comp. ch. Revelation 16:7). And here we can the less think of any other than it, as on it alone were bloody offerings presented, and only under it could the blood be found, or the souls of those that had been slain. Why does John see the souls of the martyrs under the altar? The answer is furnished by what has been already remarked. By this is already disposed of the view of those who consider the spot under the altar as the place “where they could best be kept under the view of God, to whom their obedience in their death had been a sweet smelling savour,” as “a fine keeping place,” as the first stage of that blessedness to which others afterwards succeed; so that some are even inclined to understand by the altar Christ (Gerhard, Calov, &c.,) “under whose protection and shade the souls of the martyrs are preserved free from all perils and evils till the day of judgment.” Such a view must at once give way as soon as it is established, that it is not the spirits but the animal souls of the martyrs that are here spoken of. It withdraws from the vengeance-cry of the martyrs, in Revelation 6:10, the foundation which is here provided for it, and which rests on the circumstance, that their murdered souls lie upon the ground. For the spirits of the departed, too, the place under the altar, by which it is quite arbitrary to understand Christ, is a rare sort of keeping place! Then, such a view of the subject here brings it into conflict with what is elsewhere said of the state of the departed righteous, especially in this series itself; and in ch. Revelation 7:9 ss., according to which the departed righteous stand before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white garments and palms in their hands, and this even partly during the tribulation which passes over the world. Bengel’s supposition of different stages rests upon a misapprehension as to the relation of ch. 7 to ch. 6, and the regressive character which belongs to the latter. The whole of the sacrificial system is an allegory. The sacrifice of beasts symbolised that of men. The presentation of the burnt-offering in particular symbolised the consecration of the persons by whom and for whom they were brought, primarily indeed, their spiritual consecration, but this also in the external, in martyrdom, formed the chief and fundamental element. Hence, it was very natural to consider those who had yielded up their life for the cause of God and Christ, as having been sacrificed on the altar of the heavenly sanctuary; the more so, as from Isaiah 53. the death of Christ was wont to be considered as a sacrificial death, and to be set forth under sacrificial terms, not preventing, but prefiguring the death of his people for the truth (comp. ch. Revelation 12:11). The blood of the slain victims, which were offered on the material altar of burnt-offering, according to Leviticus 4:7, was to be poured out at the bottom of the altar. Accordingly it was natural to assign the murdered souls of the martyrs a place under the altar. There they lie, and complain of their murder, so long as it still remains unavenged. From this passage has arisen the custom of preserving the relics of the martyrs in the altars. Bengel remarks, “who killed them? Babylon (ch. Revelation 18:24, and in her, in the spiritual Babylon, that is Rome, was found the blood of prophets and saints, and of all those that were killed upon the earth.) When Babylon is reckoned with, the blood that cries here is found in her, ch. Revelation 19:2. Now, since the Roman martyrs in the fifth seal still cry for vengeance, it may be perceived that the plagues in the fourth seal do not particularly point to Rome, for that city remains yet unavenged. When John received the vision, many Christians had already been executed; the persecution was past which had been raised by the savage Nero in Rome itself, in which Peter was crucified, and Paul was put to death by the sword.” It is true that the Seer had primarily in his eye the Roman martyrs. Still, these only occupied the foreground—as surely as the contents of this fifth seal could not find merely a single fulfilment. But in so far as the Roman persecution is kept in view, we are not merely to think of the souls of those who were slain under Nero and onwards till the time of Domitian; but we are to regard the Seer as beholding along with these all such as, up to the period of the fifth seal, were destined to suffer amid the approaching catastrophes of the Roman dominion. He that saw through the causes of the bloody commencement could have no doubt as to the bloody progress. But from this Bengel quite erroneously concludes, that the Roman martyrs still cry for vengeance, and that the plagues in the first four seals do not especially respect Home. The revenge which is sought here is the definitive, the final one. As certainly as the Roman persecution forms the starting-point, must the plagues in the first four seals primarily have respect to Rome (though still neither specially, nor exclusively so), and an exposition which does not recognise this, bears error on its very front. For the word of God and for the testimony which they had, therefore, for the very same reason that had occasioned John’s banishment to Patmos, as stated in ch. Revelation 1:9. The testimony, according to this parallel passage, is the testimony of Jesus; and the addition, “of the Lamb,” or “of Jesus Christ,” which is found in some critical authorities, is right in substance. The expression: which they had, appears at first sight singular. We would have expected something, that more distinctly marked their activity. But according to the kind of representation adopted in the Apocalypse, the witnessing properly belongs to Christ, who is the true and faithful witness—ch. Revelation 1:5, Revelation 3:14. The martyrs, as they are commonly called, are but the depositaries of this testimony; those that are Christ’s have but to abide true to the testimony they have received, to keep that which has been given them, ch. Revelation 11:3, to hold what they have. Jesus witnessed concerning the truth during his walk on earth, and continually bears witness through the Spirit of the Father, which he sends—comp. John 15:26-27. The testimony also of Jesus, which is deposited in this book, belongs originally not to him, through whom it was communicated to the church, but Jesus testifies in it of himself, and John merely has the testimony of Jesus according to ch. Revelation 19:10, comp. ch. Revelation 12:17; where “having the testimony of Jesus” also occurs. In Revelation 6:10 it is not the souls that are the subject (for these could not speak of their blood), but the slain. The address, as it seems, is directed to Christ; for it is he who opens the fifth seal. The fundamental passage is Psalms 79:10, “Make known to the heathen the revenging of the blood of thy servants, which has been shed.” This again points back to the words of Moses, “for the blood of his servants will he avenge,” which form the conclusion of the Song in Deuteronomy 32:43. The sad and wistful, but still believing (for faith alone wonders that God should be so long in executing revenge) how long, is very common in the Old Testament, and especially in the Psalms; for example, Psalms 35:17, “O Lord, how long wilt thou look on?” Psalms 94:3, “How long, Lord, how long shall the wicked triumph?” The address, “O Lord,” corresponds to the mention of the servants in the Psalms. Compare the expression “their fellow-servants,” in Revelation 6:11. The Lord must himself undertake for his servants and avenge them As it belongs to them to serve him truly, and as they have done this even to the sacrificing of their life, so it rests with him to afford them true protection and avenge them. In the Psalms the prayer for help and vengeance is commonly founded on the circumstance of the Psalmist’s being the Lord’s servant. Bengel: “In the Greek here there is a word ὁδελσπότης, which nowhere else occurs in the Revelation, and properly signifies a landlord, or head of a house. The martyrs cried to God as their own proper lord. Innocent blood, if shed without any charge of crime, and guiltless only in a common respect, cries; but much more does the blood of those cry, who have shed it for the truth of heaven”—the servants of God and Christ, who had sacrificed their lives in their service. The New Testament constantly uses the word δεσπότης, lord or householder, in denoting the relation of any one to servants—comp. 1 Peter 2:9, “Let servants be subject to their masters with all fear.” Luke 2:29, “Now, Lord, lettest thou thy servant depart in peace,” Acts 4:28-29; 1 Timothy 6:1; Titus 2:9; 2 Peter 1:1; Jude 1:1, Jude 1:4. The holiness denotes God's absolute separation from the world, in its impotence and transitoriness; comp. on ch. Revelation 4:8. In reference to the truth, see on ch. Revelation 3:7. The divine truthfulness in keeping promise is only a particular element of the truth, and the idea of the truth is weakened, if it is wholly confined to that. The martyrs sought for revenge as such, so that the nature of their God might manifest itself therein, which would otherwise be at fault; for if revenge was wanting God could not be God ; as certainly as he is the holy and the true, he must execute it. But they also desired revenge, as appears from Revelation 6:11, because it is the necessary condition of the church's glorification, and peculiar to it. If with Wolf we take away the former, one does not see how provisionally and as an earnest white clothing could be given them. The fulfilment of what is here prayed for is disclosed in ch. Revelation 19:2, where, in the words of Bengel, “the desire of the martyrs, with a very remarkable repetition of their words, is transformed into a song of praise.” God is there praised by great hosts in the heavenly world, “because his judgments are true and righteous, because he has judged the great whore, who corrupted the earth with her fornication, and has avenged the blood of his servants at her hand.” Comp. ch. Revelation 18:20. As the groups, however, are each complete in themselves, the fulfilment must be indicated even in this group itself; and such an indication is actually found under the sixth and seventh seals, which disclose the full vengeance of God on the persecutors of the church. That there can be nothing here of a revengeful spirit on the part of the martyrs, is clear from what has been remarked on the import of the whole scene, according to which also conclusions such as those of Bossuet are to be rejected: that pious souls know that God has still not avenged their blood, wherefore they must be cognizant of all that is going on upon earth. We have shewn, that the introduction of the souls of the slain is of a purely poetical character. But the thought that God avenges the blood of his people on their persecutors is an entirely scriptural one, and one thoroughly in accordance with the mind of the Saviour. The general law, which receives here a special application, was uttered by our Lord in Matthew 7:1-2. He himself applies it to the very case before us in Matthew 23:35-36, “So that upon you may come all the righteous blood, that has been shed on the earth from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zecharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the temple and the altar.” And in Luke 18:7-8, “Shall not God avenge his elect, who cry to him day and night? I tell you, he will avenge them and that speedily.” The last passage shews, that not only is the revenge agreeable to the nature of God, but also that the wish for the revenge is acceptable, whenever it proceeds from the right affection, a desire for the glorification of the divine nature, and the exaltation of his church on earth. This, indeed, might be understood of itself; for what God does from the necessity of his nature, this may, and even should be wished for by believers; see my remarks on the Vindictive Psalms, in the dissertations appended to my Commentary. The inhabitants of the earth appear here as the persecutors. The small flock that have been redeemed from the earth are not formally mentioned as an exception to the worldly mass; comp. the words of our Lord in Matthew 24:9, “Ye shall be hated of all nations for my name sake.” According to Revelation 6:11 there was given provisionally a white garment to each of the suppliant martyrs, in answer to their prayer, as this could not at present receive a complete fulfilment. What has been said on the white as the colour of lucid splendour, the symbolical image of glory, at ch. Revelation 6:2, Revelation 4:4, may be compared. According to ch. Revelation 3:4-5, and Revelation 7:14, a white garment is the clothing of the blessed generally, and their clothing as such: without any exception they go from this life immediately into glory. Hence the expression here, “there was given,” can only be referred to the consciousness of the Seer, as a thing connected with the fifth seal, not to the actual fact; for long before this had martyrs finished their testimony, Antipas for example, who had died before the seals began at all to be opened. For John’s sake and that of the church there was given to them what they already in fact possessed. The thought can only be this, that they must be satisfied meanwhile with the heavenly glory, till the time should come when the kingdom of glory would be set up on the earth. Had the slain martyrs presented themselves to the Seer at once in their white garments, their cry would have made little impression on him. Bengel’s view of the giving of the white garments as an extraordinary reward and distinction (“In fact something was given to these souls, which in their blessedness they did not possess. White Stolae, or white long robes, are an excellent ornament and high honour”) cannot be maintained in accordance with the parallel passages. As little can the view of Vitringa, who thinks that the giving of the white garments must symbolize the fact, “that those martyrs shall be openly justified in the church, and they shall be acknowledged and honoured as partakers in the glory and kingdom of Christ, while their case for a long time appeared in a doubtful light.” According to the parallel passages, the white garments denote, not the acknowledgment of the martyrs on the earth, but the heavenly glory conferred on them. Bossuet’s remark: “A white garment—this is the glory of pious souls in expectation of the resurrection,” is fitted to create a misunderstanding unless it were defined in some such way as this: the white garment, in itself a mark of glory generally, signifies here from the connection the contrast to the completed glory, etc. The resting, ἀναπαύεσθαι (comp. Mark 6:31, Matthew 14:41; Luke 12:19; Matthew 11:29) is carefully to be distinguished from simple resting and ceasing, καταπαύεσθαι. Hence we are not to think, with Bengel, of a resting of the souls from their cry. The ἐ ?́πι alone is against this, since it presupposes, that they had even till now been resting, and intimates, that they must still continue to enjoy their rest, till the period when they should be admitted to their full inheritance. We can only think of a resting and refreshing of themselves from the sufferings and troubles of this life. Comp. ch. Revelation 14:13, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord . . . that they may rest from their labours,” ἱ ?́ναἀναπαήσονταιἐκτῶνκόπωναὐτῶν. As there the resting corresponds to the blessed, so does it here to the white garments. The blessedness and glory before the resurrection consist especially in the resting—as also in ch. 7, in the representation of the state of the blessed before the resurrection the negative element is the predominating one: they shall hunger no more, nor thirst any more, neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat, and God will wipe away all tears from their eyes. Resting from the troubles and annoyances of the earthly pilgrimage—this is a blessed earnest that God will certainly give to his people a rest in most intimate fellowship with Christ; for otherwise dying could be no gain to them, Philippians 1:21. See on the state of the departed till the resurrection, Nitzsch’s excellent remarks in his System, § 215. For: a time, some critical helps have: a little time, χρόνονμικρόν. But the attribute is evidently borrowed from ch. Revelation 20:3. The simple: a time, is found elsewhere also, where it was not wished to define the period more exactly, Acts 19:22; comp. Isaiah 27:11, Sept., Tob 14:4, and Nehemiah 13:6 in the Hebrew. In ch. Revelation 10:6-7 : “And he swore—that henceforth there should be no time more. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall sound, the mystery of God shall be finished, as he has declared to his servants the prophets, “it is intimated, that the delay fixed here had come near its close. From that passage we are here to supply: then shall the mystery of God, which he declares to his servants, the prophets, be finished, and consequently in the place of the resting the complete glory promised by them shall enter along with its necessary ground-work, the completed revenge on the enemies of the kingdom of God. In the expression: till they should complete or fulfil (πληρώσωσι), we must supply: their course or their work. To complete, fulfil one’s course, work, the gospel, that is, the service connected with it, is a mode of speech of which St Paul was peculiarly fond; see especially Acts 20:22-24, “And now, behold, I go bound in the Spirit to Jerusalem, not knowing the things that shall befal me there; save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every city, saying that bonds and afflictions await me there. But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear to me, that I may complete my course with joy, and the ministry which I have received from the Lord Jesus, to testify of the gospel of the grace of God.” Also 2 Timothy 4:6-8, “For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me at that day; and not to me only, but to all them also, who love his appearing.” (See, besides, Romans 15:19; Luke 9:31; Acts 13:35, Acts 12:25, Acts 14:26.) From a reference to these passages, in which just as here the completion of the course is, put in connection with martyrdom, we can explain the elliptical mode of expression. It must have respect to this very reference. The different variations in the text have arisen from the oversight of this ellipsis.[Note: Of these the reading πληρωθῶσι has the greatest support in MSS., while πληρώσονται, which is vindicated by Ewald, has little or none, as was long ago sufficiently shown by Bengel. But the former also, when more narrowly examined, yields hardly any satisfactory meaning. The common rendering: till they have been completed, for till their number has been made up, is hard. So also is that of Vitringa: till the whole measure of the sufferings appointed to them might be full. No parallel passages can be produced for either.]So far as the idea is concerned, there is a close resemblance in Hebrews 11:39-40, “And these all (the faithful witnesses of the Old Testament) having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise; God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect.” If the completion were precipitately hurried on, the precious opportunity would be denied those who come after us, of saying with St Paul, “I have finished my course,” etc. The naming of the brethren, still more than that of the fellow-servants, points to this, that we must not lay hold of anything that is disadvantageous to them. Because these are their fellow-servants, God must not have a partial respect to them; because they are their brethren, they must not desire that any such respect should be had. They must be satisfied with the white clothing, and the rest after their labour, until opportunity has also been given those to deserve the crown of righteousness, who should fight the good fight, and love not their lives unto death, during the further persecutions that should be carried on by the beast, under the Roman dominion, under the ten kings, and lastly under the assault of Gog and Magog. One must be very much captivated by Jewish representations, if by the fellow-servants one understands the future martyrs from the heathen, and by the brethren those that should come from the house of Israel. The Apocalypse knows nothing of such a distinction. It would need in such a case to have been first of all expressly stated, that by the slain for the word of God only martyrs from among the Jews were to be understood. The sixth seal follows now in Revelation 6:12-17. First, in Revelation 6:12-14, the plague is described which alights upon the ungodly world. This description is completed in the number seven, divided by the four and three; the earthquake, the sun becoming black, the bloody moon, the falling stars of heaven—the disappearing heavens,’ the mountains and islands moved out of their places. Then in Revelation 6:15-17 the impression is delineated, which these facts produced upon those who were affected by them, the indescribable anguish by which they were seized.This seal has had a false interpretation put on it in two different ways. First, by those who suppose (as recently Hoffmann), that the subject here discoursed of is the end of all, the day of judgment. What this view has to support it, rests on mere appearance. That the things, which in Revelation 6:12-14 appear to carry one over the boundaries of the present world, only belong to the figurative style of the representation, is evident from Revelation 6:15-17, in which we find ourselves in the existing state of things. Only by adhering to the figurative style also does it become clear, why precisely the heavens, and the mountains, and the islands are brought together. But the most important, and of itself alone quite decisive ground against the interpretation in question, is the circumstance, that we are here still only at the sixth seal, and another, the seventh, follows. The final judgment must first enter with this seventh seal. For, according to the starting-point of this group, and the whole contents of the book, the seals cannot reach farther than the judgment. Then, the judgment, which meets us under this seal, does not at all bear the character of the final judgment. We behold here kings of the earth, the nobles, etc., certainly in great trouble and despair; but the deadly blow is still not struck against them even at the close. Of what really does characterise the final judgment—the resurrection of the dead and their appearance before the tribunal of Christ—there is not a word said. Finally, that this judgment with all its terrors is still but a preparatory one, appears from the original passages of the Old Testament, and likewise from the declaration of our Lord in Matthew 24:29, which is to be regarded as the text on which the Seer comments. That the last judgment cannot be meant there, that the passage is to be understood figuratively of times of great tribulation and uproar, is clear from what follows, in which men still appear to be living after the catastrophe has taken place; and the manifestation of Christ, corresponding here to the seventh seal, only appears afterwards. While the signification of this seal is over-valued by this class of expositors, by another it rated too low. It is so by those who, not perceiving that the Revelation falls into a series of independent groups, think that the seventh seal comprehends the whole of the rest of the book. So great and lengthened a course of things could not possibly have followed the sixth seal if this were taken in its natural import, and hence the attempt must be made to rob it of this; as was done by Bengel, for example, when he set forth the singular view that the end of the world is here merely exhibited beforehand to the unrighteous dead. If we do not stand here exactly at the final end, we yet stand at the beginning of the end. “The great day of his wrath” is immediately before the door, is already as good as come; and ch. 7 can only come in as an episode between ch. Revelation 6:17 and ch. Revelation 8:1, where the dawn of that day is announced. The two verses are very closely connected together, and in ch. 7 we have only a repetition of what belongs to an earlier period. The historical realization of the section before us is to be found, first, in the times of complete uproar and begun destruction in respect to that world-power, whose persecution of the church was the primary occasion of the composition of this book, and whose approaching overthrow must therefore have been peculiarly comforting to the church—the Roman. The impending terrible convulsion of this power also appears in ch. Revelation 16:18, under the symbol of a mighty earthquake. What in this respect is marked here in its general features, is more fully detailed in the following groups. But the prophecy does not come to an end with this first realization. It continually revives anew, whenever a new persecuting world-power steps into the place of the Roman. As another of this kind Gog and Magog are named in this very book. The original passage also, Matthew 24:29, has had more than one fulfilment:—the first a provisional one, which our Seer already saw behind him in the overthrow of Jerusalem, a more general one in the breaking up of the Roman state; the most extensive one is still future, and may already be descried in its beginnings. The mistake of several of the older expositors, who refer the darkening of the sun, etc., to the fates of the church instead of the judgments on the world, against which the elect are fully secured by the sealing vision in ch. 7, has been well exposed by Vitringa. Sixth Seal Revelation 6:12. And I saw when he opened the sixth seal, and there was a great earthquake, and the sun was black as sackcloth of hair, and the whole moon was like blood.In place of the earthquake, Züllig puts a commotion generally, on the ground that the heavens and the sea were also affected by it. But the word when standing alone is always used of the earthquake. So in particular in Revelation, ch. Revelation 8:5, Revelation 11:13; Revelation 11:19, Revelation 16:18. And Zullig’s reason is disposed of by the remark that the heavens and the sea are spoken of in a figurative sense, and in point of fact the whole catastrophe is confined to the earth.” Storms, earthquakes, are not images of God’s omnipotence in general; they are the natural symbols of the destroying omnipotence of God, and were regarded as such by the nations of antiquity. Earthquakes were viewed as precursors of approaching ruin; comp., for example, the remarkable passage of Herodian, VI. 98, from which it appears that he himself, participating in the general belief, held them to be such; also IV. 28; Thuc. II. 8; Justin. XL. 2. As the manifestation of the destroying power of God in inanimate nature calls forth, even in the rudest minds, the anticipation that the same destroying power shall also manifest itself in the relations of men; as in every storm, in every earthquake, we behold a sort of prophecy in act concerning God’s judgments on men; so, on the other hand, where these judgments are experienced, where mournful disorder and distress on all sides prevail, even external nature seems, to the troubled and anxious mind, to be dissolved; it feels as if heaven and earth were convulsed together. And this explains how the manifestations of the destroying power of God in nature—how storms and earthquakes should be so frequently used in Scripture as images of similar manifestations of the same power in the affairs of man. Hence, for example, the description of the storm in Psalms 18, to denote the fearful ruin which God was ready to bring on the enemies of the Psalmist. Hence, too, Isaiah 13:13, where the contemplation of the destruction that overhung Babylon is extended so as to embrace a judgment over the whole earth, of which it was a prelude, an execution in part, and at the same time a matter-of-fact prophecy. “Therefore will I make the heaven to tremble, and the earth shall quake from its place, through the anger of the Lord of Hosts, and in the day when his anger burns.” So also Psalms 60:3, where sore calamities of the covenant people appear under the image of an earthquake, by which great breaches of the earth had been occasioned. Even in the poetical prose of the first book of the Maccabees, 1Ma 1:28, the terrible sufferings by which the covenant people had been visited, appears directly as an earthquake.” (Christology on Haggai 2:6.) In Psalms 46:6, “the nations roared, the kingdoms were moved,” is parallel; and “he utters his voice, the earth melts.” The tumultuous roaring of the nations, the moving of the kingdoms, appears as a spiritual earthquake sent among them by God; so also in Psalms 46:2, In Haggai 2:6 the words, “I shake the heaven and the earth and the sea and the dry land,” are explained by those in Haggai 2:7, “and I shake all heathen.” If it is established, that by the latter is meant the causing of the foundations of empire among the heathen to shake, the dissolving of their power, then the shaking of heaven and earth must be referred to the same. In Haggai 2:22 likewise, by the words, “I shake heaven and earth,” great revolutions are indicated, through which the condition of things on earth was to be so changed that the highest should become lowest. This is manifest from Haggai 2:22, which serves as an explanation, “and I overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and I destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen, and I overthrow the chariots of war and their warriors, and the horses and the riders come down, every one by the sword of his brother.” From this commentary we perceive that the shaking of heaven and earth denotes great revolutions, which God by his almighty power brings about in the state of nations—bloody wars, by which he precipitates from their seat of power those who proudly lifted themselves up against him. It is this that is denoted by the words: and there was a great earthquake, which we can the more readily understand, as we have now the beginning of such an earthquake before our eyes, and which always takes place where the earth rises up in rebellion against its Creator and Redeemer. The shining of the heavenly lights is the symbol and the visible reflection of the grace of God. Hence its extinguishment by the sun and moon becoming dark in storms and earthquakes, &c., is regarded as a prelude of severe judgments. Comp. Joe 3:4, “the sun shall be changed into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and dreadful day of the Lord comes,” and the Christology on the passage. The main point in such representations was not the sign itself, but the state of mind it indicated, the consciousness of guilt, which filled the soul with thoughts of an avenging God, and the posture of affairs which brought him strikingly into view. Hence we find an explanation, why in the Old Testament the darkening of the sun and moon usually appears as an image of troublous and distressing times. When such really come, the lights of heaven appear to be extinguished. The sun seems to shine only for the prosperous. Isaiah, after having described heavy troubles that were going to break in upon the land for its ungodliness, says, in Isaiah 5:30, “There was darkness in its heaven.” Jeremiah, when describing the judgment that was impending over Judah, says, in Jeremiah 4:23, “and I saw the earth, and behold! it was waste and desolate, and the heaven and it had no lights.” And in Jeremiah 15:9, “her sun went down while it was yet day.” In Ezekiel. Ezekiel 32:7-8, we meet with the extinguishing of the heavenly lights in his delineation of the overthrow of Pharaoh the king of Egypt, to indicate such unutterable evils as it would be impossible to escape from. In Amos, Amos 8:9-10, it is said, “and it comes to pass in that day, saith the Lord Jehovah, that I make the sun to go down at mid-day, and give darkness to the land in clear day. And I turn your feasts into mourning, and all your songs into lamentations; and I bring upon all loins sackcloth, and upon every head baldness; and I make it as the mourning for a first-born, and its end as a bitter day.” Michaelis: “I make the sun to go down, that is, I make all that is mournful suddenly rush in.” In Micah 3:6 it is said, “And the sun goes down for the prophets, and the day becomes dark for them,” meaning, “that everything of a dismal kind was ready to overtake them.” Comp. besides Isaiah 13:10; Zechariah 14:6; Joe 3:15. Since there is such a regular figurative use in Old Testament Scripture of the darkening of the sun and moon, we shall not think of anything else in the declaration of our Lord, which forms the immediate basis of the passage before us, “But soon after the tribulation of those days the sun shall be darkened and the moon shall not give her light;” we shall only find in it a description of the most dismal and mournful times—such times as existed immediately before the destruction of Jerusalem, and as are now again beginning to appear, when the lights of heaven are as good as extinguished for the miserable, because these are no longer sensible of the enlivening rays they emit. This view also is rendered necessary by the falling of the stars from heaven that immediately follows which must be figuratively understood, both from the parallel passages in the Old Testament, and because the stars falling from heaven, if understood otherwise, would crush and destroy all, while in the following verses the tribes of men are spoken of as being still in existence. The comparison of the sun with sackcloth of hair (sackcloth as the mourning-garb again in ch. Revelation 11:3, comp. Matthew 11:21) is not to be referred to the blackness—for hair-cloth was usually made of camel’s hair, Matthew 3:4—but to the want of all bright and shining colour. No stronger contrast to the glittering splendour of the sun could be found than the sackcloth of hair worn by mourners, the natural hatefulness of which is still further heightened by its symbolical use. On the expression: the whole moon, Züllig remarks, “as she appears only when at full moon, so that the sight would be still more terrible.” The whole, however, is wanting in many manuscripts; and is also rendered somewhat suspicious by never occurring in the fundamental passages of the Old Testament. Revelation 6:13. And the stars of heaven fall to the earth, as the fig tree casts its unripe fruit, when shaken by a strong wind. Every thing mighty is in Scripture transferred to heaven; see on ch. Revelation 12:9. But the stars of heaven, in particular, are so natural an image and symbol of the greatness and splendour of worldly rulers, that the employment of them in this sense is found among almost all nations, and pervades also nearly all Scripture, from Numbers 24:17 onwards (see my work on Balaam there.) In Isaiah 34:4-5, Isaiah says in words, from which those here are principally taken, to which also those of our Lord in Matthew 24:29 refer, “And all the host of heaven is dissolved, and the heavens are rolled together as a scroll; and all their host falls down, as a leaf falls from off the vine, and as that which is withered from the fig-tree. For my sword is bathed in heaven, behold it comes down on Idumea.” It is the same thing in meaning that is expressed in Isaiah 34:12, “Their nobles! there is none whom one calls to the kingdom, and all their princes have come to nothing.” The heaven is the princes-heaven, the entire order of kings and nobles. The stars are individual princes and nobles. The “in heaven” of Isaiah 34:5 puts this beyond a doubt, as heaven stands there for the region where the sword rages, which could not be said of heaven in the proper sense. Michaelis remarks, “That this prophecy cannot be understood immediately of the last day, is clear from the circumstance, that the desolation of many regions follows this rolling up of the heavens.” In Isaiah 24:21, “And it comes to pass on that day, that the Lord will visit the host of the height in the height, and the kings of the earth on the earth,” the second member is explanatory of the first. No trace is to be found anywhere else in the Old Testament of a punishment of “the bad heavenly powers.” The whole chapter has to do only with judgments on the earth. The height occurs in Isaiah 24:4, Isaiah 26:5, in undoubted reference to the heights of the earth. In Isaiah 14:12, the now fallen and prostrate king of Babylon appears under the image of the morning-star falling from heaven. In this book itself, ch. Revelation 12:4, in imitation of Dan 8:10, mighty kings appear as the stars of heaven, and their overthrow is represented as the falling down of these to the earth. In ch. Revelation 8:10 a great star of heaven denotes a mighty ruler. In regard to the image of the fig-tree we may apply what Bengel says of the book in the next verse, “When Scripture compares something very great to what is very small, the majesty and omnipotence of God, before which the great is as the small, is thereby magnified, Job 38:9.” To the “strong wind,” corresponds the mighty storm of the divine judgments; comp. ch. Revelation 7:1. In the verse before us, therefore, we are told, that those who have been the leaders in the conflict with the kingdom of God, in the persecution of his church, shall first experience his avenging hand; that the abuse of their power must draw after it the shaking and the absolute loss of that power: an announcement, the truth of which is realizing itself anew. With devout wonder we see before our eyes, how the stars of heaven are falling to the earth, precisely as a fig-tree, when violently shaken by the wind, casts off its unripe fruit. But the immediate fulfilment was the overthrow of the possessor of the old Roman power, the bright morning-star, that shone in heaven at the time the Apocalypse was composed. The Sealing Vision Chap. 7 We have an episode before us in this chapter. The painful solicitude, which could scarcely fail to arise even in the faithful, on account of the judgments that threaten the world, as these were developed in a lengthened series under the first six seals, from which, as themselves also living in the world, it might seem as if they could hardly escape, is here met by a double consolation: first, that God holds over them his protecting hand, while war and terrors of every kind overspread the world, Revelation 7:1-8; and then, that there is opened up a view into that celestial glory, which awaits the chosen after the short tribulation of the present time, Revelation 7:9-17. First, in regard to the portion, Revelation 7:1-8, we have to inquire what precisely is the place of this scene? The answer is at once furnished by Revelation 7:1. According to it the winds have still not moved, the judgments on the world have not yet begun to take effect. But these begin with the very first seal, and not merely with the sixth. So that it is here represented, what is to take place before the accomplishment of that, which is announced in the opening of the sixth seal. Those who think that the faithful are here placed in security against the tribulation, that is spoken of in what follows,[Note: Bengel: “This already points to the trumpets. God’s servants are secured by the sealing against the plagues under the trumpets, and especially under the trumpets of the four first angels.”]have—apart from the consideration that we are not justified in going out of the group of the seven seals, which stops at ch. Revelation 8:1—this against them, that here no trace is to be found of judgments that have already preceded; up till this time there is only guilt in the world, but not punishment. And this also serves as a refutation of those, who refer the security only to the judgment of the sixth seal. This last opinion has also against it the consideration, that the four number of the angels and the winds points to a variety and fulness in the divine judgments, such as are found to exist only when we take into account the sixth seal. In regard to the regressive character of this portion, which has proved a stumbling-block to so many expositors, Hoffmann remarks well: “It should not stumble us, that the earth here appears still unhurt. Since these two parts, the world’s destruction and the church’s preservation, are co-ordinate to each other, it might happen without disadvantage to the intended result and the knowledge to be obtained of it, that the theatre, which was comprehended in the general dissolution that was spoken of as taking place in the world’s destruction, presents itself anew as still unhurt, when a representation comes to be made of the foresight that was to be exercised in the church’s preservation.” To a church fainting under the bloody persecutions of the world the Seer had announced the great judgments, through which God was going to avenge the blood of his servants on the world, and break its rebelliousness, humble its pride. But out of the consolation itself a new fear arises. The church is still in the world, and must therefore, as it seems, be herself involved in a participation of those frightful judgments. Especially was the representation of the fifth seal fitted to awaken this fear. If all should be convulsed, if the proud trees must fall, under whose shelter men dwell upon earth, there appears no hope of safety even for the elect. A new consolation is brought in here to meet this new temptation. God’s protecting hand will be stretched out over his own children even during these frightful plagues, as in former times he delivered Lot from the midst of destruction, as he slew Egypt and spared Goshen; as he gave to Zerubabel the comforting promise, that amid the terrible shakings of the world he would make him as a seal-ring;[Note: Ch. 6 here stands in the same relation to ch. 7 that Haggai 2:21-22 (“I shake the heavens and the earth, and overthrow the throne of kingdoms, and destroy the strength of the kingdoms of the heathen,” &c.) does to Revelation 6:23, “in that day, saith the Lord of Hosts, I will take thee Zerubbabel son of Shealtiel, and will make thee as a seal-ring, for I have chosen thee, saith the Lord of Hosts.” The remarks made in the Christology there are equally applicable here: “The fundamental idea is God’s affectionate guardianship of his people amid all the mighty changes brought by him upon the world, which, just because they are not accidental, but designed by his guidance to exult his people and kingdom, cannot he injurious to them; so that his people can look with peace and comfort upon the earth’s desolations, assured that these are but the way to a better world.”]as in Zechariah 9:8, after a representation of the great judgments with which all the countries around Judah should be visited, and the kingdom brought to nought under whose dominion it then stood (Persia), it is said, “and I make for my house a camp against the invading enemy;” no oppressor shall pass through them any more; for now I see with mine eyes.” Jesus Christ had already, during his sojourn on earth, not only guaranteed safety to his disciples under the persecutions they were to experience in the world, but also in the midst of the judgments by which the world was to be visited, Matthew 24:22. Ch. Revelation 7:1. And after these things I saw four angels standing on the four corners of the earth, holding the four winds of the earth, that the wind should not blow on the earth, nor on the sea nor on any tree.The winds in Scripture are the symbol of divine judgments, the storms of suffering and temptation which are appointed by God. In ch. Revelation 6:13, “as a fig-tree casts its unripe fruit, when shaken by a strong wind,” the divine judgment was already compared to a strong wind. And from that there was but a step to the representation here, where it appears under the image of the wind. In Job 9:17, it is said, “he breaketh me in a tempest, and multiplieth my wounds without cause.” In 1 Kings 19:11, “the great and strong wind, rending the mountains and breaking in pieces the rocks before the Lord,” denotes the storm of assaults and tribulations which befel the church and her representatives, the prophets. The powerful storm out of the north, in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 1:4, symbolises the judgment that was to break in upon Judea out of Babylon. In Jeremiah also, Jeremiah 22:22, the judgment of God is represented under the image of the wind. But there are three passages in particular of the Old Testament which serve as a foundation for the one before us. In Jeremiah 49:36, the divine judgments rushing in upon all sides appear as the four winds, “and I bring against Elam the four winds from the four ends of the heaven, and I scatter them toward all the four winds.” The winds are introduced here, not as Zόllig thinks, for the immediate purpose of scattering, but for that of destroying: the scattering to the four winds is only the consequence of the powerful activity of the winds, as appears plainly from Jeremiah 49:32, where the “I bring their calamity from all sides” corresponds as to the matter: and also because it is not said, “and the four winds scatter them,” but, “I scatter them to all the four winds.” So here also the circumstance of the four angels standing with the four winds on the four corners of the earth, indicates that the storms of the divine judgments were to break in from all sides, and so, in accordance with what was said in the sixth seal, brings out the multifarious nature of the divine judgments, presupposing the greatness of the guilt they were sent to chastise. The second passage is Daniel 7:2. There the four winds of heaven are let loose upon the great sea, as a description of the divine judgments which were to be executed by the conquerors of the world. The third and last passage is Zechariah 6:1, ss. The prophet sees four chariots. The interpreting angel instructs him regarding the meaning of these in Zechariah 6:5, “These are the four winds of heaven, which go forth, after they have appeared ministering before the Lord of the whole earth.” The four winds of heaven are used to symbolize the divine judgments. It is on account of their personification that chariots are ascribed to them, and that the chariots in which we must suppose the winds to be carried are afterwards identified with the winds. The four winds are called the four winds of the earth. The earth is wanting in some critical helps, and Bengel would omit it; but, improperly; for, in the fundamental passages, it is not simply the four winds, but the four winds of heaven, that are mentioned; and the omission of heaven here is to be accounted for from the earth preceding and following, the threefold mention of which is certainly not accidental, but emphatically points to the theatre of the divine judgments. The four winds are held by four angels. Their chief mission is to let the winds go (comp. on Revelation 7:2), whence it is given to them to hurt the earth and the sea. But along with this they had the charge of restraining the winds for some time longer, till the saints were placed in security, as the angels in Sodom were at once commissioned to destroy the city and to deliver Lot. And this is the only point made prominent here, because it is the only thing of present importance. That the angels are not, as Zόllig conceives, the angels of the four winds, but that they are here employed on a special business, is clear from this, that the discourse is not of the four angels, but quite indefinitely of four angels, while it is of the four winds. We are not to think, with Bengel, of bad angels. With such the mission would not suit, either to hold the winds for the preservation of the righteous, or to let them loose for the destruction of the wicked. Both belong, according to the doctrine of Scripture, to the good angels—see in regard to the latter my commentary on Psalms 78:49. According to Exodus 12:13, Exodus 12:23, the slaying of the first-born of Egypt was accomplished by the destroyer, the angel of the Lord with his attendants. According also to Revelation 7:3 of this chapter, the four angels take part in the sealing of the elect.[Note: Bengel remarks: “They are bad angels; for good angels, though they do harm, still do no injustice.” But ἁδικεῖν is used in the sense of doing harm, giving pain, often in the Apocalypse itself, ch. 6:6, 9:4. In that sense it must at any rate be taken here, since, even if the angels were bad, the work done by them has nothing in it of injustice; they were certainly instruments of deserved punishment.]In the angels who hold and let go the winds, the thought that the salvation of the chosen and the destruction of the wicked comes only from God, is clothed, as it were, with flesh and blood[Note: Vitringa: Qua dictionis formula innuitur, nullos in orbe terrarum motus cieri majores, qui non pudcant a dei consilio.]—comp. the similar symbolical representation in ch. Revelation 9:14-15. The four angels with the four winds make up with the earth, the sea. and the trees, the number seven: in the first group the spoilers, in the second those that were to be spoiled, the agens and the patiens of the desolation. The sea, according to Daniel 7:2, can only he the sea of the nations. Of the sea in the literal sense, besides, we cannot think, because that could not be hurt by the winds, as stated in Revelation 7:2. Finally, that the sea and the trees are used figuratively is clear from the position of the trees, which are separated from the earth, to which the natural trees belong, and are placed after the sea. The trees here correspond to the kings, magnates, etc., in ch. Revelation 6:15. Trees and grass in ch. Revelation 8:7, Revelation 9:4, denote the high and the low, princes and subjects. In the Old Testament trees are the common symbol of the great. In Isaiah 10:18-19, the trees of Ashur, in contrast to his brushwood, are his great ones. But especially has this symbol a frequent place in those prophets, with whom St John most closely connected himself, Daniel and Ezekiel. In Daniel 4 Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon appears under the image of a lofty tree: “Thou, O king, art that tree,” Daniel 4:19, In Ezekiel, Ezekiel 31:3, ss., Assyria is represented as a cedar on Lebanon, beautifully foliaged, its top reaching to the very clouds; in its branches nestled all the fowls of heaven, the beasts of the field bore under its boughs, and many tribes of the earth dwelt beneath its shade. In Ezekiel 17 also the house of David appears as a high cedar on Lebanon; the trees of the field (Michaelis: “all princes and potentates of this world”) saw its wonderful growth, and perceived from it that it is the Lord who exalts or depresses all trees. The trees of the field, too, in Ezekiel 31:4-5, Ezekiel 31:15, are the princes of the earth. Comp. besides Jeremiah 21:14, Jeremiah 46:22-23. The angels hold the winds that the wind might not blow upon any tree, literally, every tree. And as Zόllig remarks, the word all or every is not used in vain in the Apocalypse For the present the winds must blow upon no tree; by and bye they must blow upon all trees. The hurting of the trees brings injury to those who dwell under their branches; Ezekiel 31:6, Ezekiel 31:17, Ezekiel 17:23; Matthew 13:31-32. If but a single tree had been hurt before the sealing, the promise which the Lord has given to his people would be broken. For without his protecting grace the fall of that tree would be hurtful to them. Precious privilege of Christians, that they are preserved from the destruction which the fall of the tree brings along with it! Revelation 7:2. And I saw another angel ascend from the rising of the sun, who had the seal of the living God, and cried with a loud voice to the four angels, to whom it was given to hurt the earth and the sea, saying, Revelation 7:3. Hurt not the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.On the expression “another angel,” Bengel remarks: “This was a holy, but a created angel. To such an one alone is the word suitable, which he utters in Revelation 7:3.” But this other angel is rather Christ, sent by God the Father as the Saviour and the Comforter of his afflicted church. The “our God” is no objection to that, as Bengel supposes. For Christ also calls God his God, John 20:17; and in Romans 15:6, Paul speaks of the God of our Lord Jesus Christ.[Note: See on the connection between the full equality of nature and the dependance in Christ, Schmeider όber das hohenpriesterliche Gebet, p. 20.Nor does the epithet angel speak against its being Christ. For this denotes not the nature but the mission, which he has in common with the inferior angels. Through the whole of the Old Testament the Logos constantly appears as the angel of the Lord. Christ represents himself as an angel also, in ch. Revelation 10:1, and Revelation 18:1. The reference to Christ is favoured by the absolute authority which this angel exercises over the other angels, and the fundamental passage of Ezekiel 9, where the righteous are marked by the angel of the Lord, the heavenly mediator between God and his people, who presents himself in the garb of the earthly mediator—comp. Leviticus 16:4, Leviticus 16:23. But more especially, and sufficient of itself, indeed, is the proof that is afforded by the circumstance that the angel here ascends from the rising of the sun.[Note: Bengel: “Elsewhere the angels come down from heaven, ch. 10:1, 18:1, 20:1. But here an angel goes forth from the horizon, as the sun in his course.”][1] Zόllig calls it “a circumstance very enigmatical.” But it suits only Christ. The sun-rising marks the heavenly region. In the east, where the visible sun goes forth, there was given to the Seer a glorious spectacle, there the spiritual sun ascends the heavens—that is, Christ, as possessor of the glory of God, as which he is also elsewhere in the Revelation and in other parts of Scripture compared to the sun—comp. Revelation 10:1, Revelation 1:16, John 1:9, where Christ appears as the true light, which enlightens every man, Matthew 17:2, and on the sun as a symbol of the glory of the Lord, see on ch. Revelation 12:1. As the rising sun, or the sun going forth in the height, Christ was spoken of by Zecharias in Luke 1:78. The wonderful mercy of God celebrated by him, “through which the rising from on high has visited us, and he has appeared to those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death,’’ makes itself known here anew by a visitation, which he accomplishes for his people in the immediate prospect of the troubles that threatened them. The sun is brought into view here as the source of vivifying and refreshing power, Christ as the Saviour and helper of his people. The angel, who ascends as the spiritual sun, forms a contrast to the angel with the four winds. As these announce storms of sufferings and tribulations, so the lovely image of the sun promises salvation and refreshment to those who stand under his grace. The original passage for the representation here (as also for Luke 1:78. where it is combined with Isaiah 9:1), is Malachi 4:2, “And to you that fear my name, the Sun of Righteousness shall arise, and salvation is under his wings.” The sun there is primarily righteousness itself, or salvation as a matter-of-fact justification and manifestation of righteousness. But He, through whom the righteousness was to be imparted to the Lord’s people, with whose appearance righteousness was to arise on them as the sun, is, according to Malachi 3:1, the angel of the Lord, the heavenly mediator of the covenant, who makes good his threatenings and promises. So that the view of the church, which understands Christ by the sun, is perfectly correct in the main, as he also is in reality the light that arises on those who dwell in the land of darkness like the shadow of death. (See the Christology on the passage.) Amid the anxieties and fears which are apt to be occasioned by the thought of the heavy judgments that God brings on a guilty world, let us never lose sight of this comforting image of the angel that ascends from the rising of the sun. The angel has the seal of the living God that he might seal with it the servants of God in their foreheads. The original passage is Ezekiel 9:4, where the Lord says to the person clothed in linen, “Thou shalt set a mark upon the foreheads of the men, who sigh and cry over all the abominations which are done in the midst of them.” In the midst of the six angels, who were sent for judgment against the ungodly Jerusalem, or the world in the church, a man appeared clothed in linen, with an inkhorn on his thigh, the angel of the Lord (see Christology on the passage for the proof), who receives from God a charge to go through the city, and mark the elect. It was a symbolical representation of the truth, most consolatory to the true people of God, ready to faint under the thought of God’s impending judgments, that in the midst of these the protecting hand of his grace would be upon them, that they should not be swept away for the iniquities of the city, and that, just as he knew how to reserve the wicked to the day of judgment, so also did he know how to deliver the godly out of temptation (2 Peter 2:10). This assurance of an actual preservation was verified, for example, in the deliverance of Jeremiah, and in that of Ebed-Melech, to whom the Lord said by Jeremiah, Jeremiah 39:16-18, “Behold I will bring my words upon this city for evil and not for good, and thou shalt see it in that day. But I will deliver thee in that day, saith the Lord, and thou shalt not he given into the hand of the men of whom thou art afraid. For, I will surely deliver thee, and thou shalt not fall by the sword, but thy life shall be for a prey unto thee: because thou hast put thy trust in me, saith the Lord.” To the inkhorn in Ezekiel corresponds the seal of God here, and to the mark in the one place, the impress of the seal in the other. In common life things are sealed for a double purpose—either to make them inaccessible and lay them under seal, Matthew 27:66, or to confirm them. And accordingly in Scripture there is a double import in the figurative and symbolical use of sealing. The latter of the two kinds is referred to in the passages, John 3:33, John 6:27; Romans 4:11; 1 Corinthians 9:2; 2 Corinthians 1:22; Ephesians 1:13. Here the sense of confirming is the more suitable, as it was not by the sealing that persons could be first made servants of God; they could only be recognised and outwardly represented as such; whence also the seal was to be impressed on their foreheads, the place where it could be most easily seen. He that is sealed is confirmed in his position as the servant of God, and is thereby made secure against the calamities, which can only alight on the children of this world. God gives them in respect to the matter a letter and seal, that they are his servants. Bengel understands the sealing otherwise: “Where there is any thing that belongs to a prince’s establishment, where the royal arms are imprinted on plate, or where a seal of that sort is impressed on a writing, there must no one lay hold of the object. Now, what belongs to the great God, that remains untouched. If any one would appropriate it to himself, he must again be deprived of it.” Harless gives the same view of the sealing on Ephesians 1:13, “The impress of the seal marks the certainty, that what is stamped with it belongs in some respect to the possessor of the seal. In what particular respect the seal does not indicate.” But the use of sealing as a mark of property is without any certain example in Scripture. According to the opinion of many expositors, the name of Jehovah must have been on the seal. They rest on ch. Revelation 14:1, where the elect are said to have the name of God on their foreheads. But that name there denotes their character as servants of God, which belonged to them before the sealing here, and which was the foundation of the sealing. Nor must we lay stress on the circumstance, that in the East the seal commonly bears the name of its possessor. For, the custom is still not so common there, that it might be understood of itself, and in that case it would have required here to be expressly mentioned. But it is carefully to be noted, that even in Ezekiel a mark is spoken of quite generally, without any more immediate description of the sort of mark. For that reason alone we must here not go beyond what is expressly written. Nothing depends on what might be on the seal, but simply, that it was the seal of God. The seal is described as that of the living God. The same thing is implied here as in the original passage, Psalms 42:2, “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God,” where I remarked in my Commentary, “the Psalmist’s God is not a phantom, which, itself dead, is also incapable of imparting life; he is the living, and consequently the life-giving; comp. the corresponding phrase, ‘the God of my life in Psalms 42:8, rich in salvation for his people.’” See on ch. Revelation 1:18. The loud voice proclaims the determined and absolute will; comp. John 11:43, where Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus come forth.” Bengel interprets differently: “The loud cry indicates, that the four angels were already about to make a commencement of the work of desolation. If something is ready to be done, and we would fain arrest it, we then raise our voice.” Instead of: until we have sealed, Luther has: until we seal, following the not sufficiently established reading of σφραγίζωμεν. Since no others are mentioned as being present in the scene, the we is most simply explained by: I and you. This mode of explaining it can only be objected to, if by the four angels bad angels are understood. “Bad angels,” Bengel says on this false supposition, “are also indeed in the power of God the Almighty; but no one of them can say, My God; and neither could any good angel say in fellowship with the bad, Our God.” We may be the less surprised to find the four angels here represented as taking part in the work of scaling, since not only was it given to them in Revelation 7:2 to hurt the earth and the sea, but also, according to Revelation 7:1, for the sake of the elect to hold the four winds of the earth. The analogy, too, of the fundamental passage is in favour of this view. In Ezekiel 9 we find no appearance of any one beside the six angels, who were sent to execute God’s judgments, and the person in linen clothing who was to murk the elect. The last, however, is the leader of the whole party, as appears from this, that thus only is the number seven completed, and that he stands in the midst, while the others follow him. That the person clothed in linen appears also at the (desecrated; altar, indicates that he too had a part in the execution of judgment; comp. Revelation 8:5, Amos 9:1. We are not, however, to conclude from the we with Zόllig: “Hence these others also must have had the seal of the living God, not the person alone who spake.” But it is against this, that only one seal of the living God is named; and also the analogy of Ezekiel, according to whom the marking was performed merely by the person who was clothed in linen The works of judgment and preservation were so distributed, that the first was executed by the four angels, and the second by the other angel. The two, however, still formed a common work. The four angels so far took part in the sealing, that they held the winds till it was completed, and gave to it their cordial concurrence and joyful assistance. And the judgment again was executed under the auspices of the other angel; the four angels were but the instruments of the wrath of the Lamb, ch. Revelation 6:16. Bengel remarks: “The hurting lasts for a long time, and so also does the work of scaling, which is perpetually in progress. Whenever a paroxysm of hurting breaks forth, the servants of God also are preserved, for whom it then becomes necessary, until they are placed in perfect security on Mount Zion, ch. Revelation 14:1.” But in this it is not properly distinguished between the symbol and the fact indicated thereby; and what belongs only to the latter is transferred to the former. The sealing as a symbolical act was accomplished in a single period of time; it was done once for all before the commencement of the plagues, by which the ungodly world was to be judged. But the simple idea is, that amid all the judgments which befal the world for its sins, God protects his own people. The sealing refers to the entire duration of the Christian church, even to its final completion; to the entire duration of the world, even to its final destruction. Therefore, it has not yet lost its significance. And for the present time in particular it is full of consolation, as the sixth seal is beginning to be realized anew in a manner never seen before. Revelation 7:4. And I heard the number of those who were sealed, an hundred and forty and four thousand, that were sealed out of all the tribes of the children of Israel. The act of sealing is not expressly reported to have been brought to a close, but the Seer passes on abruptly to what presupposes it to have been actually finished. The “I heard” is particularly to be noted. Züllig: “The number is too great for the Seer to have ascertained it by his own reckoning, and yet it must be a quite definite number. Hence he aptly feigns (!) that he heard it announced.” The “I heard” here coincides with “the great multitude, which no one could number,” in Revelation 7:9, and disproves the opinion of those who, because a determinate number is mentioned here, while there the (relative) innumerableness is spoken of, would conclude that in the latter passage a different company is meant. That the number 144,000 has not a statistical, but a purely theological value, is evident from the way it is made up. A great multitude of believers, that no one can number, could not be more appropriately indicated than by this number. Twelve is the signature of the church (see my Commentary on Balaam, p. 72), and as such is often used in this book itself—comp. ch. Revelation 12:1, where the woman, who represents the church, has a crown of twelve stars, Revelation 21:12, where the city has twelve gates, Revelation 21:14, where the walls of the city have twelve foundations, Revelation 21:16-17, the four and twenty elders. In its simplest and most elementary form, this number presents itself in the twelve patriarchs and the twelve apostles, the two sources of the stream of the church. The idea of” the great multitude” of believers is expressed thus: the fundamental number is multiplied by itself, as in Revelation 21:17, and then by thousands, as in Revelation 21:16. While Bengel is here at great pains to rescue the definite number, because with the recognition of the truth here light falls also upon other numbers of the Revelation—those numbers, which lie at the bottom of his castle in the air, his apocalyptic chronology Bossuet clearly perceived the right view, and distinctly announced it. He says, “This passage alone ought to make it manifest, how greatly they deceive themselves, who would always apprehend an exact and definite number in the numbers of the Apocalypse. For, can it be imagined, that there was precisely in each tribe twelve thousand elect, neither more nor less, to make up this total number of 144,000? It is not by such minutiae, nor with such scrupulous littleness of spirit, that the sacred oracles should be explained. It is necessary to understand in the numbers of the Apocalypse a certain mystical reason, to which the Holy Spirit seeks to draw our attention. The mystery, which we are to learn here, is, that the number twelve, sacred in the synagogue and in the church, because of the twelve patriarchs and the twelve apostles, is multiplied by itself, in order to make twelve thousand in each tribe, and twelve times twelve thousand in all the tribes together, that we might perceive the faith of patriarchs and of apostles multiplied in their successors; and in the solidity of a number so perfectly square, the eternal immutability of the truth of God and of his apostles.” If the number is rightly understood, all such questions, as whether the 144,000 are so many individual souls, or whether so many men belong to them, fall entirely into abeyance. The same 144,000, whose preservation amid the plagues that were to come upon the earth is here represented, meet us again in ch. Revelation 14:1; Revelation 14:3, in their state of heavenly glory; substantially also here in the same state, in Revelation 7:9, ss., only that the number is not expressly repeated. Both the preservation and the glory are at the same time pledged to the true members of the church, and besides these a third, citizenship in the New Jerusalem. The sealed are out of all the tribes of the children of Israel. It is no contradiction to this, that Dan is not named in the following enumeration; the omission merely shows, that according to the Seer’s point of view Dan was excluded from the number of the tribes of Israel. But this very omission of the tribe of Dan is a proof that the Seer spake of the tribes of the children of Israel, not in a Jewish, but in an Israelitish-Christian sense. In the sacred books of the Old Testament the wicked appear, in spite of their fleshly descent from Jacob, as cut off from their people. But, on the other hand, native heathens, under certain restrictions, were on account of their faith naturalized in Israel; and the prophets announced, that one day these restrictions were to be abolished, and the naturalization of believing heathen, going hand in hand with the exclusion of the false seed, shall proceed with great rapidity. So, for example, Isaiah in Isaiah 56:6-7, and Ezekiel in Ezekiel 47:22-23, “And it shall come to pass, that ye shall divide it (the land) by lot for an inheritance among you, and to the strangers that sojourn among you, who shall beget children among you; and they shall be unto you as born in the country among the children of Israel; they shall have inheritance with you among the tribes of Israel. And it shall come to pass, that in what tribe the stranger sojourneth, there shall ye give him his inheritance, saith the Lord God.” Michaelis: “The distinction of races which existed under the Old Covenant shall be abolished;” see also Hävernick on the passage. Now that Israel and his tribes are mentioned here in this sense, that the Christian church is what is meant by them, as being the legitimate continuation of ancient Israel, not only appears from the omission already referred to of the tribe of Dan, and from the equality of the numbers in the small and the great tribes, but will also be still farther proved at ch. 11 from the effacing there of all tribe-distinctions. Those who with Bengel hold stiffly to the point, that Israel is here spoken of in the natural sense, entangle themselves in the difficulty, that the Jewish Christians, to whom by their view the promise exclusively belongs, cannot possibly be separated from the others. Bengel himself says: “With the Jews, who for so long a period have assumed, whether willingly or by constraint, the Christian name, circumcision has been renounced, and the multitudes of their descendants have become intermingled with the heathen, so that it is impossible for us to know who among us may have derived our descent from Jews or heathen; as, on the other hand, a Jew does not know whether he may not have partly sprung from a proselyte.” Besides, the following argument is irresistible: the plagues, against which the sealing brings security, pass over the whole earth, threaten alike all who, according to Revelation 59-10, have been redeemed by the blood of Christ out of every kindred and tongue, people and nation, and made kings and priests to their God; not a word being said as to any separate division of Jewish Christians. But how unlikely is it that the Seer should have obtained consolation only for a part of those that were in danger! What should fill all with anxiety required to be met with consolation for all; and so, according to Revelation 7:3, the servants of God generally must be sealed. To understand by these simply the Jewish Christians, is the greatest arbitrariness. Bengel says: “As certainly as the tribe of Judah is that from which the victorious Lion, the Lamb, sprung (ch Revelation 5:5), so certainly are all the tribes here to be literally understood.” But the question is not whether literally or non-literally; but whether with the inclusion or the exclusion of the adopted children, who through faith have become incorporated? And the former has on its side the analogy among Israel of the excision of the false seed, the entire omission of Dan, and the circumstance that in the rest it is not the whole tribes that are sealed, but only a limited number out of each. Besides, though the tribes were to be understood literally, the enumeration of tilt particular tribes could still have only an ideal import. They serve merely to embody the thought that the preservation shall extend alike to all parts of the church. This results simply from the consideration that at the time the Apocalypse was composed, the distinction of tribes had already in great part vanished, then from the omission of one whole tribe, which could never have taken place if a real numbering had been meant, further from the absolute equality of the numbers obtained from the small and the great alike, &c. Ewald admits that it is not Jewish Christians specially who are spoken of, but the whole Christian church; in the transference, however, of the name of Israel to Christians, he conceives he finds a proof of the Judaizing disposition of the author. But if a fault were really to be discovered in this, it must necessarily be a quite common one (Ewald would ascribe it to the author of the Revelation in contrast to Paul and John); since the Saviour himself took the lead in designating his church by the name of Israel, Matthew 19:28, and chose his apostles with a respect to the number of the tribes of Israel; comp. the introductory investigations to ch. 11. The name arose out of a consideration of the continuity of the church, which doubtless cannot but look very strange to an age that has been so much accustomed to tear asunder the Old and New Testaments from each other. Revelation 7:5. Of the tribe of Judah were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe of Reuben were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe of Gad were sealed twelve thousand. Revelation 7:6. Of the tribe of Asher were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe of Naphthali were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe of Manasseh were sealed twelve thousand. Revelation 7:7. Of the tribe of Simeon were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe of Levi were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe of Issachar were sealed twelve thousand. Revelation 7:8. Of the tribe of Zebulon were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe of Joseph were sealed twelve thousand; of the tribe of Benjamin were sealed twelve thousand.The tribes are united in pairs together. Bengel: “It was after Luther’s death that the Bible was divided into verses as we now find it, and there in each verse we have three tribes, which does not make a suitable arrangement.” In regard to the reason for the pair-like arrangement, Züllig remarks: “The birth determines the order in the eight last, four closely related brotherly pairs after their mothers. It only required the two leaders Judah and Reuben to be placed beside each other, and then with Simeon and Levi, who were in other respects closely connected (comp. Genesis 49:5-7, where they stand in juxtaposition), there just remained one pair more.” Precisely as the tribes here, the apostles are arranged in pairs, Matthew 10:2, ss., and for similar reasons; at the head stand two pairs of brothers, and with an express reference to this relationship. The other points which this list presents for notice are the following:—1. The tribe Dan is omitted. Several, indeed, have tried to save themselves the trouble of explaining this omission by getting rid of the fact. Thus Züllig remarks: “In all manuscripts and editions Manasseh stands instead of Dan. And Irenaeus in his early age knew no variation. But even if the author himself may have written it so, we must hold him to have written wrong, and affirm it ought to have been Dan; so overwhelming here are the considerations of the higher criticism.” But such a procedure condemns itself; in no book are we less warranted in employing a superficial, “It must be so,” in order to change the text. Nor must the reason of the peculiarity be sought in the difficulty, which presented itself to the Seer, in his being obliged not to overstep the number twelve, because this was the signature of the church, while the tribes were thirteen To meet this no heroic effort was needed. The prophet only required to comprehend the two tribes Ephraim and Manasseh, under the name of Joseph, which might the more readily have occurred, as Ezekiel, Ezekiel 48:32, had already by this means reduced the number to twelve. He must, therefore, have had an important special reason for leaving out the tribe of Dan; and this could only be a theological one. We find the key in such passages as ch. Revelation 14:4, where it is said of the hundred, forty, and four thousand, who had been redeemed from the earth, from the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, “These are they who have not defiled themselves with women (i.e. sins), for they are virgins;” ch. Revelation 21:27, “And nothing that is common shall enter therein, and that worketh abomination and lies,” ch. Revelation 22:14. Almost the only remarkable fact which is to be found in the history of the Danites is, that after having got possession of the land, they introduced into their territory a false worship (Judges 18), which continued through centuries. On this account did Ezekiel, Ezekiel 48, in determining the respective positions of the tribes, assign the most remote place on the north to Dan, at the farthest distance from the sanctuary, to which Judah immediately adjoined. John only proceeds a step farther, and excludes Dan altogether. There he stands in the limits of the world, here his place is not Found in it at all. This explanation of the fact is also confirmed by the analogy of the substitution of the name of Joseph for Ephraim, and by the corresponding fact in the history of the apostles, from which the name of Judas Iscariot was dropt out because of his apostacy. 2. Instead of Ephraim stands Joseph, after Manasseh. the other son of Joseph, had been named. This, too, must have a deep ground. For it is without example elsewhere to find one of the two tribes, that sprung from him, designated by his name in contradistinction to the other. Numbers 13:11 cannot be referred to as in point. For, there it is said, “Of the tribe of Joseph (as a second deputy, beside that of Ephraim) of the tribe of Manasseh.” But here Joseph is exactly substituted for Ephraim. We shall perceive the reason of the fact if we take a glance at the history. The Ephraimite Micah had first, according to Judges 17, set up the false worship, which afterwards passed over to the Danites. Through the whole period of the Judges the sons of Ephraim had shown themselves to be “deceitful bowmen, who turned back in the day of battle,” Psalms 78:9 (see my Commentary); they afterwards set themselves against the sanctuary in Zion, and against the dominion of David’s house and line; they were the authors of the lamentable division which inflicted on the people of Israel a deadly wound. By all which they had rendered their name an offence. In its room, therefore, that of Joseph is put, the sacred remembrance of which was a security, that the tribe of Ephraim should not, like the tribe of Dan, suffer the fate of an entire extinction. 3. Judah, who, according to the order of birth, was the fourth among the sons of Leah, stands here at the head, and has precedence of Reuben, the first-born. The reason of this is given in Hebrews 7:14, “For it is manifest that our Lord sprang from Judah;” and may also be learnt from this book, where Christ is called the lion of the tribe of Judah. Even under the Old Testament this tribe was distinguished, by the promises he obtained with reference to this, from the lips of Jacob, Genesis 49:10, and from the prophet Nathan, who announced to David the perpetual dominion of his line, and consequently that of Judah. 4. Levi, who had in the blessing of Moses been so nobly distinguished with privilege, and placed immediately after Judah, here again descends from the elevation he had already reached. He is mixed up with the others without the appearance of any superiority. Bengel: “After the Levitical ceremonies were abolished, Levi found himself again on a level with his brethren. All now are priests, all have access, not one through another, but one with another. Levi was chosen of old for the public ministrations of the sanctuary, and the priesthood in particular was given to Aaron and his posterity; but in the New Testament such shadow-work is passed away, and Levi hence became as one of the other tribes.” This entire assimilation of Levi to the rest, shows that the precedence of Judah rested on nothing but its relation to Christ, that whatever else distinguished it does not come into notice here, and also shows how far they are from the mind of John, who suppose him to have given the pre-eminence to Jewish Christians. What this presupposed, belonged to the same line as the prerogatives of Levi. We cannot at once take away the old distinctions within Judaism, and still retain the boundaries between Jewish and heathenish origin. Has Levi no peculiar place, then the word “there is neither Jew, nor Greek, nor Gentile,” has assuredly entered. 5. The foundation of the arrangement of the tribes stands in the order of the birth of the sons of Jacob. But there is a series of departures from this, which as a whole are ruled by one principle—namely this, that in the kingdom of Christ difference of birth, external privilege avails nothing; the same principle, on which the doctrine of Paul in Ephesians 3:6 rests, “That the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by his Gospel.” To facilitate a survey of the matter, we shall set down here (after Züllig) the order of birth, and that of the Apocalypse after each other. Order of Birth: Of Leah: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah. Of Bilhah: Dan, Napthali. Of Zilpah: Gad, Asher. Of Leah again: Issachar, Zebulon. Of Rachel: Joseph, Benjamin. Order of the Apocalypse: Of Leah: Judah, Reuben. Of Zilpah: Gad, Asher. Of Bilhah and Rachel: Naphthali, Manasseh. Of Leah again from her earlier sons: Simeon, Levi. Of Leah the two last-born: Issachar, Zebulon. Of Rachel: Joseph, Benjamin. Whoever,” remarks Züllig, “has but a moderate acquaintance with the spirit of order that prevailed with the author of the Apocalypse, he can have no doubt that these transpositions were not arbitrary, but were well weighed; consequently, that under this apparent want of order a real order, though probably of a very artificial kind, lay hidden.” On nearer consideration this order cannot escape us. There is found a complete intermingling of the sons of the different women, and in particular of the sons of the maids with those of the proper wives. Of the four first sons of ‘Leah two are separated, Simeon and Levi, and in the middle, between them and the other two Judah and Reuben—are placed the sons of the concubines. But thus only the sons of the one wife were placed on a level with the sons of the concubines. And the same thing was effected in regard to the sons also of Rachel, by putting Manasseh, who was descended from Rachel, in the room of Dan, and combining him into a pair with Naphthali. (It does not stand: Manasseh, Naphthali, as it would have been Dan, Naphthali; because Manasseh, and not Naphthali is the name shoved in; Manasseh was assigned as an accompaniment to Naphthali.) By this method also the aim is accomplished of placing the sons of Rachel, the humanly beloved, on a footing of equality with the sons of Leah, who was hated. Manasseh stands in the middle of the sons of Leah.[Note: If any doubt might still exist as to the genuineness of the reading Manasseh, it would be completely removed by this collocation.]It only further remains to be asked, why the order of the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah should have been reversed. The answer is, because the equalization with the sons of Leah, who open the series, must first be attained, and one of the sons of Bilhah is extruded, in order to make room for the son of Rachel. If there could be any doubt as to the correctness of the solution now given, it would be removed by comparing the parallel passages in Ezekiel. In the two enumerations also of the sons of Jacob, which are given by him in Ezekiel 48, the whole arrangement is theologically constructed, and pervaded by the same principle. There is found an intentional intermingling of the sons of the maid-servants and the wives, and of the latter again among each other, in Ezekiel 48:31-34. Thus Dan stands in the middle between Benjamin, the son of Rachel, and Simeon, the son of Leah. The latter is separated from his natural companion Levi, and is brought in after the sons of Rachel, and after Dan. Three sons of Leah take the lead, three receive the third place, and the conclusion is formed by three sons of the bond-maids. In the second place are two sons of Rachel, and a son of a bond-maid. So that all birth-prerogatives are broken through. Naphthali must conclude the whole, and give precedence to the sons of Zilpah, because Bilhah’s posterity had already attained to honour through the advancement of Dan. In Ezekiel 48:1-7 and Ezekiel 48:23-29, the tribes are divided into two groups, the one of seven, and the other of five, a division of the twelve, which we often meet with in the arrangements of the Psalms. In the middle of the two groups is the sanctuary. The first group is closed by Judah, the second commenced by Benjamin, so that the nearest to the sanctuary are the two tribes, which remained true after the apostacy of Israel—(Benjamin certainly but in part.) Three pairs precede Judah, two follow Benjamin. First, a son of Bilhah and one of Zilpah are paired. Dan and Asher. Then a son of Bilhah and one of Rachel, Naphthali, Manasseh (just as here.) Next a son of Rachel and one of Leah, Ephraim and Reuben. Finally, a son of Leah and Zilpath, Zebulon and Gad. Only one pair of sons of one mother is to be found, Simeon and Issachar; which could not be avoided, because the number of the sons of Leah was a preponderating one. But the object was already fully accomplished. We close the exposition of this section with the words of Bengel: “The Lord knows them that are his. Oh! it is good to serve the Lord. In peaceful times, when matters go well, and there is a fair wind, one is not so deeply sensible of this, nor is a special preservation so needful. But when bad angels step forth (or rather, times of tribulation and chastisement arise), then does the divine election form a blessed feature in the condition of those who are under the protection of the Almighty.” Revelation 7:9-17. In the midst of the plagues, which are destined to befal the world, the elect were assured of safety in the preceding context. But this can still only preserve them from the worst. It is impossible to be happy amid the desolations of a falling world. That the execution of judgment on the world must bring heavy troubles on the Lord’s people, in the first instance in the catastrophe of Judea, which John saw lying behind him, was plainly implied in the words of our Lord in Matthew 24:19-22. And how, indeed, can it be otherwise, since the guilt of the world is nothing absolutely foreign to them, since they have themselves to struggle with the sin which reigns in the world, and since they also so far need the sufferings, which fall with a destructive severity on the world, that through these they are tried and purified, and withdrawn from an undue love to the world. So, then, a new consolation is still required for believers, and this is furnished in the section before us. The good reaches its end. Those who were before assured of preservation amid the judgments that are decreed against the world, are here presented before us in that heavenly glory which awaited them. If they have in many respects to suffer here with the world, what boots it? since the white garments, and the palms, and the waters of life, are sure to them. Revelation 7:9. After these things l saw, and behold! a great multitude, which no one could number, of every nation, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands. The multitude that no one could number is a characteristic description of Israel, or the church—comp. Genesis 13:16, Genesis 15:5; Numbers 23:10. Such a description alone shows that it is not simply heathen Christians who are here spoken of, in contradistinction to the Jewish ones, of whom mention was made in Revelation 7:1-8. The note here that they could not be numbered is equivalent to the express designation as Israel there. It is to be observed that it is not the absolute, but only the relative innumerableness that is affirmed: a great multitude, which no one can number; as also in Revelation 7:4, the Seer hears the number of the sealed, because he himself could not number them. Bengel remarks that “the sealed were a great number, and the number of angels in ch. Revelation 5:11 was still greater, and of the horsemen in ch. Revelation 9:16, where there were hundreds of millions; still these companies were capable of being numbered; but the one before us could neither John nor any one number.” This overlooking, however, of what has been stated above, and magnifying the numbers here to something beyond all bounds, proceeds on the error of departing from the scriptural mode of contemplating the conditions of blessedness, and adopting that of the world, which would have all to be blessed. Bengel refutes himself, when he remarks, “it is elsewhere stated in Scripture that those who pass through the wide gate into destruction are many, but few comparatively who find the strait gate and enter by the narrow way into life.” In respect to the words: out of every nation, &c., see on ch. Revelation 5:9.[Note: Bengel noticed as remarkable the singular ἐ ?́θνους in connection with the following plurals, but was not fortunate in the explanation of it. In the use of ἐ ?́θνος the plural was avoided, became both in the New Testament generally and in the Apocalypse (comp. 2:26, 11:2, 18) it is usually employed us a designation of the heathen. But here the nations generally must be meant. It differs so far from λαός that it is the lowest name, and designates the peoples merely as masses, corresponding to the Hebr. βει, whereas λαός denotes them after the organism which unites them together. Because this organism in so far as it arises in a natural way, is of a very imperfect kind, so there is, till Christ’s coming, strictly speaking, but one people—that of God; comp. Deuteronomy 32:21, where the heathen are marked as no people, μΰςν, with 4:7, 8, “what nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God?” &c.]On the white robes as the symbol of glory, see on ch. Revelation 6:11. The angel also, in Mark 16:5, was arrayed in white clothing, and possibly the literal agreement of the expression was not accidental, and was intended to intimate, that believers when made perfect shall be “like the angels in heaven,” Matthew 22:30. Their standing designation, the saints, that is, the exalted, the glorious, expresses the substance of what is symbolically indicated by the white clothing.[Note: In regard to the reading Bengel remarks: “Μετὰταῦταεἶδον, καὶἰδοὺὄχλοςπολύς—ἑστῶτες—περιβεβλημένους, a middle rending, whence some reduce the whole period to the nominative, others to the accusative. The mixture of cases displeases Wolf, as frequently, indeed, happens in this book.” The accusative περιβεβλημένους is governed by εἶδον, which comes forth here from behind the ἰδοὺ, as also in ch. 4:4 the accusative depends on the omitted εἶδον.]The palms in the hands of the elect are, in the opinion of many, palms of victory. But when one reads in Ewald, “After having patiently endured they bear palms like conquerors in the Olympic games,” we can scarcely fail to feel distrustful of such an exposition. A reference to the Olympic games is something quite out of place; nor is there in the whole of Revelation a single well certified example of such a transition to the territory of heathen symbols. But, besides, the palms as signs of victory accord ill at Revelation 7:10, where the subject of discourse is not of what the elect had done, nor generally, indeed, throughout the section, but only of what they had been. The discourse that follows speaks not of victory, but of salvation. The palms as symbolical of victory would ascribe to the redeemed an activity, which is out of place here, where all is designed to celebrate the surpassing grace of a redeeming God. Finally, if the palms were those of victory, the white robes would not alone be mentioned in Revelation 7:13. This shows that the palms have not, like the white garments, an objective meaning. The palms are beyond doubt those of the feast of tabernacles. According to Leviticus 23:40, the children of Israel at this festival were to bring green branches of palms, and take other trees, and rejoice before the Lord seven days. The latter words point to the import of the rite. It was an expression of joy, the feast of tabernacles being pre-eminently a feast of joy—comp. Deuteronomy 16:14-15. The immediate occasion of this joy was the prosperously concluded harvest; comp. Isaiah 9:2, where the joy of harvest is spoken of as joy of the highest kind. In Leviticus 23:39 it is said before, “when ye have gathered in the produce of the land.” This object of the joy was represented through the fruits, which were to be used along with the green branches, and which are named before them. As these stood related in the Mosaic law to the green branches, so here the white robes; and in this we have an explanation of the circumstance, that the latter alone are mentioned in Revelation 7:13. The meaning of the green branches remains the same, whether we suppose with the Jewish tradition, that during the feast they were borne in the hand, or with Bδhr (Symbolik II. p. 625), and others, that the Israelites adorned their tabernacles with them. This last is certainly what was done with them in the time of Nehemiah (Nehemiah 8:15—from which passage, however, it cannot be proved that the branches were not, at the same time, carried in the hand). The green twigs of trees, which have the freshest and thickest foliage, are always an expression of joy. Such we must maintain to be the case, unless we would tear asunder the passage before us from that of Joh 12:12-13, which is very closely connected with it; “On the next day much people that were come to the feast, when they heard that Jesus was coming to Jerusalem, took branches of palm trees and went forth to meet him, and cried: Hosanna! Blessed is the king of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.” If by the palms we understand the palms of joy, the symbolical acknowledgment of the salvation which is certified by the name Jesus, the two passages agree harmoniously together. As the people formerly expressed through this symbol their salvation-joy, when Jesus, the Saviour, rode into the earthly Jerusalem, so now do the elect, when they are in the heavenly Zion with Christ, comp. ch. Revelation 14:1.[Note: The word φοίνικες occurs no where else in the New Testament but in these two passages (Mark 11:8 uses στοιβάδας for τὰβαῖατῶνφοινίκων.) But we can perceive here also the difference between the historical and the poetical style. In the Gospel John speaks of palm branches, here of palms.]The green branches cannot be regarded as means simply for the construction of the booths (the materials for which are left quite indefinite), because they are mentioned in the law of Moses without any respect to the booths, which only come to be noticed at a later period, and also because of the connection in which the feast stood with the people’s rejoicing. But the truth is, that nothing precisely is determined in the Mosaic law as to the application of the green branches. The main thing was that they were there. They were merely ordered to be taken. But the order prescribed in the law rendered it very natural for the people not to satisfy themselves with a simple employment of the branches about the booths. Their independent signification would in that case have readily fallen into the shade. That the custom of bearing the palms in the hand had at any rate become common before the period at which the Apocalypse was written is certain from Macc. Revelation 10:7, where it is said of the celebration of the feast of tabernacles after the temple had been consecrated, “And they bare branches and fair boughs, and palms also, and sang psalms unto him that had given them good success in cleansing his place,” where, also, the bearing of the palm branches was an expression of joy for the deliverance that had been obtained. It is further evident from Jos. Ant. B. Revelation 13:13, § 5, and from the passage before us itself, as soon as it is admitted that the palms are the palms of the feast of tabernacles. And that they really were so we can the less doubt, as several of the traits also in what follows point to a heavenly celebration of the feast of tabernacles; comp. Revelation 7:15, where allusion is made to the booths; Revelation 7:16, where the notes given of the misery from which the redeemed had been taken, are derived from the leading features of the distressed condition that belonged to Israel in the literal wilderness; Revelation 7:17, where there seems to be a reference to the rite of pouring out water at the feast of tabernacles. The expression: and palms in their hands, cannot but remind one of the Jewish tradition, according to which every Israelite carried a bunch of green branches in his right hand and an apple in the left. From the preceding remarks we have before us a celebration of the feast of tabernacles in heaven. There is the less reason for controverting such a view, as an ideal keeping of the feast of tabernacles occurs even in the Old Testament. Zechariah, in Zechariah 14:16, makes the converted heathen in Messiah’s time repair to Jerusalem to celebrate the feast of tabernacles in gratitude to God for his having graciously led them through the wilderness, and for the blessings of salvation conferred upon them (see Christology on the passage.) The feast of tabernacles, according to its double signification, the historical and the natural, was admirably fitted for serving as a type of this heavenly solemnity. As regards the first, the feast was, according to Leviticus 23:43, a feast of thanksgiving for the Lord’s gracious preservation experienced by Israel during their wanderings in the wilderness, which alone prevented the people from being destroyed by the dangers that surrounded them, and purified them for the possession of the land of Canaan. The antitype of the festival in this respect is kept by those who, after having escaped the troubles and dangers of their pilgrimage through the wilderness of life, have reached the heavenly Canaan, the place of their rest, where they shall never hunger any more nor thirst any more, and the sun shall not light on them or any heat. In regard to the natural signification of the symbol, Bδhr remarks, “With the feast of tabernacles all field-labour ceased, and winter, the period of rest, began. Every one saw himself recompensed for the labours of the year, his cares were gone, the whole fulness of the divine blessing was in the hands of all. No time of the year was so appropriate for joy and rejoicing.” The application to the heavenly harvest-feast, when the elect rest from their labours and their works follow them, when they shall be accredited for what they have here wrought in the sweat of their brow, and what God’s blessing conferred on them, is clear as day. What Bδhr also says, p. 658, on the connection between the two aspects of the feast, the natural and the historical, equally applies to the antitypical festival: “After having gathered in the whole produce of the field, the agricultural people found themselves at the end of their annual labours and occupations, were in possession of the promised and expected blessing, felt rewarded for all the trouble and the faith with which they had sown their seed in hope, and could now enjoy their rest. No time, certainly, could be more appropriate than that to remind them of the finished toil connected with their wanderings in the wilderness, of the time when their fidelity was proved, of the great act of divine beneficence in giving them possession of the promised land, where also they found rest from battle.” The Israelite in his pains and labour on the earth, which the Lord has cursed, consoled himself by a glance toward the joyful day, when before the earthly sanctuary he should bear palms in his hands. May we find consolation during our time of pilgrimage upon earth, by casting our eye on the heavenly palms. Revelation 7:10. And they cried with a loud voice and said: The salvation to our God, who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb! In the words of the thanksgiving of the redeemed, there is an allusion to Psalms 3:8, “Salvation is the Lord’s,” q.d., he is the possessor and sole dispenser of it;”over thy people thy blessing.” What there forms the foundation of the prayer is turned here into a thanksgiving. Luther has rendered improperly: Salvation be to, etc., instead of: the salvation. Bengel: “That they had been delivered out of all danger and distress, and were now in the enjoyment of blessing, for this they gave thanks aloud to God and to the Lamb. Our God, said they, who sits upon the throne, has given us salvation, and we have to thank his love entirely for it, and that for ever. The Lamb has purchased for us the salvation, and bestows it on us. Christ Jesus is our salvation (Joshua): therefore do we praise his inconceivably great and wonderful love for ever. Salvation or blessedness is something precious. The word properly signifies deliverance and freedom from all mischief and adversity: but along with this there is also an overflowing of joy and glory. Both are expressed together, 2 Timothy 2:10 Now, when a soul passing from this world is introduced into that other, this is in a manner the first cry that it raises there: the salvation be to our God and the Lamb.” The salvation forms the contrast to the great tribulation, out of which, according to Revelation 7:14, they have been taken. Allusion is made to the name of Jesus, as also in Matthew 21:9, where the multitudes exclaim at the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem, “Hosanna to the Son of David;” let his name, Jesus, be verified, let there be salvation to him, and through him, to us. Here the redeemed give thanks for the keeping of the name, for the accomplishment of the salvation. There also He, who sits upon the throne, appears as the ultimate author of salvation: Hosanna in the highest, help us, thou who art enthroned in heaven, through him in whom thou hast laid up the treasures of salvation. The hosanna is now changed into a hallelujah. It had even then a hallelujah in the background. For the cry for help rests on the confidence that he will help. An allusion to the common hosanna-cry at the feast of tabernacles is more doubtful. But at any rate, Psalms 118:25, the place whence that cry was borrowed, and which was wont to be repeated at the feast of tabernacles, “Save now, I beseech thee, O Lord; O Lord, I beseech thee, send now prosperity,” has finally passed into fulfilment in the case of these redeemed ones. To the Lamb, at whose wrath the world trembles, ch. Revelation 6:16. Why they call Christ the Lamb is evident from Revelation 7:14. His holy atoning blood is the source of their salvation; see on ch. Revelation 5:6. Revelation 7:11. And all the angels stood round about the throne, and about the elders, and the four beasts, and fell down before the throne on their face, and worshipped God, Revelation 7:12. Saying, Amen, the blessing, and the glory, and the wisdom, and the thanksgiving, and the honour, and the power, and the strength, be to our God for ever and ever, Amen!The angels are our patterns in the adoration of God, whose glory is presented to our apprehension through their songs of praise, comp. Psalms 29:1-2; Psalms 89:6-7; Psalms 89:6-7; Psalms 103:20. But the glory of God has most singularly manifested itself in the leading of his church through the wilderness of the world to the heavenly Canaan and Zion, so that the angels could not remain unconcerned in the matter. They would otherwise have been untrue to their high calling and their delightful obligation. Their voice was heard at the birth of Christ, comp. Luke 2:13-14, “And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” So now they could not be silent, when the holy work, which had its unpromising commencement in the birth of Christ, has reached its close. There is joy before the angels of God over one sinner that repents (Luke 15:10). If they rejoice over the glory of God, which manifests itself in the conversion of a single sinner, how can they refrain from testifying their joy at the manifestation of God’s glory in the final safety and well-being of his whole church? The worship is not addressed to God in centradistinction to Christ, but to God in Christ (the Lamb, according to Revelation 7:17, is in the midst of the throne.) But that Christ is not expressly named, is to be explained on the ground, that essentially the same doxology had already been uttered in respect to him, in ch. Revelation 5:12. The connection between the two passages is marked by the two last words there being intentionally made the first here. Intentionally also are the same words repeated here, with a slight alteration (thanksgiving here instead of riches there), enough as a mark of independence.[Note: Bengel remarks: “But why is it said here, that all the angels worshipped God, and not also the Lamb, since it is admitted elsewhere, that all the angels of God worship also the Son? The answer is, that the angels are in an especial manner under God’s oversight and dominion, as the faithful, in the New Testament, stand peculiarly under the Lamb.” But this explanation of the fact is immediately dispersed by ch. 5:12.The first Amen expressed an accord to the praise of the redeemed, and so marks the sphere in which the glory of the Lord has unfolded itself. The omission of the second Amen in several critical helps is to be explained from this signification of the first Amen not being understood. It is the less to be regarded, as in some copies even the first Amen has been omitted on the same account. In the encomiums the seven are better divided into the three and four (as also in Revelation 6:15, Isaiah 11:2), than into the four and three. For, by the first division, the thanksgiving appears at the head of the second group, and serves, like the blessing in the first, as an explanation of the following epithets—shows, that God must receive the honour, etc., in the commendation given of them. On the other hand, in ch. Revelation 5:12, the seven is divided by the four and the three: power and riches, wisdom and strength, honour and glory, blessing. The reverse order was naturally to have been expected, as the beginning here connects itself with the end there. Power and riches then stand together, as riches and strength in ch. Revelation 6:15, wisdom and strength, as counsel and strength in Isaiah 11:2. The twin pair, honour and glory, remain together. Finally, in that case blessing stands alone, and the internal is also externally represented. Revelation 7:13. And one of the elders answered and said to me: Who are these clothed with white robes? And whence came they? Expositors for the most part remark here superficially, that answer stands for, commenced to speak. Bengel, however, gave the correct view: “John had not indeed asked, but certainly desired to know, who the persons in white robes were. And this desire of his was met by the elder.” A question can be asked otherwise than by a word. John’s whole conduct betrayed that he burned with desire to get an exact account of the attractive appearance of the persons in white clothing. The answer to the silent question is thrown into the form of a verbal question, with the view simply of calling forth John’s express request for information, and the confession of his own inability. Bengel: “It not only requires one who knows something to ask, but there must also be a fit opportunity for one who would communicate any thing to another, if he commences with a question, as was the case with our Lord in his wise procedure toward his disciples, the Samaritan woman, and others. In such a manner one can often get at the heart, and loose a man’s tongue, who could not find his way to it before, so that he is glad at the circumstance.” The who and whence art thou, was in ancient times the regular question to friends on their arrival.[Note: See, for example, Homer, Od. v. 104: Ξεῖνετὸμενσεπρῶτονἐγὼνεἰρήσομαιαὐτὴτίς· πόθενεἰςἀνδρῶν; Πόθετοιπόλιςἠδὲτοκῆες. Other passages may be seen in Wolf’s Curse]. The questions are afterwards answered in the reverse order, first the whence, then the who. Revelation 7:14. And I said to him: My Lord, thou knowest it. And he said to me: these are they, who come out of the great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made their robes bright in the blood of the Lamb. In the speech of John there is a discreet request for information. Thou knowest it, says he; thou hast been longer here than I have been; I do not know. If thou wouldst tell me, I shall receive it with thankfulness. John addresses the elder as his lord. Bengel: “Before an elder, the title of Lord was not so common as it is now; and that John should have said to the elder, Lord, nay, my Lord, has much significance in it. John saw great and glorious things, and the elders were there in the midst of them. He found himself in a state of holy wonder, and said to the elder, My Lord. Still greater things were disclosed to him there, and in his transport he forgot himself so far as to attempt even twice to worship the angel. To say, My Lord, as John did, and to worship, is not far different; nay, it is a step to the other.” John said, My Lord, in the presence of the glory of the Lord, which shines upon the blessed, so that the expression of veneration at last returns to the Lord himself. So Lot in Genesis 19:18 addressed the angels by the name Adonai, which properly belongs only to God; and in Isaiah 45:14, the Gentiles who desire salvation fall down before the church of the Lord, and supplicate to her, because God is only in her, and there is no God besides. To take the “My Lord” in a feebler sense, is the less suitable, as we have here before us a vision, and the territory of appearance and mere courtesy is far away. Elsewhere also in the New Testament this address always occurs as an expression of veneration and dependence. The Greeks, in John 12:21, address Philip thus, and certainly on no other account (“Lord, we would see Jesus”), because they transferred the glory of the master to the disciple. In John 20:15, Mary takes Jesus for the gardener, but she doubtless would not have styled him Lord, if she had sought only common things of him, if she had not believed herself to be dependent on him in regard to her beloved. The address here, therefore, in unison with the following: Thou knowest it, points to the vast distance between what is here and what shall be hereafter; so that the most advanced, who still dwell here in flesh and faith, can only look up to the perfectly righteous. There is a very striking agreement between the “thou knowest it,” and Peter’s reply to our Lord in John 21:15-16. On the words, “These are they who come,” Züllig remarks, “The present in the signification of the future renders it manifest that it is only a vision, when John says he already saw them above, at the time he wrote; for they were certainly then still below on the earth, and could only be translated to heaven a considerable time afterwards, when they had borne their share in the tribulation spoken of.” It may be asked what we are to understand by “the great tribulation.” According to Bengel, it must indicate generally the troubles of human life.” What else is this great tribulation than all men’s pains and labour on the earth, which God has cursed, and the collected sorrows which have been brought on the human family by the fall of Adam? This is clear from the following contrast. The partakers of salvation shall hunger and thirst no more, be free henceforth from sweat and tears. The great tribulation, therefore, consists in hunger, thirst, heat, tears, &c. To this tribulation all men, not excepting the elect, have been subjected since the fall, in this vale of tears and sorrows. It is a plague, which one meets with every day; troubles may certainly be counted on. Respect is not had here to any particular tribulation, which some might have to suffer for the word of God; but it is this earthly sorrowful life itself, such as Adam doubtless experienced beyond any of his descendants. Before, he could walk up and down in Paradise, and eat of the fruit of its trees, one only excepted, without any toil on his part. But after the fall he had the burden of a laborious and troublesome cultivation laid on him. It was said, In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread; words that briefly express hunger, thirst, heat, and tears.” But this exposition seeks in vain for support from Revelation 7:16; the distresses mentioned there are not those generally of this life, but those of the wilderness. But what disproves it is, that by it the starting-point, the fainting of believers in prospect of the judgments which were going to be inflicted on the world, is overlooked, and so the connection is destroyed between Revelation 7:9-17 and Revelation 7:1-8. The same reason is also decisive against those who would understand by the great tribulation the persecution of Christians. The consolation for those Christians, who sighed under the persecutions of the world, has been given earlier, and finds its completion in ch. Revelation 8:1. It lies in the contents of the seventh seal. The definite article alone, which implies the distress to be known from the preceding context, leads to the conclusion, that by the great tribulation the plagues of the world are to be understood, which bring with them troubles also for the elect. To the same result we are also led by the original passage, Matthew 24:21,”For there shall then be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world till now, nor shall be.” The subject of discourse there, too, is the judgments to be brought on the world, which necessarily involve the elect in sufferings along with others. Finally, this explanation is confirmed by comparing ch. Revelation 3:10, where the hour of temptation is spoken of which shall come upon the whole world, to tempt those who dwell upon the earth. The subject of discourse there cannot be persecution, for the temptation appears as a future one, while the persecution raged at that very time. But here we can the less think of persecution, as there is not a syllable found in regard to what in that case would have been of such vast moment—fidelity and stedfastness. Only the general marks of believers are given. The washing and making bright are to be carefully distinguished. The washing denotes the obtaining of pardon of sin through the blood of Christ; the making bright sanctification which springs out of reconciliation. In the symbolical rites of the law, and in the explanation of it in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 36:25, “and I sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean from all your impurities, and from all your filthiness will I purify you.” the washing and sprinkling with water appears as an image of the forgiveness of sins (see Christol. there.) Filthy garments (the clothing being regarded as a symbol of the state[Note: Vitringa: “The stole (robe) is a symbol of the condition or state in which any one is. Among the Orientals, as well as the Romans and other people of the west, the custom was such that from the robe, tunic, or gown, the Mate and dignity of any one could be easily perceived.”]) were, in the Old Testament, borne by sinners, clean ones by the justified, Isaiah 64:5, Zech. Zechariah 3:4, “and he answered and said to those who stood before him: Take away from him the filthy garments; and he said to Joshua, behold, I take away from thee thy sins, and they will clothe thee with festive garments.” Here instead of the water the blood of Christ is put, to indicate that it is not simply forgiveness, but forgiveness as rooting itself in the atonement which is spoken of. We have a commentary in 1 John 1:7, “The blood of Christ cleanseth from all sin;” 1 John 5:6, “This is he who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not by water only (forgiveness without satisfaction), but by water and blood;’’ John 19:34, “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately there came out water and blood.” The great importance which is laid upon this in John 19:35, is to be explained from the apostle seeing a symbolical meaning in the procedure, from his perceiving in the water and the blood the forgiveness that has its root in the atonement of Christ. The point of connection here between the Revelation and the other writings of John is a very delicate and deep one. To the mating of the garments bright corresponds in the passage of Ezekiel referred to, Ezekiel 36:26, the “giving of a new heart and a new spirit” (after the purging away of their sins); and in John, the “walking in the light,” 1 John 1:7, “not sinning,” 1 John 2:1, 1 John 3:6, 1 John 3:9, “keeping one’s self,” 1 John 5:18, “doing the will of God,” 1 John 2:17, “doing what is well-pleasing before him,” 1 John 3:22, “keeping his commandments,” 1 John 5:3. The courageous witness-bearing, which, according to ch. Revelation 12:11, springs from the sense of forgiveness as obtained through the blood of the Lamb, is only a particular manifestation of the sanctified life which is denoted by the bright garments. On the white or bright as the colour of clear splendour, the symbolical image of glory, comp. on ch. Revelation 3:4. Here the white is the colour of the righteous, which streams forth in the splendour of their virtues—comp. Revelation 3:18-19, Revelation 19:8. For, that the doing, and not the reward of holiness, is what is here spoken of (whence the white garment differs here from that in Revelation 5:9 and Revelation 6:11), appears first from the active, “they have made them white;” then, and more especially, from a reward on this account being announced in Rev. 5:15; and still farther from the white clothing which is said to have been given to believers (Revelation 6:11), never having like this been unclean. That there is an internal connection between white clothing in the one sense and in the other, or between sanctification and glory, it is scarcely necessary to remark. Revelation 7:15. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple, and he who sits upon the throne shall tabernacle before them. Therefore, because, as Bengel says, “they have been fitly prepared for it by the blood of the Lamb.” The delineation of the blessedness is completed in a threefold three: they are before the throne, they serve, they are tented;—they hunger not, they thirst not, they suffer no heat;—the Lamb feeds them, leads them, wipes them. The foundation for this lies in the three number of the Mosaic blessing on the chosen people, which, with those here, has reached its complete fulfilment. Vitringa thinks that here the happy condition of the perfectly righteous on this earth is represented. But the whole position of our section is against this, which can unfold nothing that lies absolutely beyond the seventh seal; and so also is ch. Revelation 6:11, where the white garments are mentioned in regard to the intermediate state before the completion of God’s kingdom—the standing before the throne of God, which belongs, according to ch. Revelation 4:2, to heaven—the serving him in his temple, which is also heavenly, ch. Revelation 11:19, Revelation 14:15; Revelation 14:17, Revelation 15:5; Revelation 15:8, Revelation 16:1; Revelation 16:17; and a comparison of the parallel passages, ch. Revelation 14:1-5, Revelation 15:2-4, Revelation 20:4-6. The affinity of our passage to those which relate to the “regeneration,” Matthew 19:28, the state of blessedness to be enjoyed by the church on the renovated earth, can prove nothing, inasmuch as there exists an internal connection between the state of the perfectly righteous before, and that after the resurrection. To remark, “that here we have a representation, 1, as to how the righteous serve God, and, 2, what God gives to them,” is fitted to mislead; for even the being before the throne of God, and serving him in his temple, free from the sorrow and vexation which in many ways were experienced from the vanities of time, appears here as wonderful grace and recompense (hence the therefore), according to the hymn “Den wahren Gott zu schauen,” &c. (“To behold the true God and the beautiful garniture of the heavenly world, this is real blessedness,”) and 1 Corinthians 14:12. Even in this life it is not only a sacred duty, but also a precious privilege of believers to endeavour to copy after the example of Anna, who “departed not from the temple, and served God with fastings and prayers day and night.” Bengel: “In the world it is held to be a great honour when a lord of the chamber, a high servant may always be about the sovereign, and can get the nearest access to him at all times; but what is this compared with the privilege of those who are before the throne of God, and wait upon him day and night? He will tabernacle upon them is as much as: he will perform to them the part of a tent. The tent, therefore, is the Lord himself, and Psalms 31:20 corresponds, “Thou shalt hide them in the secret of thy presence from the confederacy of man; thon shalt keep them secretly in a tabernacle from the strife of tongues.” The correspondence here is closer than in Psalms 28:5, where the godly are represented as hidden with the Lord in his tent. But in the other passage the Lord himself, as in the words before us, his gracious countenance directed upon the godly, is their hiding-place and tabernacle. Isaiah 4:6 is also to be compared, where it is said respecting the time of salvation, and the completion of the kingdom of God, “And there shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day time from the heat, and for a place of refuge, and for a covert from storm and rain.” The tabernacle consists, according to our verse, in the grace of the Lord abiding with his people and protecting them—in the Shekinah. In Deuteronomy 33:27, and Psalms 90:1, God was called by Moses the dwelling-place of his people amid the troubles of life. Here also, as it appears, there is an allusion to the feast of tabernacles: in that blessed time there shall be an infinitely glorious tabernacle. Revelation 7:16. They shall not hunger any more nor thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. Revelation 7:17. For the Lamb in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them into life-fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes. The fundamental passage for Revelation 7:16, and the two first members of Rev 7:17, is Isaiah 49:10, “They shall neither hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them; for he that hath mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall he guide them.” Compare the similar passage, Isaiah 48:21, “And they thirsted not when he led them through the deserts; he caused the waters to flow out of the rock for them; he clave the rock also, and the waters gushed out.” What, then, in allusion to the earlier proof of the Lord’s shepherd-faithfulness, as manifested in the guiding of his people through the literal wilderness, is said respecting the Lord’s watchful care and goodness toward his people during their journey through the wilderness of the world, is here transferred to the condition of those who have completed this journey; with them the word first becomes perfectly true, the promised good is actually reached. There are only two important deviations from the original passages. 1. Instead of “He that has mercy on them,” we have here, “The Lamb in the midst of the throne.” Thus what is said of Jehovah in the prophet is appropriated to Christ. The relation of Christ to the supreme God, is here marked as a more internal one than in ch. Revelation 5:6, where the Lamb stands between the throne with the four beasts, and the elders, as the exalted mediator between God and his people. The expression, “In the midst of the throne,” has respect also to Christ as sitting on the right hand of God. It declares him to be equal in might and glory with the Father; and in the Revelation stands in unison with such things, as his having the seven Spirits of God, receiving divine worship, having applied to him directly what in the Old Testament is written of God. It accords also with what in the Gospel of John is written of the Word of God (comp. here Revelation 19:13), who in the beginning was with God and was God, of the oneness of Christ with the Father, of his being in the Father, and of the Father being in him, in ch. Revelation 14:10-11. The bringing out of the full Godhead of Christ is suitable here, because only from this point of view could Christ have been substituted for God in the original passages, and because Christ could no otherwise bestow the highest good on his people than as the possessor of essential Godhead. 2. Instead of simple water-springs, “in the original passages, we have here” life-fountains of water.” This addition indicates, that spiritual fountains of water are meant. The well-springs of life here correspond to the wells of salvation in Isaiah 12:3, “And ye draw water with joy out of the wells of salvation.” Comp. Psalms 87:7, where also the springs are the springs of salvation, which refresh the thirsty soul and the parched land, Psalms 84:6. Life with John is “that life, which really is such, the direct antithesis of death; as the Logos is called the life—that is, life in full vigour disturbed in its flow by no check, nothing painful or unpleasant, but blessed life, as God the primeval source of life gives it, a life that is raised above all creaturely evanescence and weakness” (Kφstlin, Lehrbegr. des Johannes, p. 235.) Life is consequently another term for salvation, which is also indicated by Ezekiel in Ezekiel 47 by the fountain, which issues from the sanctuary in Zion, and flows into the Dead Sea, refreshing and fructifying the wilderness on its way. Also in Revelation 21:6; Revelation 22:1-17 the water of life is descriptive of salvation. That by the introduction of this single word, Isaiah 12:3 is combined with the original passage into one whole, appears the more suitable, as the figure of that passage was at the feast of tabernacles embodied in the symbolical action of pouring out water. That an allusion to this should have been made here was the more natural, as the palms and the tabernacles had already preceded (Revelation 7:15). The salvation or life, which through that rite is designated as the privilege and the hope of the people of God, is in the fullest measure secured to them here by him, who as the Lamb is at the same time the true shepherd. They now receive in truth what was only imaged by the literal waters of the wilderness. For, these were a type of the well-springs of salvation, which the Lord opens in all ages for his people in the wilderness of trouble, and most gloriously when the period of their pilgrimage is over—see my Comm. on Psalms 107:35.[Note: The reading ζώσας for ζωῆς is by much the worst supported of the two. It has only arisen from the copyists stumbling at the doable genitive. All the parallel passages in the Apocalypse speak for ζωῆς, ch. 21:6, 22:1, 17. Of living fountains we nowhere else read, but always of living waters, and this has a solid ground in the circumstance that fountains are always living. For the addition to the original passages there must have been a Deuteronomy 6 nite reason, as in the substitution of the Lamb in the midst of the throne, for, him that has mercy. The ζώσας does not contain such an one, for it does not arise from the image. In the ζωῆς also alone do we perceive a reason for the word, that has been introduced, being placed first. It lies in the reference to Isaiah 12:3, where also it is the springs (not the waters) of salvation that are discoursed of.]It is to be carefully noted that it is precisely in the gospel of John that the passages occur, in which the blessings of salvation, which the Lord gives even in this life to his people, are denoted by not hungering, not thirsting, the true bread and the living water—comp. John 4:14-15, John 6:35, John 7:38. These passages are the more analogous to the one before us, as in them also respect is had to what the Lord formerly did for his people in the wilderness. This starting-point is distinctly marked in John 6:30-31, “Then said they to him, what sign showest thou then, that we may see and believe on thee? What dost thou work? Our fathers did eat manna in the desert, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat.” From what has been remarked we see that hunger, thirst, the heat of the sun, are mentioned as the leading and more manifest forms of the annoyances that were experienced in the march through the wilderness. Viewed in regard to the substance, hunger and thirst indicate the unsatisfied need for salvation, the sun the glow of tribulations—comp. ch. Revelation 16:8-9. The conclusion of Rev 7:17 : and God shall wipe away, etc., is taken from Isaiah 25:8. These words return again, not without reason, in ch. Revelation 21:4, with a slight, and as to the meaning unimportant, yet still intentional variation. For instead of, “out of the eyes,” it is there “from the eyes.” (Such small differences almost constantly occur in the borrowings and repetitions of Scripture. They serve to prevent the appearance of a lifeless adoption.) In ch. Revelation 21:4 the subject of discourse is the “regeneration,” the kingdom of glory upon earth, to which the words in the original passages refer, and in which they are to find their only complete and ultimate fulfilment. Seventh Seal Ch. Revelation 8:1. And when he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for an half hour. That these words are to be connected with the close of ch. 6 is clear from what was formerly remarked. The more customary it has been for expositors here to surrender themselves to mere conjecture, it is the more necessary to lay a sure foundation for our exposition. And first, as certainly as all the seals contain scenes of judgment, so certainly must the silence here denote the dumb astonishment of the raging enemies of Christ and his church. It is this that the connection establishes. Another means, by which we shall get above the uncertainty of conjecture, is furnished by the fundamental passages in the Old Testament. That there must be some of this description, may be regarded at the outset as matter of undoubted certainty. For, otherwise the Seer would have spoken out more plainly. The silence must somehow have been definitely fixed as to its meaning, and for this, besides the connection, we are thrown upon the writings of the Old Testament. Now, we have actually three prophetic passages, in which silence is found in a similar connection as here. First, the proper fundamental passage, on which the two others are dependent, Habakkuk 2:20, “And the Lord is in his holy temple, be silent before him all the earth.” These words form there the emphatic close of the threatened judgment on Babylon, the representative of the ungodly world. The Lord will appear from the dwelling-place of the Almighty in resistless power to exercise judgment on the impotent; deep silence reigns on earth, recently so uproarious; wickedness shuts its mouth; the raging of the people, the blasphemy of the heathen ceases at once on the day when the Lord alone is exalted. Then Zephaniah 1:7, after the representation of a frightful judgment of the Lord upon the earth: “Be silent before the Lord, for near is the day of the Lord.” Finally, Zechariah 2:13, “Be silent, O all flesh before the Lord, for he is raised up out of his holy habitation.” The announcement of a glorious manifestation of God precedes, by which he was to humble the heathen world, and especially proud Babylon, Zechariah 2:12-13, and raise his people out of the dust of abasement. So that the meaning is, then indeed shall all flesh, in itself helpless and confounded, which hitherto has raged so loud against the Lord and his church, be brought to silence.[Note: Michaelis: Est imperativus majestaticus idemque propheticus, ut Habakkuk 2:20, Zephaniah 1:7. Silentium efficaciter imperat, et eo ipso dum imperat futurum praedicit. Iou: Dispereant onmes impli.]From these fundamental passages we can have no doubt as to the import of the silence here. It is a silence like that of Pharaoh when he sank with his host into the Red Sea. It forms the contrast to what we read in ch. Revelation 13:5-6, “And there was given to him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies. And he opened his mouth in blasphemies against God, to blaspheme his name and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven.” Once so loud and now so silent! The word: And there was a silence, is unspeakably comforting amid the tumults of the world. The jubilee of the truth runs parallel with the silence of revolt. In the earlier “Revelation of Jesus Christ,” in regard to his coming for judgment, there is a corresponding declaration in Matthew 24:30, “And then shall appear the sign of the Son of man in heaven. And then shall the tribes of the earth howl, and they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with great power and glory.” The howling of the ungodly world there corresponds to the silence here. Both imply absolute annihilation; and both the silence and the howling alike come into play at intervals through the whole of history, but at the end alone reach their perfection. As often as a power manifests itself in opposition to God and Christ and the church, a whole series of preparatory divine judgments begins to be developed (the six first seals), and then at last descends the fatal blow. The whole process terminates in the dead silence and dreadful howling of the creature that had presumed to revolt against its Creator and Redeemer. The heaven here comes into notice only as the visible theatre—comp. ch. Revelation 4:1, Revelation 12:1. In reality the silence belongs to the earth. The half hour likewise is not the time of the actual accomplishment, but the time of the symbolical representation. If this is considered, it will be seen that the half hour, in harmony with the high import of this seal, as the one that brings the final decision, is a long time. The first seals followed quickly on one another, and had probably each occupied but a single moment. The period occupied in receiving the whole Revelation was probably limited to the space of a day (comp. on ch. Revelation 1:10), as also the prophet Zechariah had imparted to him in one night the whole series of visions, which together present a complete image of the future fate of the people of God, Revelation 1:7 to Revelation 6:15. The entire cycle, too, of the prophecies in Ezekiel contained in Ezekiel 33-39 belong to a single day, which is more exactly described in Ezekiel 33:21-22. If we have correctly made out the meaning of this verse, it follows that here there can follow no continuation, but only a new beginning. The oppression of the church by the world-power is the starting-point and the pole of the whole Revelation. But that power we see here lying shattered and broken on the ground. New scenes may possibly be disclosed, in which other aspects of the great conflict between God and the world shall be made known. Such indeed must be expected ; for here everything still wears very much of a general character, and we should lay down the book with an unsatisfactory feeling, if we found ourselves here at the close. In particular, the final catastrophe is but very imperfectly described by the thought, which is here rendered prominent—the profound silence of the lately so noisy world. All bears the impress of a prelude of a general plan, which is afterwards to be followed up by the further development—one that shall go more thoroughly into the history of that world-power, whose persecutions formed the immediate occasion of the Revelation of Jesus Christ. But the action cannot possibly be continued farther on the same scene. THE SEVEN (Ch. Revelation 8:2 to Revelation 11:19) Introductory Remarks The distribution of this group is as follows.Revelation 8:2, “And I saw the seven angels, who stand before God, and to them were given seven trumpets,” supplies, as it were, the place of a superscription. It presents immediately before our eyes, those from whom all action proceeds in the great drama that follows. Next comes in the vision of the incense-offering angel, a kind of prelude Revelation 8:3-5. Then begins the work of the seven angels. The plagues of the four first, Revelation 8:6-12, alight upon the earth, the sea, the rivers, the heavens, and thus compose together one whole, inasmuch as they embrace the entire territory of creation. The three last trumpets are likewise bound up together. After the four first have been brought to a close, they are announced in ch. Revelation 8:13 by an eagle, which proclaims a threefold woe on the inhabitants of the earth. The fifth trumpet and the first woe is contained in ch. Revelation 9:1-12; the sixth trumpet and the second woe in Revelation 8:13-13, on which follows an episode in Revelation 10:1 to Revelation 11:13, so that the concluding formula is only given in ch. Revelation 11:14. Then comes at the close of the whole the seventh trumpet and the third woe, in ch. Revelation 11:15-19. The three last trumpets, by being designated as the three last woes, are represented relatively to the four first, as greatly the more important and frightful; and in accordance with this is the much more lengthened description that is given of them. The fifth trumpet, or the first woe, takes up almost twice as much space as is devoted to the whole of the first four together. Only in the third woe, the seventh trumpet, do we find a less extended description than might have been expected; the reason of which shall afterwards be considered. Again, on the first six trumpets in relation to the seventh—leaving out of view the point of some of them belonging to the woes—there is impressed the character of the half and incomplete. In the first four trumpets the third part of the sphere on which the injury alight is uniformly mentioned. The locusts under the fifth trumpet torment, according to ch. Revelation 9:5; Revelation 9:10, five months, the five being the signature of the half and incomplete, in contrast to the last trumpet and the last woe, when the mystery of God is finished, which he has revealed to his servants, the prophets, ch. Revelation 10:7. In the sixth trumpet the third part of men is again killed. The following remarks may serve for defining the circle within which the seven trumpets move. The historical starting-point of the whole book comes first into consideration. The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which John imparts, was occasioned by a severe oppression of the Christian church through the heathen world-power. Accordingly, we expect such a revelation as will bring destruction to this hostile power, but salvation to the church. Then, the introductory vision of the angel with frankincense, in ch. Revelation 8:3-5, is to be taken into account. The fundamental thought here is, that God will hear the fervent prayers of his struggling and afflicted church, and cause his judgments to go forth against the world. Hence, only such things can be suitable here as are salutary to the church, destructive to the world; and the expositions, which discover in the group persecutions of Christians, heresies (that of Arius, for example, whom many understand most strangely under the falling star in ch. Revelation 8:10), mendicant friars, etc., are at the outset excluded. Finally, the whole in the seven trumpets runs out into the fact, that the kingdom of the world has become the Lord’s and his anointed, ch. Revelation 11:15. But the six first trumpets are already even outwardly marked as preparatory to the seventh. They could, therefore, only indicate approaches of the dominion of the Lord and his anointed, precursory manifestations of power on their part in respect to it—as Bengel justly remarks, though unfortunately, without afterwards abiding by the right view: “Beforehand, however, there falls on the kingdom of the world one stroke and calamity after another.” Vitringa, also, had a correct apprehension of the general import, and only departed from this in his interpretation of the particular parts; for he says, “The plagues were designed to punish and extirpate the enemies of God’s people, so that that large and glorious kingdom might be prepared for Christ and his saints.” There can be no doubt that this group bears an independent character, that it stands by itself separate and complete. This is manifest especially from a comparison of ch. Revelation 8:5 with ch. Revelation 11:19. In the former passage we have the prophecy, in the latter the complete fulfilment. Further, at the close of the vision we stand at the last end (see Introd. to ch. 12), so that the scene cannot be prolonged farther in this line. At the beginning, again, of the vision, we stand at the first commencement, and it cannot possibly be imagined that we have here a description of the things that were to follow immediately on what is announced in ch. Revelation 8:1. (See, in regard to the notion of every thing to the end of ch. 11 still belonging to the territory of the seven seals, the Introd. to ch. 12.) In ch. Revelation 8:1, at the opening of the seventh seal, we see the world-power lying shattered and prostrate on the ground. Here, on the other hand, we have another series of catastrophes, which bear the signature of the half and incomplete, and only when we reach the seventh trumpet do we find ourselves again at the same point at which we were when the seventh seal was disclosed. In the sixth seal even, where every thing appeared already in dreadful convulsion and immediately approaching its end, it was impossible that such catastrophes should follow, as are indicated here in the first four trumpets. The result is, that the world-catastrophes represented here could only run parallel to those described in the earlier group. But the independence maintained by us is that only of but one group, not that of a separate writing, which has been only accidentally and externally united into one whole with another. There exists, first, a near connection between this group and the preceding one. If we had here an independent writing before us, the beginning: And I saw the seven angels, would be unsuitable. The introductory vision of the angel with incense would then also have formally stood at the head, without being connected by any sort of bridge with what goes before. But now, since the seven angels with the trumpets are formally linked together with the seven angels, they must also be materially associated with them. In an independent writing also the theatre would have required to be more particularly described. Here, it is presupposed as a thing known from the preceding context (ch. Revelation 4:1): John still finds himself in heaven. But this group likewise points forward to what is to follow; as appears in a double respect. First, the final catastrophe, to which all the others are preparatory, the object of all the fervent longings of the people of God, is delineated here with greater brevity than the other preliminary ones. The description of it is properly confined to ch. Revelation 11:19. This can only be explained on the ground, that the more extended representation of the final catastrophe was reserved for a later opportunity. The supposition is the more probable, as the brevity is an enigmatical one, pointing to a commentary afterwards to be given. Further, the Revelation was seen in the midst of the Roman persecution. According to the analogy of the earlier prophets, that, for example, of Isaiah’s prophecy in Isaiah 13, we expect on the general ground of the representation of judgments to be inflicted on the world, a special disclosure of the fate of this ungodly world-power in particular. But this is as little found here as in the group of the seven seals. All the judgments befal the inhabitants of the earth, under whom the Romans are certainly comprehended, but never solely intended. Vitringa, who remarks, “The seven trumpet-blasts indicate the evils which are decreed against the Roman kingdom on account of its hostility to the church of Christ, and which shall end with the entire subjection of this kingdom,” resorts to an arbitrary limitation of the sphere of the divine judgments. But this group, like the preceding one, for the most part retains a kind of general character, which was admirably in place in the introduction to the closing prophetical book of Scripture, though it could not possibly continue to stand at that. We should have laid down the book with an unsatisfactory feeling, if it had merely been distinguished by the vividness with which it represented the avenging righteousness and redeeming love of God, and had not presented the leading features of the later development of things in the history of the church and the world, more especially in that direction, which accords with the historical starting-point of the Revelation. We could not otherwise have been able to get rid of the thought, that the introduction in ch. Revelation 1:1-3 makes too high pretensions. None of the great prophets of the Old Testament, though they still had the mission first of all of instilling general truths into the minds of the people, while John found this already done to his hand, remained thus at mere general enunciations, such as, that sin is the destruction of a people, that God punishes all the enemies of his church, etc. With all of them, indeed, the special rests on the general as its foundation; only it does not stand there. There is, besides, in Revelation a twofold special reference to the contents of the later groups. The voices of the seven thunders in ch. Revelation 10:4, which John (in the meantime) was not to write, but to seal up, point to a later group, in which it is going to be reported concerning the time of the mystery of God, as he has announced it to his servants the prophets. And the beast which ascends from the abyss, which suddenly meets us in ch. Revelation 11:7, is a riddle that finds no solution within this group, though it is impossible but that a solution should be given. These indications pointing forwards to the following groups correspond to the not less intended allusion to the group of the seven seals in ch. Revelation 9:4. We may endeavour to determine more exactly the relation of this group to the preceding one. The commonest and most frightful scourge through which the vengeance of heaven discharges itself on the apostate earth is war. The other plagues, such as hunger and pestilence, commonly appear only in its train. In the preceding group also war has broken out. But it appears there only as on a like footing with the other plagues. This second introductory group, however, is entirely devoted to it. To the last trumpet, that of the final victory, all here is only an expansion of the words of our Lord, “Nation shall rise up against nation, and kingdom against kingdom,” Matthew 24:7. We have now only further to endeavour to explain the symbol of the trumpets. In Scripture trumpets are always employed on account of their piercing, loud sound. What may be more exactly meant, must in each case be determined by the connection. The sound of the trumpet has no intrinsic worth in itself. That the loud stirring noise of the trumpet is the essential characteristic is evident from the circumstance that the sound of the trumpet is itself described as a cry, ϊψεςδ, or sample in Leviticus 25:9, and that the loud cry goes along with it as a fitting accompaniment; comp. Joshua 6:5, where the people were to raise a great shout at the blowing of the trumpets, Zephaniah 1:16. Then it appears from such passages as Isaiah 58:1, “Raise thy voice like a trumpet,” Hosea 8:1, “Put the trumpet to thy mouth and say, He comes upon the house of the Lord like an eagle,” where the loud tone is plainly indicated by that of the trumpet. Finally, it appears from the use of trumpets in the sacred music. In my Commentary on the Psalms, it was remarked in reference to this: “Other instruments (besides harps and psalteries) are mentioned only in festival and national songs of praise; as trumpets at the thanksgiving for Jehoshaphat’s victory, Psalms 47:5, at the paschal feast in Psalms 81:3, at the consecration of the walls of the city in Nehemiah’s time, in Psalms 150. In the historical books trumpets are mentioned at the bringing in of the ark of the covenant, 1 Chronicles 15:24, “And the priests trumpeted with trumpets before the ark of the Lord” (comp. 2 Samuel 6:15, “And David and all Israel brought up the ark with a shout and the sound of trumpets”)—at the consecration of the temple, 2 Chronicles 5:12-13—at the solemn restoration of the worship under Hezekiah, 2 Chronicles 29:26-27; finally, in Ezra 3:10, Nehemiah 12:35. They are always mentioned in connection with other very noisy instruments. In 2 Chronicles 30:21 it is said of the passover under Hezekiah, that “they praised the Lord with instruments of strength, which were to Jehovah,” Michaelis: musical instruments being employed of such a kind as gave forth a strong sound; Jarchi: with trumpets, having respect to 2 Chronicles 29:26-27. (Psalms, vol. III. p. xvi., Eng. Trans.) Accordingly, the loud stirring voice was the characteristic. This use of the trumpets in sacred music entirely accords with Numbers 10:10, “And on your feast-days, and on your high festivals, and on your new moons, ye shall blow with trumpets.” Hence, festivals and trumpets were inseparably connected together. As the festival-day was related to other days, so the sound of the trumpet to other sounds. Bδhr in his Symbolik (Th. II., p. 594), has laboured in vain to give to the sound of the trumpet a definite meaning, especially to bring it into connection with the Sabbath-idea. But it is against this, that in the Sabbatical year there was no sounding of trumpets, nor at the Sabbath of weeks. Then, it must be altogether denied that on the first day of the seventh month pre-eminently the trumpets were blown, so as that it should be known by this, and in this alone should be found the peculiarity of the festival. The day is called in Leviticus 23:24, Numbers 29:1, not the day, but a day of blowing of trumpets, not less than the great festivals, at which this was to be understood, as a matter of course, to be done. The sound of the trumpet was not more peculiar to it than the cessation from work, the calling of a sacred convocation, the presentation of sacrifices. Still less indeed, for it was common to this feast not merely with the great feasts, but even with all the new moons, according to Numbers 10:10. We must not separate the blowing of the trumpets on the first day of the seventh month, as to its meaning, from that on the other new moons, and generally on the public festivals. As the sacrifices on this day possessed no partial character, but represented all spheres of the religious life, so we must not give to the sound of the trumpets a partial meaning. It points to the more excited character of the religious feeling, which is peculiar to festive occasions generally, of the “Lord, have mercy on us,” not less than of the “Lord, we give thee thanks,” and in particular to those feasts which marked the commencement of a new period of time. Besides, the sound of the trumpet being put for the mark or signal in Leviticus 23:24, shows that the blowing of the trumpets on that day had only a subjective character, that it merely served to bring the Lord to the remembrance of the congregation, comp. Numbers 10:9, “And ye shall blow an alarm with the trumpets, and it shall be remembered to you before the Lord your God, Numbers 10:10, and it shall serve to you for a remembrance before your God.” Bδhr’s supposition, of its being indicated by the sound of the trumpet, that Israel was brought into remembrance before Jehovah, is against this passage. According to it the blowing with trumpets is a call of the congregation, and not an announcement on the part of God. Else, the blowing with trumpets must have been committed to the priests, and not to the people. Nor in Numbers 29:1, could it have appeared among the obligations of the church at large, along with the calling of sacred convocations, and the cessation from all work. Finally, the hypothesis of Bδhr finds no support in the circumstance, that by the prescription of the law the trumpets must be sounded throughout the land in the year of jubilee on the day of atonement. By this it was merely intimated, through the strong, far-resounding sound of the trumpet, that an important time for the land had come in. The 50th year was thereby consecrated, Leviticus 25:10, set apart from the number of the rest. The more definite purpose is intimated in the proclamation of liberty throughout the whole land for all its inhabitants, mentioned in that passage. Only in this connection did the loud sound become at the same time a joyful one. We must distinguish, whether the trumpets must denote what God has to say to the church or the world, or what the church has to Say to God. This distinction was already made in the Mosaic law. Of the use of the trumpets for what the Lord has to say to the church, it is treated in the classic passage on the trumpets, Numbers 10:2-8; where, however, only two occasions are mentioned, the assembling of the congregation and decamping. And of their use in what the church had to say to God, in times of distress or on festival days, it is treated in Numbers 10:9-10. In the former case, the sound of the trumpet might with perfect indifference be employed to announce a joyful subject, a great salvation; as, for example, the falling of the walls of Jericho; or to give notice of great tribulation, as in Joe 2:1, where the day of judgment is announced by trumpets, “Blow with trumpets on Zion, and sound upon my holy mount, let all inhabitants of the earth tremble, for the day of the Lord comes, and is near.” But it can only be in respect to important transactions, such as were of general significance, of deep pervasive power, that they are used; either great catastrophes are announced by trumpets, or important tidings, which the Lord has to communicate to his people. As the Lord will never summon his people for trifling matters to his throne, the sound of the trumpet might certainly be taken for the common note of a summoning before the Lord. In the latter case the blowing of the trumpets might serve equally well to denote an animated “Lord, in distress to thee we call,” and an animated and solemn, Te Deum laudamus. The characteristic is merely the rising of the state of feeling above the common measure. The question: Why should the blowing of trumpets have been a matter properly belonging to the priests by the law of Moses? is simply to be answered thus: because the trumpets “had of all instruments the loudest, strongest, most powerful tone,” and on this account were used, where the Lord had to say something of importance to his church, or where the church came before him in a particularly lively and excited state of feeling. The trumpets stand related to the other instruments, as the Lord’s servants to the ordinary members of the church, as the feast-day to the other days. Let us turn now more especially to the section before us. The more immediate import of the trumpet-sound is determined by the starting-point of the hook. The occasion of this was the oppression of the church by the heathen world-power. Accordingly by the trumpets only great catastrophes can be denoted, through which destruction should be brought to the world, and salvation be first prepared for the church, and then actually brought in. The trumpets here are exciting for all—joyfully exciting for the church, frightfully exciting for the world. Such generally is the signification of the trumpets here. With a certain degree of truth, however, three special references may still be supposed. By combining the seven number with the trumpets we are not unnaturally reminded of the conquest of Jericho. For seven days must Israel, according to Joshua 6, march round the city at the Lord’s command in solemn procession, with the ark of the covenant and seven priests blowing with trumpets—each day once—but on the seventh day, seven times. And at the last round the walls fell down. In the book of Joshua Jericho has a kind of symbolical meaning. What was done at the fortress, which guarded the entrance into the territory of the Canaanites, presented an image of what should be done in general respecting the Canaanitish power. Faith saw in the last trumpet-blast at the walls of Jericho, along with these, the whole state of the Canaanites, apparently so strong and invincible, falling to the ground. If Jericho, then, in the book of Joshua forms an image of the Canaanitish power, it is admirably fitted to stand as a type of the world-power generally, the overthrow of which ensues on the blowing of the seventh trumpet, in which all the preceding ones culminate. The Old Testament presents a second case of the combination of trumpets with the seven, and one that stands in an easy and natural connection with the subject before us. After seven times seven years it was ordained in the Mosaic law, that the year of jubilee should be proclaimed by trumpets—the year, when the Lord announced himself as proprietor—the year, when every one returned to his possession (Leviticus 25:13)—the year of freedom and of restoration for all the distressed, who looked for it with anxious longing. This year appears even in the Old Testament, in Isaiah 61:1-2, as a type of the redemption from the slavery of the world, the year of the Lord’s grace and the day of the vengeance of our God, to comfort all that mourn. Such consolation breaks in here at the sounding of the seventh trumpet. Finally, the trumpet stands in a close relation to the excited character of war, and is peculiarly the warlike instrument—comp. Zephaniah 1:16; Jeremiah 4:19, Jeremiah 42:14; Ezekiel 7:14. Hence also, among the catastrophes to be inflicted by the Lord, which were denoted in general by the blowing of the trumpets, it was especially suited for announcing the tribulations of war that were impending from the Lord. Bengel: “In the prophecy is described God’s war against the enemies of his kingdom, on account of which the trumpets are here peculiarly appropriate.” Revelation 8:3. And another angel came and stood beside the altar, and had a golden censer; and much incense was given him, that he might give it to the prayers of all saints on the golden altar before the throne. In the times of the first persecutions, as Bengel remarks, the Christians prayed with great earnestness and stedfast perseverance. But under the form of the fact there is here, at the same time, couched an admonition: if ye would gain the victory over the world, and see its completion, continue instant in prayer; for, “the prayer of the righteous availeth much when it is earnest. Elias was a man like as we are, and prayed a prayer that it should not rain, and it rained not upon the earth for three years and six months,” James 5:16-17. Many of the older expositors would understand Christ by the other angel. But this view is inadmissible, not for the reasons assigned by Bengel, that Christ is never represented as an angel in the New Testament, and that another angel could only mean one who had likewise been created. In opposition to this see ch. Revelation 7:2, Revelation 10:1, Revelation 18:1, where by the other angel is undoubtedly meant Christ. The reason why he cannot be understood here is, that there is no distinguishing predicate, nor is there anything in what the angel accomplishes, which raises him above the rank of ordinary angels. It is not his coming forth that renders the prayers of the saints Acceptable; but he has simply the position of a messenger and a bearer—a heavenly representative. Only by misapprehending the position here occupied by the angel, by supposing that it was through his mediation the prayers of the saints were first rendered truly acceptable, have men come, on the ground of no properly mediatorial agency being ascribed to angels in Scripture, to adopt the conclusion that the angel here can be no other than Christ.[Note: The origin of tins exposition was correctly pointed out by Bossuet: “The Protestants, offended at seeing angelic intercession so clearly established in this passage would have the angel here to be Jesus Christ himself.”]The angel in this case is only a symbolical figure; his agency belongs merely to the character of the vision, which must give to all a visible shape, not to the substance itself—although in this respect the internal harmony between the heavenly hosts and the church on earth certainly lies at the foundation. The angel could not otherwise have had even this place in the vision assigned to him. If prayer embodied itself in frankincense, there must be a heavenly representative of believers above who should present the frankincense. If the veil of the frankincense is a thin and transparent one. so also is that of the angel. That the angel does not necessarily belong to the substance is clear from ch. Revelation 5:8, where the twenty-four elders as representatives of the church have golden vials full of incense, which are the prayers of saints. Bengel’s remark: “In no book of Scripture are angels so frequently spoken of as this,” itself betokens that much here must belong only to the form of the representation. By the altar must be understood here, according to many expositors, the altar of burnt-offering. From this the fire was wont to be taken to kindle the frankincense on the golden altar. Undoubtedly, the altar of burnt-offering is frequently mentioned in Revelation—comp ch. Revelation 6:9. But here it cannot be thought of. For the altar here receives its more immediate determination from the mention of the incense. On this account alone, unless we should arbitrarily change the incense-pan into one merely of coals, we can understand only the altar of incense to be meant. But even if his having a golden censer did not supply the more exact definition—a circumstance quite overlooked by those who speak of the “indefiniteness,” “that the word golden is only found afterwards”—it still could not be the altar of burnt-offering that is mentioned. For, though the altar of burnt-offering might otherwise have been fitly enough understood, yet this is quite unsuitable here, since necessarily, if the altar of burnt-offering had been meant, a more exact description would have been needed to prevent it from being identified with the altar of incense mentioned immediately afterwards. The archaeological consideration, however, which has led to the idea of the altar of burnt- offering being meant, is an entirely groundless one. Even in Leviticus 16:12, “And he shall take a censer full of burning coals of fire from off the altar, which stands before the Lord, and his hands full of sweet incense beaten small, and bring it within the veil, and he shall put the incense upon the fire before the Lord,” the incense-pan was filled with coals from off the incense-altar. The implement with which the angel comes forth, places his work immediately before us. Bengel: “A golden censer, this was a sign and instrument of what the angel had to do.” Much incense was given to the angel. Bengel: “A mighty power was to be formed, whence again was to arise a mighty operation, and a movement extending far and wide.” The object of the prayers of the saints is more exactly defined here by the connection, by the starting-point and the result. Accordingly, by the prayers are to be understood such as those in Joe 2:17, “Spare thy people, O Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them;” in Psalms 9:19, “Arise, O Lord, let not man prevail; let the heathen be judged in thy sight;” in Psalms 89:11-12, “Let the sighing of the prisoner come before thee, according to the greatness of thy power preserve thou those that are appointed to die. And render unto our neighbours sevenfold into their bosom their reproach, wherewith they have reproached thee, O Lord.” According to ch. Revelation 5:8 frankincense is prayer; so here also by Revelation 8:4. Hence everything beside the frankincense and the prayers is to be avoided here. That suits well to the earthly, but not to the heavenly sanctuary. The frankincense should be regarded not as an addition to the prayers, but we should explain: frankincense, importing the prayers which are offered in and along with it. When the explanation is given: which was required for their behoof, so that the prayers might be accepted, then the collateral and unsuitable idea is introduced, that the angel had then merely the frankincense, and to the saints belonged the prayers. We should also have to separate the prayers here from those in Revelation 8:4; and the angel should have an abnormal agency ascribed to him. For, that the prayers of the saints required a presentation at the hands of the angel, is an unscriptural representation. It is opposed even by ch. Revelation 5:8, where no mention is made of an angel. But the explanation, that he contributed somewhat to the prayers of the saints, is still more objectionable. It is not an addition, but a gift that is spoken of. Instead of: to the prayers, it might also have been, the prayers, τὰςπροσευχάς. Only there would then have been a complete overlooking of the embodiment of prayer as frankincense, and in the place of the symbol there would have stood the figure. Bengel: “We have remarked of the saints at ch. Revelation 5:8, that by this name are denoted alike the saints on earth and in heaven. And because it is said expressly here, ‘of all saints,’ we understand both to be meant, especially since what was prayed for concerns the saints both on earth and in heaven. There would also be a gap between the angel and the saints in heaven, if the saints in heaven were excluded.” From the circumstance of the angel acting in behalf of the saints, one might conclude with some reason, that respect was not had to the heavenly portion of them; if these had been taken into account, they could, without the mediation of an angel, have represented themselves and the saints upon earth. It is, however, to be observed, that the position of the angel here is a double-sided one, that he not merely causes the incense of the prayers of the saints to ascend, but also the fire of God’s wrath to come down. This combined agency is suited only to an angel. The golden altar is represented as standing before the throne. That the veil is to be understood as also existing here, appears from ch. Revelation 11:19, Revelation 15:5. It shall only be uplifted, when the glory of the Lord will shew itself through great catastrophes in unveiled splendour. Even under the New Testament, and after the work of reconciliation has been effected, the infinite distance still remains between the Creator and the creature, God remains the unapproachable and the holy. There is no reason for supposing that only the altar of incense, and not the whole of the heavenly sanctuary, was disclosed to the Seer; according to his point of view, which fashioned itself after the personal eye-sight of the temple at Jerusalem, there was certainly present to his mind an undivided whole. Indeed, it is said expressly here, that the altar was before the throne. Therefore, beside the sanctuary, in which was the altar of incense, there must also have been the Most Holy Place. Revelation 8:4. And the smoke of the incense went up to the prayers of the saints from the hand of the angel before God. To the prayers, importing these, which were presented in and with the frankincense.[Note: The ταῖςπροσευχαῖς are Dinted to the θυμιαμάτων, exactly as μπτωϊιλν, in Genesis 9:5, to γξλν, your blood to your souls, importing or being us good as these—your blood, that is, your souls.] Revelation 8:5. And the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar, and poured it out upon the earth. And there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and earthquakes. Bengel: “Frankincense and prayer draw a great deal after it: it is acceptable, it will be heard; God then causes his righteous judgments to go forth, for a terror to the world, for the discomfiture of his enemies, and for the advancement of his kingdom.” The angel exercises the function of a days-man, îìéõ, Job 33:23. In Revelation 8:3-4 he represented the church, and brought its petitions before God. Here he fulfils the second part of his office. He is the medium of communication in respect to God’s answer to the requests of the church. In fulfilment of his commission, he throws God’s fire down upon the earth. According to John 1:52, “From henceforth ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of man” (comp. Genesis 28:12), the angels first ascend up from Christ in his state of humiliation, and hence also from his militant church, bringing their petitions and prayers before the throne of God; and then they descend down and bring the answer and the help and the vengeance on the enemies. The internal connection between the fiery prayer, and the fiery indignation which is to consume the adversaries (Hebrews 10:27), is shadowed forth by the circumstance, that of the same fire of the altar, with which the frankincense was kindled, there was taken and thrown upon the earth. By the first use of the fire in kindling the frankincense, it was in a manner consecrated for the second. Fire is here, as usually in the Apocalypse (comp. on Revelation 4:5), the symbol of the holy wrath and judgment of God.[Note: Ezekiel 10:2, ss., is not, with Vitringa, to be compared. The fire, which the man clothed in linen there takes out of the midst of the wheels of the Cherubim, is not, us here, a symbolical representation of the wrath of God, but it is the elementary fire. For the setting on tire and burning of the city must there be indicated. The wheels of the Cherubim denote the powers of nature, primarily the wind (comp. ch. 10:13), but then also the fire. The Cherub supplies the fire: the earth presents heaven with the material for its judgments.]The fire, the voices, &c., have here only a typical, a prophetical character. The fulfilment of the prophecy begins with the first trumpet and closes with the last; comp. ch. Revelation 11:19. In ch. Revelation 4:5 the voices, lightnings, and thunders are likewise, not the judgment itself, but the matter-of-fact or symbolical announcement of it. The seven seals are the realization of that announcement. See what is said there respecting the voices, lightnings, and thunders. Here the earthquake is besides named, as the pre-intimation of great approaching revolutions—comp. on ch. Revelation 6:12. Revelation 8:6. And the seven angels with the seven trumpets prepared themselves, to sound. Bengel: “To the angels, who had the seven vials given them, it is said: Go your ways, Revelation 16:1-2. But the angels with the trumpets do not go away ; and consequently they remain in their state of preparation, and even when they sound, still stand before God.” The prayers of the saints are a necessary pre-existing condition of their preparing themselves. The angels do not inflict the punishment, they merely announce it. Only at the sixth plague there is found, by way of exception, an active angelic agency. The angel first blows, then he looses the four angels that were bound by the great river Euphrates. Even there, however, the angel with the trumpet is not God’s proper instrument for inflicting punishment, but the four angels are so. The First Trumpet Revelation 8:7. And the first (angel) sounded. And there was a hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth. And the third part of the earth was burnt, and the third part of the trees was burnt, and all green grass was burnt. John beholds concentrated in a great and fiery hail-storm the desolations of the war, which through the course of centuries constantly bursts forth anew against the world that is at enmity with God. The prototype was the seventh plague, that fell upon Pharaoh, the malignant enemy of the people of God, whom God raised up, that he might shew his power, and have his name proclaimed throughout the earth—the first type of the world-power, on which God’s avenging might manifested itself, as a prelude to all the succeeding judgments, which he should hereafter execute for the benefit of his kingdom. “And the Lord,” it is said in Exodus 9, “caused it to rain hail over the land of Egypt. And there was hail and fire mingled with the hail. . . . And the hail smote all the grass of the field, and brake all the trees of the field.” The fire is here, according to Revelation 8:8-9, not the expression of the wrath of God, but the fire of wrath and war, which was certainly kindled by the anger of God. The “mingled with blood” gives for both the hail and the fire the more specific determination—shews, that the storm of hail and the fire are emblems of war in its desolating and consuming property.[Note: Bossuet: “The desolation is vividly represented by the comparison of a beautiful and rich country, which is laid waste by hail.” Bengel: “A mighty, compact, widespread, sudden irruption and calamity.” Mede: “John has mingled blood contrary to nature, that he might indicate how the whole of this image points to slaughter.”]Different plagues could not, as Vitringa supposes, be denoted by hail, fire, and blood. He conceives the hail to indicate famine, the fire pestilence, the blood war. In that case we should be thrown upon conjecture in the two first. Then, in the representation of the effects, it could not be simply the being burnt that would be mentioned. It is a further objection, that all the other plagues in this group bear a simple character, and that they have generally to do with war; and so, indeed, that the difference in the particular trumpets only consists in the diversity of the symbols. The same matter is represented in a series of manifold, frightful images, which should fill the mind and fancy with holy dread before the Lord, as going to manifest himself in the approaching war of the world. This prophecy is not more definite than that of our Lord, “Ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars,” and “nation shall rise against nation.”[Note: Vitringa was upon the right track when he remarked: “It is perhaps not improper to suppose, that this trumpet does not unfold to us some divine judgment upon the Roman empire of one period, but a certain species of divine judgment, to be expected at various periods after the times of John.”]Viewed as a special prediction, it would be very defective, and would fail in its end. As it has respect to the whole earth, this shews that we are not to limit it to any single war, but that we have, so to speak, a species before us personified as an individual. All wars bear a particular character. A limitation exists only in the starting-point of the book. According to this, the scourge of war comes into consideration only in so far as it respects the opposition of the heathen world to the kingdom of Christ, with which ch. Revelation 9:20 agrees. Hence the event, to which Bengel refers this prophecy as a special prediction, the Jewish war under Trajan and Hadrian, does not at all come within it. The compass of this judgment reaches as far as the opposition of the earth to heaven, which always calls forth a reaction on the part of the latter—as far as the opposition of the heathen world to the kingdom of God. But since this in the sequel does not continue within the limits of the Roman empire, since afterwards the ten kings trod in this respect in its footsteps, and still again after the thousand years of Christ’s dominion, the great party of Gog and Magog, it would be arbitrary here to confine the representation of punishment to the Roman empire. This, however, is to step beyond the circle of this group, which, like the preceding one, still knows nothing except the Roman empire. As hail, fire, and blood, are employed to represent the judgment, the effect may be described by a single verb, which has immediate respect to the image of fire. The object of the judgment is the whole earth; but only a third part of the earth is destroyed by it, because it is still not the final judgment. The clause: and the third part of the earth was burnt, which is wanting in Luther, is necessary on this account alone, because the third part of the earth here forms the contrast to the third part of the sea, the rivers, the sun in what follows. The threefold division of the destroyed corresponds to the threefold division of the instruments of destruction. The following context describes more exactly what on the earth was affected by the burning. The omission in a few manuscripts, and these not important, has been occasioned merely by the resemblance of the three sentences. By the trees are denoted the high and mighty. In the Old Testament the image had become quite an established one. The grass indicates the people, according to Isaiah 40:7, “Surely the people is grass.” Trees and grass occur also in ch. Revelation 9:4, as a designation of the high and low, princes and subjects. It is better to refer the predicate green to the cheerful bloom and prosperity, which was to continue till the very moment of the plague’s bursting forth (comp. Job 5:25; Psalms 72:16), than to the freshness of youth. With the grass also the third part only is to be understood as being burnt. In the same way, with a limitation determined by the context, the all is frequently found in the account given of the Egyptian plagues. The Second Trumpet Revelation 8:8. And the second angel sounded. And like a great mountain burning with fire was thrown into the sea. And the third part of the sea became blood. Revelation 8:9. And the third part of the living creatures in the sea died, and the third part of the ships was burnt. The person who throws is God, who visits the sins of an apostate and antichristian world. The expression: like a great mountain, indicates that we are not to stand at the outward appearance, are not to think of a natural mountain.” Thus I saw the horses in the vision,” in ch. Revelation 9:17, corresponds. In the Old Testament mountains had come to be used as a common symbol of kingdoms; see, for example, Psalms 76:4, “Thou art more glorious and excellent than the plunder-mountains,” mighty peoples that are set on plunder, despoiling kingdoms, Psalms 68:16, Psalms 65:6. In Zechariah 4:7 the great mountain before Zerubbabel was the Persian kingdom, which set itself against the building of the temple. In ch. Revelation 17:9 of this book the seven mountains are seven kingdoms. The symbolical action in ch. Revelation 18:21, also rests upon the symbolical signification of a mountain, and there, as in the original passage, Jeremiah 51:63-64 (comp. also Daniel 2:35), the mountain, the symbol of the mighty kingdom, is represented by the great stone, and the sea of the peoples, out of which Babylon had risen up with great power in the time of prosperity, but into which she now again sunk down, by the Euphrates. The great mountain burns with fire. The fire is the fire of wrath, the lust of war and conquest. Allusion is made to Jeremiah 51:25, where it is said in reference to the Chaldean empire, “Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain, saith the Lord, which destroyest all the earth: I will stretch out my hand upon thee, and roll thee down from the rocks, and will make of thee a burnt mountain.” Out of the burning mountain there is made in just recompense a burnt mountain, according to the word, “As he has done, so shall it be done to him.” The great mountain burning with fire is cast into the sea. The sea, in Scripture, generally and specially in the Apocalypse, is the common symbol of the world and the nations—comp. on ch. Revelation 6:14, Revelation 13:1, Revelation 17:15. Mountain and sea are connected together, as here, in Psalms 46:2-3, “Therefore we are not afraid, though the earth be changed, and mountains shake in the heart of the sea, (though) its waters rage, foam, mountains tremble through its loftiness,” comp. Psalms 45:6-7, Matthew 21:21. The meaning, therefore, of the symbolical representation is this: The apostate world shall be punished by war and conquest, a kingdom greedy of plunder shall be itself plundered. Bengel remarks: “Here, therefore, the invasion of the Roman empire by foreign nations, and the barbarians, as they were called, is indicated. About the year 250 the warlike Goths made an expedition into the Roman dominions, and from that time the roving incursions and inroads of such tribes never ceased, till they had, as it were, incorporated themselves with the Roman empire.” The only fault in this exposition is, that the fulfilment is sought in an event, which can only be regarded as a particular fulfilment, instead of perceiving that in reality we have here an entire species of divine judgments before us, and that the fulfilment of this prophecy is to be considered as still in progress That we have here to do not specially and exclusively with the Roman empire, to which undoubtedly the truth in the prophecy more immediately bore respect, is evident alone from the symbol of the sea. The waters, according to the explanation given by the Seer himself in ch. Revelation 17:15, are “peoples and multitudes, and nations and tongues.” In consequence of the sinking of the mountain in the sea the third part of the sea becomes blood. In the first Egyptian plague, Exodus 7:20-21, it is said, “And all the water that was in the Nile was changed into blood, and the fish that were in the Nile died.” And that we have here a reference to that plague, which was a symbolical pre-intimation of the last, the killing of the first-born in Egypt, is plain from the circumstance of the blood and the dying of the fish being in both places alike connected together The third part of the living creatures that were in the sea died. In the further extension of the symbol of the sea men appear also in the Old Testament under the image of the living’ creatures in the sea. What in Psalms 104:25 is said of the natural sea, “Here is the great and wide sea, wherein are creeping things innumerable, small beasts with great,” is poetically regarded as an image of what is to be found in the sea of the world. Isaiah in Isaiah 27:1 denotes the possessor of the world-power as the dragon that is in the sea. In Habakkuk 2:14-17, the men who were involved in destruction by the Chaldean thirst for conquest appear as fish in the sea, which the spoiler caught in his net. In Ezekiel 29:3-4, Pharaoh the king of Egypt presents himself to the prophet under the image of fish, sticking to his scales. In Ezekiel 47:9, there are in the dead sea, the symbol of the world, very many fish, after it has been quickened by the river of life that flows into it. In the New Testament this symbolical representation is carried still farther. Matthew 4:18-19 rests on it, where the Lord said to Peter and Andrew, “I will make yon fishers of men,” implying that the fish in the sea stand for the world of living men. On it also rests Peter’s wonderful draught of fish before the resurrection (Luke 5), which the Lord applies by telling him that from henceforth he was to catch men; and his wonderful draught after the resurrection (John 21). Our Lord’s similitude of a net cast into the sea, and gathering fish of all sorts, Matthew 13:47, is of the same description. In the passage before us there is a special reference to Ezekiel 42:9, “And they (the waters of life) come into the sea, and when they come into the sea the waters of it are made whole. And it comes to pass that every thing that lives, that moves, whithersoever the double-stream comes,[Note: The double stream is the strong stream, as in Jer. 1.21. îøúéí, the double apostasy, in the time of the Judges, Cushan-Risbathaim, the double wickedness, for the great wickedness. The great mountain here corresponds to the double stream there.]shall live and shall have very many fish; and all shall be whole and shall live whither this stream comes.” The healing and life-diffusing stream there forms the contrast to the burning and death-bringing mountain here, much as the saving net of Christ stands opposed to the destructive net of the Chaldeans, or the healing tree which Moses put into the water, to the great star, burning like a torch, which makes the waters bitter. There is set before mankind a dreadful alternative. Those who refuse admission to restoring grace are doomed to judgment; such as will not have Jesus for their Saviour must be given up to the destroyer. It is the same person who directs the quickening and refreshing stream into the sea, and throws into it the burning mountain. The energy of love, which is announced by the first, cannot exist without a corresponding energy in righteousness. He does not abandon the sea and the fish to themselves. Blessing or cursing they must receive from him. The third part of the ships is destroyed. In Psalms 104:20 we find immediately after the words quoted above, “There go the ships.” In symbolic language possessions in common are indicated by ships, as in these many persons are together, having one aim, risk, profit and loss. In the symbolical action in Mark 4:30, ss., Matthew 8:23, Luke 8:22, the ship is the church. Here, where only worldly possessions in common can be spoken of, we are rather to think of cities and villages than states; since for the latter in the Apocalypse there is employed another symbolical term, and one taken from the same category of things—that of islands. The Third Trumpet Revelation 8:10. And the third angel sounded. And there fell a great star from heaven, which burned like a torch, and fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters. Revelation 8:11. And the name of the star is called Wormwood. And the third part of the waters became wormwood. And many men died of the waters, because they had become bitter. The symbol of the star has, without exception in the Apocalypse, the meaning of ruler—comp. on ch. Revelation 6:13, Revelation 1:16, Revelation 2:1; Revelation 2:28, Revelation 3:1, Revelation 9:1, Revelation 12:1; Revelation 12:4. The star falls from heaven, whence comes down every good and perfect gift, and likewise also every destructive result; for the earth is dependent on heaven both as to salvation and perdition. By the falling from heaven here, and again in ch. Revelation 9:1, is denoted the sudden and unexpected nature of the occurrence; comp. also in Revelation 8:8 the expression, he was thrown. The falling here is a different one from that mentioned in ch. Revelation 6:13, and is similar to that of Mat 21:44, “On whomsoever he falls he will grind him to powder.” The fire with which the great star burns is the fire of wrath, war, and plunder. As the sea is the image of masses of people, so is the water of rivers an image of affluence, prosperity, and success; see my work on Balaam, at Numbers 24:6-7, and my Commentary on Psalms 107:33-35, the substance of which is: God causes the waters of the world’s commerce and prosperity to dry up, but those of his church to flow copiously; or, Babylon shall be parched, the land of the Lord well watered; see also Psalms 68:6, “The rebellious dwell in a dry land.” The fountains beside the rivers denote the sources of the prosperity. By another turn of the image the effect might, instead of an imbittering of the waters, have been described as a drying up of the fountains and springs, and a dying of men from thirst; comp. Isaiah 50:2, “Behold at my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a wilderness; their fish stink, because there is no water, and die for thirst.” Here, however, there is also an allusion to Exodus 15:23-26, “And when they came to Marah they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, what shall we drink? And he cried unto the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree which, when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet. And the Lord said, if thou wilt diligently hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God, and wilt do that which is right in his sight, &c., I will put none of these diseases upon thee which I have brought upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that healeth thee.” (This implies that the partaking of the bitter water had already brought sickness upon them.) The star, burning like a torch and named Wormwood, forms here a contrast to the wood with which Moses, as a type of Jesus the Saviour, made the bitter water sweet, just as in Revelation 8:8-9, the great mountain burning with fire forms the contrast to the mighty life-stream of Ezekiel. For his own people God makes the bitter waters sweet, for the world he makes the sweet waters bitter. Through means of his servants, and by the manifestation of his glory, he shows to his own a healing tree, which, when put into the waters, makes them good ; but in righteous judgment to the world, because they would not behold this tree, he throws a great star burning like a torch into the waters, by which they are made bitter. Several expositors would put poison in place of the bitterness, because bitterness does not kill. But even in nature bitter water produces sickness, according to Exodus 15, and the bitterness of water in a spiritual sense certainly occasions death. The Fourth Trumpet Revelation 8:12. And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars, so that their third part was darkened, and the day did not appear for the third part of it, and the night in like manner. On the shining of the lights of heaven as a symbol of the grace of God and of salvation, and on their darkening as a symbol of troublous and distressing times, see on ch. Revelation 6:12. The more exact meaning is determined here by the connection. Before and after the subject discoursed of are the sore tribulations of war, and with these the whole group is occupied. So here we can only think of the alarming and distressing times of war. The fifth seal in like manner receives from the context its more precise meaning Bengel: “If great persons think that such affairs may be committed to them, they shall still find that the judgments of the Almighty are thereby executed and his words fulfilled. Come and behold the works of the Lord, what desolations he has wrought upon the earth. All such things must be considered thus, as they belong to the vast administration of God throughout every region and place of the world. They are no mere news, but they happen under the trumpets of the holy angels, for the glory of the Almighty, through whose righteous judgment it has ever and anon been effected, that the world in its opposition to his kingdom has never been able to succeed. God has always controlled matters so, that space should be obtained at the proper time for his kingdom.” The being smitten of God is the cause, the darkening is the effect. That a third part of the sun, moon, and stars is smitten, denotes long periods of time, during which distressing times should alternate with better ones. In the seventh trumpet the sun, moon, and stars are wholly smitten. Here a third part as it were each time covers the watches, or interferes with the function of shining. Two bright sections are followed by a dark one. The very circumstance that this is not applicable to natural things, shews, that we are placed here upon the territory of the symbolical, in which the glittering splendour of the sun, moon, and stars represents a prosperous and happy state, and the darkening of these trouble and distress. By pressing too closely, the rule of the natural sun, etc., commentators have been led into difficulties and constrained significations. Thus, according to Bengel and Züllig. not the third part of the length of the day and of the night must be meant, but the third part of the degree of brightness, which the day and the night have more or less. This exposition cannot stand with the words. The taking away of a third part of the brightness were considerably too small, and would not comport with the heavy tribulations before and after. In the prototype also of the Egyptian plague, Exodus 10:21-23, which is the more nearly related to the passage before us, as in it the external darkness was but an image of the night of distress, which rested upon Egypt, there were three days of total darkness. Revelation 8:13. And I saw, and heard an eagle flying through the midst of heaven, and saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe to those who dwell upon the earth before the other voices of the trumpets of the three angels, which are yet to sound! Bengel: “The trumpets of the four first angels were not previously announced with their contents, but in regard to the three last there is now made an anticipatory proclamation. Under the former severe tribulations had already happened; yet they were not called woes. But now great lamentations come one after another, and it is declared, that although the trumpets of the four first angels have reached to all the four ends of the earth, still three woes under the trumpets of the three last must be endured (must pass by—for the trumpets are salutary to the church), ere the kingdom of God shines forth under the trumpet of the seventh angel.” The eagle, according to an entire series of passages in the Old Testament, is excellently fitted as a symbol and messenger of the divine judgment, especially of such as consists in hostile oppression. “The Lord will bring against thee,” it is said in the original passage, Deuteronomy 28:49, “a people from afar, from the end of the earth, as the eagle flies.” In Hosea 8:1, it is said, “The trumpet to thy mouth! As an eagle (will the enemy come) upon the house of the Lord, because they have trampled upon my covenant, and have done wickedly against my law.” This passage is the more remarkable, as the eagle appears in it, as here, in connection with the trumpet. In Habakkuk 1:8, “His (the Chaldean’s) horsemen come from afar, they fly as an eagle hastens to his prey.” In Jeremiah 48:40 it is said of Nebuchadnezzar, “Behold as an eagle will he fly, and spread out his wings against Moab.” In Ezekiel 17:3 the king of Babylon appears as a great eagle. With these passages of the Old Testament the declaration of our Lord connects itself in Matthew 24:28, “Where the carcase is, there the eagles gather themselves together. Instead of an eagle, several critical helps, which Luther follows, have an angel. But this reading has merely originated in the vicious realism of the exposition, which appears also in the remark of several, who retain an eagle, that by this is to be understood here an angel like to an eagle. For the eagle there is a decided preponderance of external authorities, and even were the evidence on the other side equal, we should still hold the eagle to be the proper word. Bengel expressed his surprise, that angel should not have been found in more copies. Among prosaic copyists and critics no one certainly would have thought of eagle, unless it had originally stood in the text. But, on the other hand, how natural it was to displace the eagle, may appear from the remark of Zόllig: “We could very well dispense with the marvellous speaking eagle.” If an angel had been the subject, he would have been mentioned as another angel; comp. Revelation 8:3, Revelation 7:2, Revelation 14:6; Revelation 14:8-9. Not less stumbling than the speaking eagle must be the voice from the four horns of the altar, in ch. Revelation 9:13, to the realistic mode of exposition, and the song of praise from all the creatures in ch. 5. It is quite fitting that such hard stumbling-blocks should be thrown in the way of such a style of exposition. It should teach men to be less opposed elsewhere to the ideal interpretation, where matters do not lie so much on the surface—to perceive, for example, that the angels themselves also in the Apocalypse are often but the substratum for the kind of representation given, as in Revelation 8:3, Revelation 9:14. The flying is not decisive for either of the two readings. It is used of the eagle in ch. Revelation 4:7, and of the angel in ch. Revelation 14:6. The eagle here forms a contrast to the dove in John 1:32. Those cannot have had the dove coming down upon them, to whom the eagle is sent. John sees the eagle flying in the midst of heaven. The space in the midst of heaven is here and in ch. Revelation 14:6 quite suitable for a message which must be heard by the whole earth. In ch. Revelation 19:17 also it is equally suitable. There an angel stands in the sun. doubtless because that is the loftiest position and radiates in all directions, and calls to all birds flying in the midst of heaven, round where he himself stands.[Note: These are the three passages in the Revelation where the μεσουπάνημα occurs. Ewald’s exposition of the space between heaven and earth is against the usage. Μεσουρὰνεω always signifies in medio s. umbilico coeli sum, see Stephani Thes. ed. Paris.] Whether the οὐαί ?, woe, should remind one of the croaking of the raven, as Hofmann thinks, we leave undecided. Fifth Trumpet Ch. 9 We have in ch. Revelation 9:1-12 the fifth trumpet, the first woe. A new frightful image of war, as the awful scourge with which God chastises the apostate world: A star fallen from heaven with locusts. First there is the appearance of the locusts; then the injury they occasion, Revelation 9:3-6. After this we have a description of them, Revelation 9:7-10, which again at the close connects itself with what is the chief point in them, the injury they occasion. And the close of the whole leads back to the first beginning, the leader of the locusts, Revelation 9:11. There is only added farther in Revelation 9:12 a short sentence placing a boundary-line between this trumpet and the next. The absence of all individual traits shews that here also we have not the prediction of a particular historical event, but a lively and vivid image of the tribulations of war generally. Fifth Trumpet Revelation 9:1. And the fifth angel sounded. And I saw a star fallen from heaven upon the earth, and to him was given the key of the pit of the abyss. The star here, as throughout the Apocalypse, denotes a ruler—see on ch. Revelation 8:10. If by this star an angel were at once denoted (Ewald), the pains, that might be connected with the exposition of a book written with so much regularity, would be in vain. But the ruler is here no single historical person; as appears from the want of all individual traits and the whole general and introductory character of the groups of the seven seals and the seven trumpets, in which there is to be found no special reference to those phases of the world-power, by which the church was then oppressed. The ruler is an ideal person, who appears in history in a whole series of real individuals. The last great embodiment of this star was Napoleon. But he shall not remain the last. How adverse the historising mode of exposition is to the profitable understanding of the passage is clear from the words with which Bengel introduces his thoughts upon this section. “The text before us may indeed be regarded as having little edification for us, because a woe is described in it which is already long since past; and if the prophecy plainly treated of such things, we should not expect to derive great profit from the consideration of it.” In regard to the falling of the star from heaven, what has been already remarked at ch. Revelation 8:10 is quite applicable: it is a non-essential distinction that there the Seer beholds the star as he falls, here after he has fallen. It is a falling like that of the stone which was cut out without hands, and which struck the image on its feet, and ground them to pieces, Daniel 2:34. What the Lord says of his kingdom, that it is not of this world, is true in a certain sense of all, even of those of barbaric plunderers. All come down from heaven upon earth; as, indeed, heaven and hell generally have a signification of which the superficial race of the present time little dream. It is a different sort of falling from that of Satan from heaven, Luke 10:18 (comp. here ch. 12), a passage that is here unseasonably compared by Vitringa, and so separates, what ought to have been indissolubly joined, the passage before us and that of ch. Revelation 8:10. That the key was given to the star shows that the appearance of a star was intermingled with that of the human form. The abyss, properly the bottomless deep, is a strong poetical designation of hell, identical with Hades, by which in the New Testament, and especially in the Apocalypse, only hell is meant; comp. on ch. Revelation 6:8.[Note: To the abyss corresponds in the Old Testament αιψ, grave, is a poetical designation of Scheol, comp. Psalms 28:1; Psalms 30:3; Psalms 88:4; Isaiah 14:15.The abyss appears in the New Testament as the receptacle of demons, Luke 8:31, and of Satan, Revelation 20:2 (for there Satan is only confined in his proper place of abode), the source and centre of demoniacal influence upon the earth, ch. Revelation 11:7, Revelation 17:8, and here Revelation 9:1-11. How frightful when the powers of darkness, which dwell in that horrid abyss, issue forth upon this upper world! But the well-pit of the abyss is the communication through which the lower world is connected with the earth and opens out toward the earth. Such a communication is poetically referred to in Psalms 55:23, “And thou, O Lord, wilt throw them into the well-pit of the grave.” There the wicked are sunk down through the medium of the well-pit into hell, as in ancient times such a well- pit of hell disclosed itself to swallow up Korah (to which that passage in the Psalm refers); here, through the medium of the well-pit opened by the star from heaven, who, according to Revelation 9:11, is also the angel of the abyss, the evil spirit ascends from hell to the earth.[Note: This passage at any rate must not be separated from Psalms 55:23. If we should there, less properly, understand, by the well-pit of the grave Scheol itself, deep as a well-pit, we must also understand the same by it here. The opening, the orifice, cannot, however, be marked by φρέαρ, which corresponds to αΰψ in Heb.]If through men’s guilt the connection between heaven and earth is dissolved—if the earth shuts itself out from heaven by proclaiming its ungodliness, in righteous judgment hell shall be opened by heaven, and in the place of human wickedness and for its punishment there shall come that of demons. This is brought in by particular Satanic individuals, angels or messengers from hell. These are set by God in the fitting positions where they have the opportunity of spreading through a wide circle the hellish spirit. As heaven, so also hell is opened by particular personages, who are, as it were, an incarnation of the hellish spirit. Bossuet: “Hell does not open of itself; it is always some false teacher that sets it open.” Here, however, it is a different incarnation of the hellish principle that comes primarily into consideration.[Note: The aberrations of the older polemical exegesis meet us here in a very palpable manner. Bellarmin referred the star to Luther,—the locusts to the Lutherans. Soherzer understood by the star the Papacy, by the locusts the Jesuits. Another Lutheran expositor, Affelmann, thought he could recognise the Papacy in the star, and in the locusts the Calvinists.] Revelation 9:2. And he opened the well-pit of the abyss. And there arose a smoke out of the pit, as the smoke of a great oven; and the sun and the air were darkened by reason of the smoke of the pit. The smoke denotes the hellish spirit which penetrates to the earth—comp. Revelation 16:13—especially the Cainite spirit of brotherly hatred. For the smoke is the product of fire, as Bengel has remarked, “Where there is smoke, there also is fire, with flames or without them. And of what sort the fire is, of the same sort is the smoke, good or bad, salutary or hurtful.” But the fire denotes rage and hatred, the thirst of destruction. The smoke is described as very thick. As Bengel says, “Dense masses issue forth one after another, which spread themselves far and wide, and again intermingle with each other, so that the darkness always becomes greater.” The smoke like that of an oven is from Genesis 19:28, Exodus 19:18, “The mountain was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire; and the smoke thereof went up like the smoke of an oven.” This is a quite different smoke from the smoke of the frankincense, which is the prayers of saints, and which rises from earth to heaven; comp. ch. Revelation 8:4. But where this smoke fails, or where it ascends against any one, there constantly bursts forth that hellish smoke. The darkening of the sun and the firmament here also denotes the sad and distressing times, which come upon the earth in consequence of the power given to the hellish Cainite spirit. Comp. ch. Revelation 8:12. Revelation 9:3. And out of the smoke came locusts upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. The locusts do not come from hell, but they proceed out of the smoke. The hellish wrath spirit sends desolating hordes over the earth. The body, as it were, or the material for the locusts, was previously in existence. But from hell comes the quickening spirit, by which they are first made locusts, with an insatiable thirst for destruction. These locusts do not merely come after the smoke, as Vitringa supposes, but in the strictest sense out of the smoke; the smoke is what makes them locusts. Often are invading hosts compared to locusts, which overspread the land. The point of comparison is first the multitude, from which locusts in Hebrew derive their name; then the sudden inroad and the desolation. In Judges 6:5, comp. Revelation 7:12, it is said of the hosts of the Midianites, Amalekites, and the children of the east, “And they came like the locusts for multitude, and came to lay waste the land.” In Jeremiah 46:23 we read of the hostile armies that fall upon Egypt.” They are more than the locusts, and they have no number.” In Jeremiah 51:27, “Cause the horses to come upon them (Babylon), like the horrible lickers,” a poetical description of the locusts on account of their desolations; comp. Psalms 105:34-35, “He spake, there came locusts and lickers without number; and they ate all the grass in the land, and ate the fruit of their field.” In Jdt 2:20, it is said, “And Holofernes went forth with the whole host . . which covered the ground like locusts.” In these passages there is found an explicitly stated comparison. From them there is but a step to another, in which a hostile irruption should be simply represented under the symbol of the plague of locusts. These representations have a special starting-point in the locust-devastation in Egypt, Exodus 10. The Egyptian plagues were justly considered as prophecies in action, and men delighted to represent the analogous future under the image of the past, in which it had its pledge. Amos in Amos 7:1-3 beheld the approaching divine judgment, which was to consist of a hostile invasion, under the image of a swarm of locusts, as he does in Amos 7:4 under the image of a fire, and in Amos 7:7 under that of a plumb line. Substantially the whole three convey one meaning. This is announced in Amos 7:9 by the words, “and the high places of Isaac shall be desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste; and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword.” But this symbolical representation is to be found at the greatest length in Joe 1:1 to Joe 2:18, where see the Christology. Now, that in the passage before us literal locusts cannot be understood, is clear as day. These would form a very strange exception in a quite symbolical connection, along with stars and smoke.[Note: Vitringa: “he describes them by such attributes as do not belong to actual locusts; as, that they were produced by smoke, issuing not out of some sort of pool but out of an abyss; that they had tails with stings, like scorpions; that they hurt men; that they had golden crowns on their heads; that they had a human face and a woman’s hair; and at last had a leader set over them, the angel of the abyss.”]But if the description must be understood symbolically, the only admissible reference is to a hostile devastation. For, 1. throughout Scripture, wherever locusts are spoken of in a figurative manner, a hostile devastation is denoted by them. The locusts never stand as a designation of” indeterminate frightful punishments and plagues.” Under the related image also of swarms of flies and bees hordes of enemies are denoted in Scripture, comp. Isaiah 7:18; Deuteronomy 1:44; Psalms 118:12. 2. We stand here in the midst of a warlike connection. The four preceding trumpets announce hostile devastations, as do also those that follow. A ruler and conqueror is indicated by the star fallen from heaven, who opens hell and sends forth the smoke, out of which the locusts proceed, identical with the angel of the abyss in Revelation 9:11, who is called the king of the locusts. 3. The succeeding trumpets present such important and intentional agreements with this, that the subject in each must be the same; that if in these we admit the reference to be to hostile devastations, we cannot deny it to be so here also. To the horses prepared for war here in Revelation 9:7 correspond in Revelation 9:16 the myriads of horsemen, to the lions teeth in Revelation 9:8, the heads of lions in Revelation 9:17; coats of mail are mentioned alike in Revelation 9:9 and Revelation 9:17; and the tails like scorpions in Revelation 9:10 have their correspondence in the tails like those of serpents in Revelation 9:19. 4. The natural locusts are destructive to plants and trees—comp. Exodus 10:15. In this respect a preparation was made for the figurative representation here by the employment, in ch. Revelation 8:7, of the green grass and the trees in a figurative sense, as a designation of the people and persons of distinction. Farther, the point of comparison between the locusts and the invading hordes of enemies is only that which has now been described. Neither here, nor in the fundamental passages of the Old Testament, is there the least trace of any resemblance in form between the horses and the locusts being taken into account. Several expositors, like Ewald, by their arbitrary suppositions, impute in this respect, to the prophet, a sort of playful trifling, unworthy of a man of God. The image of the locusts is not sufficiently comprehensive and marked for the prophet. In particular, the idea of malice was not strongly enough represented by the symbol. He, therefore, adds to it that of scorpions, which both in the Old and the New Testament are ill reported of.[Note: The venomous tail of scorpions is according to Pliny, L. vi. c. 28, semper in ictu, nulloque momento meditari cesant no qando desit occasioni.]When it is said that power was given to them, as the scorpions of the earth have power, the mode of representation is based on the truth, that even in nature everything destructive has its mission from God, and only in consequence and by virtue of this is its pernicious energy developed—comp Genesis 3:17, where the earth is cursed for man’s sin, and Isa. Isaiah 11, according to which in the “regeneration” of the earth, when righteousness dwells on it, everything violent and destructive shall vanish from it. The scorpions of the earth form the contrast to these scorpion-like locusts sent forth from hell. If we had, not a holy seer, but a natural philosopher before us, we might have supposed that land scorpions are here spoken of, as contradistinguished from the (rather obscure) water scorpions, the existence of which was probably unknown to John. Scripture everywhere knows only of land scorpions. It was quite pardonable in the great author of the work on the beasts of Scripture (Bochart), to suffer himself to be here carried away by his leanings to natural history; but expositors should have exercised more foresight. Revelation 9:4. And it was said to them, that they should not hurt the grass on the earth, nor any green thing, nor any tree, save only the men who had not the seal of God on their foreheads. The trees correspond in ch. Revelation 7:1; Revelation 7:3, to the kings, nobles, etc., in ch. Revelation 6:15. Trees and grass denote in ch. Revelation 8:7, the high and the low, princes and subjects. It does not mean the men, but the men; for men are also denoted by the grass and the trees. By these are not meant, as Vitringa supposes, believers, but men generally. The reference to believers is first given by the limitation that follows. The human family falls into the two great divisions of the sealed, and those who have not the seal of God on their foreheads. That all excepting the sealed appear here as the object of the divine judgment, shews plainly that the sealed out of the tribes of Israel, in ch. 7, comprehend all believers. How it is to be understood that believers are here exempted from the plagues which alight upon the whole world, we have already considered at ch. 7. St Paul says, “All things work together for good to those that love God;” and Paul Gerhardt sings in respect to the thirty years’ war, that “as faithful mothers in severe storms upon earth anxiously guard and keep their little ones, so also does God, when tribulation and distress arise, press his children to his bosom.” By the common interpretation, the grass, etc., here, must be understood of things in nature, which are preyed upon by locusts. But such a limitation in respect to the natural locust, is rather cold, as the whole representation plainly enough shews, that these are not to be brought into view. Further, since trees and grass occur so shortly before in the figurative sense, it was the more necessary to indicate by the choice of some particle expressing the opposite, that the figurative sense was here to be excluded. Instead of: save only, besides (comp. Exodus 9:26, “only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel dwelt, there was no hail”), there should then rather have been a but, which Luther certainly has. Revelation 9:5. And it was given to them, that they should not kill them, but that they should be tormented five months; and their torment was as the torment of a scorpion, when it strikes a man. The not killing is not to be understood as if none were to be killed; but those who are not killed alone draw attention, because their number is much the greater and their lot the harder, Revelation 9:6. The signification of the five months may here be certainly determined from the circumstance, that in the four first trumpets, and likewise in the sixth, the third part of men are mentioned as the object of the plagues, but here not so. Hence the fifth here must have the same design of stamping this trumpet as incomplete in its character as compared with the seventh. For this purpose the fifth number was well adapted. For it is throughout the signature of the half, the incomplete, as the broken ten. Fire months are named, because only the fire in relation to the twelve months of the year, produces the idea of a proportionately long continuance and frightfulness, which was the thing more immediately to be rendered palpable. It was necessary to denote a very long period, and still not the longest. Against the reference of the five months to the 150 days of the flood, Genesis 7:24, Mark has already objected that the waters were much longer upon the earth. The “five months of the existence of the natural locust” have no place in natural history, and all searching into the natural history of locusts must here be regarded as out of place. Finally, in respect to Hofmann’s supposition of a reference to the five sins in 20:21, we reply, that there five sins are not named, but first a tenfold sin against the first table, and then four against the second. They themselves resembled scorpions in their malicious disposition to torment men (comp. Ezekiel 2:6, “Thou dwellest among scorpions”), and, therefore, by a righteous judgment of heaven, their torment becomes like the torment inflicted by a scorpion. Revelation 9:6. And in those days shall men seek death and not find it; they shall desire to die, and death will flee from them. With what earnestness the word is spoken appears from its repetition a second time. Ch. Revelation 6:16, in the vision of the seals is parallel, and the original passage is Jeremiah 8:3, “And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the Lord.” Revelation 9:7. And the locusts are like horses, which are prepared for war, and upon their heads as crowns, like gold,[Note: Instead of the reading ὁ ?́μοιοιχρυσῳ ?͂ ?, which we hate followed with Luther, others have χρυσοῖ ?. But this reading has probably arisen from a feeling of unsuitableness in the repetition of the simple likeness, overlooking how common also in Ezekiel are such accumulated indications of difference between the vision and the reality.]and their faces like the face of men. The first clause is literally: And the likenesses of the locusts are like. This is put for: as regards their likeness or resemblance, they are like. The prefixing” the likeness” shows, that the Seer now passes on to this point; he leaves other things concerning them, in order to describe their likeness. Four verses are devoted to this. First we have their likeness in regard to their appearance as a whole, then only particular features. The horses are to be understood as occupied by their riders, so that they correspond to the horsemen in Revelation 9:16. Only when the riders sit upon them, are they prepared for war; and in the fundamental passage also, Joe 2:4, “The appearance of them is as the appearance of horses, and as horsemen so shall they run,” the horse from the parallelism is not to be thought of without, but with his rider. The cavalry force is among barbarous people the most important, and always is that which, in appearance, is the most frightful, hence the fittest for representing the whole war-like force. In the Old Testament representations also of impending divine judgments by means of hostile armies—the cavalry plays a prominent part; comp., for example, Habakkuk 1:8, “Their horses are swifter than the leopards, and more fierce than the evening wolves; and their horsemen shall spread themselves, their horsemen come from far; they fly as the eagle that hastes to eat.” We have here an express statement from the Seer as to what we should understand by the locusts. That only the likeness is spoken of is to be explained from the desire of throwing over the whole the veil of the locust-symbol. This veil is a transparent one. Behind the slender covering the real nature of the thing meant appears, yet so that there always remains an infusion of the symbol and the reality into each other. They appear like locusts, and yet also like a frightful mass of horses and horsemen. The crown in Revelation is always the mark of royal dignity, dominion—comp. Revelation 2:10, Revelation 3:11, Revelation 4:4, Revelation 6:2, Revelation 12:1, Revelation 14:14. From their having crowns upon their head, they are marked out as the sovereign people. The crowns refer to the relation in which the party represented stood to strangers, much as in the Old and the New Testament Israel is designated as a royal people on account of its dominion—comp. on ch. Revelation 1:6. To the crowns correspond the designation of their leader as the star, that has fallen from heaven to the earth. In his dominion their’s also is involved, as in the kingly dignity of Christ that also of believers. For he is the head, they are the members. In respect to the inhabitants of the plundered countries they have the feeling of kings, while those feel as subjects. Their faces resemble those of men, since, dreadful to behold, the fierce countenance of a man looks through the visage of the locust. In reality they were human countenances. Revelation 9:8. And they had hair as the hair of women, and their teeth were as those of lions. Among the Greeks and Romans it was the usual practice to cut the hair. (It was certainly otherwise in half-barbarous times, comp. Hom. II. ii. 11.) Plutarch says in the Quaest. Rom.: “Custom requires men to cut the hair, but with the women to let it grow.”[Note: See Perizonius on AElian, Var. Hist. ix. 4.How deeply-rooted this custom was, appears from 1 Corinthians 11:14-15. Among the civilised Egyptians the wearing of long hair was reckoned a characteristic mark of barbarism—see my work on Egypt and the books of Moses, p. 28. That among the Israelites the polling of the hair belonged to social life, is evident from the cultivation of the hair in the Nazarites being appointed as a mark of their separation from the world; and on the same ground the Egyptians allowed the beard to grow in times of mourning. The barbarous Parthians wore long hair.[Note: Suestonius Vespas. c. 23: Cum inter prodigia caetera Mausoleum Caesarum derepente patuisset, et stella in coelo crinita apparuisset: alterum ad Junium Calvinam e gente Augusti pertinere dicebat: alterum ad Parthorum regem, qui capillatus esset. Aurelius Victor also: Istud, iuquit, ad regem Persarum pertinet, cui capillus efffusior.]Hair like women’s in length, but kept without order, would present a frightful spectacle. Any one that lets every thing on his body grow as it will, virtually makes himself known as one who gives free scope to his lusts and passions, thinks only of suffering no hindrance to his natural desires. Among us also, again, long hair has become a symbol of savage wildness! The teeth resembling those of lions, is from Joe 1:6. The comparison suits well the spiritual locusts, raging enemies, but not the natural ones. For the lion cannot possibly be put as a symbol of mere voracity. Revelation 9:9. And they had coats of mail like iron coats of mail, and the rustling of their wing a as the rustling of chariots of many horses, running to battle. The iron coats of mail indicate how difficult it would be to get at these horsemen.[Note: Amm. Marcellinus says of the Persians in b. xix. c. 1: Ferreus equitatus campos opplevit; again in B. xxv. c. 1: Erant autem omues catervae ferrutae. And before: Ubi vero primum dies iuclaruit, radiantes loricae: limbis circumdatae ferreis, et corrusci thoraces longe prospecti adesse regis copias significabant.]The horses here also, as in Revelation 9:7, are to be thought of as occupied by their riders, partly sitting on their saddles, partly on light chariots of war. The chariots appear as an appurtenance of the cavalry. They were so reckoned in the books of Moses. The combatants on the very small and light Egyptian war-chariots are there described as horsemen, precisely as we are wont to speak of the riding-post, notwithstanding that letter-carriers often use gigs. Comp. Isaiah 21:7, Isaiah 21:9, where riders on chariots are mentioned among the Medo-Persian armies. We must not translate: of many horse-chariots, but only: of the chariots of many horses. The numerousness of the chariots is only to be concluded from the numerousness of the horses. In Joe 2:5 also the noise of the locusts is compared to the noise of chariots.[Note: Ewaid would delete the ἱ ?́ππων, De Wette the ἀρμάτων. But such arbitrariness can no longer pass among us. Both the horses and the chariots occur in the original passage, Joe 2:4-5. The chariots cannot be dispensed with, because their rattling agrees better with the whirring noise of the locusts than the prancing of horses: nor can the horses, because the multitude of the horsemen and not of the chariots is the proper counterpart to the locusts; comp. on Revelation 9:7. Revelation 9:10. And they have tails like scorpions, and there are stings in their tails; and their power is to hurt men for five months. This verse reverts to Revelation 9:3-6, from the description of the locusts to what they were to accomplish. Bengel: “The tails of the locusts are not only like the tails of scorpions, but like the scorpions themselves, as the tails of the horses in Revelation 9:19 with their heads are not only like the tails of serpents, but like the serpents themselves.” Revelation 9:11. They have over them as king the angel of the abyss; whose name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he has the name Apollyon. Bengel: “Elsewhere locusts have no king, Proverbs 30:27, but these have one.” The star in Revelation 9:1, according to the uniform usage of the Revelation, corresponds to the king. If another king were here meant, then two kings would be ascribed to the locusts. And in that case the respective territories of each would require to be bounded. But we can the less doubt respecting the identity of the king and the star, as the retrogressive movement begins even in Revelation 9:10. As there in connection with the tails of the locusts the subject of Rev 9:3-6 is resumed, so this verse looks back to Revelation 9:1-2. We become lost, too, in inexplicable difficulty, whenever we deny the identity of the king and the angel. We cannot think of Satan himself. For Satan has his angels (ch. Revelation 12:7, Matthew 25:11), but he is not himself called an angel. And no trace whatever exists of any other infernal king, who could be simply designated as the angel of the abyss. The article, which is wanting in Luther, denotes either this angel of the abyss, an ideal person, who becomes manifest in a multitude of real personages, as already known from what had gone before, or as the angel par excellence—comp. ch. Revelation 3:17. According to the uniform usage of the Apocalypse it is not the messengers, but the angel of the abyss, that is here spoken of, as in Matthew 25:41, and here Revelation 12:7, 2 Corinthians 12:7, we read of the angels of the devil, who, according to 2 Peter 2:4, Jude Jude 1:6, reside in the darkness of hell. The name of .the higher messengers of hell is transferred to the lower, in order to create a salutary dread of them, as we speak of a corporeal Satan—comp. Matthew 16:23. The transference of the name of the heavenly messengers to the earthly in ch. Revelation 1:20, is quite analogous. The king has on one side, according to Revelation 9:1, a divine mission. But the hellish one, alone rendered prominent here, was also indicated in Revelation 9:1-2. For, if he opens the well-pit of hell, and lets out the smoke, he certainly does, apart from the divine mission, a devilish work, what betokens a Satanic disposition, and a hellish employ. Abaddon properly means destruction, and occurs in the Old Testament in connection with death and the grave. Here it appears as a name of him, who has become a kind of personal, embodied destruction, synonymous with Apollyon, the destroyer. Expositors have with reason remarked that the names of Abaddon and Apollyon, the destroyer (certainly the resemblance is striking between this name and Napoleon, who was one of the many incarnations of Apollyon), stand related to the name Jesus. Bengel: “The name of Antichrist stands directly opposed to the name of Christ; and not less directly opposed to the name of Jesus or Saviour is that of Abaddon the destroyer.” On those, who despise Jeans, the Saviour, inevitably comes the destroyer. The world has to make its choice between Jesus and Apollyon. If they refuse the one, they must fall into the hands of the other. Bengel says, “Great is the glory of the Son of God, who restrains so many and such diverse enemies, numerous and powerful agents in the kingdom of darkness, lets them loose, and again sets a limit to them. Blessed is the state of those, who stand under the power of Christ. How needful is it for us to betake for refuge to Christ, and seek our safety under his wings! They who do so, have no need to be afraid either of Abaddon, or of Satan himself and his angels. The evil inflicted under the first woe takes effect on the men, who have not the seal of God; but they, on the other hand, are always in safe keeping, who, as his servants, have the seal and mark of God upon them. However sharp the conflict may be, the Lord will assuredly protect his chosen ones, on whom he has set his mark, and who are sprinkled with the blood of the Lamb.” Sixth Trumpet Revelation 9:12. One woe is past; behold! there come two woes more after it. In ch. Revelation 9:13-21, we have the sixth trumpet, the second woe. Four angels, till now bound in the Euphrates, are set loose, that they may execute the work of God’s vengeance. They overspread the earth with an incredible number of horsemen. The third part of men are destroyed. But the world continues still in its impenitence. Since, therefore, they will not turn back to him, who smites them, and seek the Lord of Hosts, they must expect that the word shall again be verified, “For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.” The world calls aloud for the seventh trumpet, the last woe. For, it is not to be imagined, that God’s righteousness shall prove less energetic than men’s sinfulness. Revelation 9:13. And the sixth angel sounded. And I heard a voice from the four[Note: The reason of the omission of τεσσάραων even in some important authorities (it is omitted in Lachmann and Tischendorf), was given by Bengel: “It might easily be omitted before κεράτων, since both words have the same number of syllables and nearly the same letters.” It may be added, that in the Mosaic law the horns of the altar of incense might justly be taken as four in number, though that is not expressly said as in the case of the altar of burnt-offering. This circumstance at least shown, that the τεσσάραων would not he lightly shoved in.]horns of the golden altar, before God, Revelation 9:14, which spake to the sixth angel, that had the trumpet, Loose the four angels, bound by the great river Euphrates. There is not sufficient proof for the view of Bδhr (Symbolik des Mos. Cultus I. p. 472), that the horns of the altar have a separate symbolical meaning, and that the altar by means of its four corners is rendered “a manifestation of divine power and blessing.” For, that the horn occurs in a series of passages as an image of power and strength, with reference to those animals, whose strength lies in their horns, is not enough for the point in question. There is nothing to be found in Scripture indicating that this symbolical import was specially ascribed to the horns of the altar. Luke 1:69 does not refer to the horns of the altar, but to Psalms 18:2. But Exodus 30:10 (comp. Jeremiah 17:1) is against Bδhr’s view, as there it is enjoined that the altar be purified once every year. This shews, that we must not refer the horns of the altar in a one-sided manner to that which God imparted, but that rather what was presented on the altar, was what primarily culminated in the horns. Many impurities were mingled with the devotions, (comp. Job 16:17, Isaiah 1:15,) which stood in need of atonement and forgiveness. We may rather suppose, that the horns of the altar come into consideration as that, in which itself runs out—in which all its signification culminates, as the horn of an animal is its strength and ornament; the head, in a manner, of the altar. With this view accords Exodus 27:2, Exodus 38:2, according to which the horns were to be of one piece with the altar, to indicate that they had not a separate meaning of their own, but that the altar only culminated in them. Hence also, it may naturally be explained, how the sacrificial blood should have been sprinkled on the horns, how the slayer of blood should have laid hold of the horns, and in them of the whole altar, and here likewise, how the voice should have proceeded out of the four horns. The voice is that of the altar itself, and nothing but a vicious realism here, as in the case of the eagle in ch. Revelation 8:13, could have thought of an actual existence. The voice does not come merely out of the region, it comes out of the four horns of the altar itself. In what respect the altar comes into notice here, may be understood from ch. Revelation 8:3. It is the place of “the prayers of saints.” It is these which desire the loosing of the four angels bound at the Euphrates, and obtain it. As the angels generally prepared themselves to sound in consequence of the much incense which was presented on the golden altar that is before God, so here, in consequence of the voice out of the altar, the angel looses the four angels bound by the great river Euphrates. The voice proceeds, not from one horn merely, but from all the horns together, because they together formed the head of the altar. At the same time the four number of the horns appear to be not without some respect to the four angels in Revelation 9:14, and the four number of sins in Revelation 9:21. The sins, the desire of the church, the punishment, all bear the impress of comprehensiveness and intensity. The four number of the sins constitutes the foundation, the four number of the horns and the angels stand related to these as the effect to its cause. But comprehensive as the judgment is, it still bears, like the preceding trumpets, a provisional character in relation to the seventh. Angels, without any additional predicate, are always good angels. Of such alone can we think here, from the very nature of the case. For, in Scripture it is uniformly the good angels that are employed in punishing the wicked. The reference to them also is confirmed by the analogy of the four angels with the four winds in ch. Revelation 7:1. That the angels were bound, points to the long-suffering of God, which, up to this time, restrained the punishment, and still gave space for repentance. The signification of the binding was correctly given by Bossuet: “What binds the angels, are the sovereign commands of God.” We perceive the truth of this from Revelation 9:15. Their work must have its commencement at a particular moment. The four number of the angels bears respect to the four ends of the earth. It denotes the universality, the �cumenical character of the divine judgment. This number alone shows, that we are not to think of the angels of particular nations, and the same appears by a comparison of ch. Revelation 7:1. The Euphrates here, and in ch. Revelation 16:12, is mentioned as the river, from the regions on the further side of which, during the times of the Old Testament, and through the course of centuries, the scourge of God came forth upon the nearer districts of Asia. It was so, according to Genesis 14, even in the most ancient times, and afterwards during the ascendancy of the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, and the Persians. In Isaiah 7:20, the king of Assyria is described as a razor, hired by God in the district beyond the Euphrates. The word spoken by Jeremiah in Jeremiah 46:10, must come anew into fulfilment. “And this day shall be to Jehovah the Lord of Hosts, a day of revenge, that he may avenge him of his adversaries, and the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood. For the Lord God of Hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates.” The epithet great, the great river Euphrates, itself points to the Old Testament—comp. Genesis 15:18; Deuteronomy 1:7; Joshua 1:4. The local designation is hence a merely apparent one. Not less than the four bound angels does the Euphrates belong to the vision, which ever loves to find the substratum of its representations in events of a similar nature in the past—comp. for example, Isaiah 11:15-16; Zechariah 10:11. All historizing interpreters, such, for example, as conceive the Euphrates to be mentioned from being the limits of the Roman empire, or from the dangers with which the Parthians threatened the Romans, apart from the misapprehension implied regarding the trumpets generally, is excluded by the enormous numbers in Revelation 9:16. The subject of discourse in Revelation 9:15-16 is not the Romans, but men at large. The angels are to be regarded as the leaders of the great hosts, who assemble under their banners in the regions beyond the Euphrates, the seat, as it were, of God’s hosts of war; as in Isaiah 13:5, Jehovah himself marches forth at the head of his instruments of vengeance to lay waste the whole earth In the angels the truth is embodied, that those warlike hosts do nothing, but what they are commissioned to execute. The heavenly agency so strongly engages the attention of the Seer, that at first he does not even think of the earthly instruments In the preceding vision the same thought is rendered manifest by the falling of the star from heaven, which leads on the locusts. We may understand from the beginning in Revelation 9:13 who they are, against whom the four angels are loosed; they are the persons against whom the prayers of the church, they had persecuted, have gone up. We may also learn it from the conclusion in Revelation 9:20-21, according to which it is the world sunk in idolatry and the love of sin, which on this account could not but assume a hostile attitude towards the church and believers: for “he who doeth evil hateth the light, and cometh not to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved,” John 3:20. Revelation 9:15. And the four angels were loosed, who were prepared for the hour, and day, and month, and year, that they might kill the third part of men. The preparation proceeds only from God. The thought of such a preparation on the part of God may well encourage the church to bear what she has to suffer from the world. Whenever the set time comes, there will be a changing of places! The article applies alike to all the four words. The definite period is meant, in which the loosing of the angels was to take effect (Luther has improperly: an hour). They were already ready in preparation for that, and when it arrived, after the wickedness of the world had become full, the loosing took place, and they were to begin their work. An ascent is made from the lower to the higher. When I know, that something has happened about nine o’clock, I know less than if the year had been mentioned to me. In Numbers 1:1, Zechariah 1:7, Haggai 1:15, also the rise is made from the day to the month, and from this again to the year. Bossuet: “The time being so precisely marked by the prophet, lets us see how exactly God determines the periods.” Revelation 9:16. And the number of the army of the horsemen was twice ten thousand times ten thousand[Note: Some MSS. have merely μυριάδεςμυριάδων, as in ch. Revelation 9:11. Vitringa says justly: “The Holy Spirit elsewhere also uses this expression to denote the greatest possible number, Psalms 68:17.”]; I heard the number of them. The subject of discourse is the enormous multitude of cavalry. As cavalry produce a very imposing impression, the whole of the plundering hordes is here, as in the preceding trumpet, represented under this image, although in reality foot soldiers must be understood to be also included. The four hundred millions exclude all idea of a particular war, and shew that we have here to do only with a personified species. The fundamental passage is Psalms 68:17, “The chariots of God are two myriads, thousands of repetition;” q.d. thousands multiplied by thousands, a thousand times a thousand. There it is the invisible war-chariots of Jehovah that are spoken of, which we may imagine to be drawn by hosts of angels. But the difference is not an essential one. For, these earthly hosts are as completely dependant on every nod of God, as those heavenly ones. They, too, are led by angels. In both places alike the hosts of God are employed in his service against the world. He heard their number, because it was so great a one, that no one could number it—comp. ch. Revelation 7:9. Revelation 9:17. And thus I saw the horses in the vision, and them that sat on them, having coats of mail of fire and hyacinth and brimstone; and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths went forth fire, and smoke, and sulphur. Thus, viz., as follows: The horses are here, as also in Revelation 9:7, to be thought of as provided with riders. The description begins with the horsemen and then passes over to their horses. And them that sat on them, for: namely, them that sat on them. The vision is framed so as to impress on us, what might have been understood of itself, though it is still even to our day not understood by many expositors, that we must distinguish between the substance and the form, under which it appears in the vision. In this everything was seen—the internal had to imprint itself on the external, the spiritual receive a body. The wild exasperation, the thirst for murder, the desire of rapine and desolation, are pictorially exhibited in the colours of the coats of mail on the horsemen, and especially in the fire, and smoke, and sulphur which came out of the mouth of their horses: the external representation of their beastly appetite was transferred to the beast part of the host. Even apart from the warning-note, from the kind of invisible N.B. given in the expression, “in the vision,” it is scarcely possible to understand, how one should so far misapprehend the nature of the representation, as to conclude from it, that warlike hosts are not meant here. The affirmation, that nothing like actual war is seen here, may be met, as soon as we can distinguish between the reality and the clothing, by the counter affirmation, that every thing does so. And were it not for the multifariousness of the forms employed in the representation, the six trumpets might be all compressed into one. The signification of the colours of the coats of mail is entirely to be determined by what proceeds out of the mouth of the horses: to the coats of mail of fire corresponds the fire, which must therefore be imaged by them, to the hyacinth-coloured (what is meant is the deep blue hyacinth), the smoke, to the brimstone-like, the sulphur. Bengel: “There is no mixture of a white, clear, peaceful colour.” The lion-heads, fearful and appalling. The fire is the fire of wrath, the smoke is the inseparable accompaniment of the fire—comp. Psalms 18:8, where also, as here, the fire-wrath goes out of the mouth—the (burning) brimstone points to the unpleasant character of this tire: the fire of hell is a fire of brimstone, ch. Revelation 14:10, Revelation 19:20, Revelation 21:8. If fire and smoke alone had been mentioned, an honourable wrath might have been indicated, as is plain from Psalms 18. So that the ingredient of the sulphur here is quite necessary to a complete characteristic. Revelation 9:18. By these three plagues was the third part of men killed, by the fire, and by the smoke, and by the brimstone, which issued out of their mouth. The these refers to the things that had first been named. Without a figure: by their wild spirit of ferocity and murder. The limitation of Bengel is arbitrary, in understanding by the men, “such as lived in those lands, whither the warlike host went.” The third part of men upon the whole earth are specified. We have here no gradation in relation to the fifth trumpet. For, the not being killed, is there to be limited to the majority, who here also remain in life; and in Revelation 9:6 there, it is represented, not as the better, but as the worse lot. Here also, remarks Züllig, “by the perishing are to be understood those who have not the seal of God spoken of in Revelation 9:4.” And Bengel says: “In the present day there is a great corruption among unbelievers and nominal Christians, in all parts of Christendom, among high and low, and in all conditions of men; but if we could see what in former times has been taken away, we should find that the great God has continually saved out of the corrupt mass a good portion to remain for a seed Those portions that have been extirpated have for the most part been a bad commodity. In plants one always leaves the best, the largest, and most perfect for seed, so that a good kind may be preserved. What would it come to, if God should leave men to act as they pleased, since with so much to restrain them, they are still so averse to improve? It is, therefore, necessary for the holy angels to blow with their trumpets, that men may learn to fear the Lord, and not be ever contending against him? Lord, when I reflect how thou hast executed judgment in the world, my desire is increased to give thee glory in a truly reverential and submissive spirit.” Revelation 9:19. For, the power of the horses is in their mouths and in their tails, for their tails are like serpents, and they have heads, and with these they do hurt. The clause, stating the power to be in their mouth, serves only as a connecting link with what is still to be said of their tails. The injurious and dreadfully destructive tendency had not been sufficiently represented by what proceeds out of the month of the horses. It still farther embodies itself in the symbol of the serpent-tails. Serpents are mentioned here, as in ch. Revelation 12:9, where the devil is called the old serpent, on account of their cunning, malicious wickedness, as opposed in some sense to the lions in Revelation 9:17; and agreeing also in this, that the serpents are behind, where one suspects no danger. Bengel’s remark is rather little: “Whether they make a furious onset, or turn the back, and feign a retreat, they still do hurt.” There is no reason for supposing here, with some, a reference to a peculiar sort of serpent, “one that has a short tail, like a head, which the creature uses both for creeping and for discharging venom, as if it had two heads.” It is not said of the tails of the serpents, that they had heads, but of the tails of the horses. These resemble serpents, which have grown to the tails, and have the head free for biting. Revelation 9:20. And the rest of the men, who were not killed by these plagues, repented not of the works of their hands that they should worship demons, and idols of gold, and silver, and brass, and wood, and stone, which can neither sec, nor hear, nor walk. Dreadful hardness of the human heart! Rather let all be destroyed than be converted! We may compare in the Old Testament the history of Pharaoh, whose servants said to him in vain, “Dost thou not see, that Egypt is destroyed;” and Isaiah 9:12, “And the people return not to him that smites them, and the Lord of Hosts they seek not.” A similar spirit of impenitence under divine judgments is given in ch. Revelation 16:9; Revelation 16:11; Revelation 16:21. The opposite, however, in the degenerate church, ch. Revelation 11:13.[Note: The μετανοεῖν uniformly corresponds in the Apocalypse to ωεα. That be found ten times in this book, und not once in the other writings of John, is a particular proof of the Old Testament character of the Apocalypse.]Mark says: “It is to be understood of itself, that when it is said of the rest, they did not repent, the statement is to be confined to the apostates, and is not to be extended to those, whom the Lord has reserved for himself in secret.” The proper limitation, however, is rather this, that along side the world, which here is the subject of discourse, the church exists, and is also, indeed, much tainted by the worldly spirit, but by the judgments of the Lord it is awakened to repentance; see ch. 11. We have here a tenfold description of idols, divided by the seven and the three. and the first again by two and five. That by the works of their hands, it is not actions that are denoted, as some conceive, referring to ch. Revelation 2:22, Revelation 16:11 (where, however, actions are net spoken of), but works generally, is clear from Deuteronomy 4:28, “And ye shall there serve idols, the works of men’s hands, wood and stone, which see not, and hear not, and eat not, and smell not,” Psalms 115:4-7, “Their gods are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands,” Psalms 135:15-17. Further, in the service of idolatry, which those expositors understand to be meant by the works of the hands, the hands are not peculiarly employed. The worship is performed by the whole body. Finally, the repetition of the statement, “they repented not,” in Revelation 9:21, is more easily explained, if by the works of the hands the idols are understood. The certainly somewhat hard expression: Repent of the works, is softened by what follows immediately after. According to this it is as much as, repent of their worshipping the works of their hands, demons and idols. By the demons we can only understand evil spirits, according to the usage of the New Testament. There is no proof of lifeless images being ever meant by the demons. The second passage also, where demons are mentioned in the Apocalypse, ch. Revelation 16:14, indicates real existences, as there the spirits of demons are spoken of. The worship of idolatry may be viewed in two aspects. In the one it is a rude image-worship. The several heathen gods have no existence beside the material one in their statutes, the work of men’s hands. But in the other aspect, the idolatrous service has a demoniacal background. The allurement to give honour to those Elilim, those nonentities, proceeds from the powers of darkness, and since they constitute the spiritual background in the matter, the worship may be regarded as in a measure performed to them. Only a passing notice, however, is taken here of this aspect, and in what follows, the Seer immediately reverts again to the other. All profound investigations into the nature of idol-worship leads to this result. The fearful power, which it wields over the minds of men, is inexplicable without this spiritual background, which is first disclosed to our view in the New Testament, going, as it usually does, more to the bottom of things, while the Old Testament rests more in the material appearance. The apostles, who lived in the midst of heathen objects and relations, were thereby rendered, humanly considered, more competent for this, than those who know of heathenism only from books. The demoniacal character, the infernal origin of the evil, in all the more inveterate aberrations of the human mind, impresses itself on all who have it immediately before their eyes, and are capable of profound inquiries into the subject. However, the demoniacal nature of the Revolution and the rage for freedom has opened many eyes in our days, that were hitherto shut, to perceive the existence of a kingdom of darkness. It is quite similar in respect to the worship of idolatry. Airy phantoms, nonentities, were what came into immediate contact with men’s consciences, but behind these a real power lay concealed, and one of terrible energy. The demoniacal background continues through all ages, even to the end of the world. But in regard to “the works of men’s hands,” &c., changes take place in the course of time, yet not such as materially to affect the nature of things. The world is continually fabricating to itself new schemes, which it idolizes and worships. The Seer here makes account only of that form which was prevalent in his time, without meaning, however, to ascribe more to this than the rest. It is not without reason that the works of the hands are set first. For, the subject is not about a direct and conscious worshipping of demons. On the words, “that neither see,” &c., comp. Daniel 5:23,”But the God, in whose hand thy breath is, and whose are all thy ways, hast thou not glorified.” Revelation 9:21. And they repented not of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thefts. On the transgressions of the first table there follow now those of the second. The former were completed in the number ten, and these latter are comprised in four. The four, on account of the four quarters of heaven, is next to the ten, the signature of the comprehensive, the complete. The two first sins are against the fifth command, according to Luther’s reckoning, the sixth by the original text, or the first of the second table; the two last are against the sixth and Seventh, or the seventh and eighth respectively. Sorcery (mentioned also ch. Revelation 18:23, and Galatians 5:20) appears here among the transgressions of the second table, in connection with open murders, and is therefore viewed not in its religious aspect, but as one of the means by which a neighbour might be secretly injured, and injured in respect to his life. Fornication is the spirit of licentiousness, whence proceeds the transgression of the precept : Thou shalt not commit adultery. The Interludein Ch. Revelation 10:1 to Revelation 11:13 The seven angels with the seven trumpets form a prophetic picture in itself complete, bringing matters fully to an end, as was the case also with the preceding group of the six seals; and after it an entirely new beginning follows, the vision of the three enemies of the kingdom of God. In this section Revelation 10:1 to Revelation 11:13 forms a sort of episode; and ch. Revelation 11:14 connects itself with Revelation 9:21. The prophet sees a strong angel descending from heaven, Revelation 10:1. First by a symbolical action—namely, having his right foot planted on the sea, the left on the earth—and then by an express word, coupled with an oath, this angel announces, that under the trumpet of the seventh angel the full and perfect realization of all the promises made to the church concerning her final victory over the world and the kingdom of glory should be accomplished, Revelation 10:2-7. Then he gives to the prophet a little book of painful contents, which should enable him and the church to bear that first business with a courageous spirit.[Note: The correct view of this connection between the first business of the angel and the second is found in Vitringa: “This vision is of a consolatory kind, as in it the Holy Spirit sought to fit and prepare John, and in him the church, for the new revelation, contained in the little book, concerning some new and very severe calamity that was to befal the church, and of which much is said in the subsequent part of this prophecy; so that what was to come might be borne with a patient and composed mind, and with the experience of much consolation.”]He swallows the little book, and is thereby put in a capacity for uttering the prophecy which follows in ch. Revelation 11:1-13, and by which the contents of the little book are made known. The church—alas! that it should be so—has become subject to the power of the world, not only externally, but partly also internally, connected with it and leagued together for the persecution of the true confessors of the faith. The kernel, however, remains unhurt, and the elect abide stedfast under the trial. Those only who stand in a loose relation to the church shall fall under it. Whoever in the church has, to him it shall then be given, and only from him who has not shall be taken away what he has. Through the whole course of the external and internal pressure of the world on the church, the work of witnessing proceeds by the operation of the grace of God. And the reformation of the church, prepared by this, has been ever and anon brought about by means of God’s visitations of judgment. By these it is effected, that the blessed seed scattered by the faithful germinates, and grows and brings forth fruit.The interlude here between the sixth and seventh trumpets has its correspondence in the vision of the seven seals, which is united with this into a pair, and in common with it is of a preparatory and introductory character, in the episode between the sixth and seventh seals, ch. 7. There, too, the look is turned from the world, with the fates of which, according to the historical starting-point of the book, its chief scenes have alone to do, to the church; as is the case also here. How does it go with the church of God during the frightful judgments which come upon the world? This question is answered in the whole of the seventh chapter. But, while there the discourse is of the state of the church under the plagues which desolate the world, the question that is answered here, having immediate reference to the two last verses of ch. 9, is: How does the church stand related to the corruption of the world that lies in wickedness, and which proves itself to be irremediable even under the severest judgments of God? To this question the answer is of a less joyful kind than to the first. There the bright side of the church’s future is presented to our view; but here it is the dark side; though still even in the night the stars appear shining. It goes otherwise in the church of the Lord, in consequence of the strong pressure of the world on it, than could well have been imagined by those who have not known from their own experience the weakness of the flesh as to its dread of suffering, and the deceitfulness of the heart; who have not obtained any deep insight into the mystery of sin. For, even in the church much apostacy and corruption discover themselves, and there too is the agency of God to be displayed in executing judgment. But the pain this was fitted to occasion is softened, a balsam is prepared for the wound at the very first by the appearance of the rainbow around the strong angel’s head in ch. Revelation 10:1; and not only so, but against the apostacy a reaction takes place in the midst of the church, which is strengthened by God, and brought to glory, though not without and reverses; so that the judgment is not a consuming one, but only prepares the way for the operations of grace. When this manifests itself, then the distinction between the world and the church properly appears. The powers that lay bound in the latter are by the judgment of God set free. Of the world it is said in ch. Revelation 9:20-21, the two verses that form the transition to this interlude, “And the rest of the men that were not killed by these plagues, repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons,” etc. Here, on the other hand, it is said with manifest reference to that starting-point of the whole, “And the rest were frightened, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” Thus we obtain a firm foundation for the consolatory announcement of the strong angel, that the completion of the mystery of God infallibly approaches, and which was fitly made to precede the representation of the facts, that were so much fitted to beget despair in respect to that completion. For how could a church that had become so much identified with the world, obtain a final victory over the world! It is announced in reply, first, that the worldly admixture is not a total one, reaching to the innermost source of life, and then, that the judgment of God shall purge it out. Revelation 10:1. And I saw another strong angel come down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and the rainbow upon his head; and his face like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire. The other angel (understood most easily in relation to the angels who blew the trumpets), can only be Christ. For everything that is said to characterize this other angel applies only to God, who can be no angel, and to the reflection of his glory, Christ. We cannot suppose with Züllig, that Jehovah had communicated to the angel his proper insignia, for these are not communicable. It would, indeed, have been contrary to the divine word, “I will not give my glory to another”—a breaking down of the limits between the Creator and his creature, for which no analogy is to be found in the whole of Scripture. It must, at any rate, have been very carefully and expressly pointed out, that the glory was altogether of a borrowed kind. But there is no trace whatever of this. Further, the operations of the angel belong only to Christ. The planting of the right foot on the sea, and of the left on the earth, as certainly belongs to Christ, as it is to him and not to an angel that God has put in subjection the future world (Hebrews 2:5), as certainly as the dominion of the world must be possessed by the Lord and his Christ (ch. Revelation 11:15). It would have been presumption for a created angel to come forth thus. Nothing but the oath of God, or of one connected with him by oneness of nature, can secure for the church, what requires here to be secured for her. Scripture never attributes to angels such depth of insight into the divine decrees, that their authority could be a perfectly secure one for the church—comp. 1 Peter 1:12 and Revelation 5:3. It would have been somewhat different if the angel had made the oath merely in the name of God, or had related it as having been made by God; as in Genesis 22:16. And even there it is not an angel that speaks, but the angel of the Lord: “By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord.” Here, too, the suitableness of the result is founded on the person swearing; the angel swears in his name; and of such an oath, made by a created angel, Scripture furnishes no example.[Note: Vitringa: “Does the hope of the church rest on the oath of a created angel? Is it the part of a created angel to swear, that the words of prophecy and the promises given to the church shall he fulfilled? Assuredly, if the hope of the church shall stand unmoved, it cannot he sustained excepting by the faithfulness and oath of that very person, to whose nature failure is not incident, and which of itself is able to perform whatever it swears to—and this can be said only of God. Wherefore God swears by himself (Hebrews 5:7) when his object was to confirm the faith of his people regarding what he had promised in the Old Testament, and shew the unchangeableness of his council.”]Then, in the original passage, Daniel 12:7, it is not a created angel, but Michael, the Logos, who stands upon the waters of Tigris, as the angelhere upon the sea and earth, and swears. Finally, the reference to Christ has on its side the analogy of ch. Revelation 7:2, where he appears likewise under the name of another angel. There he comes forth for the consolation of his church, which was troubled at the prospect of the judgments which were to pass over the world; here he meets the disquieting doubts regarding the completion of the kingdom of God and its final victory over the world, which were awakened by the thought of the worldly spirit having gained so much in the church itself. There he consoles the church, when ready to faint on account of her participation in the world’s plagues, and here, in like manner, when ready to faint on account of her participation in the world’s sins. What seems to be against this angel being Christ, has already nearly all been met at ch. Revelation 7:2, comp. also ch. Revelation 18:1, where Christ is designated in a similar manner. The conclusion: “The angel swears here by the Creator, therefore he is himself a creature,” is a very hasty one. The mere circumstance of Christ appearing here as an angel precluded his swearing by himself, and required that he should swear by him who had sent him and who was represented by him. Were such reasoning sound, from how much of what Christ spake in his state of humiliation (with which his appearance here is on a line) might conclusions be drawn against his true Godhead! But why should Christ not have been expressly named? why is he so vaguely designated? Because the Seer will only relate what he saw, and deliver to his reader the sacred riddle, which had been presented to himself, and which he had himself solved. He acted quite similarly at the appearance of Christ in ch. 1. Christ did not need to come down from heaven, on account of what he had to say to John, for John was in heaven. But the reason for the coming down is given in Revelation 10:2. He comes down to plant his foot upon the sea and the earth, and by this act to indicate his approaching possession of both. This was the proper position for the uttering of the oath. For the oath delivers a commentary on that symbolical action, and discloses its meaning. There is no necessity for supposing that John looked down from heaven upon earth. The most natural view is, that from out of the earth he saw the strong angel coming down. John’s being in heaven is to be understood positively and not exclusively. According to John 3:3, Christ also was at once in heaven and on the earth. Where the earth presents anything to be seen, there John was on the earth, us in ch. John 12:18, he stands on the sand of the sea, and in ch. John 17:3, he finds himself in the wilderness. But where, again, anything was to be seen in heaven, he is in heaven. Such a double-sided existence, in a certain degree, belongs to all believers; their citizenship is in heaven, Philippians 3:20, and still they behold the doings of God upon the earth, Psalms 46:9. The mind is in a sickly state when the eye is shut in regard to the operations of God upon the earth. The being in heaven, with John, existed only potentially. On the cloud, as a foreshadowing of judgment, see on ch. Revelation 1:7. Remarks like this, “By the cloud the brightness of the angel was not only indicated, but also in a fitting manner veiled,” or this, “covered with a cloud on account of the extreme splendour, which blinds the eyes,” are alien to the scriptural mode of representation, in which the symbol of the cloud has but one well-established meaning. The object of the judgment foreshadowed by the cloud is primarily the world. To it more immediately belongs the threatening symbolically announced in the cloud. On it first of all does this cloud, big with furious storms, discharge what it contains. For the completion of the judgment on the world is in Revelation 10:2-7 set before the view of the church, whose completion is inseparably bound up with that. Still, we must not stand simply at this. The appearance is prefigurative of the whole contents of the interlude, as Bengel remarks: “In such appearances we must keep the attire of the person who appears, and the word spoken by him in connection with each other. Thus the attire of Christ in ch. 1, and what he presently afterwards caused John to write to the churches, throw light mutually on each other.” All that occurs in the interlude of judicial agency must stand in connection with the cloud. But in ch. Revelation 11:13 we read of a great judgment, which alights on the degenerate church. We must therefore contemplate the cloud, charged with lightning, thunder, and hail, with mingled feelings. It is at once a call to joy, and an occasion for awakening fear and trembling, exciting the cry, Woe is me, and Lord have mercy on us. But the wound which the cloud makes is healed by the rainbow (Luther, following a false reading: a rainbow; there is only one spiritual rainbow, as there is only one whose head the rainbow can adorn)—the symbol of divine grace returning after wrath—of the church to which alone belong the declarations, “I kill and I make alive,” and “he wounds and he binds up, he smites and his hands heal.” Such things belong exclusively to the church, while the cloud is common to it with the world. Even when there is much sin with us, there is much more grace with God, which brings forth the lovely symbol of the rainbow to cheer the church when terrified by the frightful cloud, and ready to faint under a sense of sin. The rainbow on the head of the angel at the outset pledges to the church the completion of God’s mystery, as is expressly promised in Revelation 10:7; pledges to her what is promised in ch. Revelation 11:1-13, the stedfastness of the faithful, in the time of temptation, the salutary, and not, as in the world, destructive operation of the divine judgments. The face like the sun marks the angel as the possessor of the glory of the Lord—comp. on ch. Revelation 1:16; Hebrews 1:3; 2 Corinthians 4:6. The face like the sun calls aloud to the church: “Beware of him, and obey his voice, provoke him not; for he will not pardon your transgressions, because my name is in him. But if thou wilt indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speak, then will I be an enemy to thine enemies, and an adversary to thine adversaries,” (Exodus 23:21-22). The preservation of the divine glory, as it was imaged by the face like the sun, is the completion of God’s judgment on the world, and also the judgment on the church, and the manifestation of grace toward her. For in the forgiveness of sins the glory and holiness of God, his absolute being, shine forth in the clearest and purest manner, according to Hosea 11:9, “I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim (as formerly Sodom), for I am God and not a man, I am the Holy in thy midst, and do not go into the city”—am no son of man, like those who walk upon the earth, and go out and in at the gates of the city. The moderation of the judicial punishments inflicted on those who are called after God’s name appears there as a manifestation of the holiness of God. He whose face beams like the sun, the Holy, is free from all human passions, which always keep the eye stiffly directed to only one side. Two things are said of the feet, their pillar-like and their fiery appearance. As the latter characteristic is manifestly of a polemical nature—comp. what was said on the corresponding phrase, “like clear brass,” in ch. Revelation 1:15, Revelation 2:18 so the other also, the pillar-like appearance, must be understood in a polemical sense. It may be that as the fire images the consuming character of God’s punitive righteousness, so the designation as pillars brings out the massive character, which renders it so crushing to all upon whom it is exercised. But the view of Bengel appears preferable, “to hold to his post in an invincible manner where he plants his feet,” “the immoveable stedfastness of the heavenly conqueror against all the resistance of his enemies.” The post-like standing suits quite well in Revelation 10:2, and at ch. Revelation 3:12, where also unchangeable stedfastness is indicated by the pillars. The dark cloud, threatening fire, forms the beginning, fife itself the close. In the pillar of cloud and fire also we have the two combined together, Exodus 13:21. The two there also have a threatening character, and symbolize the Lord’s judgments upon his enemies. The symbol of the Lord’s presence exhibited a bright character for Israel only while they continued faithful. Revelation 10:2. And he had in his hand a little book open; and he set his right foot on the sea, and the left upon the earth. That the angel has here the open book in his hand, shews plainly that we are not to separate the interlude into two parts independent of each other, ch. Revelation 10:1-7, and ch. Revelation 10:8-11. If the little book were without meaning as to the first action, the angel could not have appeared with it so early in his hand—as Zόllig conceives: “The little book belongs to the description of his appearance, although it has nothing to do with what immediately follows.” The impression made would then be a very disturbing one. But the correct view is rather this: Revelation 10:2-7 meet the doubt and disquietude, which the partly distressing contents of the little book were fitted to raise. In this it is represented how the worldly spirit was to press hard upon the church, and to some extent also press into her. Should such a church, so deeply tainted by the world, be held worthy of attaining to a complete victory over the world? Must not the accomplishment of God’s mystery, which he had announced to his servants the prophets, be staid in the middle of its course? Could there be anything more than half faith kept in regard to the whole salvation? The consideration of the sinfulness of the chosen of the entire church—this is the dangerous rock on which the hope of a completed work of salvation threatens to be shipwrecked. Without the supposition of such a separate occasion and reference, Revelation 10:2-7 is scarcely intelligible. Apart from this, what need were there for the solemn asseveration by an oath, that after the preliminary judgments the final ones should follow, and the “regeneration” therewith connected? That, apart from the one mighty stumbling-block, is the most natural in the world for the believing mind. The little book here manifestly looks back to the book in ch. Revelation 5:1. But the remark of Bengel is quite erroneous, that” this little book forms the remnant or the filling up of that book; in that this also was contained and sealed along with it.” The contents of the book have already been fully communicated. The book contains the judgments on the world, the little book the destinies of the church. With the distinction of the book[Note: The βιβλὶον is in form a diminutive, but in use is scarcely distinguished from βίβλος.]from the little book—founded on the circumstance that the sins and punishments of the world constitute matter of a much more comprehensive nature than those of the church—the circumstance goes hand in hand of the book being written on both sides; for this indicated the fulness of its matter. The book was sealed with seven seals, and no one could open it but Christ, who did open it, after John had wept much that no one could open it and look into it. The subject in hand there was the victory of the church over the world. But here, on the other hand, the little book is opened. The subject of which it treats is the injuries sustained by the church from the pernicious influence exercised over it by the world. They lie also upon the surface, and irresistibly force themselves upon one’s notice. Here the word holds: “Lord, my sins are ever before me.” The planting of the foot on anything is a symbol of taking possession and maintaining with invincible power. In Daniel 12:6, Michael appears as standing on the waters of the Tigris, as a sign that he has power over the might of heathendom, and consequently could bring it under his dominion. Comp., besides, Psalms 8:7, where to put under the feet and to have dominion are parallel; Psalms 110:1, Joshua 10:24. A commentary on the symbolical action is given here, as in Daniel, by the oath, which proceeds upon an unconditional subjection of the earth and the sea. That the sea here, as commonly in the Revelation, is used of the sea of the nations (see on ch. Revelation 8:8), is clear from this alone, that the literal sea has nothing properly to do with the matter in hand: it was not comprehended in the revolt against God and his kingdom, and the placing it under subjection, as announced by the symbolical action, would have been without meaning. The feet which were placed on the sea and the earth are, according to Revelation 10:1, like pillars of fire; they fix themselves fast like posts wherever they are placed, and consume those who oppose themselves. Where these feet are placed, there revolt against God must have existed. To this result we are led by the consideration that the sea here, and likewise in Revelation 10:5; Revelation 10:8, is named before the earth, and also by the right foot being placed on it. And in the next group it is not out of the literal sea, but out of the sea of the nations, that the beast arises. Revelation 10:3. And he cried with a loud voice, as a lion roars; and when he cried the seven thunders uttered their voices. The hostile character of the loud voice is made manifest by comparing it with the roar of the lion. This, in a series of passages of the Old Testament, has already been consecrated as an expression of the wrath of God against his enemies—comp. Hosea 11:10, where the Lord roars like a lion for his church against the world; Joe 3:16, “The Lord shall roar out of Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem; and the heavens and the earth shall shake; and the Lord shall be the hope of his people, and the strength of the children of Israel: “also the passages resting on that of Joel, Amos 1:2, Jeremiah 25:30. Christ had already been designated the lion of the tribe of Judah, on account of his terribleness to his enemies. Whom the threatening respects is manifest from Revelation 10:2, where the strong angel plants his foot upon the sea and the earth. To them there is called out a frightful, “Thus far and no farther;” to them is announced the complete discomfiture, which brings for ever to an end their opposition to heaven. We afterwards see the first beast rising out of the sea—the ungodly world-power, and out of the earth the second beast—the ungodly spirit of earthly wisdom; by which the conflict between God and the world, that had hitherto been indicated only in general features, is to be more pointedly delineated. The strong voice like the roaring of a lion itself intimates that the matter is not to be very greatly protracted. Jesus formerly exclaimed with a loud voice when on the cross, “It is finished.” And the loud voice here announces that this last word of his upon earth shall be kept in the final victory of the church, and the subjection of the world, which have their foundation in the work accomplished by Christ upon the cross.[Note: Through the μυκᾶσθαι, properly mugire, the roar of the lion is here fitly designated, because a stronger and more palpable expression than the ὠρύεσθαυι of 1 Peter 5:8. It is too far-fetched to think of the resemblance which the voice of the lion is said to have to that of cattle, when he has got his prey; Plutarch remarks concerning it, de animal.: κᾶνλάβὼσινὁτιοῦν, ἀνακαλοῦνται (calling on their young) μόσχουμυκήματιτὸβράχημαποιοῦντεςὁ ?́μοιον.]What was uttered by the angel in a brief and sharp word of threatening is continued and carried forward by the seven thunders. This connection with the lion’s roar alone shews that the seven trumpets must possess a threatening character. Thunders in the Apocalypse, too, always carry a polemical aspect, always stand in respect to the frightful judgments of God, whether they may only be threatened, or may be actually executed—comp. on ch. Revelation 4:5, Revelation 8:5, Revelation 11:19, Revelation 16:18. Finally, there can be no doubt that the seven trumpets here point to Psalms 29. There the voice of the Lord is mentioned seven times, which cannot be regarded as accidental, on account of the corresponding seven number of the verses. But in Psalms 29 the thunder bears a frightful character (“the voice of the Lord cleaves with flames of fire,” Psalms 29:7); it appears as a symbolical threatening to the world, and hence also as a symbolical promise to the church, which is borne down by the world. From these remarks it will be seen with what justice it is still maintained, that” because thunder speaks, the subject cannot necessarily be a matter of terror.” The not is here plainly too much. Nor are we to give force to the article, so as to suppose there should be actually seven peals of thunder; these are no more to be understood really, than the seven Spirits of God in ch. Revelation 1:4. This belongs only to the vision, and has its root in Psalms 29. It is remarkable that in the writings of the New Testament there is next to no mention of thunder, excepting in those of John. It occurs in the gospel, John 12:29, where a commentary is given in John 12:31; so that there also the thunder has a polemical character; it announces that the name of Jesus shall be glorified by the execution of judgment on this world. Then it occurs in a long series of passages in the Apocalypse. Once only is it found in Mark, Mark 3:17, and with reference to John, to whom, along with his brother James, we are told, the Lord gave the name of Boanerges, sons of thunder. This passage supplies us with a key for the frequent occurrence of thunder in the Revelation, as was remarked by Bengel, “A son of thunder is a fit person for hearing voices of thunder.” The name Boanerges is held by Rationalism to be a name of reproach, but it is not less a name of honour, and significative of a divine mission, than the name Peter, with which it is very closely connected. In the application of that name the Lord described the Apocalypse long before it was written, so that it may be said to be deprived of its signification, whenever the Apocalypse is ascribed to another than John. It rests upon a twofold supposition; first, a vivid sense of the judicial righteousness of God in respect to those against whom it is directed (to the strength of which in James, his roughness, as the world would say, he probably owed his early martyrdom), and an aptness for the symbolical language of nature. Another point of connexion as to the past for the frequent occurrence of thunder in the Apocalypse, is furnished by Luke 9:51. John and James would have had fire immediately called down from heaven on those who would not receive Jesus; in which we have not merely to think of their strong sense of the divine righteousness, which then certainly was mingled with dross, and required to be purified by the fire of the Holy Spirit, but also of the peculiar cast of mind, which should have led them to seek for the exercise of the divine righteousness in this particular form. Revelation 10:4. And when the seven thunders had uttered (their voices), I was going to write (them); and I heard a voice from heaven saying: Seal what the seven thunders have uttered, and write it not. A speech of definite meaning is attributed to the thunders, to each its separate import. For, otherwise, it would have been impossible to write what they had spoken. There is here a remarkable coincidence with John 12:28, where also we have a voice of thunder with a definite meaning. We must not compare here the unutterable words of Paul in 2 Corinthians 12:4. For that the discourse here is not of impenetrable secrets, as it is there, is plain from the circumstance that John was going to write the words. The means of a more exact explanation in regard to this demand are furnished by the fundamental passages of the Old Testament, Daniel 8:26, “Shut up the vision, for it is for a long time”—where the words that follow, “I was astonished at the vision, and no one understood it,” plainly show what is meant by the shutting up; Daniel 12:4, where Daniel is enjoined to fold up the roll, which contained the prophecy that had been imparted to him, and to seal it till the time of the fulfilment—meaning, that the prophecy was for the present as good as closed up and sealed, the church of the future should alone be able to make a right use of it; Daniel 12:9, where the angel answered to the prayer of Daniel, for more explicit information regarding the prophecy, that he could not impart this, for the prophecy was to be shut up and sealed till the last time. From these fundamental passages, it follows, 1. That here it is only a temporary keeping secret that is spoken of. From the first indeed we could expect no other than such; for we have here the Revelation of Jesus Christ. Accordingly, we are not to think of an absolute and perpetual secrecy. Substantially, the sequel must disclose what is here shut up. The book with seven seals also in ch.5 was only provisionally sealed. In common life it is not what is never to be read, but only what is not to be read in the meantime, that is sealed. 2. That the ground of this preliminary keeping secret is to be sought in this, that the basis for the understanding of it meanwhile was wanting. With this also agrees ch. Revelation 22:10. The injunction not to seal is there founded on the consideration, that the fulfilment should soon throw light on the prophecy. The general truth, that the seven thunders announced the destruction of the ungodly power, was plain enough. But for the particular points involved, there was still wanting the necessary foundation to a proper understanding, and it would have been needful to trespass on the territory of the following groups. In these we are to expect, according to this passage, detailed explanations regarding the overthrow of the powers that are opposed to the kingdom of God. The next group itself treats of the three enemies of God’s kingdom; the sixth relates the destruction of these three enemies; in ch. Revelation 20:7, ss., the assault and overthrow of Gog and Magog are depicted. What is thus delineated in later portions of the overthrow of the enemies of God’s kingdom, and of the final victory of the latter, must be essentially identical with that, which is here meanwhile shut up in secrecy. In regard to the voice of the angel Bengel remarks, “From the commencement of the book the Lord Jesus himself has so often told John to write, that it is doubtless his voice also, which in other passages commands John to write, and here interdicts his writing, while it commands him to take the little book.” If we can suppose, that it was Christ who appeared in the character of the strong angel, we can appropriately understand by the voice from heaven, the voice of Christ. For, his appearing as the strong angel does not interfere with his sitting on the right hand of the Father. In the days of his flesh, also, he was not merely on the earth, but constantly in heaven too—comp. John 3:13. But that the voice does not proceed from the angel but from heaven arises from this, that the angel has here a special mission, within the compass of which there lay no control over the composition of the Apocalypse. Revelation 10:5. And the angel whom I saw stand upon the sea and the earth lifted up his right hand to heaven. Revelation 10:6. And swore by him that liveth for ever and ever, who has made heaven and what is therein, and the earth and what is therein, and the sea and what is therein, that henceforth no time more should be. Revelation 10:7. But in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he shall sound, then the mystery of God is finished, as he has declared to his servants the prophets. The statement: whom I saw stand, is not merely a personal description. The oath forms a commentary on the placing of the foot on the sea and the earth. The original passage is Daniel 12:7, “And I heard the man clothed in linen, who was upon the waters of the river, when he held up his right hand and his left hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever, that in a time, two times, and an half time . . . all these things shall be finished.” There the angel raises both hands to heaven, here only the right hand; for in the one hand (known to be the left from what is here said of the right) he holds the book. The passage of Daniel, again, points back to Deuteronomy 32:40-41, where Jehovah swears that he will avenge his oppressed church on her persecutors: “For I lift my hand to heaven, and say, As truly as I live for ever I whet my glittering sword, and my hand lays hold on judgment,” etc. The strong angel swears by him who lives for ever, and ever, who has made heaven, etc. He who lives for ever will reign for ever, ch. Revelation 11:15. He must act over again the past, as it perpetually springs up afresh. Eternal, like himself, must his protection also be over his people. He can never surrender them to destruction, but must conduct them to the consummation of glory—comp. Psalms 102:24, and Deuteronomy 32:40, where Jehovah gives his eternity as a pledge that he will execute vengeance for his people. He who has made heaven and the other regions of created beings cannot be satisfied with a partial dominion; the end must belong to him equally with the beginning (see on ch. Revelation 1:8), the kingdom of the world must be unconditionally his; there can be nothing in the heaven, on the earth, and in the sea, whether literal or that of the nations, which for a continuance can raise against him a successful opposition; all in heaven, sea, and earth, must at last give way and vanish, that is contrary to their original destination (ch. Revelation 21:1). See on ch. Revelation 4:11 in regard to the creation as a pledge of the completion of the kingdom of God. The object of the oath is that no time more shall be. Time, here, is as much as, delay—comp. Revelation 2:21, Revelation 6:11, where time occurs in a similar sense, Isaiah 13:22, Habakkuk 2:3. The more exact import is given in Revelation 10:7. From that we learn that a delay is here meant, which might intervene between the seventh trumpet and the completion of the mystery of God. In the earlier trumpets a delay had entered in regard to the coming of the kingdom of God in its completion. The church, ready to faint under a sense of sin, is afraid that matters shall go under the seventh trumpet as they have done before, that they shall continue to stand at the suspension of a particular judgment. The doubt has respect, not to the entering of the seventh trumpet, but to the nature and extent of it. The church dreads lest her sins may deprive her of the good to be brought by it. Because she has not answered her destination and calling, she thinks that she can look for no full salvation, no perfect victory. The completion has receded from her to an invisible distance. This is the temptation that the oath meets. The supposition of some expositors, that an absolute ceasing of time is what is here spoken of, introduces a modern thought into the passage; for, according to the scriptural point of view, eternity is not the antithesis to time, but measureless time, and is dispersed by Revelation 10:7, where the discourse is not, as by this supposition we should have expected, of the entrance of eternity. I pass over in silence the still more arbitrary exposition of Bengel. The mystery of God, which shall be finished in the days of the seventh trumpet, must be entirely of a joyful nature. For it is said literally, “as he has evangelised his servants the prophets,” as he has given to them concerning it a joyful message. By the connection, the mystery has respect to the dominion of Christ over the sea and the earth. For, the symbolical action that expresses this, forms the starting-point of the oath. But we recognize more exactly the contents of the mystery of God from ch. Revelation 11:15; Revelation 11:18, where the things concealed here from the church actually appear. We learn there, that it affects the Lord’s dominion over the world, the judgment of the world, and the full establishment of the servants of God in their inheritance. It was by pointing to this glorious end, that the prophets of the Old Testament consoled believers during the long and dismal ages of the world’s ascendancy and power. The reality of this consolation must be made good at the trumpet of the seventh angel.” God’s children sow, indeed, sorrowfully and in tears, but at last, and notwithstanding their sins, the period comes for which they longed. The harvest time comes when they gather their sheaves. Then shall all their bitter sorrow be turned into joy and laughter.” The joyful message of the completion is marked as a mystery. The idea of mystery is that of absolute inaccessibility to ordinary sense and discernment—comp. on ch. Revelation 1:1. This is fast bound within the circle of the present. Because it knows not the power of God, Matthew 22:29, it cannot realize the thought of such a radical change of state, as would be implied in the coming of a new heavens and a new earth, and the sea being no more found. It thinks that the church is constantly to lie on the ground, the world always to triumph. Because it knows not the invincible grace of God, it casts a glance on the sins of the church, and. feels as if these were sufficient to throw an insuperable obstacle in the way of the completion of God’s kingdom. The expression: then is finished,[Note: Literally: And it is finished, in the Hebr. style; comp. the êáé́ ? in the Apod. Jus. iv. 15. The various readings have arisen from people failing to enter into the tempus propheticum.][1] stands with realizing confidence for: then shall be finished—comp. the “it is done,” in ch. Revelation 11:15, and in Revelation 11:17, “Thou hast taken.” Revelation 10:8. And the voice, which I heard from heaven, spake again with me and said, Go away, take the open little book in the hand of the angel, who stands upon the sea and the earth. After John, and with him the church, has been furnished with heavenly consolation, the little book with its painful contents was presented to him. Here also there is not a mere personal description, when the book is spoken of as being in the hand of the angel, who stands on the sea and the earth. The pain, which the little book naturally occasioned, was healed by a glance at Him in whose hand it was. Notwithstanding the little book, the church’s victory over the sea and the earth remains certain. The contents of the little book are already by anticipation determined by the analogy of the book in the passage of Ezekiel here referred to, Ezekiel 2:8, ss. From this we expect, 1. That the little book should be of a mournful character; 2. That it should have respect, not to the fates of the world, but to those of the church; for that little book has to do with the sins of a degenerate church, and with the judgments which the Lord was going to inflict on account of them. The subject of it is still farther determined by Revelation 10:9-10, according to which it is a painful one to the Seer. And the result thus obtained is confirmed by the representation given of the contents of the book in ch. Revelation 11:1-13. It treats of the falling away of the church, and the divine visitations sent in chastisement for this. As the rainbow provides consolation in respect to the cloud, so the angel’s standing upon the sea and the earth, provides consolation in respect to the little book, which must produce despair, unless it were found in such a hand. Revelation 10:9. And I went away to the angel and spake to him, that he should give me the little book. And he said to me, Take and eat it, and it shall make thy belly bitter, but in thy mouth it shall be sweet as honey. The Seer must not merely eat the little book; he must swallow it, so that it might go down into his body. Ezekiel 3:3 of Ezekiel corresponds “Thou shalt make thy body (not merely thy mouth) eat this book, and fill thy bowels with it.” The substantial import of the swallowing is given by Ezekiel, Ezekiel 3:10, in the words, “All my words, which I speak to thee, do thou take into thy heart.” The man of God must take the divine truth into his inmost being, and convert it into juice and blood (comp. Psalms 40:9, “Thy law is in my heart,” properly in mine entrails). Thus alone does he become qualified to appear as God’s spokesman, to prophecy—comp. Ezekiel 3:1, where the speaking and prophecying appear as the end and consequence of the eating, “Thou son of man, eat what thou findest (not, what thou likest), eat this roll, and go, speak to the house of Israel.” Immediately after he has swallowed the roll, which is the heavenly exemplar of the existing book of his prophecies, precisely as the little book of John comes again into view in ch. Revelation 11:1-13, it is said in Ezekiel 3:4, “And he said to me, Thou son of man, go to the house of Israel, and speak to them my words.” That the sweetness in the mouth does not proceed from the partly agreeable contents, is clear from the passage in Ezekiel. The book, which he found to be like honey in his mouth for sweetness, contained nothing but what was grievous, it was written throughout with lamentation, mourning, and woe. That the sweetness, too, is ascribed to the mouth, and the bitterness to the belly, shews, that we are not to think of contents partly sweet, and partly bitter. The real cause of the sweetness we learn from the passage, on which, again, that of Ezekiel rests, Jeremiah 15:16, “I found thy words and ate them ( received them into my inmost being), and thy words were to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart, for thy name is named upon me, Jehovah, God of Hosts” It is unspeakably sweet and delectable to be the organ and the spokesman of the Most High. Then also the matter of the words themselves comes into consideration,—comp. Psalms 19:11, where the commands of the Lord are described as sweeter than honey and the honey-comb. Even the most pungent divine truths have for a spiritually minded man a joyful and refreshing side.[Note: Vitringa: “The prophets, carried out of themselves, pass entirely over, as it were, into the room of God, and, divesting themselves of carnal affection, rising into the region of pure and spiritual contemplation, whatever they saw they could do for the glory of God, and for manifesting his righteousness us well as his grace, they approved of in their own mind.”] The bitterness, which the spiritual food occasioned in the body of the Seer (literally, “it shall make thee bitter in the body”), denotes the sharp pain, produced by the special contents of the word, that was committed to him. It is not so direct as the sweetness of the mouth derived from the original passage in Ezekiel. But Jeremiah 15:17 substantially corresponds. The prophet there, speaking of the mournful part of his work, says, “I sat not in the assembly of the mockers nor rejoiced, I sat alone because of thy hand (Michaelis: ‘brooding over the misfortunes of my people, which I must predict according to thy command’), for with indignation thou fillest me.” We must connect with this the passage in Ezek Ezekiel 2:10, which declares the book-roll to have been filled with lamentation, mourning, and woe. In Ezekiel 3:14, “And I went embittered in the heat of my spirit,” there is found, not merely the substance of the figurative representation before us, but also in the embittered, in the feeling of vexatious sadness and holy indignation, a personal application of it. Sweetness is attributed to the mouth, because this is the organ of God’s orator, the prophet as such,—comp. Isaiah 6:5; Isaiah 6:7, Isaiah 59:21. But to the prophet, as such, the divine revelation was sweet. All was agreeable to him, that came from the clear and pure well-spring of God. In contrast to the mouth the body distinguishes the Seer as an individual, as a member of the church. What is said here to the prophet: take it and eat it, is in substance applicable to all believers, and especially to the teachers of the church in relation to holy writ. Their place in the kingdom of God will be measured by their fidelity in complying with this prescription. We, too, must eat and even swallow it; not some choice portion of it, but the whole—not that alone which is agreeable to us, like those who separate the gospel from the law, but that also, which may occasion us the deepest pain. The twofold effect is still also renewing itself—on the one hand, joy in the whole word of God and cordial approbation, and on the other deep pain, in so far as the individual himself and the church are thereby condemned, and in so far as the hand of God, which is stretched out for punishment, comes there into contact with them. The view, which regards the book as containing “the secret of the new world,” tears it away in a violent manner from the prophecy in Revelation 10:11, which, according to the original passage in Ezekiel, can only be regarded as the product of the swallowed book, and throws the whole, indeed, into confusion. Nor can it give anything but a very constrained explanation of the bitterness. What refers to the judgments of God upon a sinful world, and the final completion of God’s mystery, Revelation 10:7, is sweet both for the mouth and for the body. For the Christian, for the man of God, it is through and through a joyful message, a gospel—according to Revelation 10:7, comp. Luke 21:28. Revelation 10:10. And I took the little book from the hand of the angel and swallowed it; and it was sweet in my mouth like honey; and when I had eaten it, it griped me in the belly. The order is a reverse one, first sweetness, then bitterness. The change is intentional. It indicates, that the two sharply contend for the priority. The pain was first named before the joy, because it was here so deep, that it was soon to overcome the joy. Then the joy was mentioned before the pain, because such must be the order connected with the ways of God and uprightness. Revelation 10:11. And he said to me, Thou must again prophecy upon peoples, and nations, and tongues, and many kings. Bengel says on the: thou must, “He, who has not received and eaten the little book, cannot prophecy, but he, who has received and eaten it, must do so. So Paul also must testify, Acts 23:11.” Under the prophecying the symbolical action also in ch. Revelation 11:1-2, is comprehended. For, the symbolical action, especially an action that takes place merely internally, like the one mentioned there, is only one of the manifold forms of prophecy, separated from the simple figure by a fluctuating boundary. Again, as in the vision of the seven seals, and in the six first trumpets.[Note: Falsely Bengel: “In respect to the old prophets, to whose prophecies this very angel had referred.” The reference to the earlier prophecies of the prophet himself is demanded by the indefinite designation of the object, which can only be explained by supposing what is common to the earlier and the later prophecying to be here marked.]But in another point of view differently. There, as the peoples, etc., were visited by the Lord with severe judgments; here, as they overflowed the church, seduced her into apostacy, and drew down upon her the judgments of the Lord. That it can be prophecied only in this respect upon the peoples and nations, is manifest from what was formerly remarked on the contents of the little book, which here again comes to light, (for little book and prophecy stand related to each other here precisely as in ch. Revelation 1:1; Revelation 1:3, revelation and prophecy). And it is further manifest from that, which the prophet in ch. Revelation 11:1-13 announces in fulfilment of the command to prophecy upon the peoples and nations. There, in Revelation 10:2, the outer court is given to the Gentiles, and they tread the holy city; the beast out of the abyss, the ungodly power, carries on the war with the two witnesses, overcomes and kill them, Revelation 10:7; those of the peoples, and tribes, and tongues, and nations, see their corpses three days and a half, and suffer not their corpses to be buried, Revelation 10:9; they that dwell upon the earth rejoice over them, Revelation 10:10. The translation of Luther has, through an important oversight,” to the peoples,” instead of “upon the peoples.”[Note: The ἐπὶ ? is found quite similarly used in John 12:16. Τότεἐμνήσθησανὅτιταῦταἦνἐπʼ ? αὐτῷγεγραμμένα. The προφητεύειν with ἐπὶ ? of what the prophecy has for its object, corresponds to the Hebr. δϊπαΰ with ςμ: comp. 1 Kings 22:8; 1 Kings 22:18.The four number of the peoples, &c., the signature of the earth, points to the oecumenical character of this assault upon the church—comp. the corresponding expression, “who dwell upon the earth,” in ch. Revelation 11:10—and forbids our confining the prophecy to any single event in history. By the mention of many kings we are taken out of the relations of the Seer’s own time, in which the Christian church had to do with only one king, the Roman emperor. It shews, that he stood upon a high watch-tower, from which he looked abroad upon the whole history of the church and the world. That the kings were heathenish in their minds is shewn, not only by ch. 11, but also by the connection with the heathen here—comp. on ch. Revelation 7:9. Ewald’s supposition, that the kings are the leaders of armies, is only a proof of embarrassment. The kings here return again afterwards in the ten kings, who were in the service of the beast, ch. Revelation 17:12; in the kings of the earth, who, after the overthrow of Rome, warred against Christ under the auspices of the beast, ch. Revelation 19:19; and in the kings of the whole earth, whom the wicked spirits in ch. Revelation 16:14 actuated in the conflict against Christ. To the command to prophecy corresponds the prophet as described in the section ch. Revelation 11:1-13. This falls into two divisions. The first, Revelation 10:1-2, gives the promise, that the faith of the elect shall not expire; the second, Revelation 10:3-11, certifies the uninterrupted continuance of the office of witnessing. The Interludein Ch. Revelation 10:1 to Revelation 11:13 The seven angels with the seven trumpets form a prophetic picture in itself complete, bringing matters fully to an end, as was the case also with the preceding group of the six seals; and after it an entirely new beginning follows, the vision of the three enemies of the kingdom of God. In this section Revelation 10:1 to Revelation 11:13 forms a sort of episode; and ch. Revelation 11:14 connects itself with Revelation 9:21. The prophet sees a strong angel descending from heaven, Revelation 10:1. First by a symbolical action—namely, having his right foot planted on the sea, the left on the earth—and then by an express word, coupled with an oath, this angel announces, that under the trumpet of the seventh angel the full and perfect realization of all the promises made to the church concerning her final victory over the world and the kingdom of glory should be accomplished, Revelation 10:2-7. Then he gives to the prophet a little book of painful contents, which should enable him and the church to bear that first business with a courageous spirit.[Note: The correct view of this connection between the first business of the angel and the second is found in Vitringa: “This vision is of a consolatory kind, as in it the Holy Spirit sought to fit and prepare John, and in him the church, for the new revelation, contained in the little book, concerning some new and very severe calamity that was to befal the church, and of which much is said in the subsequent part of this prophecy; so that what was to come might be borne with a patient and composed mind, and with the experience of much consolation.”]He swallows the little book, and is thereby put in a capacity for uttering the prophecy which follows in ch. Revelation 11:1-13, and by which the contents of the little book are made known. The church—alas! that it should be so—has become subject to the power of the world, not only externally, but partly also internally, connected with it and leagued together for the persecution of the true confessors of the faith. The kernel, however, remains unhurt, and the elect abide stedfast under the trial. Those only who stand in a loose relation to the church shall fall under it. Whoever in the church has, to him it shall then be given, and only from him who has not shall be taken away what he has. Through the whole course of the external and internal pressure of the world on the church, the work of witnessing proceeds by the operation of the grace of God. And the reformation of the church, prepared by this, has been ever and anon brought about by means of God’s visitations of judgment. By these it is effected, that the blessed seed scattered by the faithful germinates, and grows and brings forth fruit.The interlude here between the sixth and seventh trumpets has its correspondence in the vision of the seven seals, which is united with this into a pair, and in common with it is of a preparatory and introductory character, in the episode between the sixth and seventh seals, ch. 7. There, too, the look is turned from the world, with the fates of which, according to the historical starting-point of the book, its chief scenes have alone to do, to the church; as is the case also here. How does it go with the church of God during the frightful judgments which come upon the world? This question is answered in the whole of the seventh chapter. But, while there the discourse is of the state of the church under the plagues which desolate the world, the question that is answered here, having immediate reference to the two last verses of ch. 9, is: How does the church stand related to the corruption of the world that lies in wickedness, and which proves itself to be irremediable even under the severest judgments of God? To this question the answer is of a less joyful kind than to the first. There the bright side of the church’s future is presented to our view; but here it is the dark side; though still even in the night the stars appear shining. It goes otherwise in the church of the Lord, in consequence of the strong pressure of the world on it, than could well have been imagined by those who have not known from their own experience the weakness of the flesh as to its dread of suffering, and the deceitfulness of the heart; who have not obtained any deep insight into the mystery of sin. For, even in the church much apostacy and corruption discover themselves, and there too is the agency of God to be displayed in executing judgment. But the pain this was fitted to occasion is softened, a balsam is prepared for the wound at the very first by the appearance of the rainbow around the strong angel’s head in ch. Revelation 10:1; and not only so, but against the apostacy a reaction takes place in the midst of the church, which is strengthened by God, and brought to glory, though not without and reverses; so that the judgment is not a consuming one, but only prepares the way for the operations of grace. When this manifests itself, then the distinction between the world and the church properly appears. The powers that lay bound in the latter are by the judgment of God set free. Of the world it is said in ch. Revelation 9:20-21, the two verses that form the transition to this interlude, “And the rest of the men that were not killed by these plagues, repented not of the works of their hands, that they should not worship demons,” etc. Here, on the other hand, it is said with manifest reference to that starting-point of the whole, “And the rest were frightened, and gave glory to the God of heaven.” Thus we obtain a firm foundation for the consolatory announcement of the strong angel, that the completion of the mystery of God infallibly approaches, and which was fitly made to precede the representation of the facts, that were so much fitted to beget despair in respect to that completion. For how could a church that had become so much identified with the world, obtain a final victory over the world! It is announced in reply, first, that the worldly admixture is not a total one, reaching to the innermost source of life, and then, that the judgment of God shall purge it out. Revelation 11:1. And there was given to me a reed like a slick, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. Revelation 11:2. But the court, which is without the temple, throw out and measure it not, for it is given to the heathen, and the holy city shall they tread down forty and two months. In the words of our Lord, as recorded in Matthew 24:9-13, we are presented with the naked thoughts of this passage, “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you; and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake. And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another, and many false prophets shall arise and shall deceive many. And because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold. But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.” The fundamental truth also is found in the parable of the sower, where the outer court here had its correspondence in him who “heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while, for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and bye he is offended.” Now, this thought has here, agreeably to the nature of vision, which lends form to what is spiritual, flesh and blood imparted to it. The church appears under the symbol of the temple, which for so many centuries was the seat and external representation of the kingdom of God, and hence occurs, otherwise than in vision, in a series of passages in the New Testament as the designation of the church, John 2:19; Mark 14:58; Ephesians 2:21-22; Tim. Revelation 3:15; 2 Corinthians 6:16; 2 Thessalonians 2:4; Hebrews 3:6. The temple proper denotes those, who are deeply filled and penetrated by the spirit of the church, the outer court those, who are only superficially affected. The rising up forms the contrast to the sitting. But both the sitting and the rising belong only to the vision. In the reality, it is the transition from rest to activity, which is denoted by the rising. The import of the measuring is determined by the opposite throwing out. It is measured as far as the preservation is to go. Where the measuring ceases, there the line of abandoning begins. The figurative representation here rests upon Ezekiel, by whom in Ezekiel 40 the restored temple was measured. The symbolical action here has respect to the preserving of the object represented. Beside the temple proper, which in the material building at Jerusalem consisted of the Most Holy Place, the residence of God, and the sanctuary, as the ideal abode of believers, the altar also is measured or preserved; and by this we can only understand the altar of burnt-offering—comp. on ch. Revelation 6:9. It is here transferred to the temple itself, for the therein can only refer to the temple: measure the temple of God, and the altar (in it), and them that worship in it. This shows that we are here entirely on an ideal territory. In the temple of Jerusalem the altar of burnt-offering stood in the real place of resort to the people, in the outer court; but here it is transferred to their ideal dwelling-place, to the temple itself. The meaning of the altar we learn from ch. Revelation 6:9-11 : under the constraining power of love believers present themselves there as a free-will sacrifice to him who has redeemed them with his blood. Therefore, however hard the world may press, how great soever may be the desolations which it effects in the outworks, still the church remains in existence; the spirit of joyful sacrifice is preserved; true believers continually abide. The court in Revelation 11:2, as contrasted with the temple proper, must not be limited to the outer court, but denotes whatever belonged to the sanctuary beside the temple proper: the without the temple forms a manifest contrast to the within. To designate by the court without those who have not in their souls been penetrated by the spirit of the church, was the more natural, since, according to the phraseology even of the Old Testament, true believers dwell in the house of God, and come into his sanctuary, while the multitude, who are but externally related to the church, only tread the courts—see Isaiah 1:12. That the court should be thrown away, and given up to the heathen, stands related to the treading down of the city, as an effect to its cause. The overflowing of the church by the world brings it to pass, that from many, who have not, shall be taken away even that which they have. Nothing but the strong mound of a firm faith can resist their powerful billows. The two and forty months contain only an apparent determination of time; as, indeed, all numbers in the Apocalypse have only an ideal signification; they belong not so properly to the chronological, as to the symbolical forum. The common signature of the dominion of the world over the church in the Revelation, resting on the prophecies of Daniel, (comp. at Revelation 12:6; Revelation 13:5), is the three and a half, in which we have only to think of the broken seven, the signature of the church. So that the meaning is here conveyed, that however the world may lift itself up, however it may proudly triumph, it can never attain to anything complete and lasting. These three and a half years return again in different forms: a time, two times, and an half time, ch. Revelation 12:14, forty and two months, here and in ch. Revelation 13:5, 1260 days in ch. Revelation 12:6. In the number of the beast also in ch. Revelation 13:18, the same thing substantially holds as in these numbers. We have here before us a representation, which does not bring into view some particular period of time in the world’s history, but the whole course of it, only that towards the end every thing realizes itself in a more perfect manner. Wherever the world is found overflowing the church, from that of which John himself saw the commencement, to the last in ch. Revelation 20:7-9, of which we have now the beginning before our eyes, there the substance of the prophecy always verifies itself anew, there the obligation still remains to those who are affected by the evil, to take it as the ground of consolation and warning to their hearts. At the same time, it is interesting and rich in consolation and warning to trace in history the particular exemplifications of our prophecy. Let any one read, for example, what Eusebius has written at the beginning of his eight book on the Diocletian persecution. A great degeneracy in the Christian church preceded it, many were shaken by it, many more made entire shipwreck; yet true believers remained stedfast, and the church was built up, through the noble constancy of the martyrs.[Note: Vitringa: “Doubtless with grief and sorrow of mind did true Christians see great numbers among those who bad professed faith in Christ suffering themselves, through fear of infamy and torture, to be prevailed upon to blaspheme the name of Christ and do homage to idols. God at that time measured the church by the plumb line of judgment, as it is in the vision of Amos, and publicly detected many hypocrites and others watering in the faith.”]The thought in this prophecy was in other respects quite correctly apprehended by the older expositors. Thus on the expression, “the holy city shall be trodden down,” Bossuet remarks, “Christians shall be under the sway of the unbelievers; but though the weak shall fall, the church shall continue in strength. This is the first point which St John apprehends in the persecutions: the church continually abiding.” In the second part of the section, Revelation 11:3-13, the church obtains the consolatory assurance, that even in the times of the most profound darkness and of the greatest worldly intermixture, the witnessing office and the possession of the gifts of the Spirit shall be perpetuated in her. Revelation 11:3. And I will give to my two witnesses, and they shall prophecy a thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth. Revelation 11:4. These are the two olive-trees and the two lamps, which stand before the Lord of the earth. For all who feel that they are in themselves impotent, and that nothing is done by their own strength, there is much consolation in the word, “I will give to my two witnesses.” But, at the same time, it points to the heavy responsibility which they draw upon themselves, who will not let it be given, who by their softness and indolence close up the way to the grace for witnessing, so that they cannot attain to it. The declaration, I will give to my witnesses, cuts off all excuse. The object of the giving is simply to be supplied from the following words: And they shall prophecy—comp. on ch. Revelation 2:20. The speaker is the strong angel, who gives to John the little book, Christ. The two witnesses are ideal persons, who appear in a multitude of real ones—personifications of the work of witnessing. The two number was primarily chosen on account of the pattern given in Moses (comp. with Revelation 11:6, Exodus 7:15-25 and Revelation 8-11; it was Moses who in ancient times changed the water into blood and smote the earth with many plagues), and Elias (who in the days of his prophecy shut up heaven, that it should not rain, and whose enemies were consumed by fire, comp. with Revelation 11:5-6, 1 Kings 19:17, 1 Kings 17:1). It was precisely these two persons, also, who appeared on the mount of transfiguration, where John was present, as representatives of the witnessing that belonged to the Old Testament. As such they were types of that of the New Testament. The number two also is of consolatory import. It indicates that the true witness never stands isolated, that he always finds some with whom he can join hand to hand and heart to heart, in whose strength he can invigorate his weakness, and whose weakness he can again change through his own strength into power, and so derive fresh encouragement to himself. “In the midst of all tribulation,” says a true witness, “it is an encouraging thing if one has at least one help, who stands side by side with him. Our Lord always sent forth his disciples by two together; and in earlier times there were Moses and Aaron, Joshua and Caleb, Zerubbabel and Joshua, Haggai and Zechariah, as on the opposite side Jannes and Jambres. One servant of Christ is able to support another, they mutually invigorate and strengthen each other; if they make a firm stand, they shall have both a common struggle, and a common victory and reward.” The two witnesses prophesy clothed in sackcloth; that is, they wore mourning garments of hair-cloth, after the example of Elias and John the Baptist, Matthew 3:4. Mourning over the lamentable state of the holy city, pain at the desolation of the church, the earnest severity of repentance and of the call to repentance—these have in all times been, and still are, the marks of the Lord’s true servants, and by the degree of this pain is recognised the degree of the spiritual demand made, and the amount of spiritual energy to be brought into action. They who have no eye and no heart for the backsliding of the church, will never be able to promote its revival and edification. Nature much dislikes being clothed with sackcloth; they who follow it are not grieved at the affliction of Joseph, but play on the psaltery, and compose songs, and drink wine in bowls, and anoint themselves with balsam; it constantly strives to substitute in the room of the reality as it is a dream of its own; and while it often makes a very promising beginning, knows at least how to veil itself in a spiritual appearance, yet they who surrender themselves to it, shall one day be obliged to put on the garments of mourning, when the true witnesses put on their festive attire. The two witnesses are designated in Revelation 11:4 as the two olive-trees and the two lamps, which stand before the Lord of the whole earth, alluding to Zechariah 4, according to which they bear the name of lamps and of olive-trees, as the concentration of the light, which belongs to the church of God, and an instrument of divine grace for her. What the two witnesses accomplish in behalf of the faithful, we learn partly from this, and partly from Revelation 11:1. For, manifestly it is owing pre-eminently to their services, that the temple of God, with those who worship in it, are preserved in being. But what is said of these should serve not merely for our consolation, but also for our admonition. Especially for all the ministering servants of the church it should act like a burning fire in their bones. Woe to them, if they do not perform what is here ascribed to the two witnesses—if either no application, or a very poor one, can be made to them of the word, “These are the two olive trees and the two lights”—if they are not channels of grace to the church, and give forth to her no light.” Ye are the light of the world. A city which is set on a hill, cannot be hid. Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it giveth light to all that are in the house. Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father that is in heaven.” “Teachers,” says Bengel, “must not be cold and dry, but filled with oil; and the church, through all her members, must appropriate the oil, so as to exhibit in their walk a lovely brightness and an attractive beauty.” The face of the witnesses turned upon the wicked, flashes on us in Revelation 11:5-6. Revelation 11:5. And if any one will hurt them, fire goes out of their mouth and devours their enemies; and if any one will hurt them, he must in this manner be killed. Revelation 11:6. These have power to shut up heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy, and have power over water, to turn it into blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will. The form in which the wrath and power of the witnesses here shews itself, as already remarked, is derived from the past. Bengel: “What Moses and what Elias had done separately, that is said to be done by the two witnesses at once. It reaches to all visible nature, heaven or the firmament, the waters and the earth.” It is the method of prophecy, to represent what is like in nature and in origin under like forms of manifestation, while still these are not specially meant, nor is anything more than the nature indicated. That is here, that the Lord gloriously arms his servants against their and his enemies. As the Lamb that was slain is at the same time the lion of the tribe of Judah, so also are those, whom he sends forth as sheep in the midst of wolves, at the same time lions, who have an invincible strength and power residing in them. Where the oil is, there also is fire. It is the strength of one and the same spirit, which manifests itself in the witnesses for the salvation of the good, and for vengeance on the wicked. The Lord has put his word in their month, which resembles a hammer, that breaks the rock in pieces; which is living and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, and pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Whoever, taking to his aid the powers of darkness, steels and hardens his heart against this internally judging power of the witnesses of God, he still cannot escape the external judgments, which they threaten and pronounce upon him in the name of the Lord and in their own name (for God’s will is also theirs; what by the eternal laws of the divine nature is necessary is at the same time written on the tablets of their hearts). He must feel, both in time and in eternity, that he has had to do with God’s witness-bearers on earth. At the word of Elias fire came down from heaven and consumed his adversaries; and the mockery with which the infatuated people heard the word of Jeremiah (Jeremiah 5:14, “Behold I make my word in thy mouth for fire and this people for wood, and thou devourest them”) changed into bitter lamentations, when these words assumed flesh and blood in the Chaldeans, and besieged the city, and distressed it till they left not one stone upon another. The word, “Be not deceived, God is not mocked,” holds above all in respect to God as manifesting himself in his servants, and the testimony he puts into their month. “God,” says Bengel, “is pure love; and his love has a holy order. He is good above all; therefore does he love himself above all with the holiest love, and then those creatures who stand in his love. Whatever, therefore, strikes against him (and his witnesses) in a hostile manner, shall be destroyed by him in vengeance as by a consuming fire.” To know this, is most consolatory for those, whom the Lord has called to the office of bearing witness, especially in a time like the present, which so confidently imagines that in them it has to do only with feeble men. At the same time, it is well fitted to humble them in the dust, and to fill them with holy zeal for their divine calling. Who are they! and how does it become them to feel and act, in whose hands God has placed such power! He must in this manner be killed, in the same manner as he has hurt them, and in righteous judgment because of it—comp. ch. Revelation 18:6. Revelation 11:7. And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the abyss shall make war with them, and shall overcome them, and shall kill them. The indifference is remarkable, with which the words, “and shall overcome them,” are here uttered. But it is explained by what precedes and what follows. They shall only be overcome when they have finished their testimony, when God has no further need for their service, when their death can produce more fruit than their life. And on their overthrow and their death follows their glorification, and springs out of it. They die only to rise again and go to heaven. Their overthrow is but a concealed victory, like the corn of wheat, which dies in the earth in order to bring forth much fruit. If this were considered aright, how would it banish the fear, which makes so many in our day inclined to timid concessions, which smites the shepherds, and causes the sheep to be scattered! To escape imaginary dangers, these persons fall into real ones. For, only one danger is really to be feared, namely, that our heart be overcome, that faith, which is the innermost life of our souls, should be slain. What is said here of the witnesses of Christ, was exemplified in Christ himself. The world hated him, and yet the enemies could accomplish nothing against him, till their hour came and the power of darkness. Then only did the darkness receive power, when he had finished his testimony, and when it was good for the church that he should go away; and his death was followed by his resurrection and ascension to heaven, as is represented here in Revelation 11:11-12, in respect to the true witnesses.” In all circumstances God still has his glory; and if it should appear that the evil gains the mastery over the good, the evil is still very limited; it cannot break forth sooner than its time, nor rise higher and last longer than God permits it. Begin but rightly with God, and the result shall not fail.” The beast that ascends out of the abyss (comp. on ch. Revelation 9:1), is mentioned here incidentally and by anticipation. The more extended description is given us by the Seer in the fourth group: the three enemies of God’s kingdom, Revelation 12-14; and in the sixth, the judgment on the three enemies, Revelation 17-20. That it should be brought into notice here plainly shews that we have not in the Revelation, as Bengel thought, a regularly progressive anticipatory history. The beast denotes the ungodly heathen state. By it here is meant the reviving of the ungodly heathen power at the close of the thousand years’ reign, or, the whole of the ungodly power is here denoted by the most prominent part, which the Seer had already before him in his own day. The brutal character of the ungodly power, which he denotes by this expression, discovers itself more and more manifestly in the present age. Bengel says, “These are two excellent instruments, and when they shall have accomplished their task so stedfastly, such is the recompense they are to receive for it from the world; they are to find tribulation, pain, mockery, and death; so that these are not bad marks.” No, assuredly not, in a church whose Lord has been crucified, and who has said, “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more will they call those of the household! They shall cast yon out of the synagogue. Nay, the time shall come when he that killeth you shall think that he doeth God service.” Revelation 11:8. And their corpse shall lie upon the street of the great city, which is called spiritually Sodom and Egypt, where also their[Note: Luther has: Our Lord, from the reading ç̔ ?ìù͂ ?í.][1] Lord was crucified. Revelation 11:9. And they of the peoples, and kindreds, and tongues, and nations, shall see their dead corpse three days and an half, and shall not suffer their corpses to be laid in the grave. Revelation 11:10. And they that dwell on the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and send gifts one to another, because these two prophets tormented them that dwell on the earth. The great city is Jerusalem. But the honourable name is purposely not used. It is reserved for a better occasion. So we also, in our times of apostacy, can only speak with trembling lips of a church. We are here, however, not to think of the literal Jerusalem; but Jerusalem denotes the church as degenerate on account of the ascendancy of the world, and filled with offences, as the new Jerusalem is the purified and glorified church. The spiritually is also to be supplied to the expression: where our Lord was crucified. Outwardly the Lord was crucified in the city called Jerusalem, but spiritually in the degenerate church. The spiritual Jerusalem is compared to Egypt on account of the religious corruption with which it infected Israel in the early period of Israelitish history—comp. Ezekiel 23:3, Ezekiel 23:8, Ezekiel 23:27, “Thou shalt not remember Egypt any more;” and Ezekiel 23:19, “She called to remembrance the days of her youth, when she played the harlot in the land of Egypt.” that is, embraced her idolatry. By Sodom, on the other hand, in the original passages of the Old Testament, the morals are constantly referred to—comp. Deuteronomy 32:32; Isaiah 1:10; Ezekiel 16:46, Ezekiel 16:48; Jeremiah 23:14.[Note: Vitringa incorrectly by the fundamental passages: “Egypt, on account of the oppression, which it exercised ou the people of God, but Sodom on account of the universal corruption that prevailed in it.]The great city itself, the degenerate church, has its share in the guilt of killing the witnesses, as formerly it had a part in the death of our Lord, whose treatment is only repeated over again in the history of his servants; according to the word: the servant is not greater than his master. When the church is overrun by the world, then seeming faith, half faith, and false faith, play the part of giving up the true witnesses of the Lord to unbelief for crucifixion. By its faithlessness the world is rendered bold. Then it imagines it has done a good work, when it has persecuted the true servants of God, and abandons itself to extravagant joy, when it has got their fearless mouth shut from uttering any more its testimony. But the judgment of this world when clothed as the church, of the world in the church, shall be frightful, far more frightful than the judgment on the world, that appears simply as the world. We perceive this in the fate of the literal Jerusalem. The three days and an half are in one respect an imitation of the history of the Lord, whom his servants must follow, and in another they point, like the three and an half years, to the seven as the signature of the kingdom of God, on which account the half day is added. The victory of the world is always but a transitory one. Very characteristic is the expression that these prophets tormented those that dwell upon the earth. The members and servants of Christ are but a little flock, they stand in a small minority in respect to the world and the half-faith party. They have no other weapons than the word. Why, then, should men not leave them in silent contempt to pursue their course? why hate and persecute them? For no other reason, than because their word, so weak and contemptible in itself, has an ally in the hearts and consciences of those against whom it is directed. It is this that makes their word, and their whole existence, indeed, a source of torment to those who dwell upon the earth. However freely they may laugh and mock, they must still gnash their teeth. Their very hatred gives evidence against them. If the witnesses had not these allies in the hearts of the world and of the false seed in the church, it would be a piece of great folly for them to open their mouth any more. But the declaration: These two prophets tormented, is a touch-stone, by which every one may learn, whether he fulfils his office in the right spirit and with proper zeal. So long as all speak well of us, or even let us go on unmolested, we may be perfectly certain, that we are still not in the right state, and consequently can look for no proper fruits from our operations. For he who torments not, also blesses not. The ground must first be pierced by the plough before the seed can be sown in it. But those only can rejoice in the tormenting power of the prophets, and console themselves under the pain, who are prepared with a feeling heart to be the object of hatred, who find it a torment to themselves that they must torment, and can apply to themselves what has been said of Christ, “He burns and cuts, but not as a tyrant; he does it as a true, and wise, and tender physician.” Revelation 11:11. And after the three days and an half the Spirit of life entered Into them from God, and they stood upon their feet, and a great fear fell upon those who saw them. Revelation 11:12. And they heard[Note: The reading ἠ ?́κουσα, I heard, is less supported, and against John 5:28. The sudden introduction of the Seer also has something strange in it.]a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they ascended to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies saw it. The form in which the triumph of the witnesses is here described after their apparent defeat, is taken from the history of Christ, whose ascension to heaven, though not related by John in his Gospel, yet attested here,[Note: Comp. here Revelation 11:8, Luke 24:51, Acts 1:9, Mark 16:9; also on the words: and a great fear fell on those who saw, Matthew 27:54; and on: at the same hour there was a great earthquake, Matthew 27:51; Matthew 27:54; Matthew 28:2.prefigured the destiny of his people, and possesses for them the character of a matter-of-fact prophecy. The ascent to heaven following on the crucifixion realizes itself in the true witnesses in various ways. First, in the perpetually recurring victory of the cause for which they sacrificed their lives, and which seemed to go down with their overthrow. Nothing can be more uureasonable than to faint, if this cause appears once more to be on the decline. For six thousand years a reviving has constantly succeeded to the death, so that we may well say, in spite of the laughter of the Jews, “Weep not, it is not dead, but sleepeth”—and, “Its spirit will come again, and it will presently stand on its feet.” It appears also in the reviving of their memory on the earth. Is it not remarkable, that the names of all those who in their lifetime have borne reproach, that an Athanasius, a Spener, a Franke, a Zinzendorf, bear even in the world a good report, while the names of its own prophets are covered with contempt? Finally, it is again realized in the heavenly glory, which they are given to inherit. “The teachers, “says Scripture, “shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever.” The enemies of the true witnesses cannot but see how they are raised to heaven. “Though wickedness may rage and carry itself insolently for a time, it must still be frightened and give way. What escapes from the enemies and rises to heaven, can no longer be touched by it, though it should put all its artillery in motion.” Revelation 11:13. And at the same hour there was a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell; and in the earthquake seven thousand names of men[Note: See in regard to the ὀνάματα on ch. 3:4.were killed; and the rest were affrighted, and gave glory to the God of heaven. It is the great privilege of the church, that while the Lord may indeed chastise her, he does not give her over to death; that his judgments, besides their destroying, have always at the same time a healing character. Hence she can be joyful in the prospect of them, or even when she actually experiences them. For, however frightful they may look, and may even really be, the result still is, that her true members give glory to the God of heaven; and from their own experience are ever ready to repeat the song,” Praise the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy endureth for ever.” But this also lies clearly before us here, that the matter does not pass off without heavy judgments, not in the world merely, but also in the church. So great is the depth of human corruption. The simple preaching of repentance and faith will not do it; but to bring things into a right state, God must first tear up the field by the plough of his visitations. “Now,” says Bengel, “we are in a low state. But if the still advancing and horrible wickedness of men shall lead us astray, we must consider that the time is always coming nearer for God the Almighty putting every thing in order. What an astounding change will that make! How shall men then give up their boldness, impiety, and confidence!” If we lay it properly to heart, that the spirit of repentance can only he produced by divine judgments on the church, we shall feel that there is no longer any reason for crying peace, peace, with such as prophecy out of their own hearts, where no peace is in order to make the day of wrath and of the righteous judgment of God appear as a phantom, when we may see the signs of it already gathering in the heavens. We shall rather take the prophet Habakkuk for our pattern, who begins his prophecy with a prayer to the God of the degenerate church, that he would appear for judgment against it—that he would again revive in it the dead spirit of righteousness and holiness—and shall only pray with him, “In wrath remember mercy.” The witnesses stand before the Lord of the earth, and he to whom the glory is given is called the God of heaven. This is the foundation of all witnessing for the truth, all joy in one’s calling, all hope of a blessed result, that the Lord of the church is the Lord of heaven and of earth. He is at once the Alpha and the Omega, at once the beginning and the end, he who comes, as well as he who was. In firm faith should we commend the cause of the church to him, before whom all enemies upon earth are too feeble to render any effectual opposition. Review of Opposite Opinions Regarding the Temple etc., in the Interlude We shall now take a glance at the views which have been adopted of the preceding section, different from ours. According to some the temple and the holy city must not be the symbol of the church; but the vision must refer to the external temple, and the literal Jerusalem; and, indeed, to the fates of the restored temple and the Jerusalem of the last times. But no trace whatever is to be found here of Jerusalem and the temple being in ruins at the time of the vision;[Note: Dr Hofmann, in his Weissagung und ibre Erfόllung, Th. II, p. 802, discovers in Revelation 11:8 a reference to the prostrate state of Jerusalem: “Jerusalem is so called, because it has experienced an overthrow like Sodom, and a judgment like Egypt.” But that the designations Sodom and Egypt refer to the sunk religious and moral condition, and not to the outward state, appears from the following considerations. 1. The expression, “where also their Lord was crucified,” implies a participation on the part of the great city in the guilt of slaying the two witnesses, as previously in that of Christ’s death, who was surrendered by a degenerate church to the world. 2. The words “which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt,” indicates that the point of comparison belongs to the spiritual territory, that the comparison goes upon the analogous state of the spiritual life. Vitringa: “But the spiritual import is what we call the intellectual, which is derived from a more inward, profound and intellectual view of the things under consideration; it is what the Hebrews are wont to call allegorical, inward, intellectual, occult, secret and hidden.” When the point of comparison lies merely in externals, there no place exists for the activity of the πνεῦμα, there the comparison does not belong to the territory of the spirit. 3. Egypt does not elsewhere occur as a distinguished example of the punitive righteousness of God, so that it might be sufficient to name it, in order immediately to suggest that, nor could it be so used. But in regard to the state of complete spiritual corruption and profligacy, both Egypt and Sodom had become alike proverbial; and a comparison of the degenerate church of God with them was the more natural, as Egypt had in ancient times infected it with its pollution (comp. Ezekiel 23:3; Ezekiel 23:8; Ezekiel 23:27), and Sodom stood for centuries as a frightful example before the eyes of the covenant people. 4. That the great city is not without a share in the guilt of killing the two witnesses, that the dead bodies of these lay on its street, that they also cried to God against it for vengeance, and not merely against the heathen who trod upon the holy city; this is clear from the judgment which, according to Revelation 11:13, fell upon the city in consequence of the death of the witnesses, and was only what might be expected from Revelation 11:2, according to which the court of the temple was to be thrown out and given to the heathen. Apostates, too, are always the bitterest enemies and persecutors of the true witnesses and faithful confessors of Jesus Christ. For all these reasons, Sodom and Egypt are quite in their place as designations of a spiritual state, and as such are also strongly confirmed by the passages of Old Testament Scripture formerly quoted.]nor any trace of a rebuilding to take place in the future, either here or in any other part of the book. But prophecy can never so entirely separate itself from the ground of the present, to influence which is always its more immediate object, and to which, therefore, it must constantly raise a bridge. On this also rests all certainty of exposition as to the future. And that the means should be provided for such certainty is a necessary consequence of the divine nature of prophecy. A truly divine prophecy cannot possibly swim in the air; nor can the church be left to mere guesswork in the exposition of Scripture, which has been given to her amidst the darkness. Then, this literal method of exposition belongs to an entire chain of representations in regard to the kingdom of God, which has recently indeed, and especially in England, obtained extensive support, where in particular the society for the conversion of the Jews is pervaded by it. We cannot, however, regard it as agreeable to Scripture. It is a kind of revival of the Jewish-Christian tendency in the ancient church—the idea that the converted Jews in it are to form a sort of spiritual nobility in the church, and that for them as a separate, distinguished, and most illustrious part of it, there are destined quite peculiar honours and wonderful performances. We may almost say that this view is the worm in the noble fruit of the Jewish mission, the success of which is now rather poor. It nourishes in the converted the natural pride, the extirpation of which should be one of the first objects of a true spiritual activity. It misleads the converted to form a sort of peculiar brotherhood among themselves, and prevents them from properly incorporating themselves with the general society of the Christian church, in which alone the means of recovery can be found for so many wounds as they have necessarily brought along with them from the corrupt social life of their nation. Let us here also look back to the soundness of the older church, not out of reverence to it, but because it has Scripture rightly understood on its side, and cease to change Jewish Christiana into Christian Jews. The result of a free and enlightened investigation of Scripture in reference to this point is expressed by the excellent Vitringa in these words: “This distinction is entirely taken away under the new economy. For, as the heathen, who were converted to Christ, were graffed in to the Jewish olive-tree, and have taken on them, as it were, the person and form of the Jews; so shall the Jews, who in the latter days shall be converted to Christ, be graffed into that church of the heathen, or rather become incorporated with the mystical and spiritual Jews, and without any difference possess along with them the same condition in the kingdom of Christ. All are one in Christ.” He remarks also specially in respect to the Revelation, “I would particularly draw attention to this, that throughout the whole of this book no separate mention is made of the Jewish as distinguished from the Gentile Christians, and this on the clear and obvious ground, that under the new (economy all distinction of races in matters of religion is taken away. Never in any part of the Apocalypse do prophecies occur in respect to the Jews, in so far as these are opposed in matters of religion to the heathen.” Since one cannot forbear to assent to what Vitringa says in regard to the Revelation, the view sustains on this ground alone a heavy blow. For, we are thus driven generally out of the territory of the New Testament, there being scarcely any passages elsewhere which one could even attempt to bring in support of the view in question. The declarations in the epistle to the Romans are rather unfavourable to this view. They speak much of the blessing, which the conversion of the Jews shall bring to the church of the future, but nothing whatever of a new church from the Jews, of the restoration of Jerusalem, the rebuilding of the temple, nor generally of a return of the old beggarly elements, which have been completely swept away by Christ and his blood, placing all nations on a footing. The question is thus thrown entirely back upon the Old Testament, and so, the position maintained on the other side becomes a very difficult, or rather a quite hopeless one. We must leave it to the Jews, to draw from the Old Testament alone articles of faith and expectations of the future. We Christians apply in the first instance to the New Testament, and if we find anything in the Old Testament, which seems to oppose it, or to go beyond it, this only serves to indicate our want of a proper understanding. What appears there to favour the modern Judaistic view, rests merely on this want as to its foundation. If any one is ready to conclude, that wherever Israel is spoken of, the Jews are meant, he can certainly prove much; but little good will be done by such a light and superficial mode of expounding the Old Testament Scriptures. What the Spirit has spoken must be spiritually understood, as the sayings everywhere apply: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear; he that reads, let him understand; here is the mind that hath wisdom. Even the promises given to the patriarchs do not respect the children of Israel as opposed to believers from among the heathen; but comprehend along with them such as might be ingrafted into the olive tree, Romans 11:17, Romans 11:24. (See the investigations on the promises made to the patriarchs in the Christol. III. p. 50, ss.) An olive tree, a people of God stands from first to last—an Israel out of which the false seed is excluded, and into which believers from among the heathen were adopted. According to another view, which we may call the nationalistic, although unfortunately it is not supported merely by nationalists, the temple is the second temple of the Jews, the holy city, the Jerusalem still not laid in desolation by the Romans. In this prophecy they find the most undoubted proofs that the Revelation was composed before the taking of Jerusalem, and therefore not, according to the ecclesiastical tradition, under Domitian. The patriotism of the author of the book could not embrace the idea of a complete destruction of the temple and city, though he descries an approaching judgment, but he lightens the matter as much as possible; of the temple he gives up only the outer court, and of the holy city and its inhabitants only the tenth part.[Note: These expositors, in opposition to their own canon, that it is against the custom of the prophets to give definite predictions, hold that here there is really a very exact and precise announcement of what was to come: the court shall be taken possession of, but the holy city not. That Ewald was not without a sense of this difficulty, is evident from the words he has shoved in: Sin forte exterius timplum hostium lubido invadet. This also shews the inadmissibility of the literal view, Unit in the actual temple, in the temple proper, in which were here placed, there were no worshippers.]This view must be regarded as one of the most singular proofs of the modern subjective tendency, which judges of every thing by itself. On the territory of sacred Scripture that pseudo-patriotism, that blind partiality for one’s own people, is never in place. Our Seer would stand quite alone with it. As the prophets, before the Chaldean desolation, with one voice predicted this, as it was then held to be a mark of a deceiver, of a prophet speaking out of his own heart, when any one denied, that the full measure of sin was to be followed by the full measure of punishment; so precisely in our day do those brand themselves in the eyes of believers with the stamp of false teachers, who say peace, peace, where there is no peace, who on the very eve of judgment are doting about a glorious era for Germany. The prophets after the Babylonish captivity likewise announced with one voice, a coming second total desolation, which was to break in as soon as the sin, which had begun again in their day to germinate, should have reached its maturity and brought forth fruit—that, namely, which was to be effected by the Romans, and whose internal connection with the Chaldean was made palpable by divine providence ordering it to take place on the very same day that the other had done. Our Lord rests on these prophecies of the Old Testament, when he says in Luke, Luke 21:22, “For these are the days of vengeance, when all that is written shall be fulfilled;” and in Matthew 24:15, where he distinctly alludes to the properly classical prophecy, that in Daniel 9:24-27, which was usually referred by the Jews, before the catastrophe by the Romans, to a future destruction of the city and temple. (See the proofs in my Beitr. I. p. 265, Christol. II. p. 576.) If the abomination of desolation on the holy city announced by Daniel stands; that is, if the abomination, which, according to the eternal law of recompense, according to the principle, “I will sanctify myself on them that draw near to me,” has desolation for its inseparable consequence, then deliverance is only to be found in the curse; because by the faithful word of God, uttered by Daniel, all was to go to ruin. What Daniel declared, when the city and temple still lay in ashes, pointing to a second desolation lying on the farther side of the approaching restoration announced by him, was also intimated by Zechariah shortly after the return of the people, and the city and temple had begun to be rebuilt. God’s righteousness is not less energetic than men’s sinfulness; a new, severe, and destructive judgment shall break in, according to Zechariah 5:1-4, a new captivity, a long exile, Zechariah 5:5-11, another entire desolation of the land by an enemy coming out of the north. The prophecy of the last among the prophets, Malachi, is entirely of a threatening character.”Behold,” it said in Malachi 4, “the day comes burning like an oven, and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble; and the day that comes shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, who shall not leave them root or branch.” His prophecy, and with that the whole volume of Old Testament prophecy, runs out into the threatening, that the Lord will come and smite the land with a curse. First—such is the conclusion of Malachi’s prophecy Elias the prophet comes and endeavours to restore all (Reformation), then the Lord himself appears, and smites the land with a curse. The messenger makes a last attempt to sanctify the Lord in his people. Then the Lord sanctifies himself upon those, with whom this attempt has proved fruitless. The Old Testament prophecy revives once more in John the Baptist. He threatens with the baptism of fire, declares that the axe is laid to the root of the trees, and points to a day of coming wrath. Christ, our Lord, was certainly a patriot; he wept over Jerusalem; but the approaching destruction of the city and temple stands as clearly before his soul as if it were actually present—a pattern to us, whose eyes are so much rivetted to the visible, whose knowledge and hatred of sin are so dull, whose apprehension of the avenging righteousness of God is so languid, and who are so apt to think that the storm, which appears in the far distance, shall somehow blow past. He says of Jerusalem in Luke 19:43-44, “The days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side. And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another, because thou knowest not the time of thy visitation.” He says of the temple in Matthew, Matthew 24:2, “See ye not all these things? There shall not be left here one stone upon another that shall not be thrown down.”[Note: Comp. Mark 13:2, Luke 21:5, and in regard to the city still farther, Luke 21:10, ss.; in regard to the temple, John 2:19, and Mutt, 23:38, “Behold your house is left unto you desolate”—a passage which also indirectly refers to the city. The temple comes into notice as the seat of the whole nation. If its former inhabitants were thrown out, they must lose their right to the holy city, which is to be regarded as an appendage of the temple, and this must be devoted to destruction.]As by the word of his mouth our Lord thus announced the approaching destruction, so did he also by the symbolical actions of the cursing of the fig-tree, and the purification of the temple. Now, it seems quite incredible that a Seer, who was educated with such pains, who, as his visions shew, had received into his soul the prophecies of the Old Testament, should altogether renounce the earnest spirit of prophecy, should know his people after the flesh, and in a foolish patriotism conjure up illusions respecting the future;—incredible, that one, who everywhere makes himself known as a decided follower of Christ, who was filled with such profound reverence toward him, that when he saw him he fell down before him as one dead, who regarded it as the most honourable title to be called Christ’s servant, should yet have acted contrary to him in a point so important, so variously treated, and so distinctly and prominently brought forward. An exposition, which yields such a result, bears on its front the stamp of reprobation. The force of this argument, in so far as it respects the contrast presented to the declarations of Christ, has been felt by the defenders of this exposition themselves. But the diversified attempts which they have made to justify themselves, only serve to discover more clearly with what weight it presses upon them. Ewald thinks that, when one looks into the matter more closely, Christ never speaks of the desolation of the city, but always only of the desolation of the temple. Were it so, the difficulty would only be lessened, not removed; for, the prophecy announces not merely the preservation of the city, but also of the temple, with the exception only of the court. But the assertion itself, as a single glance shews, is a mere fancy; the desolation of the city was foretold by our Lord as distinctly and repeatedly as that of the temple; and. according to the whole style of scriptural representation, the fates of both are inseparably bound up together; the temple could not fall without the city. For, the desolation of the temple is the sign of reprobation and rejection; and this must also disclose itself in the overthrow of the city. Lόcke hesitates about ranking John in the number of patriotic dreamers. “The prophet,” he says in his Apocalyptic Studies, “as a truly inspired Christian, could not less hate an antichristian, persecuting Judaism, than an antichristian, persecuting heathenism.” He seeks to get rid of the opposition to the declarations of Christ by making the apostle prophesy, not of the preservation, but of the desolation of the city and temple. He says, “The temple of Jerusalem, as the centre of Judaism, was to be desolated, only the Most Holy Place preserved. But the destruction of the earthly temple encloses the destruction of the holy city as such in itself.” The truth, however, is, that the temple is preserved, and only the court given up, and consequently Lόcke’s own words respecting the inseparable connection between the city and the temple turn against himself: the non-desolation of the temple includes in itself the non-desolation of the city. That this is to be thought of as not destroyed, is evident besides from Revelation 11:13, according to which only the tenth part of the city falls, only seven thousand men, who are hence to be understood to be the tenth part of the inhabitants of the city, are killed; the rest give God the glory, and consequently are preserved—a proportion perfectly analogous to that between the temple and its court—while the prophet, in ch. 18, cannot find words enough to describe the full and entire overthrow of Babylon. Finally Baur, on the Kanon. Evangelien, p. 605, would in his usual way cut the knot, which Ewald and Lόcke have tried in vain to loose. He remarks, “How could the Apocalyptist have overlooked the destruction of Jerusalem—how must he not rather have taken it for a main point of his Apocalyptic representations, if Jesus had really prophesied concerning it, as he is reported to have done in the Gospel of Matthew? In Rev. ch. 11 the Apocalyptist only prophesies, that the holy city should be trodden down by the heathen for three years and an half; yet the temple, along with the inner court (?) was to be preserved.” Baur is here, as very commonly, in the right as regards those with whom he has immediately to do; it is more scientific to get rid with violence of the contrariety between the disciple and the master, than innocently to ignore it, or by an arbitrary exposition conceal it; but the method is still too heroic to be generally followed. That our Lord announced the destruction of the city and the temple is unanimously testified by all the Evangelists. The declarations are so often repeated, so extended, so entwined with the history, that to give them up would be virtually to surrender the historical character of all the Gospels. They have an important foundation in the prophecies of the Old Testament, on which they lean. That they had also made their way to those without, appears from Mark, Mark 14:58. They formed a leading point in the charges brought against the Lord. But now let it be farther observed, that in the prophet the ground shews itself to have absolutely no existence, in which such a vicious Jewish patriotism could take root, as is here supposed to have wrought with the frightful energy of leading the Seer to contradict his Master to his face. He who is truly in Christ can no longer know any one after the flesh; he to whom Christ is what he was to the author of this book, the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the Prince of the kings of the earth, who has loved us and washed us from our sins in his blood, and has made us kings and priests to God and his Father—such a person is raised entirely above the territory of mere Jewish sympathies. These are to be found out of Judaism only among half Christians, with those who, in their meagre acquaintance with the glory of Christ, have never attained to the full knowledge of the difference between Judaism and Christianity. Not merely, however, from the Apocalyptic Seer’s relation to Christ, but also from his express and pointed polemical declarations against Judaism, we could shew how very far such a vicious Jewish patriotism lay from him. In the epistle to the angel of the church of Smyrna the Lord says, “I know the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are of the synagogue of Satan.” In the epistle to the angel of the church of Philadelphia it is said, “Behold I will give out of Satan’s synagogue of those who say they are Jews and are not, but do lie. Behold, I will cause them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee.” The position which the Seer in these declarations takes up toward the unbelieving Jews, is as strong and offensive as it could well be. They are plainly characterized as persons unworthy of the name of Jews, and belonging to the community of Satan. That it is not single individuals of improper character that are discoursed of, but the whole fraternity as such, is evident from the expression: Satan’s synagogue, “a parody of the title, Jehovah’s congregation (Numbers 16:3, &c.,) with which they flattered their vanity” (Zόllig). These declarations coincide with the peculiarly strong things that are recorded in the Gospel of John against the Jews, John 8:44, “Ye are of your father the devil,” spoken in reply to the pretension of the Jews in John 8:41, “We have one father, God.”[Note: Dr Bleek would conclude from these declarations, that the position of the Apocalypse against Judaism is a different one from that of the gospel:”While the gospel uses the designation the Jots as alone indicating the higher class among the Jewish people in their character of opposition to the truth, and decided hostility to the Redeemer, this name is a very honourable one with the Apocalyptist; insomuch that he calls the Jews, who obstinately opposed the gospel, or wickedly persecuted it, not properly Jews, but regards them as falsely taking to themselves that name.” In reality the representation is the same in both, differing only in the form, according to the different kinds of writing in the two cases. The historian employs the usual name; the prophet, on the other hand, who rises above the common reality and its empty names, denies to those Jews, who wanted the substance, also the name. How little such diversities infer a difference in the authorship, is plain from the fact of our Lord, in John 8:37; John 8:39 (“I know that ye are the seed of Abraham,” and again.” If ye were Abraham’s children, ye would do the deeds of Abraham”), employing almost in one breath both the real and the ideal manner of designation.]On the other hand, there was always a bridge between Judaizing Christians and unconverted Jews. Whoever has broken with these as completely as our Seer has done, to him the temple at Jerusalem can be nothing else than a den of robbers,[Note: And at what period did the temple more deserve this name than shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, to which the composition of the Apocalypse is transferred by those who understand by the temple in ch. 11 the temple at Jerusalem: Even Josephus describes that temple quite similarly, as a place in which latterly all manner of abominations became concentrated. And this sink of abominations must the author of the Apocalypse, less enlightened than Josephus, have taken for the true sanctuary of the Lord, and sought to preserve from destruction? The untenableness of the position, which the modern theology ascribes to the Apocalypse, discovers itself also here. Any one that regarded the temple at Jerusalem so, could have obtained neither a canonical nor a deuterocanical place for his book. Hofmann has justly said in his Weiss, und Erf. II. p. 301, “When Galba was emperor, Eleazar’s zealots had possession of the temple, from whence they robbed and murdered in the city: in the temple itself they dispatched the blameless Zecharias, and practised horrors which the, tongue trembles to utter. Must the author of the Apocalypse have been so very Jewishly inclined, that he should have wished to preserve the theatre of these barbarities? Are those zealots to be now regarded as the worshipping company of the Apocalypse”! or shall the two witnesses be discovered in Eleazar and John of Gishala?”] as our Lord himself called it in Matthew 21:13. He must therefore have denied it the name of the temple. As he recognises none to be Jews but the Christians, so he can own no other temple but the Christian church. When Bleek understands by those who, in ch. 11, worship in the temple, “the pious servants of God among the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” “together with the Christians such also as, without belonging to the Christian church, worshipped their God in purity of conscience,” he speaks, indeed, good Schleiermacheran, but bad Apocalyptic doctrine. The crisis by that time was quite past; the nobler elements had long ago been absorbed by the Christian church; the synagogue of Satan retained only the scum. Such illusions of a superficial fleshly benevolence, are quite remote from the author of the Apocalypse, against whom Baur, and with some right from his point of view, brings the charge, on account of the epistle to the Laodiceans, of being a gross fanatic: “who would allow nothing lukewarm, hence also nothing of an ordinary and middle character; he has always in his eye sharp contrasts.” Whoever regards Judaism as the author of the Apocalypse did, he could the less mean by the temple that at Jerusalem, as here the discourse is simply of the temple, not of a place of worship to the Lord, but, without any qualifying term, of his sanctuary on earth, while yet of this our Lord said to the woman of Samaria, “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, and now is, when neither in Jerusalem nor in this mountain shall men worship the Father.” No one viewing Judaism as our author did, could possibly think of it as having such noble powers of life slumbering in it, as that so comparatively mild a judgment should have sufficed to set them free—that the fall of the tenth part of the city and the death of the tenth part of the inhabitants should have had the effect of” terrifying the rest, and leading them to give glory to the God of heaven.” Such powers of life, according to the view taken in the Apocalypse, grow only out of Christ’s blood and redemption. For Satan’s synagogue tribulation is as fruitless as for the heathen, and even more so. It can only produce rage in such characters, the dark zealot-spirit. If we allow to these cardinal passages on the relation of the Apocalypse to Judaism their full weight, we shall have no hesitation from the outset what to make of the proofs for the Judaising spirit of the author, which some have been at pains to bring forward. We may, however, look at them somewhat closely. After the example of Lόcke, Baur presses the fact of the author speaking only of twelve apostles at ch. Revelation 21:14, as having their names on the foundations of the new Jerusalem; so that he must have excluded the apostle Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles. Bleek has justly remarked in opposition to this, that the Jews were wont to speak of their twelve tribes, without thereby excluding any portion of the people from their community. The same thing is done also here, immediately before, in Revelation 11:12; and if the apostle would not depart from what had been so long consecrated as a symbol of the church, the number twelve, he must likewise adhere to it in the corresponding number of the apostles. The twelve number of the apostles, which certainly had no accidental origin, was regarded as so inviolable, that even Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:5, says that Christ was seen of the twelve, after Judas had been parted from them. How much less could it be imagined, that the author of the Apocalypse was to speak of thirteen apostles—he who throughout lays such great stress upon the numbers? Only if one were to understand really what was meant ideally, could one have desired him in such a way to do violence to the consecrated signature of the church, and render it unintelligible. And we can the less think of any intentional exclusion of Paul, as that very passage alludes to a declaration of his in Ephesians 2:20, and the more to be regarded as there are also in other parts of the Apocalypse a great number of allusions to the epistles of Paul.[Note: Especially remarkable and undeniable are the references to Colossians 1:16-18. On the πρωτότοκοςἐκτῶννεκρῶν in Revelation 11:18, Comp. in Revelation 1:5, πρωτότοκοςτῶννεκρῶν. This peculiar expression occurs nowhere else in the New Testament, and was manifestly framed by Paul, as may be seen from the relation to Revelation 11:15. The ἀρχή in Revelation 11:18 of Col. is found also in Revelation 22:13; Revelation 3:14. The ἀρχὴτῆςκτίσεως there points to the πρωτότοκοςπάσηςκτίσεως in Revelation 11:15. A word is substituted for πρωτότοκος in Revelation 11:18, by which it is explained. It is to be observed that this reference occurs in the epistle to the Laodiceans, for whom, according to Colossians 4:16, the epistle to the Ephesians was also intended. Comp. besides Revelation 1:4, with Paul’s form of salutation, 1:9, with 2 Timothy 2:2; 2 Timothy 2:12; 2 Timothy 2:10 with Philippians 2:8; 19:8 with 2 Corinthians 11:2, &c.] Baur remarks farther, “What a great contrast exists between the stand-point of the Apocalypse, by which the kingdom of God has its genuine, its truly believing and blessed members only out of Judaism, and that of the gospel, which sees in Judaism only the kingdom of unbelief.” On the contrary, we maintain that the Revelation knows of no prerogatives belonging peculiarly to the Jews in the kingdom of God; Gentile Christians have perfectly equal rights imputed to them with the Jewish brethren; so much so, that the Seer makes no account of any distinction between Jewish and Gentile believers, he knows only of one holy Catholic church. And from this fact we draw the conclusion that the exposition of this section, which regards it as containing Jewish patriotic phantasies, cannot possibly be right. Which of the two opposite views is the correct one, must be determined by an examination of the particular passages. The first passage that demands attention is ch. Revelation 5:8; Revelation 5:10. “Then the four beasts and the four and twenty elders fell down before the lamb, having every one of them harps and golden vials full of odours, which are the prayers of saints. And they sung a new song, saying, thou art worthy to take the book and to open its seals, for thou wert slain and hast redeemed us[Note: Ewald and Block would expunge ἡμᾶς, “as it cannot be thought that the author of the Apocalypse would have it to be understood that not merely the four and twenty elders in heaven, but also the Cherubim, represent themselves as those who have been redeemed out of all nations by the blood of the Lamb, and who shall again reign on the earth.” But to the four beasts, the ideal representatives of the living earthly creation, belongs, as was shown in our exposition, only the falling down; the ἐ ?́χοντας has immediate respect only to the four and twenty elders, and of these only docs the nature of things permit us to think: the Cherubim cannot be conceived as doing the part of harpers. But the elders do not act in their own name; they do so as representatives of the saints: they have vials full of incense, which are the prayers of saints—comp, also ch. 14:2, 15:2, where the saints themselves have harps.]to God by thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation.[Note: Isaiah had already said, in ch. 66:18, “And I—their works and thoughts. A time comes for gathering all heathen and tongues”—the Jewish people are rejected, the heathen world called.]And hast made them (the persons so redeemed) kings and priests to our God, and they shall reign upon the earth.” This passage is quite plain and clear: in the kingdom of God there is neither Jew nor Greek, it brings its members out of all peoples of the earth to the possession of the same rights, to be kings and priests, which is the highest dignity that can be conceived in the kingdom of God. And this enlarged �cumenical mode of representation is not like a thing that swims in the air, so that it might be regarded as a kind of isolated ray of light; it has its foundation in the worth that is here ascribed to Christ’s blood—comp. on ch. Revelation 12:11, “They overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.” All Judaism has its root in defective views of the great work of redemption. He who perceives in Christ the Lamb of God, that takes away the sins of the world, is thereby raised quite above the contracted and partial Jewish spirit. The second passage is ch.Revelation 7:1-8. Here we have represented, in an episode between the sixth and seventh seals, the safe preservation of the members of the church amid the great plagues which befal the unbelieving and apostate world. The grace of God manifested toward them and protecting them, appears under the image of a seal, which is imprinted on them, before the wind blows upon the earth; that is, before the storm of tribulations breaks in upon the world with its desolating and destructive fury. To a superficial view the precedence of the Jews has here certainly some appearance of support. It is not only the children of Israel in general that are spoken of, but particular Jewish tribes also are singled out from the rest, as those to whom the sealed belong. But no one that is a little advanced in the investigation of Scripture will allow himself to be at once carried away by appearances of this sort. By a mode of contemplation in Scripture deeply rooted and widely diffused, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the fathers of all believers; from the very beginning of the arrangements respecting salvation to the end of the world, there is but one people of God, the sons of Abraham and of Israel, from the number of whom they are excluded, who give way to a spirit of unbelief and backsliding, even though they have been born among them, according to the oft-repeated expression, “that soul is cut off from among his people;” while, on the other hand, those who have faith, wherever they may have been born, attain to equal rights with the native members. It is from this point of view that our Lord, for example, speaks to his disciples in Matthew 19:28, “Verily I say to you, that ye who have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of man shall sit upon the throne of his glory, shall also sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” That the twelve tribes of Israel are here used not in the ordinary Jewish sense, that they rather denote the whole church of God, is as certain as the calling of the apostles had respect, not to Israel in the narrower sense, but to all nations, Matthew 28:19. Indeed, in the calling of the apostles themselves our Lord was guided by this mode of viewing things—as certainly as the twelve number of the apostles has respect to the twelve tribes of Israel. The same mode is followed also by James, when he addresses his epistle to the “twelve tribes scattered abroad,” to the Israel out of Palestine, in the dispersion; and by Peter, when he writes to the “elect strangers scattered abroad in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia.” Both of them certainly did not wish to exclude the Gentile Christians, who, as appears from the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles of Paul, were then united with Jewish Christians in those regions into one Christian body; nor did they mean to include the unchristian Jews. They addressed both the genuine original sons, and the sons by adoption. This manner of contemplation is followed also by the author of the Apocalypse himself, in ch. Revelation 21:12, according to which the city, that symbolizes the church in the kingdom of glory, the city in whose light the Gentiles walk, ch. Revelation 21:24, into which all without distinction of nation are received, who have overcome, ch. Revelation 21:7, and from which all are excluded without distinction of nation, who have done abomination and lies, Revelation 21:27, has names written on its gates which are the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. The question, therefore, arises, Does the Seer here speak of Israel and its tribes in this sense, or in the ordinary Jewish one? If in the former, there is nothing to imply an undue ascendancy of the Jews over others. For, the honour of being the kernel and trunk of the people of God, even under the New Testament, is accorded to them in all Scripture, and nowhere more decidedly than in the writings of the apostle Paul (Romans 9 and Romans 11); nor can it be denied them, without falling out with history, which declares the communication of the gospel to the heathen to have been made by means of believing Jews; without finding the conduct of Christ incomprehensible in confining the preaching of salvation primarily to the Jews; and without destroying the continuity of the kingdom of God, which unfortunately is very much lost sight of by the style of thought now prevalent, as also by orthodox theologians, to the great detriment not only of theology, but also of a living faith. For, if we tear asunder the two testaments, we leave the Old to be regarded as primarily destined for the Jews, and retain only the New for Christians; and thus rob the first of a great part of its edifying character for the Christian church, and receive only some disjecta membra of the writings of Scripture, as fitted now to exercise a direct and proper influence. Those who have not the Old Testament, possess the New also in a very imperfect manner. If we turn now to answer the proposed question, there can be no doubt that the prophet speaks here of Israel and his tribes in the spiritual or Christian sense. We could prove this without calling to our aid ch. 14, where the 144,000 again appear, and where they quite undeniably represent the whole company of Christians. In the chapter before us itself, those, whose preservation from the plagues that were to alight on the wicked is depicted in Revelation 11:1-8, for their consolation in the time of trial, are presented to our view in the possession of that final glory which awaited them. They are spoken of there as being taken out of all nations, and tribes, and peoples, and tongues, and hence from these also must the 144,000 have been formed.[Note: The supposition of Hofmann is quite inadmissible, that the numberless multitude out of all kindreds and nations, in Revelation 11:9, is placed over against the 144.000 out of Judaism. There would then have been promised to the Jewish believers only preservation upon earth, and to those from among the Gentiles only heavenly felicity. The objections which Bleek has raised against the identification of the 144,000 with the numberless multitude can very easily be disposed of. He says, first, it is not probable that, if the entire number was given at 144.000, they should immediately after be described as a multitude which no one could number. But in ch. 14:1, 2, the voices of the 144,000 are also compared with the noise of many waters, and of loud thunder. Numerable usually stands in Hebrew for what can easily be numbered; compare, for example, Isaiah 10:19. Any one looking at a multitude of 144,000 would at once lose all thought of numbering. Balaam says, in Numbers 23:10, “Who can determine the dust of Jacob, and the number of the fourth part of Israel?” already, therefore, the fourth part of Israel was held to be innumerable, and yet the whole was twice numbered during the march, and in that very book, in which such an explanation is given of Israel’s being innumerable, the precise numbers are recorded; whereas here only a round number, of a thoroughly ideal import, is given, and such as only expresses in another form the idea of an innumerable multitude. For that the number has no real signification is manifest alone from its relation to the twelve as the signature of the covenant-people. Again, it is objected by Bleek that the 144,000 are in Revelation 11:4 expressly described as sealed out of ail the tribes of Israel—an expression that could scarcely have been chosen if it was meant as the entire sum of the members of these tribes, and not as an announcement of believers sealed out of the entire number of members in these tribes. But this reason can only tell against Bleek’s earlier hypothesis, according to which the twelve tribes must be divisions in the New Testament kingdom of God itself. The twelve tribes are the twelve Jewish tribes (for in the whole of Scripture there is but one Israel, and the distinction made in the older theology of a corporeal and a spiritual Israel, the Christian church, has no foundation), but the false seed are excluded, and the sons of adoption are brought in. As. therefore, a sediment, a sentina remains behind, the expression, “out of all the tribes of Israel,” is quite suitable.]That we must not stick to the letter, is clear also from the omission of the tribe of Dan, for a purely theological reason, in order not to exceed the number twelve;[Note: Hofmann improperly refers to the omission of Simeon in the blessing of Moses. The reason for that omission was, that Simeon received no separate territory, but dwelt under Judah, hence was blessed along with him, and obtained no peculiar blessing of his own. But in respect to the Messianic blessing, Dan had not an independent existence, and must not have failed, if the whole enumeration was to be taken in a realistic sense. The reason for the exclusion alone of Dan out of the number twelve, is, as already shewn, that the only narrative of the Old Testament, in which Dan played a part, is that respecting the worship of idols among the Danites, in the book of Judges. So that the sentiment “without are the idolatrous,” in ch. 22:15, is here symbolically represented by the omission of Dan.]from the number being the same in the small and the large tribes; and from the fact that the tribal distinctions were then lost. The third passage is ch. Revelation 14:1-5. Here it is a piece of palpable caprice in Credner, Zόllig, Baur, to understand by the 144,000 who stand around the Lamb on Mount Zion, Jewish Christians, and nothing but the most imperative necessity, or the giving up also of the preceding passages, could warrant us in adopting such a view. It has, however, nothing to support it; and there are the following reasons against it:—1. All the marks throughout the passage point to Christians in general: they have the name of Christ and the name of his Father written on their foreheads; they have been redeemed from the earth, from among men, they sing a new song before the throne and the four beasts, who represent the living creatures over all the earth; they have not defiled themselves with women, i.e., sins (comp. Genesis 4:7, where sin appears under the image of a woman, with Genesis 3:16; Zechariah 5:7-8; Revelation 2:20; Revelation 2:22), they follow the Lamb wherever he goes, in their mouth was found no guile, for they are without blame. These are all clear marks for distinguishing a true Christian in any age. With Jewish Christians, on the other hand, the first distinguishing mark was circumcision, which would have made an anomalous appearance in such a society. 2. Identical beyond doubt with the 144,000, who here stand on Mount Zion and sing the new song, are those who, in ch. Revelation 15:2-4, stand on the sea of glass, and sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb. These are described as the persons who have gotten the victory over the beast and his image. But according to ch. Revelation 13:7, the beast has power given to it over every tribe, and people, and tongue, and nation, that is, over the believers from among them. These, too, are the persons who here sing the song of the Lamb, and in ch. 14, the new Song of Solomon 3. The whole fourteenth chapter, the conclusion of the group, which treats of the three enemies of the kingdom of God, and their formidable war against it, Revelation 12-14, forms the antidote to the pain, which might be occasioned by the contents of ch. 13, the representation of the great oppression caused by the beast. A glance is here first given, in ch. Revelation 14:1-5, into the heavenly blessedness of the elect. Now, if the song is of an oecumenical character, if it concerns the saints of all tongues and nations, then the field embraced in the consolation can be no straitened one, it cannot possibly be limited to the Jewish territory. Thus we have arrived at the result, that the Rationalistic exposition of our section is altogether untenable, because the supposition on which it rests, that the author of the Revelation had only one foot in Christianity, and another still in Judaism, is an utterly groundless one On the contrary, it everywhere appears that he had taken for his motto, “Christ alone and all,” and in the blood of the Lamb had been washed, as well from his Jewish sympathies, as from the other stains and imperfections of his old man. But there is also another line of argument by which we can gain the same result. We perceive that everywhere else the things of Judaism serve only as the forms and symbols under which he represents the Christian; and all these analogies lead to the conclusion that he cannot possibly mean by the temple here the temple at Jerusalem—that he must intend by it what corresponds to it on the Christian territory, the Christian church. That by Israel the author does not denote those whom he thought worthy of the name on account of their corporeal descent from Jacob, but the entire body of true Christians, we have already seen. In like manner he holds no other to be Jews but true Christians (Vitringa on ch. Revelation 2:9, “Jew in this book denotes one who is a Jew in secret, circumcised in heart, a true confessor of the faith.”) Bold as it may seem, he must also deny to the temple at Jerusalem the name of the temple. The priests of the Revelation, who must of course have a temple corresponding to them, are not the Levitical, but all Christ’s faithful people, who have been made priests to God, and his Father,” Revelation 1:6, Revelation 5:10, Revelation 20:6. Nay, the temple itself also occurs elsewhere in the Revelation in a spiritual sense, as a designation of the church of Christ. And this is the more decisive, as in each place alike the discourse is not of a temple, but precisely of the temple of God. Even in the first group, that of the epistles, it is said, ch. Revelation 3:12, “He that overcomes, him will I make a pillar in the temple of our God, and he shall go no more out.” On that passage it is well remarked by Vitringa, “That their position may be firm and immoveable in the heavenly temple, which is the symbol as well of believers upon earth, as of the saints made perfect in glory. For under the new dispensation there is a house of God, to which all the saints have access, Hebrews 12:22.” The going no more out here, forms the contrast to the throwing out in ch. Revelation 11:2. Vitringa, “It must he understood passively, as if it had been written, He shall not be cast out. The Lord by his grace and providence would take care, that those among the Philadelphians, who, with a sincere spirit and a pure affection, had confessed the truth, should never be deprived of their state and dignity.” In ch. Revelation 13:6, the tabernacle of God is a designation of his church, in connection with those, who dwell in heaven, believers in heaven and on earth, for the citizenship of the latter also is in heaven (Philippians 3:20), the saints, as they are presently after named by way of explanation.[Note: Besides these parallel passages, it is in favour of the temple being regarded as the symbol of the church, that the prophecy of Ezekiel, ch. 11-48, to which an allusion in Revelation 11:1 undoubtedly is made, unquestionably refers not to an external building, but to the spiritual temple of God’s kingdom, as is evident in particular from ch. 47:1. As Ezekiel beheld the restoration of the church under the image of the temple given to be measured, so John beheld its preservation.]Further, the temple of the Lord in heaven, with the ark of the covenant, Revelation 7:15, Revelation 11:19, Revelation 14:15; Revelation 14:17, Revelation 15:5, as the heavenly symbol of the church, implies, that the church upon earth also presented itself to the prophet under the same symbol. As it stands in regard to the temple, so does it also in regard to Jerusalem. Whenever it occurs besides in the Revelation, it never denotes the city so named in the vulgar sense, but always the church ; and we should, therefore, need to isolate the section before us from all the rest of the book, were we to think here of the literal Jerusalem and the temple of Herod. By the “beloved city,” which, according to ch. Revelation 20:9, is to be encompassed and besieged by a revived heathenism at the close of the thousand years, Lόcke himself understands “the society of believers upon earth,” in other words, the Christian church; and yet there can be no doubt, that this beloved city is Jerusalem, so that Ewald is perfectly right in identifying the city here (in ch. 11) and there. Vitringa remarks, “Allusion is made as well to Psalms 87:2, ‘The Lord loves the gates of Zion,’ as to the vision in the next prophecy, Revelation 21:1-10, which represents the church under the image of Jerusalem, the holy city, beloved of God.” How also could the prophet, in ch. Revelation 3:12, Revelation 21:2; Revelation 21:10, represent the church of the future world under the name of the new Jerusalem, unless he had already recognised the true Jerusalem in the church of the present? It was the new Jerusalem in contrast, not to that old material one, but to the spiritual beloved city in its imperfect condition here, from which this section itself tells us, how much it needs a renewal, with how many deficiencies and evils it is still beset. Finally, the heavenly Zion, with its 144,000 perfected saints, who sing there the new song before the throne, ch. Revelation 14:1-5, presupposes the existence of an earthly Zion, in which believers have been prepared for it by much tribulation. Those who stick to the letter, ought, as a necessary consequence, to abide here also by the literal Zion. If the triumphant church takes the name of Zion, the name must also be proper for the church militant. For, it cannot be applied to the church as triumphing, but only in so far as it is a church.[Note: Polycrates of Ephesus says, in his third epistle to the Roman bishop Victor, in Euseb. 11:24, of St John, “Οςἐγενήθηἱερεὺςτὸπέταλνπεφορηκώς, certainly in the manner of John himself. In a spiritual understanding of the high-priesthood, he makes its nature to consist in the closest relationship to the Lord.]With these facts before us, to attempt to interpret the section under consideration, according to the letter, would be a mere act of caprice; the more so, as the spiritual use of the language is very extensively employed also in the other books of the New Testament, even in some where it could far less be expected than in the Revelation. The passages in which the temple occurs as a designation of the Christian church, have already been adduced; in regard to Jerusalem; Galatians 4:26, Hebrews 12:22, are especially to be compared. There are besides, however, many other reasons against the reference to the Jewish temple and the literal Jerusalem, and for the reference to the temple and the Jerusalem of the Christian church. According to the seven epistles, which everywhere contain only individual applications of what is exhibited as a general delineation in the prophetical part, we could not but expect that the Seer, in the main delineation, would direct his eye upon the internal state of the church of the future. The preserving and rejecting agency of God in regard to the church, is the point that comes most prominently out in the epistles. The command, for example, “Measure the temple of God and the altar, and them that worship therein,” connects itself closely with, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee a crown of life,” ch. Revelation 2:10, “Because thou hast kept the word of my patience, I will also keep thee from the hour of temptation, which shall come upon the whole earth,” ch. Revelation 3:10. In like manner, the throwing out of the temple-court and not measuring it, is very nearly allied to such passages as the following, “If not, I will come to thee, and will remove thy candlestick out of its place,” and, “I will spue thee out of my mouth,” etc. That the church in the future was to undergo a great sifting, that it was never wholly to perish, but that many branches of the vine should become withered and useless, is a subject frequently unfolded in the epistles. But this agreement between our section and the epistles is destroyed, whenever we refer the former to Judaism, instead of to the Christian church. In its place, indeed, there comes a palpable discord. For the Judaism, whose preservation should in that case be announced here, is what is called the synagogue of Satan in the epistles. One does not see, how a prediction respecting the future fates of the literal Jerusalem and the Jewish temple should have been introduced exactly here, pressed in between the sixth and seventh trumpets, the second and third woe, which have to do only with the world-power. On the other hand, by the spiritual interpretation, which refers it to the Christian church, the prophetical announcement is quite in its place. The judgments alight upon the world-power on account of the hostile attitude it has assumed against the church, and for the salvation of the latter. And it is well, in the meantime to see, what effect has been wrought in the church itself by the very dangerous encroachment upon it through the world-power—whether it has not been internally reduced to a level with the world; the more so, since if such were the case, the whole of the treatment to be inflicted on the world-power would lose its propriety. It has the preservation of the temple of God, and of those who worship in it, for its foundation. The appearance of the angel of the Lord, which is described in the episode, Revelation 10:1 to Revelation 11:13, has the double aim of first solemnly announcing, that the completion of the judgment upon the world, and the glorifying of the church therewith connected, should certainly take place, and then of declaring how dreadfully the temple and Jerusalem would be imperilled by the encroachments of the world, though they should still be preserved. The two parts of the mission of the angel lose all internal connection, whenever by the temple we understand the Jewish one. But adopt the spiritual meaning, and that immediately becomes manifest. The danger brought to the temple and the city by the worldly intermixture in the church could not but awaken a doubt as to the final victory of the church, and her glorification, which was met by the solemn assurance given respecting the consummation. The final glorification of the church has for its basis the preservation of the church amid the temptations threatening it; without the patience of Christ, no participation in his kingdom. The position of the two witnesses becomes incomprehensible, if Revelation 11:1-2 are not referred to the Christian church. They are equally hated by the world-power—the beast which rises out of the abyss—and by the degenerate holy city, “which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified;” they were brought to death through the persecuting hatred of the degenerate community. On the degenerate holy city, according to Revelation 11:13, the judgment alights, and that because of the despite it had done to their testimony. Between the world-power and the Jews, however, there existed no internal connection. But there did between the world-power and the Christian church, which through the encroaching pressure of the former was to become to a large extent leavened with the spirit of the world. The beast, from which, according to Revelation 11:7, proceeds the persecution of the two witnesses, has to do, according to ch. Revelation 13:7-8, not with the literal Jerusalem, but with the saints, whose name is written in the book of the Lamb that had been slain. The whole war of the Dragon, which the beast serves (comp. Revelation 13:2) is waged against those, who have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; comp. Revelation 12:11. The literal Jerusalem, at the time the Apocalypse was written, even taking the earliest date to which that has been ascribed, was no longer the theatre for the two witnesses. That Jerusalem had then ceased to be the seat and centre of the church—a dignity it lost at the moment of Christ’s death, Matthew 23:38—is manifest alone from the seven epistles, which proclaim the complete separation of the church from Jerusalem and its temple. But the witnessing generally has its proper territory only in the church of God, though possibly degenerate, and that here also this is to be regarded as the sphere of action, is evident from the prototypes Moses and Elias, who came forth in the midst of God’s church, and from the designation of the witnesses as the two olive-trees and the two lamps, which determine the region of their agency to be that of the Spirit and grace of God. The result we have obtained is of importance in more than one point of view. First, the rejection of the ecclesiastical tradition respecting the composition of the Apocalypse under Domitian is thus deprived of one of its chief supports, and thereby an important vantage-ground is won for the correct exposition of the Apocalypse. But we have gained more than a mere fence. If here no judicial punishment is announced upon the Jews, in the only passage of the whole book where with some appearance of truth it might have been sought, that punishment must then be regarded as past, and the Revelation must consequently have been composed, not under Galba, but under Domitian. For, it is clear, that if Judaism had been already overthrown, the author could not have failed to announce its overthrow; he could not have occupied himself exclusively with the fall of heathenism, the less so as he had before his eyes the example of the Lord, from whom the overthrow of Jerusalem received so prominent a place. Farther, it has now again been shewn how, what from the first is felt by a simple faith in the written word, that we have here holy ground, on which no patriotic imaginations and no products of common and impure human feeling are to be found, is fully confirmed by a careful and thorough investigation. Finally, which is the point of greatest moment, it has become certain to us from the whole contents of the section, that the comforting assurance is there given us of the preservation of the church amid all temptations, the comforting assurance of our own preservation, if only we do not loiter about the court, but with the zeal which docs violence to the kingdom, press into the temple itself. Seventh Trumpet Ch. Revelation 11:14. The second woe is past; behold, the third woe comes quickly.We have now in chap. Revelation 11:15-19 the seventh trumpet, the third woe. The trumpet of the seventh angel sounds, and the blessed in heaven triumph, that now the universal dominion of their God and his Christ appears immediately in prospect, Revelation 11:15. The heavenly representatives of the church, the four and twenty elders, give thanks to the Lord, that he now comes in his kingdom to execute judgment on the ungodly world, as also on the dead (raised to life again), and to reward the righteous, Revelation 11:16-18. The catastrophe follows; the confidence of the blessed and of the elders is not put to shame; the strong angel, who in ch. Revelation 10:6-7, had declared, that at the sounding of the seventh trumpet the completion of the mystery of God should take place without delay, keeps his word, Revelation 11:19. The conclusion of the vision of the seven trumpets points back to its beginning. In ch. Revelation 8:3-4, the prayers of the saints call for the judgment of God on the world; here the saints give thanks that the wrath of the Lord has come. In ch. Revelation 8:5 voices, and lightnings, and thunders, and earthquakes, come forth as a symbolical announcement, that the world’s judgment is approaching; in Revelation 11:19 this symbolical announcement goes into complete fulfilment: amid lightnings, and voices, and thunders, and earthquakes, and great hail, the ungodly world is brought to ruin. Revelation 11:15. And the seventh trumpet sounded. And there were great voices in heaven, saying, The kingdom of the world has become our Lord’s and his anointed’s, and he will reign for ever and ever. That we are to regard the great voices in heaven as chiefly at least proceeding from the great multitude, which no man could number, clothed with white robes and with palms in their hands, the saints made perfect, arises from the nature of things. For these are that portion of the heavenly inhabitants who are specially interested in this event; they are railed to reign with their Lord and his anointed, ch. Revelation 5:10; his entrance on the government is also theirs; they, the servants, now receive from their Lord the reward, Revelation 11:18. It is evident also from the correspondence, in which the expression, “to his servants” there, stands to “our Lord” here. It farther appears from a comparison of the parallel passages. Those that have the closest connection with the one before us—much more close than ch. Revelation 5:11-12, to which alone reference is commonly made—are ch. Revelation 12:10, where “the great voice” in heaven, which celebrates the completed redemption of Christ and his right to rule over the world, springing out of that, is the voice of the church; and ch. Revelation 19:1-8, where the great multitude in heaven, that proclaims with a loud voice on the fall of Rome, “Hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns,” consists of saints, and apostles, and prophets—comp. ch. Revelation 18:20—those who fear God, great and small. The agreement with ch. Revelation 8:3 also serves to determine “the great voices.” If there the prayers of the saints cause the appearance of the angels with the seven trumpets, it can be no other than the saints who here triumph and give thanks, when the work of the seven angels was completed. Hence, though we may regard the angels generally as interested, as is shewn by ch. Revelation 7:11, we should conceive of them as being so only in a subordinate manner, and by way of concurrence. First, the whole host of the saints made perfect step forth, and celebrate in a short speech the victory of their Lord and his anointed. Then, the heavenly representatives of the church, its elite as it were, take up the discourse, and bring fully out what the others only indicate; precisely as in ch. 19, first the multitude of believers step forth, and then the elders. Accordingly, the bearers of the great voices mentioned at the beginning, are given at the close. They are no others than the servants of God, and the saints, and those who fear his name, the small and the great, Revelation 11:18. They are those, who also in ch. Revelation 15:2-4, before the entering of the seven last plagues of God, celebrate his glorious deeds and his approaching final victory over the world, and who sing in ch. Revelation 14:3 the new song before the throne. The kingdom, βασιλεία, signifies here the kingdom, not in the passive, but in the active sense—the dominion; comp. on ch. Revelation 1:6. In ch. Revelation 12:6, Revelation 17:18, also, the kingdom occurs so. It is from not apprehending this import, that the explanatory reading followed by Luther, ἑγενοντοαἱβασιλεῖαι, has arisen: the kingdoms of the world have become. Therefore, by the kingdom having become, etc., is meant: The government is (now) possessed by our Lord and his anointed; and so it suits excellently with what follows: And he shall reign for ever and ever. He has now come to the government, and shall continue to exercise it for ever. The time of the world’s supremacy, of the oppression of the church, has at length come to a final end. The kingdom has become. The result is first actually attained in Revelation 11:19. But since the angel has already sounded, and it is fixed, that the world’s catastrophe follows immediately on the trumpet, the consequence is anticipated. Such a rejoicing in prospect of the immediately approaching victory presents itself also under the old covenant. Thus Psalms 75 is a song of triumph before the victory. Here, as there, the confidence with which the coming deliverance is anticipated, rests upon the divine promise. It was guaranteed to the church by the oath of the strong angel in ch. Revelation 10:6-7, that under the trumpet of the seventh angel the mystery of God should be finished without delay, and the object of this was the dominion of the Lord and his anointed over the world. The fact, which is here celebrated, has its proper root in the redemption accomplished by Christ—comp. Revelation 12:10; but here for the first time does the necessary consequence of that work come fully into reality. To the thanksgiving of the saints for their heavenly felicity, in ch. Revelation 7:10, corresponds here the expression of their joy on account of the final victory over the world. Bengel remarks: “As soon as the seventh angel sounds, the kingdom of the world becomes the Lord’s and his Christ’s, for ever. It is only in heaven, however, that this takes place so immediately, and in heaven alone is it celebrated with joy; for dreadful things still intervene on earth.” But this view is only a result of the embarrassment in which they are involved, who, instead of perceiving that the seventh trumpet is comprised in ch. Revelation 11:15-19, bring within its compass all that follows to the end of the book. The scene cannot, from the very nature of things, belong to heaven; and it makes nothing for this, that it is spoken of heaven. Decisive against such a view, is ch. Revelation 10:6-7, according to which the sound of the seventh trumpet and the finishing of God’s mystery, which can find its completion nowhere but on earth, for it concerns the dominion of Christ over the earth, are immediately united together. Revelation 11:19 also decides against it, if only it is rightly interpreted. But with perfect truth Bengel remarks on the expression: it has become, “Everything, and consequently also the kingdom of the world, is God’s at all times. But in things visible and invisible, Satan and the world have set up their kings and lords against the Lord and his anointed. Such an impious rebellion is brought to an end by God, and he maintains his right. That royal word of the suffering Jesus, ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ has been greatly abused. His kingdom is not worldly, but the kingdom of the world is holy and Christian. This province, which has been long enough in the enemy’s hands, has at last been finally recovered; it is possessed by the Lord and his anointed.” The kingdom of the world is the Lord’s and his anointed’s—the Son’s, into whose hands all things have been committed by the Father, John 3:35, and in particular all judgment, John 5:22. There is the same connection here between the Lord and his anointed, as in Acts 4:26, in both places from Psalms 2:2, “The kings of the earth rise up, and the princes sit in counsel against the Lord and his anointed.” The conflict depicted there finds here at last an end. From the allusion to that fundamental passage it is clear, that anointed here is equivalent to king. The anointing, as was remarked in my commentary on the second Psalm, whether viewed as a real symbolical action, or spoken of in a merely figurative manner, is constantly regarded in the Old Testament as denoting the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as they were imparted to all the servants of God in his kingdom, which is characteristically distinguished from the kingdoms of this world by the very possession of these gifts. This signification comes very plainly out in the account given of the anointing of Saul, 1 Samuel 10:1, and of David, 1 Samuel 16:13-14. Kings were called by way of distinction the anointed, because they received a singularly rich supply of divine grace for their important office. The expression was on this account peculiarly appropriated to the king; he was the individual in whom the idea of the kingdom must be fully realized.[Note: Bengel: “Elisha the prophet was anointed, 1 Kings 12:16; priests were anointed, Exodus 28:41; but most of all kings; and therefore the term anointed, when used absolutely, denotes only the king. He was wont to be called the Lord’s anointed, not the anointed king. In the whole gospel history the name of Christ is never explained by the word priest, but very often by the name of king. And so, as often as Messiah is spoken of in Scripture, respect is had to his kingdom.”]The future dominion of the Lord over the world, resting on the solid foundation, that he is still Lord in the midst of the world’s revolt (Psalms 22:28, Psalms 24:1), was predicted in a long series of passages of Old Testament Scripture. It was the strong consolation solution which bore up the church of the Lord for many centuries, during which the world made her afraid. The most exact agreement is with Obadiah, Obadiah 1:21, “And the kingdom shall be the Lord’s.” Comp. Zechariah 14:9, “And the Lord will be king over the whole earth,” Daniel 2:44. The world-supremacy of Christ, beside that of the Lord, is announced in Daniel 7:13-14, as well as in Psalms 2, “And behold there came one with the clouds of heaven like a Son of man, and came to the Ancient of days, and he was brought before him. And there was given him dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, and all peoples, nations, and tongues, serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which does not pass away, and his kingdom has no end.” Comp. Daniel 7:18, Daniel 7:27, where the dominion of the Lord and of his anointed appears at the same time as the dominion of the people of the saints of the Most High, precisely as in the passage before us. Our Lord, so the saints say with tender affection, instead of simply, the Lord, as used in the original passage; indicating also, that with his dominion theirs was inseparably connected; for the glory of the Lord passes over also upon the servants, comp. at ch. Revelation 9:7. Bengel would delete the our, on very slender external authority, because he does not perceive its true import. A glance at Revelation 11:18 shews, that it was necessary here. What the elders there fully express must here be indicated, at least, in the utterance of the saints. It is a mournful retrogression to seek, as many now do, to have states emancipated from the dominion of Christ. If they are severed from the end, which they are bound perpetually to promote, there will only be substituted for the dominion of grace, the dominion of judgment. But those who contend for a Christian state in opposition to wanton despisers, have here a rich consolation, and may quietly laugh at the world, while it deems their cause to be lost. The more decided the unchristianity of a state, the nearer is its absolute Christianity. Revelation 11:16. And the four and twenty elders, who sit on their thrones before God, fell upon their faces and worshipped God. Revelation 11:17. Saying, We give thee thanks, O Lord God, the Almighty, who art and wast; because thou hast taken thy great power and dost reign. Revelation 11:18. And the nations were angry, and thy wrath is come, and the time of the dead to be judged, and to give reward to thy servants, the prophets, and the saints, and to those that fear thy name, small and great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth. The four and twenty elders who sit before God on their thrones (they constantly sit there during the whole assembly of counsel and judgment that was held to decide upon the fates of the church and the world, ch. Revelation 4:2), have respect to ch. Revelation 4:4. Their worship to ch. Revelation 4:10. There they adore and praise him, who prepares himself to judge the world. Here they celebrate the judgment as executed, the final victory over the world. According to ch. Revelation 5:10, they are the representatives of those, who shall reign upon the earth. In the assumption of dominion over the world by the Lord and his anointed, this dignity has now come to be fully enjoyed, and consequently it calls forth their thanksgivings. Bengel: “What the voices in heaven generally have spoken, is now more circumstantially unfolded in the thanksgiving of the elders. At other times they sit before the throne of God, but here they fall down, and that, not only upon their knees, but even upon their faces, and give to God the most profound worship. This worship consists in the fullest thanksgiving. Often as the elders are mentioned, they are never represented, as here, to have fallen prostrate on their faces. The greater the revelation is of divine grace and glory, the deeper always is the humiliation of the creatures, especially of those, who are the nearest to him.” In Revelation 11:17, the address is directed to God in the unity of his being, without respect to difference of persons—comp. on ch. Revelation 1:8. There should be a point after God; “the Almighty” unfolds what is contained in “God;” the, “who is and was,” explains the import of “Lord,” equal to Jehovah—comp. on ch. Revelation 1:8. There it is said, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, saith the Lord God who is, and who was, and who comes, the Almighty.” The designations of God here agree exactly with those there; excepting that “who comes” is awanting. The designations there serve to carry up the declaration that God will preserve his supremacy as at the beginning, so also at the end, to its necessity in the divine nature. Here, in view of the perfect keeping of the assurance there given, they point to the source, out of which it flows. The same designations of God occur also in ch. Revelation 4:8. The clause added by Luther: and is to come, is to be deleted. It is one of the most important deviations in the translation of Luther from the correct text of the Revelation. Externally, it has a very meagre support; the best authorities all speak for its omission; it has originated with those who thought they must supply from ch. Revelation 1:4-5, Revelation 4:8; and so thought, because they did not perceive that the subject has here reached another stage than at those parallel passages. Here the discourse can no longer be of a coming of the Lord, because he has already come. Bengel: “When it is said, We thank thee that thou hast taken thy great power, it is as much as to say, We thank thee that thou hast come. And when the wrath of God has come, as the elders say, in Revelation 11:18, then God himself has also come.” The ungenuineness of the words: and art to come, is clear also from this, that the simple “thou art and wast,”  in ch. Revelation 16:5, the only passage where it occurs besides this, can only be explained if it has been preceded by ours—see on the passage. The elders not merely praise the Lord, they give him thanks, because they are partakers of the great power which God takes, and of the dominion which he enters on. The power is the means by which the kingdom has been won. And great must be the power which can subdue an ungodly world, Ephesians 6:12. The taking forms the contrast to the leaving alone. He always possessed the power, but hitherto he had not exercised it. To reign is here, as much as to enter on the government. This is shewn here, and in ch. Revelation 19:6, by the tense; properly: thou hast reigned, thou hast entered on the government. The original passage for the words, “Thou hast taken thy great power and reignest,” is Psalms 93:1, “The Lord reigns, he is clothed with majesty, the Lord clothes and girds himself about with power.” The world-power there threatens to shake the earth, and with it the kingdom of God. But the Psalmist sets against its revolt the Lord, whom he sees coming in his kingdom, clothed with majesty, and girt about with power. It was remarked there in my commentary that the expression: the Lord reigns, “alludes to the form used at the proclamation of earthly kings”—comp. 2 Samuel 15:10; 1 Kings 1:11, 1 Kings 1:13; 2 Kings 9:13 Kings Revelation 9:13. This allusion itself shews that it is not the existing government of the Lord which is here spoken of, but a new and glorious revelation of his supremacy, as it were a new ascension of the throne. We are led to the same result also by the parallel passages, Psalms 96:10, Psalms 97:1, Psalms 99:1, where the same form of expression occurs. In all of them it is, the coming of the Lord in his kingdom that is referred to. In the face of the high-sounding pretensions of the world-power, asserting its dominion over the earth, that it has now gained the ascendancy over the kingdom of God; in the face of the proclamation: Assyria or Babylon reigns, the Psalmist exclaims: The Lord reigns; he announces that the dominion of the Lord, far from being destroyed by such feeble assaults, is now going to manifest itself in its full glory.” What faith had there anticipated, that is now without delay to be brought to its full realization. The verbal allusion to the Psalms implies, that what the church now has immediately in prospect is the same that had long ago been prophesied; the hopes and expectations of the fathers were now to be gloriously realized. Along with the passages referred to in the Psalms, the three first petitions in the Lord’s Prayer also, which, from their indications of the Lord’s will, may likewise be regarded as prophecies, receive their complete fulfilment. (Vitringa: “This is that kingdom, whose coming Jesus Christ has taught us to expect and ask in prayer from God; it was then, indeed, begun, but now it reaches its consummation.”) The Lord’s taking his great power here, has its prefiguration in the overthrow of particular phases of the ungodly power, in a manifold series of provisional judgments on it; comp. ch. Revelation 19:6, where the “Hallelujah, for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigns,” is uttered on the occasion of the overthrow of Rome. But these preliminary fulfilments point forward to the final one, to the time when not merely a particular phase of the ungodly power, but this power itself, lies stricken under the judgments of God. In Revelation 11:18, words are put into the mouth of the elders, which serve more definitely to characterize the seventh trumpet, in the proper description of which the prophet expresses himself with enigmatical brevity, to indicate, that a more lengthened delineation of the matter is to be given afterwards.[Note: Vitringa: “The things are spoken here indirectly, which would have been spoken directly and explicitly, if it had not been in the mind of the Spirit to disclose more fully in the subsequent parts of this prophecy the evils of the seventh trumpet.”]The wrath of the heathen is the time of provocation for the wrath of God. It pervades the whole of history, and then at the end of history it finds its full recompense, after many a prelude of the final issue has been given during the course of God’s providential dealings. The wrath of the heathen is called forth by the advancement of the hated kingdom of God and Christ, as it began to take place after the Word was made flesh. Such wrath, says Bengel, “continues still to shew itself. When God with his kingdom, when Christ with his truth, comes near to men, the hatred breaks forth against the light. And it will yet gather still more wind, and burst forth into a violent flame.” In consequence of this wrath of the heathen, rooted in the wrath of Satan (comp. ch. Revelation 12:17), they have shed the blood of saints and prophets; comp. ch. Revelation 16:6, Revelation 18:24. The chief phases of the wrath of the heathen are, according to the subsequent visions, the wrath of Rome, of the ten kings, of Gog and Magog, Revelation 20:7-9.[Note: The allusion is to Psalms 99:1, “The Lord reigns, the peoples tremble.” The words there have a twofold import. ψβζ signifies, not merely to tremble, but also to be angry, comp. Psalms 4:4, and this signification stands here in the back-ground. This was perceived by the LXX., who translate: Ὁκύριοςἐβασίλευσεν, ὀργιζέσθωσαν, the Lord has entered on his kingdom, let the peoples be angry. Quite similar is the ποιμανεῖ ? in ch. 2:27. There too a concealed hack ground is brought into view. That allusion is made to the passage in the Psalm here can the less be doubted, as ἐβασίλευσας immediately preceded. Besides, also, Psalms 2 treats of the wrath of God and the wrath of the heathen.]The wrath of God is come, because it is already as good as present; it breaks forth immediately in Revelation 11:19, comp. ch. Revelation 6:16-17, where the expression is employed with equal prominence. Till now, the wrath of God has been the coming, or the future—comp. Matthew 3:7, 1 Thessalonians 1:10. The time of the dead to be judged, is as much as the time when the dead shall be judged. That the subject of discourse here is the final judgment on the dead previously raised to life again (in opposition to Vitringa, who understands by the judgment on the dead, God’s espousing the cause of the dead martyrs, and bringing them into honourable remembrance), is manifest especially from ch. Revelation 20:12-13, where what is here indicated finds its fuller expansion: there the dead stand before the throne, the books are opened, and the dead are judged according to what is written in the books, according to their works—comp. John 5:28-29, “The hour cometh, in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of damnation.” In ch. Revelation 20:12-13, the dead that are judged, are only the bad. The books are only the records of guilt. The book of life is opened merely to shew, that they are not written in it. They are all condemned to the second death. Accordingly, we mast here also understand by the judgment the judgment of condemnation, that which is the product of the wrath of God, in harmony with the resurrection of judgment in John 5:29, and John 5:24, “Verily, verily I say to you, whosoever hears my word, and believes on him that sent me, he has eternal life, and does not come into judgment, but is passed from death to life”—comp. John 3:17, where to be judged forms the contrast to be saved, Revelation 18:8; Revelation 19:2; 1 Peter 4:6; 1 Corinthians 11:31-32. Otherwise it might be supposed, that by the time of the dead to be judged was meant the general judgment, and that in what follows the dead would fall into their two divisions. But in opposition to this, it is not said: those who have corrupted, but those who corrupt the earth. Besides the dead the living also are judged. But it was unnecessary to make mention of them expressly, because it was to be understood of itself, that when the dead sinners were judged, the living also should be so; whereas during the six preceding trumpets only the living were judged, and not the dead. Still, the living are not mentioned, even at the close of the verse. The Lord himself has spoken of the reward to be given to his own, Matthew 5:12, Matthew 5:46; Matthew 10:41-42. We have not here the two things existing alongside of each other, the wrath, judgment, destruction—and the distribution of reward; but the execution of judgment brings redemption along with it. If this is not perceived, the clause: and to destroy, trails in an unseemly manner. The reward of the faithful consists in this, that the earth has been cleared of its persecutors and oppressors, and now the meek possess it, Matthew 5:5. In regard to the persons who receive the reward, Bengel remarks, “There are three kinds of servants of God. There are the prophets, who have brought the will of God to men, and for the most part suffered death. There are the saints, who have given themselves wholly up to obey the will of God, although they may not have been called to deliver any particular oral testimony. These two kinds pre-eminently bear the honourable name of the Servants of God. But there are also those who fear his name, small and great. These are the inferior common class of such as receive a reward from God, and escape destruction. For one who is absolutely godless never properly fears God, Luke 23:40.” But the right view is rather that here two general and comprehensive designations are put, servants of the Lord and those who fear his name, and that each of the two classes comprises two subdivisions under it—the first, prophets and saints; the second, in reverse order, the small and the great. The servants of the Lord here are not the prophets and saints; comp. ch. Revelation 19:5, where to the servants of God correspond those who fear him: Praise our God all his servants and those who fear him, the small and the great. Believers generally are also called God’s servants in ch. Revelation 2:20, Revelation 7:3, Revelation 22:3, see on the title at ch. Revelation 1:1. By the prophets here the teachers, who also in Daniel have attained to a dignity of their own, ch. Revelation 12:3, are represented as by their head; much as in ch. Revelation 11:3 the whole work of witness-bearing is represented by that of prophecying. There is no reason for supposing that the prophets are here to be understood in the larger sense; they represent here, as also in ch. 11, the species, as being the most distinguished part. The saints never mean peculiarly distinguished Christians. By the name of saints all Israelites were designated in the Old Testament, the whole people of the covenant as the set apart, the chosen, those whom God had taken out of the territory of the profane world, behind whose glitter and display, misery and deep degradation ever lie concealed, and had elevated into the condition of his people—see my Commentary on Psalms 16:2. And so in the New Testament, and especially in the Apocalypse, it is a common designation of all Christians—comp. Revelation 13:7; Revelation 13:10, Revelation 14:12, Revelation 17:6, Revelation 18:20, Revelation 20:9. The saints, as distinguished from the prophets here, are the other holy persons, for prophets also were such: as we read of Judah and (the rest of) Israel, Jerusalem and (the rest of) Judah, in ch. Revelation 9:3, the men who bore the seal of God on their foreheads, and the grass and trees of the earth, meaning by these the rest of men. By those that fear the Lord was very commonly denoted in the Old Testament the entire multitude of believers—comp. for example Psalms 112:1, Psalms 22:23, where those that fear God form the parallelism to the seed of Jacob. Here it is not said simply, fear thee, but fear thy name. The name of God is the product of his doings. That he has a name distinguishes the God of Revelation from an anonymous deity, such as Deism and Rationalism would set up for God. By the small and the great only such distinctions can be denoted as are similar to prophets and other saints, distinctions existing within the same territory, hence not such as are formed by riches, worldly position, or relative age. The small occurs thus in Matthew 10:42, Matthew 18:6, Matthew 18:10, Matthew 18:14; comp. Luke 9:46, where the disciples contended among themselves who among them should be the greater, in regard to the place they might occupy in the kingdom of God. The saints and the small are to be regarded as emphatic. The design of giving so extended a description is to meet the misgivings of those, who can scarcely venture to appropriate to themselves any share in the reward, because they feel themselves so little and weak and wretched. That we have understood correctly who are meant by the receivers of the reward, is clear from the fundamental and parallel passages. In Psalms 115:10-11, we find set over against the house of Aaron, “and (all the rest) who fear the Lord.” In Psalms 115:12-13, of the same Psalm it is said, “He shall bless the house of Israel, bless the house of Aaron. He shall bless those that fear the Lord, the small and the great.” By the great there the priests more especially are understood, though including along with them all who occupy a prominent place in the kingdom of God, as here also the great is not to be absolutely confined to the prophets—comp. chap. Revelation 13:16, Revelation 19:18, Revelation 20:12, from which it is clear, that the distinction is of a wider compass. In Psalms 118:2-4 we find Israel, the house of Aaron, those who fear the Lord—the latter the connecting link between the house of Aaron and (the rest of) Israel. To the distinction of saints and prophets here corresponds in Matthew 10:4, the distinction of prophets and (the rest of) the righteous. Finally, in Revelation 18:20, two divisions are made—saints, and apostles and prophets. The reward of the saints consists in this, that their persecutors are brought to destruction. So that the “and to destroy,” &c., comes in quite naturally. Allusion is made to Genesis 6:11-13, “And the earth was corrupt before God, and the earth was full of violence. And God saw the earth and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its way upon the earth. And God said to Noah, the end of all flesh is come before me, for the earth is full of violence by them, and behold I corrupt (destroy) them with the earth.” As the sins of ancient times had revived, so also must their punishment. Those who destroy (corrupt) the earth, not at all mainly by idolatry, but, according to the original passage and ch. Revelation 19:2, mainly by violence, and in particular by persecuting the church—comp. the (heathen) nations were angry, with which the verse begins. As the reward is distributed to the great and the small, so the judgment also falls upon all the destroyers without distinction, the deceivers and the deceived, the ringleaders in mischief, and their instruments. Bengel: “If those who have destroyed the earth, are destroyed, it is then good for the earth, and on account of it thanks are here rendered by those who are now to bear sway on the earth.” Revelation 11:19. And the temple of God was opened in heaven, and the ark of his testimony was seen in his temple; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and a great hail. By ναός here is denoted the whole heavenly temple (comp. Revelation 3:12, Revelation 7:15), in the narrower sense, as consisting of the sanctuary and the Most Holy Place. But the temple is only then opened fully when the veil is quite removed, which separated the sanctuary from the Holiest, in which the ark stood. This ark had a double name. It is called the ark of testimony, as containing the law which testified against sin—comp. Exodus 25:16, Exodus 25:22, Exodus 26:33. But this designation is quite a partial one; it needs the other, the ark of the covenant (Deuteronomy 10:8, Deuteronomy 31:9, Deuteronomy 31:25-26; Joshua 3:6, Joshua 4:9) for its complement. The ark also had belonging to it as an integral part, the capporeth, the symbol of atonement, on which the covenant was founded; see my Beitr. III. p. 641, ss.: “The indispensable condition of God’s connection with men, the foundation of his dwelling among them, is the atoning divine compassion. This was symbolized by the capporeth. As externally the capporeth covered the ark with its testimony, so spiritually did the divine compassion the sins of the people.” The choice between these two designations is usually to be determined by the respect under which the sacred ark is brought into view. It is called the ark of the covenant, when its property as a symbol and pledge of the covenant is made account of. So, for example, in the narrative of the wonderful passage through the Jordan in the book of Joshua, in which the ark of the covenant formed a wall against the waters. So also in the siege of Jericho, Joshua 6:6. Now here the ark cannot come into consideration in so far as it contained the tables of the law, as Hofmann has explained the reason of its appearance: “The law still retains its power, as well in regard to those who have sinned against it as to those who have fulfilled it. It may therefore be openly exhibited, after having been so long covered, while God was bearing with the wicked and not rewarding his servants.” For, in that case, the ark would rather have been called the ark of testimony—comp. ch. Revelation 15:5, “And afterwards I looked, and behold the temple of the tabernacle of testimony was opened in heaven,” where a real value must be attached to the testimony, in which the world alone participates, for the capporeth avails only for the church. In the representation also of the judgment a point of essential moment would be wanting, the reference to the church, which still, according to ch. Revelation 10:7, must not be wanting. Finally, by this view too much is to be supplied. But when the ark of the covenant is made visible, the meaning can only be that the covenant receives its most signal accomplishment.[Note: “As a testimony, that what God had promised was now to be most perfectly fulfilled, both for the dismay and overthrow of the enemies, and for the support and joy of his own people.”]By the open exhibition of the ark it was intimated that the terrors which according to the following words Were to burst upon the earth, had their foundation in the love of God—comp. the similar representation in ch. Revelation 14:15; Revelation 14:17. The thought is this, that God now, remembering his holy covenant, shall give to his people, that being redeemed from the hand of their enemies, they may serve God without fear, Luke 1:72-74. We must not determine the connection with what follows in some such way as this: there is a blessed reward to the righteous, though the words also represent the frightful punishment of the wicked; but the realization of the covenant, as is indicated by the appearance of the ark of the covenant, consists precisely in the overthrow of the enemies; as likewise in Revelation 11:18, the distribution of reward to the servants consisted in the destroying of those who destroy the earth. The appearance of the ark of the covenant marks the judgment inflicted on the world to be an expression of the love of God to his church. The bright appearance here forms the contrast to the sad appearance in ch. Revelation 12:3. According to some expositors mention is made of a heavenly temple in Exodus 25:9, Exodus 25:40, Exodus 26:30, Exodus 27:8; Numbers 8:3. But the subject of discourse there is not of a heavenly temple and its furniture, the prototype of the earthly, but only that God called forth in the spirit of Moses the vision of the sanctuary, which formed the basis of the structure of the tabernacle. These passages, therefore, are not in point here. As little also does the Jewish fable of the concealment of the ark in a secret place before the Babylonish exile come into consideration (Ewald). For, here the discourse is of the heavenly temple, the heavenly ark of the covenant. Of the throne of God above the ark of the covenant, no account is made here. There is no reference to the representation given of God’s appearance in ch. 4, and the question is out of place, how the ark of the covenant, over which was the throne of God, could here first appear visible, after what had preceded? God was not bound to the ark of the covenant. Even in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 10:4, the glory of the Lord raised itself from the cherub to the threshold of the house; and in Ezek. Ezekiel 1 the Lord appears to the prophet upon the cherubim out of the temple with its ark. The five number: Lightnings, voices, thunderings, earthquake, hail, is deserving of notice. It denotes, according to the uniform signification of the five in Scripture, and especially in the Apocalypse, as the signature of the half and incomplete, the unfinished character of the representation, and points to the supplement, which it is to receive in the later groups. The same signification belongs to the number five ( which is here as little accidental as that of the three in ch. Revelation 4:6, or of the four, as the signature of the earth, which the threatening respected, in ch. Revelation 8:5) in the passage ch. Revelation 16:18-21, in which there is simply an extension of the one before us. The comparison between the passage before us and ch. Revelation 8:5, “And there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake,” is instructive. The lightnings, which there occupy the third place, are here placed at the head; and quite naturally. For there, where the voices, etc., have only a threatening character, where they merely foreshadow the future judgments, the thunder is at least as early in its production as the lightning; but here, on the contrary, where all concerns the judgment itself, the thunder can only come into consideration as connected with the lightning, as rendering the scene of destruction more appalling. Hand in hand with this position of the lightning, goes the addition of the hail, which never possesses a merely threatening character, but always appears where judgment has actually entered; comp. ch. Revelation 8:7. Also in ch. Revelation 16:18-21, where likewise the actual entrance of the judgment is represented, the lightnings form the beginning and the hail the conclusion. The verse before us is related to Revelation 11:15-18 much as in ch. Revelation 16:18, the report that there were voices, thunders, etc., to the anticipative declaration in Revelation 11:17 : It is done. The earthquake marks the shattering of the ungodly world-power—comp. on ch. Revelation 6:12. Ch. Revelation 16:18-20 forms a commentary on it.[Note: The καὶσεισμός, which is omitted in some critical helps, cannot be dispensed with were it only on account of the relation to ch. 8:5. Then also the relation to ch. 16:18-20 requires it. The reason for the omission may be gathered from the remark of Zόllig: “Others have still earthquake, but this would destroy the round number corresponding to the four quarters of the world.”]Hail appears often in the Old Testament as an image of divine judgment, comp. Isaiah 30:30, Isaiah 32:19; Psalms 18:12-13, “At the brightness before him his clouds passed, hailstones and coals of fire! And the Lord thundered in the heavens, and the Most High gave forth his voice, hailstones and coals of fire.” There too we have a scene of actual destruction. The storm of divine wrath discharges itself. Amid frightful thunder and the sea of fire, by which the Lord in his anger was encompassed, lightnings burst forth, rending the cloud, and hailstones pour down—the weapons with which the Lord assails his own and his people’s enemies; as of old the Egyptians (Exodus 9:24, comp. Psalms 78:47-48), and the Canaanites at Bethoron (Joshua 10:11). The repetition there in Joshua 10:13, serves the same design as is done here by the lightning being made to open and the hail to close the series. The repetition, as remarked in my Commentary, is the more in its place as the fiery coals, or lightnings, and the hailstones, were properly the things by which the enemies of the Psalmist were destroyed; the rest were mere accompaniments by which the scene of destruction was rendered more dreadful. We have here no limitation of the territory, as in the first six trumpets, and even in the great earthquake, which befals Jerusalemin the episode in ch. Revelation 11:13; which is a clear proof that we have here to do with the final judgment. THE THREE ENEMIES OF GOD’S KINGDOM (CH. 12-14) The Revelation of St John gives no regularly progressive disclosure of the future, advancing in unbroken series from beginning to end; but it falls into a number of groups, which indeed supplement each other, every successive vision giving some other aspect of the future, but which are still formally complete in themselves, each proceeding from a beginning to an end. There can be no doubt that at ch. 12 we have the commencement of a new group, and the remark of Bengel, “Those are in a great prophetical error who break off here, and if nowhere else, yet here at least make an entirely new beginning,” is quite wrong, and ought to be precisely reversed. For at the close of ch. 11 we are manifestly brought to the last end; so that the Seer, if he will not altogether conclude his book, must commence anew. For what could it be but a description of the last end, which has for its object the development of the kingdom of God, when it is said, in ch. Revelation 11:15, in anticipation of what was immediately to follow, “The kingdom of the world has become (the kingdom) of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever?” When the four and twenty elders, the ideal representatives of the church in heaven, say in prospect of what is presently to be done, “We give thee thanks, O Lord God the Almighty, who art and wast, that thou hast taken thy great power and reignest?” When the “and art to come,” which before the last end has so deep a meaning, and was spoken with so strong an emphasis, appears now as antiquated, and there is only a past and present in the kingdom of God? When the elders say further, in Revelation 11:18, “Thy wrath is come, and the time to judge the dead, and to reward thy servants, the prophets and the saints, and those that fear thy name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth?” Such, surely, have the time of the last judgment, and the consummation of grace immediately in prospect. What we now, according to ch. Revelation 11:15-18, expect—the appearance of the Lord, the final victory of God’s kingdom, the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, the glorification of the church—all this is represented in Revelation 11:19 as having entered, but only by way of gentle indication, which few have understood. For, the Seer would reserve the more particular delineation of these last things for a later part of his book, and precisely by the enigmatical brevity with which he here treats them, would set expectation on the stretch regarding that more particular delineation in reserve. “And the temple of God (it is said) was opened in heaven, and the ark of his Testament was seen in his temple; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and a great hail.” The temple in heaven is a symbol of the church, the ark of the covenant a symbol of the gracious relationship in which the Lord stands to his church; that it has become visible, imports that this relation is now in a glorious manner maintained, and becomes manifest to view. All that the Lord does toward the realization of this, and in suspending judgment over the church’s enemies, is here concealed under the lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and earthquake, and great hail—exactly as in ch. Revelation 8:1 by the silence, where the closing scene appears under the same kind of veil. So the end of the vision reverts to the beginning, as a certain proof that we have here a termination before us. What is said in ch. Revelation 8:5, “And the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from off the altar, and threw it upon the earth; and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake,” is a prophecy, which we here see brought to fulfilment. [By the view now given, the foundation is withdrawn from the hypothesis of Bleek (in the Berlin Theol. Zeitsch. Th. II. p. 281), according to which the book originally consisted of Revelation 1 and Revelation 4-11, and between Revelation 11, 12 something must have been taken away which originally formed the conclusion of the whole book, the representation of the Lord’s second coming, and the setting up of his kingdom. It rests primarily on the groundless supposition, that the book in its original form must necessarily have contained a continuous, regularly progressive representation, whereas here we are met with a quite new beginning. “The artificial plan, by which the future gradually advanced and rose into view, is made to vanish at ch. Revelation 8:2, where we have also a new beginning, not less than at ch. Revelation 12:1. Bleek, indeed, labours there to discover a connection. He says, “We have to consider the matter so, that what comes forth in the particular trumpet-voices, taken together, makes up the whole still remaining part of the contents of the book, inclosed in the seventh seal; so that we are here still in very close connection with the preceding context.” But if we must be still within the compass of the seventh seal at the end of ch. 11, it is very strange that no reference whatever is made to what goes before ch. Revelation 8:1; the seven trumpets have entirely the appearance of an independent position, and never make any allusion to the seals. The silence in ch. Revelation 8:1 is alone to be regarded as belonging to the seventh seal; and the idea, that the seven” trumpets are to be drawn into the circle of the seven seals, was long ago very satisfactorily refuted by Vitringa. Among other things against it is the brevity of the description belonging to the other seals in proportion to this, which would then embrace the contents of four entire chapters; while, “the events of most of the other seals are declared in the short and simple delineation of a single figure or two.” Farther, if the trumpets were subordinated to the seals, and contained the issues of the seventh seal, there would have been no need for a new preface or an introductory vision, by which John sought to prepare the way for the seven trumpets. For, the vision of the sacrificing angel, ch. Revelation 8:3-6, is a sort of prelude, heralding the new scenes, that were soon to present themselves to John. If we have a quite new beginning even at ch. Revelation 8:2, the view must be abandoned, which regards the Revelation as a regularly progressive and continuous whole, a view that has been most pernicious to the right exposition of the book; and it must not be regarded as at all strange, that at chap. 12 we are entirely cut off from the earlier series of representations, so that we should go about to construct groundless hypotheses, with Bleek, or with Bengel and Lücke, try to build a bridge out of our own materials. The attempt of the latter to bring the whole of what follows even to the end of the book within the compass of the last trumpet and of the last woe, is proved to be unavailing by the fact, that never after ch. 11 is a word said about a trumpet or a woe; secondly, by the first six trumpets and the two first woes having so limited a range; and lastly, by the circumstance that the immediately following portion, Revelation 12-14, has not at all the character of a trumpet and a woe. Bleek urges further: “It has already been remarked, how the threefold repetition of the woe, ch. Revelation 8:13, is intentional, since to each of the three still remaining last trumpet voices there belongs a woe; this is expressly noticed in connection with the fifth and sixth. But now in this third and last woe, for which preparation had been so carefully made in the preceding part, that we might certainly expect the same to be at least as solemnly and expressly uttered in regard to it, as in regard to the two first, it is not at all mentioned either here or anywhere in what follows.” In the proclamation, however, at ch. Revelation 11:14, “The second woe is past, behold the third woe comes quickly,” the third woe is expressly announced, and is realized in Revelation 11:19 where the great hail especially appears as the divine instrument of punishment and the symbol of the divine judgment—comp. Revelation 16:21. Any more explicit mention was unnecessary; because the boundary-line in respect to the second was so plainly drawn at Revelation 11:14, and there was to be no fourth. It would even have been confusing; for there was not to be expected here any formal conclusion, but rather something to indicate the supplement still to be expected, the unfinished character of the issue. What Bleek still further urges in proof of the fragmentary character of ch. 11 in its present form—that we should have expected the personal appearance of the Lord at Revelation 11:19, and the judgment therewith connected—has been already met by the remarks made in the text. It would only be of force, if Revelation 11:19 formed the close of the whole book, and not merely of a single group. In the latter case, it is quite enough, exactly as at ch. Revelation 8:1, simply to mark the place, which is to belong to what is to be unfolded afterwards more at length, and this here is sufficiently done, especially if we take into account, not merely Revelation 8:19, but also what in Revelation 8:15-18, is said in announcing what was immediately at hand. We shall then have no doubt remaining as to what really belongs to the seventh trumpet, and it will be clear, that we have here before us in the plan, what is brought out in detail in the last groups. Besides, Ewald has already remarked with justice, that the mere hypothesis of Bleek, countenanced only by some appearances, is effectually disproved by ch. Revelation 11:7 alone, according to which the beast, which rises out of the abyss, is to wage war on the two witnesses, and overcome and kill them. By that we are pointed forwards to ch. 13. Only an author could have written thus, who meant to give afterwards a more extended description of the beast, as, indeed, without the future explanation we should not know what to make of such a statement. (This passage also is decisive against the hypothesis of a regularly progressive representation in one and the same line; it implies, that the book consists of groups, which run parallel with each other. How, otherwise, could the beast, which is here spoken of as already being on the field, be represented in ch. 13 as then only making its appearance?) It is not worthwhile to advance more arguments against the hypothesis in question—as that the seven seals and the seven trumpets, which keep very much to generals, and have the character of a prelude, cannot possibly make up one whole, etc.] As certainly as at the end of ch. 11 we stand at the final close of things, so certainly do we find ourselves at the beginning of ch. 12 thrown back to the commencement of the New Testament economy; so that it is vain to speak of a continuous representation. The sufferings of the Lord’s people first pass before the soul of the prophet, which were endured before the birth of Messiah; then follows the birth itself, then the ascension, and the description, how through the accomplished atonement of Christ the power of Satan has been broken. And though we should consider all this as an introduction, which is its real character, as shall presently be made to appear, yet it does not conduct us over the very first beginnings of the Christian church. The starting-point in that case is the present of the Seer, the time of the Roman persecution, and the tendency of the section appears to be, to direct those, who had to suffer under the persecution, to the grace of God, which was to preserve the church through all the coming troubles, Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14, and at last bring the persecution to an end by the overthrow of the persecuting power. Having thus determined the relation of this section to the preceding context, we shall farther endeavour to fix its relation to what follows. A new scene opens to us with the beginning of ch. 15. The section of Revelation 12-14, or the fourth group, is occupied by the three enemies of God’s kingdom; the capital enemy Satan, who, as such, to indicate his great power, appears in heaven, ch. Revelation 12:1-17,—the beast, who arises out of the sea, the symbol of multitudes of people, the ungodly world-power, ch. Revelation 13:1-18,—and the second beast out of the earth, the earthly, sensual, demoniacal wisdom, ch. Revelation 13:11-18. The fourteenth chapter consoles the faithful, who are to be tried and oppressed by these enemies, by pointing to the blessedness in heaven, which awaits them, Revelation 13:1-5, and to the judgment, which is to be executed on the enemies at the close of all. But the representation given of this judgment is of a very general kind; the detailed account of the divine judgment on the three enemies is reserved for a separate group, the sixth, Revelation 17-20, which in a reverse order ascends from the beasts to Satan, and for which the fifth group, the vision of the vials in Revelation 15, 16, forms a sort of prelude. According to the historical starting-point of the Revelation, as it is unfolded in ch. Revelation 1:9, which declares the book to have been written by John during the Roman persecution; and according to its design as announced in Revelation 1:1, to shew to the servants of Christ, what must shortly come to pass; farther, according to Revelation 1:19, “Write what thou hast seen, and what is, and what shall be done hereafter,” and according to ch. Revelation 4:1, “Come up here, I will shew thee, what shall be done after these things,” which shew that the past as such cannot be the proper object of the things here unfolded, we must regard what is said in ch. Revelation 12:1-5; Revelation 12:7-12, only as introductory. What Christ has accomplished in the past comes here into consideration only in so far as it formed the basis of confidence and blessing to his oppressed people in their present troubles—comp. Revelation 1:11, where this aim comes plainly out; where it is announced that the glorious victory of Christ, described in the preceding context, is only to be taken into account so far as it is the foundation of victory to Christ’s people in the hard conflict which they have to maintain with the dragon. Revelation 1:6 and Revelation 1:13-15 have respect to the present and the immediate future; Revelation 1:16-17, to the more remote future. It is justly remarked by Hartwig in his Apologie der Apoc., II. p. 288, “that in this whole representation there are such unmistakeable allusions to the true history of the child Jesus and his mother, and the tyranny of Herod, as related in the second chapter of Matthew, that this chapter receives from it a new confirmation.” The First Enemy The Dragon Revelation 12:1. And there appeared a great sign in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. A sign, because John saw things not in their proper nature, but in figure and enigma; the church, for example, under the image of a woman, Satan under that of a dragon. So sign is used also in ch. Revelation 15:1. This circumstance, that John always sees only signs, has been too little considered by expositors, who too frequently keep standing at the mere outward appearance, so that those who penetrate through the veil into the idea concealed behind it, are apt to be accused of a false spiritualism. The word sign is used otherwise in Matthew 24:30. There, the sign of the Son of Man is his appearance itself, so unspeakably comforting inits nature, and yet so unspeakably frightful, as a prophecy in action of judgment and salvation—comp. the declaration connected with it, “And then shall all the tribes of the earth mourn.” The sign, whose external display and glory points to the height of the matter indicated by it (a great sign, in ch. Revelation 15:1 : a sign great and wonderful), appears in heaven. Many expositors refer this to the circumstance that the church represented by the woman has its proper seat and the root of its existence in heaven. So Vitringa: “This sign was seen in heaven, partly because it refers to the religion, the object of which is in heaven, partly and especially because the subject of this vision, the church of the New Testament, has obtained its place with Jesus Christ in heaven, Ephesians 2:6.” Bengel: “The woman herself, the church, had previously been in all conditions upon the earth, but on account of her nobility, which belongs to her from her connection with the Lord Jesus Christ, she is in heaven, Ephesians 2:6; Philippians 3:20. Her pregnancy and the birth following thereupon is heavenly; in heaven she is assaulted and defended, Revelation 12:4; Revelation 12:7.” But the heaven is here rather the theatre, where every thing passed before the eye of the prophet, not excepting that which in reality belonged to the earth. What the Seer beholds does not belong to the sensuous but to the super-senuous sphere. To be in the Spirit and to be in heaven is the same; comp. Ezekiel 1:1, “The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of God;” here ch. Revelation 4:1-2, where, as the realization of the call, “Come up hither (into heaven), I will shew thee what shall be after these things,” it is stated, “And immediately I was in the Spirit.” Then, ch. Revelation 8:1 The woman, between whom and that described in ch. 17, as Bengel remarks, there is a mighty difference, is not the community of Israel in contradistinction to the Christian church; for what is said in Revelation 12:6 and Revelation 12:14-17, of the woman, can only be referred to the Christian church. Nor, on the other hand, does it denote the Christian church in contradistinction to the community of Israel; for the Christian church had not Christ born in it—an argument which the defenders of this view (Vitringa, Bengel, and others) escape from only by the violent supposition that it is not the first birth of Christ in Bethlehem that is here spoken of, but a mystical birth of Christ as the ruler of the heathen. But the woman, or Zion, which often appears in the Old Testament under the image of a woman, is properly the one indivisible community of the Old and New Covenant, the Israel perpetuated in the Christian church, out of which the false seed has been cast by its unbelief in the now manifested angel of the covenant, while the believing heathen have been received into it—comp. ch. Revelation 7:4, ss. That the church here was seen in the type of the virgin Mary, or that the Seer perceived in the virgin Mary an image of the church, is rendered probable by Revelation 12:4. The woman appears as clothed with the sun. The sun is that of the visible heavens, for only this could be called simply the sun, and be put in opposition to the moon; but the sun signifies the glory of the Lord, and only as a symbol of this is it here brought into view. In Isaiah 60:1, this already appears under the image of a great light, “Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee.” Of Christ it is said, in Matthew 17:2, when the veiled glory of the Lord broke forth on the mount of transfiguration, “And he was changed before them, and his countenance shone like the sun, and his raiment was white like the light.” In this book itself, ch. Revelation 1:16, “his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength.” And of the New Jerusalem, the church in its state of exaltation, it is said, in ch. Revelation 21:23, “And the city needs not the sun nor the moon to give light to it, for the glory of the Lord illuminates it, and the Lamb is the light of it.” To be shone upon and enlightened by the glory of the Lord, belongs at all times to the very nature of the church; but this glory during the present course of things, as with Christ in his state of humiliation, is a veiled one; a dark cloud conceals it from our view; and he only who, like John, has a door opened for him in heaven, and a call addressed to him to go up thither, can behold it in cloudless splendour. The woman has the moon under her feet. Created light is far beneath her glory, because she is irradiated by the uncreated, the glory of the Lord. Instead of the moon, the sun and moon would both have been named, if the sun had not already been taken as the symbol of divine glory. The thought is the same as in Isaiah 24:23, “And the moon is confounded, and the sun is ashamed; for the Lord of Hosts reigns upon mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, and before his elders is glory.” Sun and moon become pale before the glory of the Lord, their Creator and Lord, with which he irradiates his glorified church. What is said there, and in Isaiah 60:19, “The sun shall no more be for light by day, and as brightness the moon shall not enlighten thee,” can only be regarded us peculiarly belonging to the triumphant church, of which it is primarily said, in so far as in that church it is fully manifest in the appearance. Essentially it must belong to the church always. For in substance every thing is common to the militant and triumphant church. On the head of the woman is a crown of twelve stars. These cannot denote the twelve apostles, whose names, according to ch. Revelation 21:14, are upon the twelve foundations of the New Jerusalem; for the woman has the crown of twelve stars before the birth of her Son; but the twelve apostles are apostles of the Lamb. They are rather the twelve Israelitish patriarchs, as ideal representatives of the tribes; comp. ch. Revelation 21:12, according to which the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel are upon the gates of Jerusalem. According to this passage, and ch. Revelation 7:4, ss., these twelve tribes continue to exist also in the church of the New Covenant; comp. Ezekiel 47:22-23, according to which in the future development of the kingdom of God the stranger is to be on a footing of equality with the native Israelite: “And shall also have their part in the land, each one under the tribe wherein he dwells, saith the Lord.” In the dream of Joseph, too. Genesis 37:9, where sun, moon, and stars occur with respect to the relations of Israel, and from which the figurative style of representation before us takes its rise, the stars denote the children of Jacob. In other parts of the Revelation the elders correspond to the stars here. The difference in the number, here twelve, there twenty-four, is to be explained by the circumstance, that the representation of the church after the period that is here contemplated (for Zion is seen by the prophet as at the threshold of Messiah’s birth), received an increase through the twelve apostles. Revelation 12:2. And she was with child and cried, and was in travailing-pangs, and in great pain to be delivered. According to a whole series of passages of the Old Testament, the heavy troubles which preceded the appearance of the Saviour appear here under the image of severe pains falling upon Zion, the church of God. Comp. Micah 4:9-10, “Pains have laid hold of thee (Zion) as a travailing woman. Shout and break forth, daughter of Zion;” Jeremiah 4:31, “I hear a voice as of a woman in travail, anguish as of one bringing forth her first-born, the voice of the daughter of Zion; she bewails, she spreads forth her hands, Woe is me! for my soul is wearied through the murderers;” Jeremiah 30:6, Jeremiah 49:24; Isaiah 26:17; Hosea 13:13. The comparison of these passages furnishes a complete answer to those who understand by the woes here, with Bengel, “the anxious longing, the sighing, the prayers, the earnest expectation of the saints for the kingdom of God.” This was not the sorrows, but the sorrows called it forth. It is an eternal law, by which God governs his church on earth, that pain precedes joy, misery salvation; after the example of Israel in Egypt, to whom redemption only came when the suffering reached its greatest height. Suffering must awaken longing after the salvation of God; it is necessary to beget cordial reception and thankfulness of spirit. We must receive what our deeds deserve, so that every feeling of our own worth and excellence, which might lead “us to think ourselves entitled to salvation, may be destroyed; so that not merely with the lips, but with the whole heart we may sing, “Not unto us, not unto us. O Lord, but to thy name be the praise.” The greatness of the preceding suffering is determined by the greatness of the approaching deliverance. It must be experienced, and must also culminate before the first and second coming of the Lord; in respect to which last it is said in Matthew 24:21, “There shall then be great tribulation, such as has not been from the beginning of the world till now, nor ever shall be”—words, whose solemn import is better understood by us now than it was some time ago, since the beginning of troubles has already entered, and the storm of divine wrath appears lowering in the heavens. Whence the sorrows mentioned here come, what the instrument is which God employs to break the hardness of his people is shown in what follows. They come without doubt from that dragon who would devour the child. For he would devour the child only because he feared that it would deliver its mother from his dominion. The statement that his tail draws the third part of the stars and throws them upon the earth, Revelation 12:4, points to the destroying agency of the dragon in earlier times—to that as the animating principle of the conquering world kingdoms. Then, the declaration in Revelation 12:5, “who shall rule all the nations with a rod of iron,” serves also to indicate the source of the troubles. It implies that before the birth of the child the church was subject to the dominion of the heathen. From what has been remarked, the historical reference cannot be doubtful. The people of God before the manifestation of Christ were subject to the dominion of the Romans, and under their auspices to the cruel tyranny of Herod, well fitted to serve as a representation of the invisible tyrant, under whose direction, according to the view given in this book, the whole matter stood In immediate connection with the birth of Christ, and the unmerited salvation which began to be prepared for the people of God, the deserved punishment of servitude to the world presented himself in a living form through Herod in the murder of the children at Bethlehem, which was designed to serve not only as a single specimen, but as an image and symptom of the whole state. The word: “In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not,” holds not alone in regard to that one calamity; it represents to our view generally the image of Zion under the tyranny of the Romans, of Herod, of the dragon, and affords us a glance into our own future. How Zion then cried aloud, and was in travailing-pangs, in anguish to be delivered, is also vividly described in the song of Zecharias, in which the felt need for redemption joyfully hails the Redeemer, and exclaims, “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people; and hath raised up an horn of salvation for ns in the house of his servant David; that we should be saved from our enemies, and from the hands of all who hate us; that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies we might serve him without fear.” Those who make all subservient in the Revelation to the discovery of a regularly progressive representation, and who cannot bear to think of a new beginning at this chapter, of a going back to the first origin of the Christian church, suppose that the church is here described in the state which belonged to it before the time of Constantine, when it was big with Christ as the ruler of the heathen, and experienced bitter pangs from the Roman persecutions, especially from the severest of them all, that of Diocletian. But every impartial mind must think primarily of the actual birth of Christ; and this is confirmed by the reference to the history of Christ’s childhood in Revelation 12:4, his ascension in Revelation 12:5, and the atonement effected by him, Revelation 12:7-9. Revelation 12:3. And there appeared another wonder in heaven, and behold! a great red dragon, that had seven heads and ten horns, and upon its head seven crowns. Revelation 12:4. And his tail draws the third part of the stars, and throws them upon the ground. And the dragon stood before the woman that was ready to be delivered, in order to devour the child as soon as she had brought forth. Vitringa: “Nothing is omitted that might set forth the greatness and severity of the woman’s conflict in the most lively colours. She was in the greatest labour, seized with the most violent pangs of child-birth, and in this state appears to be supported only by the hope of the male offspring, which she had so much desired; but she sees a frightful dragon, ready to devour her child whenever it might be born.” Bengel remarks: “The proper theme of this book begins at ch. 4, where heaven is laid open to our view as a sacred theatre of operations. Daring the first eight chapters no description is given of Satan. But since he is introduced here as the chief enemy of the kingdom of God and Christ, he is the more frequently again brought upon the field, until he at last appears as cast into the lake of fire.” The single circumstance of the author having till now been so sparing in his allusions to Satan, shows the careful construction of the plan of the book; and at the same time shows, that it does not by a regular and uninterrupted progress anticipate history. For in that case, silence could not have been maintained so long respecting Satan. The two first groups, the seals and the trumpets, possess more of a general, introductory character, that of a prelude. Prophecy and history respecting God’s kingdom only come upon the main point, when the conflict between Christ and Satan is brought into view. The dragon[Note: The LXX. render by δράκων the ϊπιο of Exodus 7:9, Jeremiah 9:11, the μειϊο of Isaiah 27:1, and elsewhere. That by the dragon here a sea-beast is denoted, is evident from a comparison of 1lie passages referred to in the text from the Old Testament. These are to be taken more into account than what has been said by heathen antiquity of the dragon—see Vitringa.]appears often as the king of the sea, and sovereign of the marine animals—see Psalms 74:13-14, and my Commentary there. In the spiritual sea of the world he is therefore the natural image of conquering and reigning power—comp. Isaiah 27:1, where it is said in reference to the king of Babylon, “At that day will the Lord visit with his sword, the hard, the great, and the strong, the Leviathan, the flying serpent, and the Leviathan, the wounded serpent, and he kills the dragon that is in the sea;” also Jeremiah 51:34 of Nebuchadnezzar the king of Babylon, “He has swallowed us up like a dragon;” Ezekiel 29:3-4, where the great dragon (to which the great dragon here specially alludes) appears as an emblem of Pharaoh the king of Egypt. Hence the great dragon must represent the prince of this world[Note: This appellation, peculiar to the evangelist John 12:31; John 14:30; John 16:11, differs from the great dragon here, precisely as John’s Gospel differs from the Revelation. In both alike Satan is represented as the spiritual background of the ungodly world. What Lόcke says in repaid, to the prince of this world, “the head of the refractory powers and influences in the world, that are opposed to the kingdom of God, as well among the Jews as heathens,” applies equally to the dragon.]in his most powerful agency, having earthly princes merely as his servants and instruments of working. Satan appears as a great red dragon. This colour belongs to him as the murderer of men from the beginning (John 8:44, comp. 1 John 3:12), as the ultimate author of all the plundering ambition and the blood- shedding that discovers itself in the earth; especially as the ultimate author of all the world’s fury against the church, which was typified by the murder of Abel through Cain, the instrument of Satan.[Note: That πυρρός here denotes the bloody character, is plain from ch. 6:4, where beyond all question it occurs as a mark of the blood colour, as also from Zechariah 6:2, comp. 2 Kings 3:22, LXX., τὰὕδαταπυρρὰὡςαἷμα, and the δάμαλιςπυρρὰ ?, whose colour points to blood; see my Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 181, ss. Here, too, ch. 17:3 is parallel, as there the woman appears sitting on a purple-coloured beast (the blood-thirsty world power, whose animating principle is Satan). But it is not necessary on this account to give πυρρός, which properly means blonde, fawn, the signification of blood-red. With the serpents as well as the horses, the colour might appropriately be chosen, which comes nearest to that of blood, and reminds one of it. Fawn is the prevailing colour of the greater part of serpents, for example, the boa, and also quite agrees with the colour of the crocodile.]The seven heads and the ten horns of the dragon denote the seven phases of the hostile world-power—the seventh a divided one, as indicated by the ten horns on the seventh head. Satan bears this emblem as a reflection of his visible representative and image upon earth. That Satan comes into consideration here as the moving principle of the conquering power and dominion of this world, as opposed to the kingdom of God, through which he executes his wicked designs, is clear alone from this, that to him the Old Testament representation commits the earthly world-power—the dragon—with which also agrees the application to him of the emblem that occurs in the subsequent context; and it also appears from what immediately follows. Other reasons will be given in the treatise on the Beast of the Apocalypse. The dragon’s tail draws the third part of the stars and throws them on the earth. This trait does not immediately belong to the matter at present in hand. The subject of discourse here is not what the dragon begins to do against the kingdom of God.” There is a wide difference,” as Bengel remarks, “between his beginning against the mother, and his deceiving the nations on the earth;” yet still, we add, they have both the same root—the spirit of revolt against God, an impious resistance to his holy arrangements, as wishing to be God upon earth. In the Old Testament also what the conquering world-power generally committed, is very commonly united with that, which is specially attempted against the church. It is so, for example, in Habakkuk. According to the symbolical language of the Revelation stars are rulers; their being cast down upon the earth denotes their being conquered and overthrown—comp. the original passage in Daniel 8:10, where the throwing of the stars upon the earth occurs of an earthly conqueror, and the remarks on this passage in the treatise on the Beast of the Apocalypse. In what is said in Daniel, “And it (the horn) was great even to the host of heaven, and threw down to the earth of the host and of the stars, and trod upon them; and it lifted itself up to the prince of the host,” &c , there is the same transition as here. For the intention of devouring the child, as expressed in what immediately follows, is in like manner a direct act of impiety toward God.[Note: The exposition, “The stare are the Christians and teachers, the third part of whom the dragon draws from their divine object of faith, attaches to himself, and brings down to the natural earthly state,” is both against the original passages and the connexion. It cannot possibly be spoken of Christians before Christ. But by what immediately follows Christ was not yet born. Satan stands ready to devour him as soon as he might be born. The uniform usage of the Revelation also is against it, by which stars denote rulers.]The third part, according to the usage of this book, denotes a great multitude. The dragon places himself before the woman, that was going to bring forth, in order to devour her child. The same wickedness had been practised by him in ancient times. The life of Moses, on whom the hopes of the people of God hung during the fearful oppression exercised over them by the enemy, was brought into extreme peril by him at the very first. At the coming of Christ, whose appearance threatened far greater danger to his dominion upon earth, who was to withdraw from him, not only the people of God, but the heathen also, whom he had hitherto regarded as his proper subjects, who should rule these with a rod of iron, and therefore should attack him in his own territory, he sets his instruments anew in motion, as is reported in Matthew 2:1-12, to which allusion is here manifestly made. Herod, the servant of the dragon, as soon as he heard of the birth of Jesus, takes measures to have the new-born child despatched, and kills all the children in Bethlehem under two years old, that he might make sure of destroying the one hated child. He has been manifesting the same wickedness also since, throughout the whole history of the Christian church, as often as Christ is born anew in the Spirit. He is always at hand to strangle, if he can, the nascent life. What he then did through Herod is, because history, also symbol—a prophecy in action. With Bengel and other expositors, to put here one of those later imitations in the room of the great original, is quite arbitrary. Revelation 12:5. And she brought forth a son, a male, who was to tend all the nations with a rod of iron. And her child was snatched up to God and his throne. The appended male, serves the purpose of giving peculiar prominence to the sex, and stands in connection with the following declaration: who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron.[Note: There is much haste in the remark of Zόllig, “According to Jeremiah 20:15, it is a pure Hebraism without any intentional emphasis.” “Cursed,” says Jeremiah, “be the man who brought to my father the report: a son is born to thee, a mule: that he might make him glad.” The ζλι added to αο is employed to make the contrast more emphatic between the birth of a son and that of a daughter, as being more joyful: q.d. a son, and not a daughter. It is a similar kind of emphasis that is used here.]Allusion, it would seem, is made to Isaiah 66:7, where it is said of Zion, “Before she cried, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man-child.” The man-child there is not a single person, but it denotes the manly, vigorous after-growth, or fresh growth of the people of God. But by the allusion to that passage it is indicated here, that only in and by that manly son Christ, that other ideal manly son could be produced; that what with the prophet was primarily a mere personification, found in the real person of Christ its profound truth. The word: who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, which we find brought to its accomplishment at chap. Revelation 19:15, carries a dreadful threatening to the heathen. But behind the destruction threatened, salvation is concealed, behind the judgment grace. It is a blessing for the heathen if through the iron rod their rebellion against God becomes broken, their enmity against his church, their entire heathenish existence. If they themselves knew what makes for their peace, they would beg to be smitten by the rod of iron. Only the dragon receives hurt in the matter. Allusion is made to Psalms 2:9, where the Lord says to his anointed Christ, “Thou wilt bruise them (the heathen) in pieces with a rod of iron.” Instead of bruising, the Seer, after the LXX., has tending. Not by a sort of misunderstanding or arbitrarily. In the original passage itself allusion is made to the pasturing or tending; the word which signifies: Thou wilt bruise, differs not in its consonants, but only in its pronunciation, from that which means: Thou wilt tend. By this significant allusion it is indicated that the proper office of the anointed is to tend (Psalms 78:71-72), but that upon their sinful quid pro quo, refractoriness instead of joyful obedience, a righteous quid pro quo follows on the part of the anointed. The double import of the expression could not be rendered in Greek; only one of the sides could be exhibited, and the tending, used with a kind of irony, has substantially much the same force as the original. Before the words: and her child was caught up, is to be supplied: and the dragon continued his persecution, as was done according to the evangelical history from the temptation onwards to the death on the cross—comp. Luke 4:13, where especially the ἀ ?́χρικαιροῦ ?, for a season, is to be kept in view, and John 14:30, where the Lord says in the immediate prospect of his sufferings, “The prince of this world cometh,” = the dragon. The supplying of this becomes quite natural from what is said in Revelation 12:4; for, how should he, who before the birth of the child stood ready to devour him, have at once ceased from his persecution, the moment the child was born? and it is demanded by the expression: he was snatched up. For, this presupposes the danger of the child. It is expressive of the haste, with which one snatches away a precious and loved treasure, and places it in security, when it has come to be in jeopardy. The fundamental passage is Isaiah 53:8, where it is said of Christ, “From oppression and judgment was he taken away.” As the expression: it was snatched up, denotes the ascension of Christ (comp. ch. Revelation 11:12, where also there is a reference to the ascension), so the words: to God and his throne, denote his session at the right hand of God. It rests on Daniel 7:13-14. There the Son of man comes upon the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of days, to the heavenly throne of God, “And to him was given dominion, and glory, and a kingdom, and all peoples, nations, and tongues, shall serve him, his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which does not pass away, and his kingdom shall not be destroyed.” Comp. Matthew 26:64, “From henceforth shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power.” The throne of God is the symbol of his dominion over heaven and earth, and all that is therein—see my Comm. on Psalms 110:1. To be set near this throne is to have a share in this divine supremacy over heaven and earth. Christ’s participation in the glory of the divine government is still certainly a concealed one during the present course of things. He only who, like Stephen, is full of the Holy Ghost, can see heaven open, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Ch. Revelation 5:6 is parallel, “And I saw between the throne and the four beasts, and between the elders, a Lamb standing,” where Christ likewise appears in the closest proximity to the divine throne. On the earth, however, from which the child had been snatched away, the hopes of the woman were apparently disappointed, and nothing appears of the tending of the heathen. But what seemed to cut off hope in this respect was in reality the means that led to its accomplishment (comp. Luke 24:21). Revelation 12:6. And the woman fled away into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that they might there nourish her for a thousand, two hundred and sixty days. The fate of the woman is here related by way of anticipation, in order to have it placed in juxtaposition with that of the Son. The Seer comes back to it in Revelation 12:14, after he has communicated what was of the greatest moment, for understanding her situation after her Son had been snatched away from the earth. By the wilderness no particular wilderness is to be understood; but the article stands generically: the wilderness in contrast to the cultivated land. To be obliged to fly into the wilderness, into the desert, where no natural sources of nourishment present themselves, is hard; but to be able to fly into the wilderness, and so to escape from the persecutions, and there also to be nourished by God, though it should be only with the necessaries of life, as becomes a wilderness-condition, this is great grace. The thought expressed is the preservation of the church under the cross, and in spite of all persecutions and privations. That all local and special historical meanings are to be avoided,[Note: Even Vitringa’s explanation of the sense, God shall take care by his providence, that the church shall be kept and preserved in certain places, remote from human commerce, till the more fortunate times which he has in reserve for his church, still carries the elements which belong to the figure as such, over to the thing. The wilderness is rather everywhere where the church is persecuted, and preserved amid the persecution.]is clear not only from the reference to the typical sojourn in the wilderness (God had in ancient times led his church out of Egypt, where the dragon persecuted her through Pharaoh, into the wilderness, and on a small scale had again repeated the transaction in the case of Elias, who fled from Jezebel into the same wilderness, and was there fed by God), but also from passages of the Old Testament, which speak of a leading through the wilderness in a purely spiritual sense Hosea 2:14; Ezekiel 20:34-38; Jeremiah 31:1-2; and see the Christology on the passages. What is given in Deuteronomy 8:2-5 as the characteristic feature of the sojourn in the wilderness, and what was also the characteristic feature of our Lord’s abode there, the temptation exists also here. The thoughts of many hearts are revealed, when the necessity arises for flying into the wilderness. Who then has, to him it is given, but he that has not, from him is taken away even that which he has. What is said of the first sojourn in the wilderness, “He suffered Israel to hunger, gave him also to eat, suffered him to thirst, gave him also to drink, who led him over burning sand, suffered not his shoe to grow old,” holds also here; the woman flies away into the wilderness, not to be wasted there but to be nourished; but if the spirit is there singularly quickened and mightily strengthened, the flesh must in consequence fare ill. As for the church at large, so for single individuals the flight into the wilderness is a necessary stage. Canaan cannot be found, if one has not overcome in the conflict with assaults and temptations. The flight of the ideal mother of Jesus, the church, into the wilderness, was typified by the flight of the actual mother through the wilderness to Egypt, who also, in Revelation 12:4, appears as a symbol of the church. The 1260 days of the woman’s sojourn in the wilderness, are, according to the solution given in Revelation 12:14, the three-and-a half years, which on the ground of Daniel’s prophecies are taken in the Revelation as the signature of the apparent victory of the world over the church. The number, indeed, has no historical meaning, but is to be estimated only by its relation to the number seven Considered thus, it conveys an intimation, that the time appointed for the afflictions of the church is a measured one, that these shall not continue a moment longer than has been determined beforehand in the divine counsels, and that it is a broken and short period. Revelation 12:7. And there was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon, and the dragon fought and his angels. Revelation 12:8. And he overcame not, and his place was no more found in heaven. Revelation 12:9. And he was thrown, the great dragon, the old serpent, who is called the devil, and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was thrown on the earth, and his angels were thrown with him. The question here first of all arises, who is Michael? Very different answers have been given to it—for the fullest account of these, see J. Ode de Angelis, p. 1052, ss. According to one view, Michael is no other than Christ, or more correctly expressed, the Word, who in the beginning was with God, and from the first has mediated in all transactions respecting the church on earth. But, according to another view, supported by the Jewish expositors, some authorities in the ancient church, the greater part of Catholic commentators, who in this manner have endeavoured to find biblical support for their angel-worship, and recently among us by Hofmann, Michael is a created angel, who has committed to him the charge of the church, both under the old and the new covenant. The following reasons decide in favour of the first view. 1. The name Michael (who is like God) itself shews, that we must not seek for him in the region of the finite. It rests upon Exodus 15:11, “Who is like thee among the gods, O Lord,” and Psalms 89:6-7, “Who in the clouds is like the Lord, comes like the Lord among the sons of the mighty? God is greatly to be feared in the fellowship of his saints, and terrible over all that is round about him.” In the name: Who is like God, there must be supplied: Whose glory is represented in me. If we should suppose with Bengel, that the name denotes the infinite distance from God, “the humility of this distinguished angel, and his freedom from all self-elation,” q.d., I am not like God, it would be no fit designation of the angel-princes, it would have been more appropriate for the least among the angels, or rather for being used as a designation of men. The derisive imitation of the name Michael in ch. Revelation 13:4, “And they worshipped the dragon that gave power to the beast, and they worshipped the beast and said, Who is like the beast? and who is able to make war with him?” implies that his name denotes an incomparable greatness and power—the εἰ ?͂ναιἰ ?́σαθεῳ ?͂ ?, being like God, which is affirmed of God in John 5:18, and Philippians 2:6. Only when the name is viewed in this light does it appear in a suitable connection with the matter in hand. “In the name Michael,” says the Berleb. Bible, “which is applied to Jesus Christ, the Lord of Hosts, there is given the sure pledge of victory. For, since he is supreme over the whole world, and the Father has put all things under his feet, angels, principalities, and powers, including those that are evil, must also be subject to him, and shall ever be so. This, therefore, is the proper person to fight in us and for us; and were he not on our side we should never be able to escape from our troubles.” 2. Michael first meets us in the book of Daniel, and there, therefore, we must seek for an explanation of his nature. But that hε is there identical with the angel of the Lord, has been proved in my Beitrδgen I., p. 165, ss. And what was said in the Christology in proof of the angel of the Lord being no created angel, but the Logos, still holds good, notwithstanding the pains of Hofmann to invalidate it.[Note: No created angel could be described by the Lord as the one, in whom his name was, and his face, (Exodus 33:14-15), nor could any created angel have been spoken of by Jacob as having redeemed him, and as blessing his children. To give such pre-eminent honour to a created angel, as Hofmann wishes, is entirely against the position, which is uniformly ascribed in the Old Testament to angels, and would gave paved the way for Polytheism. It would also imply a surrender of the Old Testament foundation or the prologue of the gospel of John, which is of essential moment. We lose also the key for explaining the fact, that as in the Old Testament the angel of the Lord and Satan, so in the New Testament, Christ and Satan stand opposed to each other, and that in the New Testament the angel almost disappears. In this one place alone would he occur in regard to the times of the new covenant under the name of Michael. This is incredible if, as the guardian of the church, he was different from Christ. How much has the Old Testament to say of the angel of the Lord? The grammatical reason also for holding that ξμΰκιδεδ cannot mean an angel, but only the angel of the Lord, also stands firm. Ewald in the last edition of his grammar, § 290, remarks, “A proper name has the same influence as a noun with the article. If the first is to be regarded as in definite, but the second as definite, the first also can remain so before the article in the status constructus, if no dubiety arises; but should such arise, because in the first word the individual and the indefinite in kind must necessarily be denoted, then the first word cannot be marked by the status constructus.” The genitive must in that case be marked by μ, comp. § 202. Sυch a fundamental rule cannot be shaken by particular passages, in which it seems on a slight consideration to be violated. A close investigation shews, that it is observed also in these. In Haggai 1:13 it is not an angel of the Lord that is the subject of discourse, but Haggai is called the angel of the Lord, to distinguish him from other persons of the same name, but of a different calling. In Malachi 2:7, the priest is not an angel, but the angel of the Lord of Hosts, ordinarius dei minister in his kingdom. The prophets alone as individuals have an extraordinary mission.] 3. What is said in Daniel 10:5-6, of Michael, “His body was like a chrysolite, his countenance like the lightning, his eyes like torches of fire, his arms and his feet like shining brass, his speech like a great clamour,” this in the Revelation, ch. Revelation 1:13-15, and Revelation 10:1 is transferred to Christ, which we cannot suppose would have been done, if Michael had been a created angel. Daniel was so terrified by the voice of the person who appeared to him, that he fell down in a state of utter impotence, and could not for a long time raise himself up. John was affected in a quite similar way by the manifestation of Christ. In ch. Revelation 2:18, also, features in the description of Christ are drawn from Daniel 5. 4. What is here attributed to Michael, the conquering of Satan, is in the fundamental passages of the gospels, and here also in Revelation 12:11, attributed to Christ.[Note: Ode: “Michael overcomes the devil, and throws him down from heaven to earth. But it is evident that the person who accomplishes that great work, is Christ the Son of God; see Matthew 12:29, Luke 11:22; comp. with Luke 10:18, Hebrews 2:2; Hebrews 2:14, and 1 John 3:8.”][2] Vitringa says with perfect justice: “If there were another angel besides him, who undertook and accomplished this, a great part of the glory would be taken from the Son of God, which by this name is often ascribed to him in Scripture.” The reasons brought in support of the created angel can easily be set aside. “In the altercation, “says Bengel, “with the devil about the body of Moses, he did not dare to bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee. This moderation, befitting only in a creature, certainly indicates a created angel.” But in that passage of Jude, Michael speaks expressly as the “archangel,” as the captain of the Lord’s hosts, as the angel of the Lord, and we can as little draw from it a proof against the godhead of Michael, as from the declaration, “The Father is greater than I,” we can find a proof against the Lord’s equality in power and glory with the Father.[Note: Vitringa with justice derives a proof from this very passage ai1ainst the view of a created angel: “That he is the Son of God, is plain from the following passages compared together, Zechariah 3:1, and Jude Revelation 12:9; for he, who is made known in Zechariah 3:2 by the name itself of Jehovah, is called in Jude the archangel Michael.” This also is not without weight, that the name of no ordinary angel elsewhere occurs in the whole of this book. When Bengel remarks, “Michael alone is called in Scripture an archangel, and elsewhere archangel is found only in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, without the name of the being to whom it is applied. Whether, therefore, there is more than one archangel, or all good angels stand under Michael, as all had ones under Satan, is a question more easily asked than answered;” two problems are mixed up together, which are essentially different from each other. That all good angels stand under Michael as all bad ones under Satan, cannot be doubted, whenever it is understood, that Michael is no other person than the Logos, the Word. But it may still be matter of doubt, whether there is more than one archangel. It admits of question whether archangel is the designation of the higher angels generally, the “first princes” in Daniel 10:13, or whether it belongs to him who corresponds to the great prince in Daniel 12:1. But in either case Michael is distinctively the archangel.]But if Michael is Christ, it may be asked, why should he here be called Michael and not Christ? The answer is, the name Michael points to this, that the work, which is here under consideration, the decisive victory over Satan, belongs to Christ, not after his human, but only after his divine nature—comp. 1 John 3:8, “He that committeth sin is of the devil; for the devil sinneth from the beginning; for this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil.” Then, this name forms a bridge between the Old and the New Testament. In the Old Testament Michael had appeared as the great prince who fights for the church, Daniel 12:1. That battle was the prophecy and prelude of the one reported here. Bengel again says, “In this battle itself Michael makes the onset. For, it is only said afterwards, that the dragon also fought. But elsewhere this enemy, and the other enemies, always make the assault; Revelation 12:4 here, 13, 17, Revelation 17:14, Revelation 19:19.” Farther, “The battle and the defeat are ascribed pre-eminently to the dragon himself as the principal, and not to his angels; as the Revelation, indeed, in the description of both the good and the evil, is wont to make all, as it were, depend on the head.” Because, we add, it is from the head that a cause always mainly proceeds. Michael and Satan are the proper factors of history. All others, however they may push themselves forward, and however much also they may draw upon them the eyes of a short-sighted world, are but subordinate agents and instruments. The object of the battle we already learn from Zechariah 3:1, ss. There the controversy is between Satan and the angel of the Lord, who is all one with Michael, about the sinfulness of the people. Satan desires, that on account of this they may be given up to him still farther. The angel of the Lord rejects this demand, removes the ground of it by imparting forgiveness of sins, and at the same time declares, that a still richer participation of this forgiveness, and in consequence a still deeper confounding of Satan, should take place in the times of Messiah, by which a bridge is raised between that passage and the one before us. There the angel of the Lord stands on the defensive: he defends the people of God against the attacks of Satan; but here he takes the offensive. We are introduced to a more profound insight into this conflict by the fundamental and parallel passages in the gospels. As soon as Christ has become Christ, has received in baptism the fulness of the Spirit, the battle of Satan against him begins, with the view of defeating the work of redemption in its commencement, maintaining his position as the prince of this world, and checking in the bud the reviving glory of the church. In the words of Bengel, “He tempted Christ in the wilderness, and when he was obliged to give way, he withdrew, but only for a season. When the suffering of Jesus came, the enemy again appeared, and the power of darkness raged with fearful violence. But then, too, was the prince of this world judged. He had acquired over men, who had allowed themselves to be overcome by sin, aright in consequence of this victory; but in the controversy with Christ he had lost all such right, and received judgment against him as a robber and a murderer.” Jesus says in John 14:30-31, “I shall not talk much more with yon, for the prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in me (he has no right in me, because I am without sin, and the territory of Satan extends only so far as sin does); but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do; arise, let us go hence”—namely, that I may meet the attack of this prince of the world. Here Satan is still in the offensive; but in consequence of the failure of his last attempt, in consequence of the obedience of Christ unto death, even the death of the cross, he passes into the defensive, which terminates in the final overthrow. This result, according to our passage, followed after the ascension of Christ. In accordance with this also is it said in John 12:31-32, “Now is the judgment of this world (Lόcke: ‘Its power is immediately judged, condemned and broken in its head’), now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth (Bengel: ‘In the very cross there was something that pointed to glory’) will draw all to me”—the complete triumph over Satan only mentioned after the completion of Christ’s work of redemption. According also to John 16:11, the declaration “the prince of this world is judged,” is first introduced after Christ’s return to the Father, as according to John 16:10 it was only thereby that the justification was perfected. It was, as Bengel remarks, “a very hard process, on which the execution followed.” On this execution it is here reported. What Christ had won from Satan through blood and death, (comp. Revelation 12:11, according to which the blood of the Lamb is the root of the whole matter), that is here turned against him. And since he is here once for all cast down to the ground, Christ can let him attempt more, can look calmly on, while he assaults the church; for his attacks can no longer hurt her, they can only advance her real interests. Berleb. Bible: “This all weak and fainting persons may lay to heart, so that they may not surrender the right which they have in God, and God has in them, not reckon the devil stronger than God, as reason is apt to represent him. Judgment has been given long since, and must be fulfilled in the experience of all his party: they can prevail nothing, if one only withholds one’s will from them, as that in which they seek their strength.”[Note: The πολεμῆσαι is not to be translated with Ewald by: must war. This yields no suitable sense. We are rather to supply from the preceding context: had war.] The preceding expression: and overcame or prevailed not, serves to explain what follows: his place was no more found in heaven. For, that Satan cannot hold his place in heaven, simply means, that his power is broken—broken, according to Revelation 12:11, through the blood of Christ—for by this forgiveness of sin has been obtained, and thus Satan’s most formidable weapon is wrenched out of his hands. All that is powerful is transferred to heaven. In the passage Isaiah 14:12, which is here specially referred to, it is said of the king of Babylon, the visible image of the great dragon here: “How art thou fallen from heaven, thou bright star, son of the morning,” meaning, how impotent hast thou become, thou glorious ruler! In the chapter before us itself in Revelation 12:1, mighty kings appear as stars of heaven, after the example of Dan 8:10, and their fall from the region of power is denoted by their being cast down upon the earth. Comp. also ch. Revelation 6:13. Still in Ephesians 6:12, after the decisive victory of Christ, wicked spirits in heaven are spoken of, meaning thereby that they are furnished with much power and dreadful cunning.[Note: Harless, on Unit passage of Ephesians, still seeks in vain to establish for τὰἐπουράνια another meaning, although he is himself obliged to remark: “Even in this epistle the expression served only for a designation of heaven itself, and of all that is divine.” Bad spirits are locally as little in heaven as in the air (Ephesians 2:2), as is clear alone from this, that the one destroys the other. Similar expressions are to be found also in classical authors. Cicero says of Pompey: Quia deciderat ex astris, lapsus quam progressus potius videbator; and of Antony: Collegum quidem de coelo detraxisti; see for these and other passages m Gesen., Isaiah 14.Comp. also Numbers 24:17, Psalms 73:9. Zόllig remarks on the being cast on the earth, “For believers on the earth this precipitation of their arch-enemy is certainly not clear gain. Now that he has come nearer to them, he can the more easily persecute them, and does it also, as the sequel shews.” This view has the appearance of things on its side; and yet it is found untenable on a closer examination. It is against it, that the simple: he was thrown, denoting the complete overthrow of Satan, in this verse, precedes the other expression: he was thrown upon the earth; it occurs also in Revelation 12:10.[Note: That the expression: he was thrown here, is quite complete in itself; that: he was thrown upon earth, is only an expansion, is evident alone from the: he was thrown, in Revelation 12:10. The double merely: he was thrown, serves as a commentary on the: he was thrown on the earth; shews, that the being thrown on the earth is only a symbolical designation of his overthrow.]The view is further opposed by the declaration in Revelation 12:10, as to the salvation, and the power and the kingdom having become God’s, and the power of his Christ; and that by Revelation 12:11 the foundation of an absolute victory was given to believers. The mere expression of his being thrown upon the earth, renders it impossible for us to think of his acquiring by the circumstance a greater power upon the earth. Bengel’s paraphrase, “He was thrown out of heaven, and after being so thrown he took the way toward the earth,” with manifest arbitrariness advances what stands opposed to the received meaning. The being thrown from heaven on the earth simply denotes his downfall. Satan’s power and opportunity to hurt were not increased by his precipitation from heaven to earth; they were rather checked and weakened; but his rage was increased, being inflamed on account of the damage his interest had sustained, because he had suffered an overthrow, such as had never befallen him since the beginning of the world—an overthrow, from which he can never possibly recover. Comp. the expression in Revelation 12:12 : and has a great wrath, and especially the words in Revelation 12:13 : And when the dragon saw that he was thrown upon the earth, he persecuted the woman. The fundamental passages also all point in the same direction. The power of Satan uniformly appears in them as broken by Christ, and only his rage as increased—see in respect to the latter, 1 Peter 5:8. According to John 12:31, the prince of this world has been cast out of the world by the atonement of Christ; and according to 1 John 3:8, the Son of God has been manifested for the purpose of destroying the works of the devil. If one should understand literally the throwing out of heaven and the throwing on the earth, we may then say with Lόcke, “In John, and in other parts also of the New Testament, excepting the Apocalypse, I find no trace of such a representation.” Precisely the same figurative representation is found in Luke 10:18, “I saw Satan fall from heaven as lightning”—a word which our Lord uttered when the Seventy returned with joy and said, Lord, even the demons are subject to us in thy name. If the falling from heaven were to be taken literally, there would be an opposition between these two passages. For here it is affirmed to have taken place before the accomplishment of redemption, but in the Revelation it appears as the consequence of redemption having been accomplished: understood figuratively the opposition disappears. The words of our Lord in Luke refer to the commencement of Satan’s overthrow by Christ, which carried in its bosom the germ and the pledge of its completion. Then it proceeds onwards by successive stages, till the last stage is reached in the resurrection of Christ and his ascension to heaven. The same thing is presented to our view under a different image in Luke 11:21-22, “When a strong man armed keeps his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armour, wherein he trusted, and divides his spoils.” Christ here breaks in upon Satan’s fortress. This took place as to its beginning, when Christ entered on his high calling, and in its completion, when he sat down on the right hand of the Father. The frightful enemy of the human race, “who deceives the whole earth,” appears here under four names: the four as the signature of the entire compass of the earth is very suitable for the prince of this world. The “great dragon” stands at the head, even before the old serpent, because Satan comes here into view peculiarly as the prince of this world, as the animating principle of the ungodly world-power, which in the Old Testament is represented under the image of the dragon. The persecution by the world-power forms the starting point. For the consolation of the church sighing under it and ready to faint, the decisive victory of Christ over Satan is here set forth, as that was the pledge of all subsequent victories. The “old serpent” is mentioned here on account of what he did so craftily at the beginning, Genesis 3:1-5. 2 Corinthians 11:3. In John 8:44, he is called a murderer from the beginning; and in 1 John 3:8, it is said, that the devil sins from the beginning. The expression: who is called, stands at the transition from the purely matter-of-fact designations to those, which are at once proper names, and also, as to the substance, belong to Satan. As the two first appellations denote his great power and his deep cunning (as a serpent he deceives, 2 Corinthians 11:3), so do the two last this intense hostility. The devil, properly the calumniator, he is called, as the accuser of the faithful; Satan, the adversary, as he who leads astray the whole world—that is, according to ch. Revelation 20:3; Revelation 20:8; Revelation 20:10, stirs them up to fight against the kingdom of God.[Note: There it is said: the devil, who deceives them; but the διάβολος is used as a proper name. The connecting together of the two names here renders it probable that an internal difference exists, that respect is had to the original import of the proper name. Ewald would delete the ὁ ? before σατανᾶς. But from what has been remarked, there is no reason for this. For the sake of the four number alone Satan must stand independently of the devil.]On the words: his angels were thrown with him, Bengel remarks: “What might be the state and operations of the angels of the dragon before and after this war and overthrow, is not delineated in this book; but mention is made only of the dragon. It is presupposed that the truth is known from other books of scripture.” Revelation 12:10. And I heard a great voice in heaven, which said: Now is come the salvation, and the power, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ because the accuser of our brethren is cast out, who accuses them day and night before God. Revelation 12:11. And they have overcome him by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and have not loved their lives to the death. Revelation 12:12. Therefore, rejoice ye heavens, and those who dwell therein! Woe to the earth and the sea, for the devil is come down to you, and has a great wrath, because he knows that he has a short time. The great voice is such an one on the part of men. “For it belongs to them to speak of their brethren, and not the angels, ch. Revelation 19:10. The saints who had formerly overcome, and had now reached heaven, are those who rejoice thus over their brethren as they go thither (?)” Bengel. Comp. on ch. Revelation 11:15. But we can think only of the saints of the Old Testament, not with Ewald of the twenty-four elders. For, twelve of these represent the church of the New Testament, which could not then as yet be represented otherwise in heaven: the voice is heard immediately after the completion of Christ’s work of redemption. And the very circumstance of the twenty- four elders not being mentioned here, confirms the view we have taken of the connection. The expression: now is come, is to be explained on the ground, that in this matter is contained the germ and the pledge of all that follows—comp. the equally anticipatory expression: they have overcome him, in Revelation 12:11, and also ch. Revelation 19:6-8, where the saints made perfect regard the marriage of the Lamb as already come, when the victory was gained over the great whore, although still much delay and many conflicts must intervene. Bengel: “The salvation, by which the saints were delivered, the power, by which the enemy was overthrown, the kingdom, which displays God’s majesty,” comp. on ch. Revelation 11:15, and in regard to the salvation, on ch. Revelation 7:10.[Note: The MSS. vacillate between the rivaling κατήγωρ, an abbreviation that often occurs in the Rabbinical writing, and the usual form κατήγορος.]The expression: they have overcome him, Revelation 12:11, is to be explained from the clear foresight. Substantially it is as much as, they are able now to overcome him. Parallel Isaiah 1 John 2:13, “I write to you, young men, that ye have overcome the wicked one;” 1 John 2:14, “I have written to you, young men, that ye are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and ye have overcome the wicked one.” The victory is certain through (properly, because of) the blood of the Lamb (comp. Revelation 1:5, “Who has loved us and washed us from our sins by his blood,” also Revelation 5:9, 1 John 1:7, 1 John 1:9, 1 John 2:2), and the word of their testimony—comp. Matthew 10:32-33, “Whosoever confesses me before men,” &c. We have not two quite independent factors mentioned here, but the second, the witness-bearing, has its root in the consciousness of pardon obtained through the blood of the Lamb, according to the sentiment, “Let us love him, for he has first loved us.” That blood alone gives power to resist unto blood. Because Christ has humbled himself and become obedient unto the death of the cross, they now no longer love their lives unto the death. Bengel: “Because of the blood of the Lamb—this blood purified the brethren from all sin, and so the accuser could bring nothing against them. And because of the word of their testimony—the word which they believed, and because they believed it, they also spoke and gave testimony to it, and suffered all for it, 2 Corinthians 4:13. This is called overcoming the wicked one, 1 John 2:14. Where there is such power in the heart, there also will the name of Christ and the righteousness, which is in that name, be confessed without fear.” Those that dwell in heaven, Revelation 12:12, properly, those who tabernacle in heaven. By σκηνή ?, tent, the church is denoted, because the sanctuary representing the church first had the form of a tent—comp. ch. Revelation 13:6. Accordingly the members of the church, who I after the Old Testament manner of representation dwell spiritually with God in his sanctuary, appear here and in ch. Revelation 13:6 as tabernacling or dwelling in a tent. A similar allusion to the original tent-form of the sanctuary occurs in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us,” and also in this book, ch. Revelation 7:15. In so far as the perfectly righteous are denoted by those who dwell in heaven, the object of their joy cannot be, that they have escaped from the personal assaults of Satan (the perfected representatives of the church in Revelation 12:10 know only of the blessed consequences of the overthrow of Satan for their brethren), but the church triumphant rejoices over the salvation, which is obtained by the church militant, as they distinctly express their joy in Revelation 12:10-11. This is plain from the therefore. In the preceding context the discourse was only of that which the church on earth, the church militant, had obtained through the overthrow of Satan. But there is no reason for thinking only, or even chiefly, of the saints in glory. According to the mode of representation adopted in the New Testament, the members of the church militant also dwell in heaven; their citizenship is there, Philippians 3:20; they are risen together with Christ, and sit together with him in the heavenly places, Ephesians 2:6; they have come to the (heavenly) mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the just made perfect, Hebrews 12:22-23. In this book itself, in ch. Revelation 13:6, those who dwell in heaven are manifestly the members of the church generally, including those on earth, who have been in a very peculiar manner affected by the blasphemies of the beast, who have been calumniated by him as evil-doers, 1 Peter 2:12, 1 Peter 3:16, 1 Peter 4:14. Viewed in regard to these members of the church militant, the contrast is not so much one of persons as of spheres of being; in respect to the heavenly one, they have for the object of their joy the peace of God, which they there enjoy, and which Satan can no more destroy; but, in respect to the earthly, they are still exposed to the assaults of Satan, they have sorrow and tribulation in the world, whereby they are tried, and by the trial kept and prepared for glory, 1 Pet. 6:7. Yet the clear light of heaven shines down upon the darkness of this earthly life. The sea can here, as in ch. Revelation 7:3; Revelation 8:8, 12:18, Revelation 13:1; Revelation 16:3; Revelation 21:1, come into consideration only in the figurative sense, as denoting the sea of the peoples, the restless world. Zόllig conceives “those threatened upon the sea are partly the inhabitants of islands, and partly such as might be found in ships (!”) The time that is given to Satan is marked as a small one, in relation to the eternity of the glory of redemption. Revelation 12:13. And when the dragon saw that he was thrown upon the earth, he persecuted the woman who had brought forth the male (child). This is no mere personal description: he persecuted the woman who brought forth the manly son that had thrown him down on the earth—persecuted her because she had given birth to the son, his conqueror—persecuted in her the conqueror himself, whom he could no longer come at. Hatred of Christ is in Satan and his instruments the foundation of their hatred of Christians. Revelation 12:14. And to the woman were given the[Note: The article is wanting in Luther, and has been restored to the text only by the most recent editors. It could scarcely have failed on account of the article following.]two wings of the great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she is nourished a time, and times, and half a time from the face of the serpent. This verse corresponds to the sixth. What was already said there is here resumed again, after an account has meanwhile been given which serves to place the situation of the woman in a clear light, the occasion of her flight, the persecution by Satan, and what impelled him to this, at the same time also what gave her in such a condition the hope of a blessed and joyful issue; so that we read here what we have already known with quite new feelings. The only things peculiar to this passage are the two wings of the great eagle which were given to the woman; and, instead of the 1260 days, the time, two times, and an half time. The eagle’s wings occur twice in the Old Testament in regard to the first sojourn in the wilderness, Exodus 19:4, “Ye have seen what I have done to Egypt, and I bore you on eagle’s wings, and brought you to me”—into the wilderness, where, under my protection, ye are free from the dominion and persecution of the Egyptians,—and Deuteronomy 32:11, “Like the eagle he stirs up his nest, hovers over his young, spreads out his wings, takes it, bears it on his pinion: “the Lord as the spiritual eagle bore Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness. A reference is made, besides, to Ezekiel 17:3-7, where the king of Babylon appears as the great eagle, the king of Egypt as a great eagle. In allusion to that great eagle, the Lord is described as the (true) great eagle.[Note: Against Ewald, according to whom the great eagle must denote only a very great eagle—the article being Hebraistically used as a mark of the superlative Züllig justly remarks: “This might be listened to, if there were no definite great eagle to he found. It is the same great eagle that formerly bore on its wings out of Egypt into the wilderness, and placed there in safety, the very same allegorical person, called here Zion, there the people of Israel (Exodus 19:4).” By Bengel’s exposition, which understands by the great eagle the mighty power which gave protection and support to the church after the arrival of the third woe, the empire, the reference to the passages in the Pentateuch is quite overlooked.]That the wilderness comes into consideration here as a place of security is evident from the whole context. But that the state was one also of privation is implied in the expression: where she is nourished. The natural means of support do not exist there; God must provide for his church in a supernatural way, as of old in the wilderness by manna. The simple expression “where she is nourished,” does not certainly of itself necessarily imply that the matter here under consideration belongs to the Seer’s own time; and we might explain: where she (then) is nourished. But since it is certain on other accounts that the subject has respect to the present, that a leading into the wilderness forms even the starting-point of the Revelation, there is no reason for departing from the most natural construction. That by the times two times are to be understood, may be inferred alone from the circumstance that a definite number is manifestly demanded, hence naturally two as being the first in order; and less doubt can be entertained regarding it since the “times” stand between the one time and the half time. It is a consolatory thought that the sojourn in the wilderness, which, while it serves to quicken and purify the soul, must still always be accompanied with something painful, has a bound set to it. But the consolation grows when it is considered that the three and a half in their relation to the seven suggest the idea of a proportionately small period of time, and so correspond to the declaration in Revelation 12:12, “he knows that he has a short time.” But, finally, the consolatory import receives a still farther increase by the verbal reference to the prophecy of Daniel in Daniel 7:25, the clear sunshine of which also at once sheds a cheerful light over this mournful scene. A time, two times, and an half time are there the period during which the little horn was to make war on the saints and obtain the victory over them, and at the close of which things were to take a happy turn for the people of God. Through this prophecy, which refers to the last great conflict and victory of the kingdom of God,[Note: In the resumption of Daniel’s prophecy of the ten horns, the Seer of the Revelation passes by in silence the small horn, which throws down three of the great horns. But it is very improbable that be altogether left out the matter symbolized by it. Not being touched on in the history of the beast, we must seek for it in the new phase of the enmity of the world against the kingdom of God, which breaks in at the end of the thousand years. Then, there is the consideration, that the Apocalypse, if it does not contain lees, so neither does it more than Daniel.]the three and a-half generally has been consecrated as the signature of the temporary subjection of the Lord’s people running out into victory. It is said in ch. Daniel 7:24-27, “And the ten horns are ten kings that shall arise out of this kingdom, and another shall arise after them, and he shall be diverse from the former, and he shall subdue three kings. And he shall speak words against the Most High, and he shall disperse the saints of the Most High, and shall attempt to change time and law (he will effect a total revolution—comp. Revelation 2:21, where the expression: he changes times, is used of God); and they shall be given into his hand for a time, and two times, and an half time. Thereafter shall the judgment sit, and his power shall be taken away, that he may be consumed and destroyed unto the end. And the kingdom and the dominion over all kingdoms under the whole heaven shall be given to the people of the saints of the Most High; and his kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, and all dominions shall serve and obey him.” By this prophecy the three and a half years and the dominion of the saints of the Most High over the world are inseparably united together. What holds respecting the last end, must be found also in what is the beginning and exemplar of the end. At the clause: from the face of the serpent, we are to supply: in her flight, or, in her fear. Some with Vitringa connect improperly thus: that she might fly from the face of the serpent. By such a construction the words present an unpleasant drawling appearance. Bengel already remarked, “The woman has her nourishment from the face of the serpent, i.e., the serpent with his persecution cannot come at the woman. So in Judges 9:21, Jotham dwelt there from his brother Abimelech. It has been construed otherwise, that the woman fled from the serpent. But this did not need to be said, as it is evident from the fact, that the dragon persecuted the woman. But this, on the other hand, is remarkable, that she should have her nourishment so long in the face of the serpent.” Revelation 12:15. And the serpent cast out of his mouth water as a flood after the woman, that he might drown her. Revelation 12:16. But the earth helped the woman and opened its mouth, and swallowed up the flood, which the dragon cast out of his mouth. The water appears in ch. Revelation 17:15 as an image of the peoples. Under the figure of an overflowing the idea of an overwhelming was not rarely represented in the Old Testament; for example, in Psalms 124:4-5, “Then the waters had overwhelmed us, the stream had gone over our soul, then the proud waters had gone over our soul.” Jeremiah 47:2, where it is said in regard to the Chaldean invasion, “Behold waters come out of the north, and become an overflowing flood;” Psalms 18:16; Isaiah 8:8; Jeremiah 46:7-8. The more exact definition appears from Revelation 12:16. By this we learn, that the discourse here is of the hostile overflowing of the church, the commencement of which gave rise to this book—the Roman persecution. With perfect propriety the Berleb. Bible compares 1 Peter 5:8, the rather so, as there too the Roman persecution is referred to. The serpent is named, and not the dragon, in order to point to the cunning, which is the distinguishing characteristic of the serpent Genesis 3:1. The poor world has been deceived by it. It gives no heed to this, that it is driven on by Satan, and conceives that it acts an independent part in the persecution of the church, and advances its own interest, while it is only working for its own destruction. The earth helped the woman and swallowed up the flood, Revelation 12:16, “which would have swallowed up the believing Israel; so that the matter turned into the reverse.” (Berleb. Bible.) Another earthly and worldly power rose against those who persecuted the church, and brought their persecutions to an end, as formerly under the Old Testament the kingdom of the Medes and Persians brought to an end that of Babylon. The further explanation is given in ch. 17. By that we learn, that Rome was to be destroyed by the ten kings, which were themselves of the earth, and gave their power to the beast. Revelation 12:17. And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the rest of her seed, who keep the commandments of God and have the testimony of Jesus (Christ.) The rest are those who survived the hostile overflowing in Revelation 12:15, or were not affected by it. The key is furnished by ch. Revelation 17:13, where it is said of the ten kings or kingdoms, who overthrew Rome, “These have one mind and give their might and power to the beast,” comp. Revelation 12:17. Their battle against Christ is depicted in ch. Revelation 19:11, ss. On the last words Bengel has some excellent remarks in his discourses, “In respect to the keeping or maintaining of the commandments of God, it is a great question, whether such is possible to men or not? Those who have attained through the power of the gospel to faith in Jesus Christ, serve God in a new and willing spirit, and this is called keeping the commandments of God. We must not take it in the strictest sense, as if God saw no faults in his most devoted children, for which they needed his forgiveness. No one knows better than he who really exercises himself to obedience, how much it is a matter of indulgence in God to regard the conduct of his children on earth, which is so faulty, in the light of an obedience to his commands. It is in the spiritual life and growth, much as in the natural. When a child learns to walk or speak, there is at every step or utterance some indication of weakness and defect; but matters are always getting better, and blame is not imputed if there is a growth in alacrity and strength. Those who keep God’s command, have also the testimony of Jesus. If our hearts are convinced of the truth of this, the mouth shall not fail to deliver a stedfast testimony respecting it, though it should be at the expense of life itself. These are the persons on whom Satan makes war, and hence it is a matter of strong suspicion, if one resile from keeping the commandments of God. Such as do so, the devil readily allows to live at peace.” Other Explanations of Ch. 13 The Papacy It still remains for us to examine the more important views that have been taken of this section, different from the one we have given. And a regard to history demands, that we should, first of all, subject to a careful investigation the view which refers it to the papacy. Bengel says, “As old as is the description here given of the papacy, so old also is the testimony to the truth, by which this prophecy is applied to the papacy. This was done long ago by the Waldenses, and afterwards by the followers of Wickliff and Huss. Such was the case before Luther’s time, and by him the light was still more widely diffused.” The two most valuable expositors of the Revelation, Bengel and Vitringa, have advanced everything that could support this interpretation. And the authority of the former especially still carries such weight with many, that the opinion almost possesses with them the character of an article of faith. He says, “The beast from the sea is the pope; the beast from the earth is that power which most particularly supports and defends, though from interested motives, the doctrine of the pope’s power. Whether and how much the orders of the Dominicans, Franciscans, Jesuits, the Inquisition, etc., have contributed to this end, it is still impossible to compute.” This explanation, however, is first of all opposed by the connection in which this chapter stands with ch. 13. The beast from the sea is the instrument by which the dragon carries on his persecution, which was described in ch. 12 (see the introduction to ch. 13). If, therefore, the beast were the papacy, it must also be the papal persecution of Christianity, of which ch. 12 discourses. But in that chapter the description of the persecution follows immediately after the narrative, which relates how the power of Satan was broken by the atonement of Christ. It is rage for this defeat, which calls forth the persecution. In Revelation 13:13 it is said, “And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman who brought forth the man-child.” If we understand by the persecution that of the papacy, then the revenge of Satan was a very late one; he must have restrained himself for a full thousand years. It would also be singular, if the heathen persecution of the church, which commenced soon after the ascension, and continued to rage for centuries, under which John himself had to suffer, should have been entirely unnoticed, and yet a persecution delineated, which did not commence till a thousand years afterwards. Add to this, that Revelation 13:15-17 of ch. 12 cannot be explained, if by the persecution we understand the papal one—the commentaries of those who do so, need only to be looked into, to convince any one how utterly they grope in the dark—while by being understood in reference to the heathen persecution, they admit of a quite easy explanation. Further, Satan appears in ch. 12 under the name of the dragon. This indicates that the beast, which persecutes the church as his instrument, is a purely worldly power, without the intermixture or appearance of what is spiritual, and without ecclesiastical properties. For the dragon is everywhere employed in the Old Testament only as an emblem of purely worldly powers. The Papal persecution might justly have been assigned to the agency of Satan, but not to that of the dragon. As another argument against the explanation of the papacy, may be mentioned the relation of this group to the two groups of the seven seals and the seven trumpets. The oppression of the church, and the execution of judgment on the persecutors, is the theme which belongs in common to this group and to the other two. The latter manifestly possess a preparatory, an introductory character. The relation can only be of this nature, that there a general delineation is given of the victory of Christ and the overthrow of the world, while in this group begins the detailed representation; as quite similarly in the prophets, a general announcement often precedes the mention of particulars. Thus in Nahum, Nahum 1:3-6, the appearance of the Lord to execute judgment on the earth is revealed, and then the prophet goes on to describe the judgment on Nineveh, the particular earthly power which in his day threatened destruction to the kingdom of God. So also Isaiah, in Isaiah 13, after unfolding the Lord’s purpose to judge the earth, immediately proceeds to proclaim the overthrow of Babylon. If the relation were to be made out differently—if it were to be supposed that the two former groups and this latter one refer to different victories of Christ and discomfitures of the world, then the two first should want details, and the last a general foundation. If, then, the papal persecution was here the subject of discourse, those two earlier groups must needs also refer to the papal persecution, if not exclusively, yet so as distinctly to embrace it. This, however, cannot be the case, simply on account of ch. Revelation 9:20—to say nothing of other reasons—as the sins there mentioned are of a distinctively heathen character. Again, the explanation that finds the papacy here, is at variance with the historical starting-point of the book. The Apocalypse was written at the time of a bloody heathen persecution which arose against Christianity. Its aim is a thoroughly practical one, being designed to comfort and animate the faint and desponding minds of believers. We would not affirm that in a book of this nature the papacy could not possibly be the subject of discourse. The Revelation of Jesus Christ was not intended merely for the present, but for the church of all ages. We do maintain, however, that primarily the subject of discourse must be that persecuting power, under the oppression of which the church sighed during the time then present, and such other powers as, in the nearer and more distant future, had the same root as that. And an exposition, which results in finding that only the most general account is given of the heathen persecuting power, that we can learn nothing of the fate of heathen Rome (for the first two groups leave us quite in the dark as to that), that all the details have respect to a hostile power, of which no suspicion had as yet begun to be entertained, and which was to be of an essentially different character from the one that then threatened the church with destruction—such an exposition must necessarily be false. The whole literature of prophecy presents nothing analogous to it. Everywhere we find the prophets manifesting solicitude primarily for the necessities of the present time. Isaiah, for example, during the oppression exercised by Assyria, in the first instance, and in the most particular manner, announces the coming deliverance from this worldly power; and when he at the same time foretells a similar deliverance from a still future Chaldean power, the future oppression, whose elements had already begun to exist, as the Chaldean dominion was even then shooting up, lay in the same line with the present one, and the application of what was said to the relations then existing was perfectly obvious. “When did a father give a stone to the son that asked of him bread!” and yet this would really have been done here. Let us but transport ourselves to the times of Domitian, so as vividly to realize the position of believers when that tyrant was persecuting the church, and we shall soon feel that such cold comfort could be to them nothing but a bitter irony. Let us imagine ourselves in the position of John himself, when he was in Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ, banished to a desert island by the Roman tyrant, bearing the sufferings of all Christendom as in the microcosm of his own heart (2 Corinthians 11:29), and ask ourselves whether it would have been at all natural for us, when living in such a time, to withdraw ourselves entirely from it, and start off to a future that was but slightly connected with it? The interpretation, which refers all to the papacy, arose at a time when people were called to suffer bitter things from the papacy. It proceeded from a desire to find, under such circumstances, direct consolation from Scripture. Must not John himself, then, must not the first readers of the book, have earnestly desired the same consolation in their sufferings? And what could have caused it to be withheld from them? Do not the epistles to the seven churches in Asia plainly show that the Apocalypse was primarily intended for the behoof of the apostle’s contemporaries? that it must consequently meet, in the first instance, the necessities of their condition? that by its composition John sought more immediately to fulfil the obligation which lay upon him in respect to his official sphere of duty, and “by pen and ink” to furnish them with what he could not administer by his presence? in a word, that John had throughout in view his “companions in tribulation?”The interpretation that regards the papacy as symbolised by the beast, arose at a time when men had not felt the force of such considerations, when they still did not understand, how prophecy, though not bound to the present, must yet have an actual starting point in the present, must always connect itself with present necessities, questions and complaints, and never can swim loosely in the air. Now, however, when no one scarcely can fail to attain to this understanding, to attempt to defend such a mode of exposition would be a sheer anachronism. Moreover, the relation of our prophecy to Daniel 7 is against the interpretation in question. The symbol of the beast in Daniel denotes purely worldly, godless, God-opposing powers, without anything of a nobler kind in appearance, without the intermixture of any better elements, powers in palpable opposition to the kingdom of God. The papacy does not stand on the same line with such powers, not even in the view of those who take up the strongest position against it. It would be a perplexing thing, and detrimental to the uniform character of Scripture symbolism, ‘ if under the same symbol something essentially different had been presented to John. Further, the beast here is a composite creature formed out of the different beasts in Daniel. It must, therefore, comprise within itself the particular phases of the ungodly power of this world, which in Daniel was represented under a succession of different beasts. Otherwise, confusion must be introduced into the symbolism of Scripture. But if the papacy is understood by the beast, this reference to the particular phases of the worldly power in Daniel is entirely lost. The beast here has on one of his heads, the seventh, ten horns. These point back to Daniel. There, in Daniel 7:24, the ten horns are ten worldly kingdoms, into which the fourth world-monarchy falls on its dissolution. If by the beast here the papacy is understood, the connection between the ten horns of the Revelation and those of Daniel is wholly destroyed. Still further, the interpretation before us is proved to be untenable by comparing the 2 Thessalonians 2 second chapter of 2 Thessalonians. It forcibly impresses itself upon us, that the adversary there, “who exalts himself above all that is called God or is worshipped,” stands in a close relation to the beast here; as has from the first, indeed, been acknowledged. That adversary, however, is not a disguised, but an avowed opponent. He appears in 2 Thessalonians 2:4, compared with Daniel 11:36, as the antitype of Antiochus Epiphanes 2 in his flagrant impiety. (Hδvernick: “A very special mark of Antiochus Epiphanes was his utter want of religion, which led even heathen historians to bring the strongest animadversions against him: he plundered the temples of all divinities.”) He does not come in the name of God or of Christ, but he exalts himself above all that is called God, will tolerate no God above himself, nay, not even beside himself. In the whole description no trace is to be found of hypocrisy, of a Pharisaical appearance. Often has his pseudo-ecclesiastical character been argued on the ground, that “he sits in the temple of God.” The temple of God is his church. This, certainly, must be admitted; but the meaning of the statement simply is, that he presses in upon the church from without, and, not content with the homage of the world, he lays claim to the homage of her members, after the manner stated by Pliny, who tells us that he constrained the Christians to do honour to the image of the emperor, and to curse Christ. So already Olshausen: “The Antichrist will seek to drive Christ, the true object of worship, out of the church, and set himself up in his room.” Especially, if we take properly into account the connection between Th 1 and 2, we shall not be able to entertain a doubt, that the first great phase of the appearance of the adversary was the rising up of heathen Rome against Christ and his church, of which even at the time, when the epistle was written, there were some preparatory symptoms, as the readers of the epistle knew from painful experience, but which first attained its full height in the time of Domitian. The first great fulfilment of the declaration in 2 Thessalonians 2:8, “Whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming,” was the overthrow of heathen Rome. The last great phase of the appearance of the adversary is described to us in Revelation 20:7-9, and we see with our own eyes how it is making way for itself. It is also to be noted, that the adversary of St Paul corresponds, not specially to the second beast, as Vitringa and others suppose, but rather to the first in conjunction with the second. What is said of the beast is of such a kind for the most part, that it is not applicable to the papacy. We shall here only specify what more readily presents itself. Whoever desires more, may find it in the exposition, and in the refutation to be given afterwards of the view that has now become current. First of all here, the name of the Beast falls to be noticed, denoting, as it does, the low, earthly mind, opposed to all that is God or godly—regular godlessness. If this name is properly interpreted, we shall soon acknowledge, in presence of the chief representatives of the papacy—a Gregory VII or an Innocent III, for example—that it is not applicable to the papacy. With all the accusations that may be brought against them, from an evangelical point of view, they still cannot be charged with having a bestial mind, excepting by setting history at defiance. It is impossible to deny their having had “a zeal for God,” and this lies out of the sphere of the beastly. The importance of this argument is evident alone from the circumstance, that those who advocate the reference to the papacy, such as Bengel, have found it necessary to ascribe to the symbol of the beast a false signification. In determining the import of the seven heads the interpretation for the papacy is in perplexity, and no agreement has been come to in regard to it. The different views bear the character of mere random guesses. They are all dashed to pieces by the express statement of the author in ch. Revelation 17:9. And so are they all by the fact, that the ten horns, by which, according to the view in question, must be denoted the kingdoms yielding homage to the papacy, are placed on the seventh head. The beast bears on his horns diadems. These in the Apocalypse are the symbol of royal dignity. They meet us at the very outset, with the manifest design of preventing misapprehensions, and of forcing on us the conviction, that the beast is not a spiritual, but a purely worldly power; not an ecclesiastical, but simply a civil dominion. The beast bears on his head names of blasphemy. This points to a manifest opposition to God and Christ, and does not accord with the papacy, which even amid its loftiest pretensions has always represented itself but as a servant and living organ of God and Christ. The beast according to Revelation 13:2 is an instrument of the dragon, his visible representative upon earth. The papacy was not regarded as a purely satanic institution, even by those who lived in the times when the contest with it was hottest. At least, when they bethought themselves, they recognized along with the satanic, also a divine element. Such especially was the case with Luther. He says, for example, in the epistle to two pastors of the Anabaptists, written in the year 1528 (W. W., p. 2646), “But we acknowledge, that under the papacy there is much Christian good, nay all Christian good, and also that it has come from thence to us; namely, we confess, that in the papacy there is the true Holy Scripture, true baptism, the true sacrament of the altar, the true keys for the forgiveness of sins, the true office of preaching, a better catechism than the ten commandments, the articles of the creed, the Pater Noster. Even as on the other side, he too (the pope) confesses, that with us (though he condemns us as heretics), and with all heretics are the Holy Scriptures, baptism, the keys, the catechism, etc. O how hypocritically dost thou speak here! How do I speak hypocritically? I say, what the pope has in common with us. And he, in return, acts a like hypocritical part towards us and the heretics, and tells us what we have in common with him. I shall play the hypocrite still more, and cannot do otherwise in the matter. I say, that under the pope, there is true Christianity, nay the real quintessence of Christianity, and many pious and eminent saints.” The concessions which Luther here and in other places makes to the papacy, loudly contradict the supposition, that by the beast the papacy is to be understood. So also does the fact, that the Evangelical church recognizes the baptism of the Roman Catholic. A church, whose centre is Satan’s vicegerent, can have no true sacraments. An argument against the notion of the papacy being symbolized by the beast, is contained in Revelation 13:3, and was already noticed in the remarks on the verse. It was shewn, that, by this verse, the beast must have been in existence at the time of the atonement of Christ. In place of the death of the beast, those expositors are obliged to substitute a dangerous merely, but not actually mortal wound, which was to be inflicted on him by the civil power. They arbitrarily tear asunder the overthrow of the beast here from that of the dragon in ch. 12. According to Revelation 13:4, the world in the first instance worships the dragon, because he gives power to the beast, and then the beast himself. The advocates of the view now under consideration know not what to make of this worship of the dragon. Even the worshipping of the beast, in the sense in which it is taken here, as connected with the open denial of God and Christ, cannot be historically proved, if by the beast we understand the papacy. What is to be understood by the second beast, has never been agreed upon by those, who refer the first beast to the papacy. The contrast is this, that the one is an external, and the other a spiritual power. This is clearly shewn by the Lamb’s horns, which in Revelation 13:11 are attributed to the beast. But such a contrast cannot be pointed out, when the interpretation is adopted, that looks to the papacy. In that case the first beast becomes in part at least, nay predominantly a spiritual power. The name of the false prophet, by which the nature of the second beast is distinguished from the first, suits also equally well to this. One cannot understand how it can denote, for example, the monkish orders in contrast to the papacy. Insuperable difficulties are presented by Revelation 13:14.[Note: Vitringa says on this verse: Nostrarum tamen partium interpretes, fateor, ipsi quoque hic fluctuant, acsi consisterent in lubrico.] The subject there is not image worship generally, but the image of the beast, and the seducing of the whole world to worship it. But history knows nothing of the fabrication of images of the papacy, and of a worship that was paid to these. Then, the interpretation is completely wrecked on ch. Revelation 17:3, according to which the woman, Rome, sits on the beast. Thus, the delineation of the prophet contains much, that does not suit when applied to the papacy. And, on the other hand, it contains nothing, which is properly characteristic of the papacy. Not a trace even exists in it, of a pious appearance, of an outwardly ecclesiastical character. In every part of it hostility to Christ in its rudest form, in undisguised nakedness, meets us. The Holy Spirit would be a bad painter, if he had meant after such a fashion to delineate the papacy. Bengel has not produced the shadow of a proof for his proposition, that the beast is a power, spiritual as well as worldly, opposed to the kingdom of Christ; although it was this, which above all he required to prove. Neither the name of blasphemy, nor the worship, nor the false prophet, lead to any such result. But if this proposition is incapable of proof, it is all over with the interpretation in question. The reasons, which have been adduced by those, who advocate the view we are controverting, are not of a kind to detain us long. Rome, it is said, is, in ch. Revelation 18:2, doomed to destruction. But since Rome still remains, it could not have been heathen Rome that was meant, it must have been Christian Rome. The answer is plain: The Rome, whose destruction is announced, is, according to ch. Revelation 17:18, “The great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” This world-wide dominant Rome has really disappeared without leaving a trace behind. Nothing now remains of the all powerful imperial Rome, which existed in the days of the apostle. The name of the false prophet, it is said, points to false teachers, who go about in the mask of ecclesiastical authority; and so, we can only understand by the first beast, which the second serves, a pseudo-ecclesiastical power. But even in Deuteronomy 13, and Deuteronomy 18:20, prophets are discoursed of, who speak in the name of other gods, and endeavour to draw away the people to serve other gods; in whose case, therefore, that appearance of ecclesiastical authority must have been wanting. In 1 Kings 18:19, mention is made of the prophets of Baal and Aschera. In Matthew 24:24, it would be an arbitrary limitation, if we should understand by the false prophets only wolves in sheep’s clothing, as also by the false Christs are to be understood not solely, nor even principally the poor creatures, who appeared under the name of Christ or of the Jewish Messias, but much rather those, who in avowed opposition to Christ laid claim to what belongs only to him. In ch. Revelation 17:4-5, zeal is ascribed to the woman, who sits upon the beast, for the diffusion of false doctrine, which she violently forced upon the whole earth. This does not suit heathen Rome, which allowed the nations she conquered to live in the quiet exercise of their religion, but it points to Christian Rome! To this Bossuet long ago justly replied, “What an illusion! The prophets have said as much of Tyre, of Nineveh, and of Babylon, which beyond doubt were not corrupt churches.” But he could not pluck the objection up by the root, because he, too, adhered to the wrong explanation of zeal for false doctrine. It is not this that is spoken of, but thirst for conquest. Mark conceives, that as heathen persecutions had already been discoursed of in ch. 12, and as the description of the beast comes after this, it must refer to a later power, that was to appear in opposition to the true church. This argument, however, rests on an entire misapprehension as to the relation in which ch. 13 stands to ch. 12. In the heathen persecution there would then be no mention of any human instrument. According to Bengel’s view, the beast must first denote the Papacy, “in a succession of popes, who for a long period one after another exercised an ungodly power under a godly name;” and then a single personage, in whom at last the ungodliness of the Papacy should culminate. On this ground it has been argued against the view we maintain, that “heathenism (more correctly: the heathenish, ungodly power of the world), the abstract thing, is still not seized and cast into the lake of fire.” But the same thing is declared in ch. Revelation 19:20 of the false prophet, as well as of the beast. If that is to be understood of an ideal person, the same may also be understood of the beast. Such modes of representation must, certainly, appear strange to one, who does not reflect, that John was in the Spirit, when he received the Apocalypse; one who sets forth the principle, that “prophecy is anticipated and condensed history;” one who has no idea, that in vision the spiritual must be invested with body, though this is still but an external veil;—but then it is needless to argue farther with such a person. Finally, it is alleged, that what is said of the beast does not suit the heathen Germanic princes, “who for the most part so readily received Christianity. The saints were not persecuted by these princes till the latter had been received into the Christian church.” Undoubtedly, German heathenism forms, according to our view, a seventh phase of the ungodly world-power. But who can deny, that it also shewed itself to be such, without flying in the face of history? Did not the blood of martyrs flow profusely among the tribes, of Germany, before they were converted to Christianity? See on Revelation 17:14. Besides, it is said of the ten kings, who formed the seventh phase of the ungodly power of the world, in ch. Revelation 17:12,”They received power as kings one hour with the beast;” so that the comparatively short continuance of their opposition to the Lamb is expressly and strikingly noted. The interpretation, which considers the Papacy represented by the beast, belongs to a time long since gone by; a time, when the ungodly and God-opposing elements of the Papacy came prominently out, and the proper, the capital enemy of Christianity had almost entirely vanished from the field. At such a time this interpretation was natural, and in a sense necessary. But now, in quite altered circumstances, in the presence of another, far worse and more formidable enemy, common to us with those, who live under the Papacy, it can, one would think, only be upheld by an excessive conservatism, which would not part even with the hair and the nails. That ignoring of the Christian elements in the Papacy, which lies at the bottom of this interpretation, and against which the feelings even of the earlier interpreters sometimes loudly reclaimed,[Note: Vitringa says: “Ego saltem ita affectus sum, ut hanc bestiam cum prostibulo illi insidente nolim interpretari de Roma Christiana, nisi extrema necessitas me ad id adegerit. Non quod praecipuos hujus bestae characteres in Roma, fide et moribus corrupta, non videam: sed quod, nescio quo animi motu, hic fere horream dicere quod verum est Quis enim, qui rem ipsam rite meditatur, absque horrore cogitet, ecclesiam Christi de generasse in bestiam tam feram et immanem, qualis illa est, quae depingitur in Apoc.” Bengel arms himself against this feeling by the consideration, that he used no bard word excepting what he found in the text, and which he could not change.] carries with it now no small degree of criminality. But while we thus decidedly oppose this interpretation in regard to the Papacy, which imposes on the word of God a very serious exaggeration (how differently does the Apocalypse speak of Laodicea, which had yet declined far enough!), we are far from denying all applicability of what is written of the beast to the Papacy. Beyond the narrow sphere of strict prophecy, there is a wide one of application, which takes into account only some leading points of agreement. There have been times in which the Papacy has looked very like the beast. But in making such applications, we must not only be careful to confine them within proper limits, but also should never forget our own faults, lest the judgment of God fall on ourselves. “Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye.” Other Explanations of the Ch. 13 Ewald Lόcke We turn now to the consideration of that view of the beast, which has become the most current in the strictly theological field. This is as follows: By the seven heads of the beast are to be understood, according to the explanation of the Apocalypse itself, besides the seven hills of Rome, also seven kings. All concurs to show, that by these are meant the seven first emperors of Rome; as also by the beast itself, to which the seven heads belong, nothing else can be understood than primarily the Roman monarchy in general as an impersonation of the antichristian power of the heathen world. The beast has a double meaning; first, that of antichristian heathen Rome, the Roman world-monarchy, inasmuch as the seven heads are the seven Roman emperors; then, that of the personal Antichrist, or the concrete person of the Roman antichristian State, whose historical appearance is regarded as an eighth head of the beast. (N.B. The beast itself the eighth head of the beast!)Of those seven Roman emperors five, at the time the vision was seen, and manifestly also at the date of the composition of the Apocalypse, according to ch. Revelation 17:10, had already fallen, that is, had died; one, namely the sixth, was then in the possession of the government. The sixth Roman emperor, beginning with Augustus, is Galba. Under him, therefore, the Apocalypse must have been written. (Galba scarcely reigned eight months; so that the time when the Apocalypse was written is known very exactly). From this historical stand-point, then, the author looks forth into the future. After the sixth a seventh also comes, who was to reign but for a short time. (The author would thus have correctly known the short continuance not only of Galba’s reign, but also of Otho’s). Then it was thought Nero, as the personal Antichrist, should again appear, and in connection with the kings of the East destroy Rome. This view, which is the one put forth by Ewald and Lόcke, has been espoused by most recent commentators with blind confidence as the correct one, as well by the representatives of a believing theology, as by those of the Rationalistic school. Of itself it makes no pretension to a well-grounded and thorough investigation; but proceeds on the lowest views of the dignity of Holy Scripture, and, in particular, of the Apocalypse, which it would place in the same rank as common apocalyptic reveries, and on a most superficial exposition. At no distant period, it will be only occasionally noticed as a singular aberration. However, ever, on account of its present momentary importance, we must give to it a careful examination, which may also enable us to supply what was the great desideratum in the interpretation generally adopted by the church. Had the church properly discharged its duty in the matter—had it not allowed itself to be drawn into a wrong path by undue polemical zeal, but attained to a right understanding of the matter, such an hypothesis would never have made its appearance. A thorough examination will also afford the advantage of plainly showing, how the want of due reverence for sacred Scripture, one of the fundamental errors of the day, of which no one can claim to be altogether free, brings ultimately confusion on those who, while destitute of it, apply themselves to the work of interpretation and criticism. Consideration of Three Questions First question: Is the beast the antichristian worldly power of Rome? Expositors are divided between holding the affirmative of this, and understanding the beast of the Papacy. The latter opinion received some heavy blows from Grotius and Bossuet, though their own explanation presented too many weaknesses to be generally followed. The former is now the prevailing one; but is not less arbitrary and untenable than the other. If the beast were the Roman empire, then the woman, who sits upon the beast, must be the capital city in contradistinction to the empire. This distinction between city and kingdom is a very questionable one. It has against it the analogies of the Old Testament, where usually the great monarchies of the world are represented by their capital cities. The Chaldean kingdom, for example, is contemplated under the symbol of Babylon. Through the whole of the eighteenth chapter Rome, the woman, manifestly represents the whole Roman empire. With the overthrow of the city Rome, also, the utter dissolution of that empire is afterwards identified. In ch. Revelation 19:11, ss., entirely different enemies come upon the stage, a series of contemporaneous independent kings or kingdoms, whose power and greatness are rendered manifest by the circumstance, that the prophet sets against them the King of kings, the Lord of lords, who has many diadems (ch. Revelation 19:2; Revelation 19:16). The destruction of Rome is a catastrophe, according to ch. Revelation 16:9, which brings to an end one of the most important phases of the heathen worldly power. That the woman is Rome, not in contradistinction to the Roman kingdom, but as the concentration and representation of that kingdom, is clear, especially from ch. Revelation 17:18, “And the woman whom thou sawest, is that great city, which reigneth over the kings of the earth.” Here, for the city, we might substitute simply the Roman kingdom. But if the woman is the anti-Christian Roman kingdom, the beast which carries her can only denote the worldly power generally, as opposed to the kingdom of God, which was then wielded by Rome. Besides, how could it have been possible to apply what is said of the beast to the body of the Roman kingdom, separate from its head? The great power, the thirst for conquest and terribleness, the mouth speaking great things and blasphemies, the war against the saints, in all this the capital city is the soul, and whenever we look away from it we at once see, that the representation is no longer suitable to the kingdom. Then, if the beast were the Roman worldly power, as contradistinguished from the capital city denoted by the woman, the woman also must have occurred at any rate in ch. 13, as in the case supposed, the beast and woman are inseparably united together. But in that chapter the beast appears without the woman. And the supposition, that in ch. 13 the beast denotes the Roman dominion including the capital, and in ch. 17 in contradistinction to it, would destroy the uniformity of the symbolism, which is so steadfastly adhered to in the Revelation, and which alone renders a sure interpretation possible. This view, however, which considers the Roman kingdom as the beast, is more especially proved to be erroneous by the fundamental passage regarding the beast, which in ch. 17, where the figure of the woman that sits upon the beast was to be delineated, is supposed to be known from the preceding part of the description, ch. Revelation 13:1-2. The exact agreement of the first part of the description with the vision in Daniel 7 alone makes it probable, that the beast here is a composite of the four beasts in Daniel; that the plurality, which appears there in the beasts, is placed here in the head:—there, “I saw—and four great beasts came up from the sea;” here, “And I saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns.” We may the rather suppose this, as otherwise nothing analogous would be found in Daniel for the seven heads, while yet the horns, an appurtenance of the heads, are derived from Daniel. With such an original pattern, it was scarcely possible that the copy of what represented the whole power of the world should have been made to image only one of its phases. This would have destroyed altogether the relation of the Apocalypse to the prophecies of Daniel, which our author everywhere appears to resume and supplement. It would have introduced confusion into the symbolical representations of Scripture, the intelligibility of which necessarily depends on their uniformity, and is incompatible with an arbitrary and variable usage.But we arrive still more certainly at the same result when we consider, that in ch. Revelation 13:2 the one beast is formed of the same component elements which in Daniel were distributed among the four beasts. One cannot but perceive that the beast has a composite character; that it does not, like the several beasts in Daniel, denote so many particular phases of the world’s power, in its hostility to the kingdom of God, but that power generally; and that the particular phases it was to assume, are to be sought in the heads and horns, which are peculiar to the Apocalypse.Something like an objection may be urged on the ground of what is held by several expositors, that the fourth beast in Daniel is composed of the three first.[Note: Vitringa, p. 595: Descripta tamen hand duie est ad imaginem belluae quartae, Daniel 7:7, quae cum dicatur fuisse terribilis et horrendae specie, plane videtur supponi esse illam compsitam ex speciedbus trium belluarum, quae Danieli ante hanc quartam in viso depictae erant.] Having such an example before him, the author of the Apocalypse may have exhibited under a composite form the last and most frightful manifestation of the world’s power. But there is no foundation for that view of Daniel’s vision. On the contrary, it is expressly said, that the fourth beast was quite diverse from the beasts before it (ch.Daniel 7:7; Daniel 7:19); and we find from Revelation 13:3, that all the beasts were peculiar. Such a compound, too, is from the outset scarcely conceivable. If the prophet saw in the three first beasts the worldly power under the symbol of actually existing beasts, it is not to be supposed, that in the fourth he should have introduced a mere ideal compound. Though he did not name the beast, he is not therefore to be held as giving up its at least conceivable reality. When the Roman empire, or Nero, is understood by the beast, the parallelism among the three enemies of God’s kingdom is destroyed. The two others are of such a kind that their enmity attends the kingdom of God through the whole of its history. The first, the dragon, is the old serpent, who from the very beginning deceives the whole earth (ch. Revelation 12:9, Revelation 20:2), and whose power, formerly existing in greater strength, was broken by Christ (ch. Revelation 12:9-11). We must the less think of separating between this dragon and the beast, as of the latter seven heads and ten horns are given up to the dragon (ch. Revelation 12:3). The other, the second beast from the earth, the opposite of the wisdom that cometh from above, earthly, physical, demoniacal wisdom (comp. Daniel 7), the false prophet, the opposite of true prophecy, which peculiarly belongs to the kingdom of God—represented, for example, by Moses, Daniel, the two witnesses, in ch. Revelation 11:3, ss., as the representatives of that faithful witnessing which in the church of Christ never ceases, and in times of persecution and apostacy rises into unusual vigour,—this second beast has had his instruments in all ages, from the magicians of Egypt downwards. Bengel remarks, “The heads of this beast are peculiarly his own, belonging to his nature. Hence, much is ascribed in the prophecy sometimes to the seven heads of the beast, sometimes to the beast himself—as the wound in ch. Revelation 13:3; Revelation 13:12; Revelation 13:14—and elsewhere not much more is said of the beast, because in the description of the heads it had itself also been described.” Such a circumstance can only be explained by the beast being put for the worldly power in general, and its heads for the particular forms in which this manifests itself. For in that case it was only in the latter that the beast had its real existence, with them perished, and with them again returned to life. If, on the other hand, the beast represents the monarchy of Rome and the heads individual emperors, the connection comes to be of a much looser sort. The destruction of a particular head might even have been an advantage to the beast. Who would maintain, for example, that the death of a Nero was a heavy misfortune to the Roman empire, and that his return to life again should be considered as the healing of a deadly wound to the commonwealth? The ten kings have one mind, and give up their power and authority to the beast, ch. Revelation 17:13. But they hate and lay desolate the woman, Rome, Revelation 13:16. What painful violence must be done here, if one should understand by the beast the Roman empire? The beast must then denote here, not the emperor Nero as a representative and concentration of the power of Rome, but the deposed Nero as an individual in contrast to the Roman state. On the other hand, whenever we understand by the beast the power of this world generally, as opposed to the kingdom of God, and by the woman, that for the present was borne by the beast, Rome and the Roman empire, all becomes perfectly plain. The Apocalypse presents n double and very striking political prophecy in the strictest sense—first, the express announcement of the overthrow of the Roman dominion, uttered at a time, when still no visible indications of such a catastrophe appeared; then, the prediction that, otherwise than in the past, from the times of Pharaoh downwards, when one vast world-monarchy had always supplanted another, after Rome there was no general ruler of the world to be looked for, but the ungodly power of the world from the fall of Rome to its final destruction was to present a divided appearance. The destined heirs, too, of the Roman dominion, the ten kings or kingdoms, while they do fealty to the world’s hatred toward the kingdom of God, still hate that possessor of the world’s power, under whose persecution at the time of the Seer the church sighed, and, as instruments of judgment in the hand of God, execute upon her the recompense of God’s righteousness. The ten horns belong to the beast. But the kings, who are represented by these, cannot be any belonging to the Roman kingdom, for they act in hostility to Rome, and destroy her; they are not subordinate vassals, but kings of the earth with their armies, ch. Revelation 19:18-19, against whom the Lord of the church himself takes the field with his heavenly hosts; and so great is their power, that by their overthrow is completed the destruction of the heathen ungodly power generally, and the church enters on the enjoyment of a millennium of secure and undisturbed possession of the kingdom. Second question: Are the seven heads of the beast the first seven Roman emperors?That they are not, appears from this alone, that Satan has seven heads and ten horns, and upon the heads seven diadems, plainly as a mere reflection of his visible representative and agent upon earth. For, that Satan is viewed here as the moving principle of the conquering and despotic power of the world in its violent assaults against the kingdom of God, through which he seeks to accomplish his wicked designs, is clear, not only from the name of the dragon given to him, but also from its being said, that “with his tail he draws the third part of the stars, and casts them on the ground,” ch. Revelation 12:4. The stars are rulers, and their being thrown on the ground denotes their overthrow and subjection. It is also evident, further, from ch. Revelation 13:2, where it is said that the dragon gives up his power, and his throne, and his great authority to the beast. Finally, it appears from comparing the great red dragon in ch. 12 with the purple-red beast in ch. Revelation 17:3. The blood-colour, the signature of conquest and tyranny, is common to the dragon and his earthly instrument. Now, the seven Roman emperors are far too tiny to be regarded as affording such a reflected image. There is wanting also in the most of them an essential element—hatred toward the kingdom of God, with which the four first had almost nothing whatever to do. “Nero,” says Lactantius, “was the first to persecute the servants of God, he caused Peter to be crucified, and killed Paul.” Tertullian also says in his Apology, “Turn up your annals; there you will find, that Nero was the first who raged against this sect, which then flourished especially at Rome.” The reflection of the crown of an Augustus on the head of the red dragon would indeed be a singular anomaly. The beast has on his head names of blasphemy, according to ch. Revelation 13:1; and according to ch. Revelation 17:3, the whole beast is full of names of blasphemy. Vitringa: “Names and designations are meant, which are in the highest degree blasphemous, and insulting to the true God and his true Son Jesus Christ. For such is what we properly call blasphemy; it is a smaller crime to assume the honours and titles of false and imaginary deities.” That this is the right view of blasphemy, appears more particularly from ch. Revelation 13:6, according to which the blaspheming of God goes hand in hand with the blaspheming of his church and acting hostilely toward her. Direct blasphemy is also spoken of in ch. Revelation 16:9; Revelation 16:11; Revelation 16:21. Hence, the fact in question implies, that all the seven heads have been related to the true God and his kingdom. What is meant by blasphemy may be understood from the speech of the king of Assyria in Isaiah, Isaiah 36:13, ss., and Isaiah 37:10, ss., in which he proudly exalts himself above the God of Israel, and mocks all confidence in him; in which “he reproaches the living God,” Isaiah 37:4, and “blasphemes” him, Isaiah 37:6; and in Isaiah 37:23, he is represented as “lifting up his eyes against the Holy One of Israel.” See also for similar blasphemies in Isaiah 10:9-10. The same thing appears from the example of Pharaoh, who on hearing the command of the Lord by Moses, “Let my people go,” impiously exalts himself above God, and asks, “Who is Jehovah, that I should obey his voice, and let Israel go? I know not Jehovah, neither will I let Israel go.” (Exodus 5:2). It may yet again be learned from the example of the Chaldean monarch Belshazzar, when in mockery of the God of Israel he drank wine with his nobles, and wives and concubines, out of the gold and silver vessels, which his father Nebuchadnezzar had carried away from the temple at Jerusalem (Daniel 5:1); thus raising himself against the Lord of heaven, in whose hand his breath was, and whose were all his ways, and not honouring him, (Daniel 5:23). Who does not see, that in such a person as Augustus, for example, there was nothing to be found of blasphemy after this sort? In ch. Revelation 17:9, it is said, that the seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits, and seven kings. It is clear as day, that there is not a double signification ascribed here to the seven heads, but that the second only serves as an explanation of the first. Even Bengel remarks, “It is certainly no satisfactory exposition, which takes a particular symbol in two quite different significations.” Now, in the symbolism of Scripture generally, and especially of the Apocalypse, mountains uniformly denote, not particular kings, but kingdoms—see on ch. Revelation 8:8. The kings, therefore, are not individuals, but ideal persons, personifications of kingdoms, the king of Babylon, of Rome, &c. Such phraseology occurs very frequently in the higher style of prophecy. For example, in Daniel 7:17, “The four beasts are four kings, that shall arise out of the earth;” Vulg. regna; in Daniel 7:23-24 for ξμκְ, king, there is ξμλε, kingdom. In Daniel 8:21, it is said, “The rough goat is the king of Grecia, and the great horn that is between his eyes is the first king.” Isaiah 23:15, “Tyre shall be forgotten seventy years as the days of one king;” on which Michaelis remarks, “Not one royal personage, but one kingdom; q.d. so long as the Chaldean empire lasted.” See, on kings for kingdoms, Gesenius on Isa., I. p. 760. It is scarcely to be conceived, how such expositors as Vitringa could allow themselves to be carried away here by the mere appearance; he says, “It denotes, as every one sees, the seven-hilled city of Rome.” So much only can be admitted here, that John saw in the seven hills of Rome a symbol of the seven- formed worldly power, of which Rome was then the possessor. But to understand the seven heads of the beast of the seven hills of Rome is in itself quite incongruous; between the image and the object thus represented by it, there exists no natural connection. Vitringa himself must admit, that “all the properties of the heads of the beast, as they are found in the two visions respecting the beast, cannot be pointed out in the hills, on which the beast sits, as is clear from ch. Revelation 13:3, and Revelation 17:10-11.” The groundlessness of the interpretation becomes more apparent by the consideration, that it would denote by one and the same symbol the seven hills of Rome and the seven kings, which have nothing properly to do with each other. And it becomes still more clearly manifest, when we glance into what goes immediately before, “Here is (in its proper place) the understanding that has wisdom.” The meaning of this declaration was quite correctly explained by Vitringa, as intimating, that a quick discernment and wise discrimination in regard to spiritual things would be required of those who should understand aright what is written. It corresponds to the frequently repeated formulas of our Lord, He that reads, let him understand, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear, He that can keep it, let him keep it; after which it is formed. It indicates, that the meaning is still mysterious to those, who have simply a sound natural understanding, who do not penetrate through the shell or rise above the letter, and by such cannot be properly understood. It sets forth as a canon for the right exposition, the sentiment expressed by Vitringa on Revelation 13:10, “The explanation itself, which shall solve the enigma, presents a new enigma.” It would be wonderful, after such an introduction, to begin with a statement, which contains in it no spiritual element, demands no spiritual apprehension. The words, “The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits,” according to the view most prevalent now, truly require no understanding that has wisdom. Let one lay it before a school-boy, and merely tell him that the woman is Rome, and he will be quite ready with his answer. But that, according to our view, the demand for wisdom was not superfluous, is evident alone from the current misunderstandings on the subject. The mountains in the place of kingdoms, the symbolical mode of considering the hills of Rome, kings instead of kingdoms, the determining of the monarchies, which are not expressly named, but which complete the number seven—all this rises above the sphere of the ordinary understanding, and is in unison with what follows, where we never meet with a statement of such bald simplicity as the one before us is by the current interpretation. The ten horns, which denote ten kings (ch. Revelation 17:12), that is ten kingdoms—as also in Daniel 7:8, and Zechariah 2:1, the four horns are four kingdoms—do not exist along with the heads, but they sit upon the seventh head. The object was a double one—first, to bring out in what the seventh phase of the ungodly world-power agreed with the others; and then wherein it differed. The first object was served by the head, the other by the horns upon the head, by which the seventh form of the power was exhibited as a divided one. That the horns belong to the seventh head is manifest: the head is the natural place for the horns to be, and no sensible symbolism would mention head and horns with each other, if the horns were not to be conceived of as on the head. It is clear, farther, from ch. Revelation 12:3, by which Satan has on his head seven diadems, which must of course be equally understood of the horns; but this could only be the case if the horns stand inseparably connected with one of the heads. It appears again from the circumstance, that in the beast, which rose out of the sea, the horns first were visible and before the heads, which only appeared afterwards, so that the horns must be regarded as placed on the heads. That this was the reason why, in the beast rising out of the sea, the heads were named before the horns, is clear from ch. Revelation 17:3, where, since no such cause any longer operated, the heads are mentioned before the horns: “a beast having seven heads and ten horns.” There the prophet does not see the beast “arising,” as he had done in ch. Revelation 13:1. There it is plain, that the horns are to be viewed as connected with the seventh head, because what in ch. Revelation 17:10 is declared of the seventh head or kingdom, stands related to what is said in Revelation 13:12, ss., of the ten horns, as the general outline to the filling up; so that the position of the horns on the seventh head cannot be doubted; for in this case alone is such a relation capable of explanation. The seventh king denoted by the seventh head had not yet come; and when he came, he should only continue for a short time. So also it is said of the ten horns, that they are ten kings, “who have not as yet received the kingdom, but they receive power as kings (to be and act quite independently) one hour with the beast.” With the fall of the seventh head is coupled that of the beast (Revelation 13:11), as it is, in like manner, according to Revelation 13:17 and ch. Revelation 19:20, with the fall of the ten horns or kings. But if any doubt still remained, it would be dissipated by the prophecy of Daniel. According to what is written there in Daniel 7, there were to arise out of the fourth monarchy (by which, at the time of Christ, was generally understood the Roman empire), ten kings, represented by ten horns; that is—according to the usual language of the book—ten kingdoms, which had already, indeed, been symbolised by the ten toes of the image in Nebuchadnezzar’s vision Daniel 2): the fourth kingdom was first to be parted into two great kingdoms, the feet; then into smaller ones, the toes. These, and for the same reason also the horns, must denote kingdoms, because the whole image has to do, not with individuals, but only with kingdoms. In Daniel, however, in the fundamental prophecy, the ten horns exist, not along with the four beasts, but upon the head of the fourth and last beast. So here also must they belong to the seventh and last head. But if it is certain, that the ten horns or kingdoms belong to the seventh head, then the heads cannot denote royal personages, but only monarchies. When the first seven Roman emperors are understood by the seven heads, the author must be held to have placed the overthrow of the Roman state in the immediate future. But at the time of the composition of the Apocalypse no grounds existed for such an expectation; and it would have been wonderful if a book, which, but a few months afterwards, when Vitellius ascended the throne, must have proved itself to be the production of a senseless visionary, should have risen to such high honour in the church. We would not lay any great stress on the circumstance, that the naming of kings in ch. Revelation 17:10 does not precisely warrant the expectation that the discourse should be exclusively of the Roman Caesars; more especially as the word Caesar is of frequent use in the writings of the New Testament. Nothing is proved by 1 Peter 2:17, for there the apostle speaks in a general way.It is a more important objection, that no properly old and valid authority can be produced for numbering the Roman Caesars from Augustus, on which the hypothesis we contend against rests; for only thus does Nero become the fifth. Tacitus has been improperly quoted in this connection, as has been already proved by Hofmann (Weiss. und Erf). In the XII Caesars of Suetonius, we find Julius Caesar, who had the substance, and from whom the name passed over to the others, even those who were not of his line, which expired with Nero (comp. Dio Cassius, p. 484, 713); so that, if he, the first, is left out, we have a body without a head. In Dio Cassius, Augustus is regularly called the second Caesar (see Reimarus, p. 502). Josephus, too, reckons from Julius Caesar. But of peculiar importance is the expression, “five are fallen,” in ch. Revelation 17:10. This does not at any rate suit those of the five emperors, who died a natural death. It indicates, that not individuals, but rather kingdoms and empires are to be thought of, for whose overthrow the term falling is the standing expression in Scripture—comp. Revelation 18:2, Revelation 14:8, Revelation 16:19, as also in the Old Testament, Isaiah 21:9; Jeremiah 51:8; Amos 5:2. Falling is used in regard to individuals only if they have perished in war, not of persons who may have a violent end in some other way. By Isaiah and Jeremiah the falling is used expressly of Babylon, which according to our view is comprehended among the five. To the five here there is added in other passages of the Revelation a sixth, which was still in existence, the Babylon of the prophet’s time, Rome. Third Question: Do ch. Revelation 17:8; Revelation 17:11 point to Nero?There can be no doubt, that if they did, the Apocalypse must be regarded as the production of a merely human, and very miserable author. In Revelation 13:1-7, by this view, the beast must denote the Roman power. In Revelation 13:8 the beast must signify Nero, the Roman emperor, it must be observed, who had been driven from the throne, and who, it is supposed, was to come forth as the enemy of Rome; who, therefore, cannot for a moment be thought of as a concentration of the power of Rome. In Revelation 13:9-10, the author again, it is thought, sets out from the consideration of the beast as the image of the Roman power. But in Revelation 13:11 the beast again becomes Nero. And this change is made without the slightest intimation on the part of the author, that he here takes the beast, the description of which he has already finished in ch. 13, in a different signification. Further, Nero must appear in Revelation 13:9-10, as also in ch Revelation 13:3, as one of the seven heads of the beast; but immediately afterwards in Revelation 13:11 as the beast itself. Truly, in Ewald’s statement, “There is in reality not much that requires to be excused in the Seer,” we should need to score out the not, if this interpretation were right. But since the defenders themselves cannot withhold from the author, as a man, their admiration, they must allow us in passing to entertain the suspicion, that these crudities belong not to him, but to them, his interpreters. Nothing but the most conclusive reasons could induce us to raise the question about tendering excuses, in regard to the author, rather than to them. But we soon discover, that what they allege in support of their reference to Nero, cannot stand a careful examination. Revelation 13:11, it is thought, must especially point to Nero, “And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.” In him, who had already appeared as one of the seven, and was again to appear as the eighth, there can be no doubt, that we must understand Nero, who, according to the popular opinion at Rome, was to re-appear after his supposed death. At p. 249, Lόcke says, “Then it is said of the beast, which was and is not, that is, of the personal Antichrist here, who had just been, but now was not, that he is the eighth in that succession of Roman emperors; and again, that so far as he already was, he was one of the seven, and goes into perdition.”But there is a strong objection to this view in the import and position of the clause, “and is of the seven.” That it is so in regard to the former, is evident from Lόcke’s finding an explanatory insertion necessary: “And again, in so far as he already was one of the seven.” And in regard to the other, the position of the clause, the interpretation separates, “and is of the seven,” in the most unsuitable manner from the other two: “He is the eighth” and “he goeth into perdition.” But, on the contrary side, another and quite simple explanation of the passage presents itself, which entirely sets aside the reference to Nero. Of the seven, there was only one thing of moment brought prominently out in the preceding verses, that of the fall, or destruction. Hence, in the clauses, “And he is an eighth,” and “he is of the seven,” there is quite naturally to be supplied, “in the destruction;” and that there might be no doubt as to this being the thing to be supplied, it is expressly added at the close, “and he goes into perdition.” The meaning is: with the overcoming of the seventh phase of the ungodly power of the world, that power generally goes down—comp. ch. Revelation 19:20, where immediately after the second catastrophe, which subsequently to the fall of Rome, passes over the new manifestation of the worldly power, after the victory of Christ over the ten kings, the beast with the false prophet is seized and cast into the lake of fire. With that the ungodly power of the world comes to an end. At the close, indeed, of the thousand years of quiet and secure repose enjoyed by the church (the maintaining of which to be still future, is one of the sad consequences of conceiving the beast to mean the papacy), there is to arise a new and powerful display of hostility on the part of the world. But for reasons which have been already given, the Seer did not comprehend this under the symbol of the beast. It is alleged, that Nero must also be meant in the clause, “the beast which was and is not,” in ch. Revelation 17:11, as also in Revelation 13:8, The beast, which thou sawest, was and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition.” So also ch. Revelation 13:3, where the prophet sees one of the heads of the beast as wounded to death, but whose deadly wound was healed. This last passage, however, cannot refer to Nero. If a beast’s head is slain, the beast itself is also slain. But by the death of Nero the beast, to wit the Roman kingdom, was not at all affected. This entry is longer than a Bible module can hold. The rest is at https://www.sermonindex.net/commentary/hengstenberg/ Revelation 13:2. And the beast which I saw, was like a panther, and his feet as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power, and his throne, and great authority. The description of the beast’s form rests on Daniel, Daniel 7; and Daniel again has respect to Jeremiah 5:6, “Wherefore a lion out of the forest shall slay them, and a wolf out of the deserts shall spoil them; and a panther shall watch upon their cities; every one that goeth out thence shall be torn in pieces; because their transgressions are many, and they are hardened in their disobedience.” Daniel only so far differs from Jeremiah, that in his representation of the earthly powers, that should desolate the people of God, by means of wild beasts, he substitutes the bear for the wolf. The form of the beast here is compounded of the different beasts in Daniel; quite naturally so, since the beast here images the ungodly power of the world as a whole, while in Daniel the different phases of this power are represented. A return is in some degree made to the simplicity of the fundamental passage in Jeremiah, where the lion, the wolf, and the panther, are also employed to represent the power of the world as a whole, and form, so to speak, a composite animal. Of the four beasts of Daniel, only the three first enter into the composition of the beast before us. For, the common supposition, that the ten horns here may belong to the fourth beast, is hardly tenable. The ten horns are not introduced here into the description of the beast’s form, which only begins with this verse; and in Daniel the ten horns stand in so loose and outward a relation to the fourth beast, that they cannot be regarded as a distinguishing characteristic of it—the less so, since in the Revelation they are not ascribed to the sixth head, which corresponds to the fourth beast in Daniel, but are set upon the seventh head, so that the connexion, already of a loose nature in Daniel, is completely dissolved by John. Several have sought to explain the fact of John’s confining himself to the three first beasts, on the supposition, that even in Daniel the fourth beast is composed of the peculiar features of the three first; so that the beast in John would thus be an exact image of the fourth beast in Daniel. But this is an entirely groundless assumption. Not the smallest trace is to be found in Daniel of the fourth beast having been compounded of the three first. We must rather, therefore, seek the reason of the fact referred to in the circumstance, that only the three first beasts in Daniel have a definite form attributed to them. The fourth beast could not form part of the representation here, because nothing farther is said of it in Daniel, than that it was indescribably dreadful.The order in which the beasts succeed each other, is here exactly reversed: in Daniel the lion, the bear, the panther—here the panther, the bear, the lion. If we could be justified in taking into account the ten horns, we might think of it as an explanation of the arrangement adopted here, that now Daniel’s fourth beast had come into the foreground, now the beast bore the woman, Rome, on its back—see ch. Revelation 17:7. But, as we must exclude all consideration of the ten horns, there remains but one way of explaining the deviation from the order in Daniel; which is, that if it had been retained, one would very naturally have supposed that the particular elements in the composite beast, like the different beasts in Daniel, indicated definite phases of the power of the world in the order here mentioned. Since the order, however, is reversed, no one can fail to see that nothing depends on it—that the object of the description is merely to portray the nature of the ungodly power of the world—that panther, lion, bear, equally belong to Egypt, Babylon, Rome. The different phases also could not be denoted here by the particular animals entering into the composition of the beast, because John has enlarged the sphere; does not, like Daniel, begin with Babylon, the ungodly power in existence at the time the prophet lived, but goes back to Egypt; so that the bestial forms in Daniel were found insufficient for him, when he was going to apply them to the same purpose.In the case of all the three beasts, we have only to take into consideration their property as creatures of a savage and blood-thirsty disposition. The panther cannot, as Vitringa supposes, denote “nations of different languages and manners,” on account of its spotted appearance; nor can it, as Bossuet conceives, be “the symbol of instability;” for everywhere in Scripture, when the panther is spoken of, respect is had only to its terrible and savage energy—see Habakkuk 1:8; Hosea 13:7; Isaiah 11:6. The bear cannot denote “steadfastness in purposes and undertakings;” for in Daniel the call is addressed to the bear, “Arise, devour much flesh.” (Jerome on Hosea 13:8, “Those who have written on the natures of animals say, that among all wild beasts, none are more savage than the bear, when it is hungry.”) Of each beast, that part is taken which more especially manifests its mischievous and frightful nature. In its main bulk, in all excepting the head and feet, the beast resembles a panther. The dark-spotted body of this animal, from which it has its name in Hebrew (ðîø, in Arabic, to be spotted), is an emblem of spiritual staining. We have the interpretation in Jeremiah 13:23,”Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard (panther) his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil;”on which Hitzig remarks: “the swarthy complexion of the Ethiopian, and the spots of the panther, are the emblems of sinfulness, and of blemishes of a moral kind.” The beast has the feet of the bear. These have also been particularly referred to in Daniel: “The other beast was like a bear, and stood upon one side;” Hävernick: “It stood higher upon the one side than the other, manifestly the posture of assault.” In attacking, the bear uses especially his fore-paws; while with the lion it is the mouth which especially inspires terror.To the beast formed after this manner the dragon gives his power, and his throne, and great authority. The dragon is a name applied to Satan, only when the Old Testament description of the earthly world-power is transferred to him. The dragon is not Satan generally, but Satan in a particular relation, as the prince of this world—see on ch. Revelation 12:3. Accordingly, the throne of the dragon is only his dominion upon earth. The throne of the dragon is, at the same time, the throne of the beast in ch. Revelation 16:10; for the dragon exercises his dominion on earth by means of the beast. It could not, indeed, have been put in this form: Satan gave him. For, Satan has never given up to the beast his whole power, dominion, and authority. The power is the natural power, consisting in the great number of retainers, fulness of earthly resources, and such like; the throne is worldly supremacy; and the authority is its assumed right to command whatever it might please. A remarkable coincidence exists between these words and what is written both in the gospel of St John and the earlier gospels. They have this in common with “John’s gospel, that Satan bears a distinct name as the animating principle of the ungodly power of the world—there the prince of this world, here the dragon. In Matthew 4:8-9, the devil takes Christ along with him to a very high mountain, and shews him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them, and says to him: “All these will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.” What Satan here gives to the beast, he there promises to Christ. And this, even apart from the passage before us, cannot be understood otherwise than as importing that Satan only promised what he was able in certain circumstances to secure. For, if we were to explain the promise of Satan as an empty boast, the temptation of Christ would be a thing unworthy of him. The addition made to the words of the devil in the evangelist Luke (Luke 4:6), are remarkable: “All this power will I give thee and the glory of them; for that is delivered to me, and to whomsoever I will, I give it.” Olshausen observes: “The expression, ‘it is delivered to me,’ contains a striking note of contrariety to the doctrine of an independent principle of evil; the prince of this world has received all from God, to whom alone belongs the glory as the eternal and universal Ruler." In the passage before us also the power and authority which is given by Satan, is not an independent, but a derived one,—one that comes from hell, but, at the same time, descends from heaven ; as the angel of the abyss in ch. Revelation 9:11, is identical with the star from heaven. The gift of Satan is subject to divine direction, and not merely to divine permission. Satan here also is but a servant of God. Not only is the sovereign power itself of God, but its abuse also is of him, when turned to lawless conquest or to the cruel persecution of the church, which requires to be chastised for her sins, exercised under the cross, perfected through sufferings, and prepared for her destiny. Revelation 13:3. And (I saw) one of his heads as[Note: We must read ὡς, and not ὡσεί ? with Tischenforf. The latter never occurs in the Apoc.; see on ch. 1:14. killed to death, and the stroke of his death was healed. And the whole earth wondered after the beast. The verb, I saw, is but feebly supported, and has manifestly been of late introduction. The accusative depends on the “I saw” of Revelation 13:1, as is the case also in ch. Revelation 4:4, Revelation 7:9. But the omission of the “I saw” here, is both intentional and significant. It indicates, that the beast even when it rose into view (not in a historical, but a symbolical or visionary respect—two appearances which are here again confounded with each other by Bengel), bore on it the marks of the wound. Had the wounding and the healing belonged to the period after its rising, the “I saw” could not have been omitted.The head, as it appeared to John, had already been restored: he did not see first the wounding, and then the healing. It is only thus that he could see the head as wounded to death; that is, with the scar of a perfectly mortal wound. That the as must be understood in this manner, is evident from the corresponding expression in ch. Revelation 5:6, “a lamb as it had been slain.” One might perceive, he had once been slain, since he bore upon him the scar of a perfectly mortal wound, such as a mark going round the throat, plainly indicating that the head had been cut off.The wound here spoken of is a wound, which had really brought death—not, as the embarrassment of interpreters has led them to suppose, merely of a dangerous, though not actually mortal wound. The expression plainly imports what we understand by it. It signifies, not wounded, but killed. By killing is always denoted a violent death—comp. 1 John 3:12; Revelation 5:9; Revelation 6:4; Revelation 6:9; Revelation 18:24, and Revelation 13:8 of this chapter. Neither in Scripture nor elsewhere is it used of wounding. Further, the stroke[Note: The word πληγή ?, which occurs with great frequency in the Apocalypse, is always stroke, plague, not wound. The simple πληγή ? here corresponds to πληγήτῆςμαχαὶρας in Revelation 13:14. What is meant is the stroke of his death, which Michael gave him with his sharp sword; see ch. 12:7. of his death can only be the stroke, which had death for its result. The supposition, that the stroke of his death stands for his deadly stroke, as a Hebraistic mode of expression, is not confirmed by any certain analogy in the New Testament. That the head was actually killed, is clear from ch. Revelation 17:8, by which the beast again rises out of the abyss, hell, which it could only have done if it had already been sent thither. It also appears, from ch. Revelation 17:11, which says, that the beast was and is not. The representation in Revelation 13:14, too, of its having become alive again, confirms the view of an actual death having taken place. And the parallelism with the once slain, and again resuscitated lamb, points to the same conclusion, that the head, and along with it the beast had really been killed.The answer to the question, which head it was that John saw slain to death, and again healed, is furnished by ch. Revelation 17:10. According to that passage, the head, which the beast bore in the time of Christ and John, was the sixth, or the Roman empire. Since the deadly stroke, as the following investigation will shew, was inflicted on the beast through the atonement of Christ, this is the only head that can be thought of.Whence comes the stroke? According to the immediately preceding context the beast stands in the nearest connection with the dragon. It is this dragon that gives him his power, and his throne, and his authority; he is the vice-dragon, the deputy of the prince of this world. Whatever, therefore, brings destruction to the dragon, or to Satan in his relation to the world, whatever injures his dominion, must also inflict on the beast a deadly wound. Now, we read in ch. 12 (to which in the first instance we turn, as the epochs of the beast must correspond to those of the dragon), of a great and severe discomfiture which Satan, as the possessor of this world’s power, received through Christ and his atonement. It was there already remarked regarding the overthrow described in Revelation 13:9, “The great dragon stands at the head, even before the old serpent, because Satan comes here into view precisely as the prince of this world, as the animating principle of the ungodly world-power, which in the Old Testament is represented under the symbol of the dragon.” To this fact in the history of the dragon, there must be a corresponding one to be set along with it in the history of the beast. It is too essential and important a matter to be omitted in the history of the beast. From what the prince of this world experienced, we must explain what befel his instrument; the rather so, because, otherwise, the latter would possess a quite abrupt and enigmatical character, and we should be thrown upon mere conjecture respecting it—to which we never can be left in the Apocalypse, and in reality never are so. Where this seems to be the case, the fault always lies in the misapprehension of the expositor. We are led also to the same result by the close connection which, according to Revelation 13:4, the dragon and the beast hold to each other. Men worship the dragon, because he gives his power to the beast. Hence, whatever destroys the power of the dragon, must also be fatal to the beast. Further, we learn from what quarter the wound comes, when we are told, that the beast, after his deadly wound was healed, magnifies himself in deeds of blasphemy and violence against Christ and his church. Whither the revenge displays itself, from thence has the injury been received, The assault, renewed after fresh strength had been obtained, can only be directed against him, from whom the discomfiture had proceeded. In ch. Revelation 12:12, sq. also the dragon continues to make war on him, who had overcome him. Still farther, when we regard Christ as the author of the deadly wound, we come to see, how this wound, which is here ascribed to a single head, is in Revelation 13:12; Revelation 13:14, and even in our verse itself,[Note: The ἀυτοῦ ?, which refers, not to the head, but to the beast, shows that the deadly stroke had affected the whole beast, as well as the head; and, as already stated, the beast has always but one active head at a time.] ascribed to the whole beast; and how, in ch. Revelation 17:8, the beast can be said to have ceased to exist. The victory of Christ affected the ungodly power of Rome not as such, but only as a part of the ungodly power of the world in general. All other discomfitures but this bore only a partial character; they could but affect a single head of the beast, and not the beast as a whole. It is the one event in the world’s history, by which the whole beast was smitten in the one head; whereas, in former times, the overthrow of one head was immediately followed by the rising up of another. From what has been said, the beast must already have existed at the time of our Lord’s death. For, by means of the atonement then effected, one of his heads was wounded to death. This alone serves for a refutation of those, who would understand by the beast a power, that did not arise till a much later period—the Papacy. The healing of the beast, though but apparent and temporary, lay as a dreadful burden upon John himself. The Lord had said, “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world;” and “Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the prince of this world be cast out.” Yet still Antipas had been killed, where Satan had his seat, and John was in the isle of Patmos for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. Those also, to whom he wrote, were companions in the tribulation of Jesus Christ. So that it seemed as if nothing whatever had happened. Truly it was a time for the Seer to stand upon his watch-tower, to see what the Lord should say to him, and what he should answer to his reproof.What follows the expression, “was healed,” does not refer to the beast in general, but has especial respect to the time, when the head of the beast was healed, after he had received the deadly wound. This appears not only from the natural progress of the narration, but also and more especially from the circumstance, that in Revelation 13:8 the future is substituted for the preterite; while in ch. Revelation 17:8 it is “they that dwell on the earth shall wonder,” here the corresponding expression is, “they that dwell on the earth wondered”—a proof that transactions are referred to, which were even then in the course of taking place. The practical conclusion in Revelation 13:9-10, points also to the same result.The wondering astonishment (comp. ch. Revelation 17:8) with which the earth follows the beast, comes not merely in spite of the death, but also on account of the healing—see on Revelation 13:12; Revelation 13:14. A sad presentiment, that it was over with the ungodly power of this world, accompanied the preaching of Christ’s gospel even through the heathen world. From this feeling alone can we explain the rage of persecution. “Nothing,” says Zόllig, “awoke more astonishment and greater faith, in respect to the Messiah, than his resurrection after he had been killed.” Nor was it otherwise in the case of the beast, the earthly power of heathendom. The new life which it displayed, the success that attended its persecutions, the helpless prostration of the church, were all contrary to the expectations of its own adherents, who had not merely heard the external report of Christ’s victory, but had also felt the truth of it in their consciences. Revelation 13:4. And worshipped the dragon,[Note: The proper reading is τῶ ?ͅδράκοντι and τὸθηρίον. Bengel long ago remarked, “τῶ ?ͅδράκοντι, a middle rending, since what follows is τὸθηρίον; whence some have put the accusative, and others the dative, twice.” Προσκυνεῖν is in like manner construed variously with the dat. and the accus. in John 4:21; Revelation 14:9; Revelation 14:11; Revelation 20:4. because he gave the power to the beast, and worshipped the beast: Who is like the beast! and who can make war with him! Bengel remarks, “Those, who regarded the beast as deserving of adoration, at the same time worshipped the dragon, without being themselves conscious of it. This was very agreeable to the dragon. Those who despise the Son of God, despise also the Father, although they are not aware of it. And there is the same connection on the other side in regard to the worship of the beast and the dragon.”This representation, however, has arisen merely from the embarrassment in which the worship of the dragon involves those who understand by the beast the Papacy. We cannot here think of a worshipping of the dragon simply in the beast. For it is expressly said, that they worshipped the dragon because he gave. In the kind of worship paid, therefore, a distinction was observed between the giver of the power and the bearer of it. We are rather to hold, that they worshipped the dragon under the form of an idolatrous service, which, according to ch. Revelation 9:20, has a demoniacal, Satanic background. The property of being incomparable belongs only to God—see Exodus 15:11; Psalms 89:7; Isaiah 40:18—and to Christ, who is connected with him by oneness of nature, and appears in the Revelation under the name of Michael, “who is like God,” (Revelation 12:7). They make the beast, to which the dragon gives his power, or the beast in his connection with the dragon, a Michael, and scornfully challenge the true Michael and his servants to measure themselves with him. They were allured to this folly by seeing the beast stand before them in renovated strength. God had raised Christ from the dead, and had thereby powerfully revived the hopes of his prostrate church, and filled her with buoyant and victorious energy. A similar wonder seemed now to be wrought by the dragon in favour of the beast. This also celebrated a resurrection, and hence the jubilee-shout of his adherents rose so high: Who is like the beast, and who can make war with him? Revelation 13:5. And a mouth was given him, which spoke great things and blasphemies,[Note: Instead βλασφημίας several, whom Luther follows, have βλασφημίαν from Revelation 13:6; others βλάσφημα; Bengel: ob μεγάλα.] and power was given him to do[Note: May copyists have found themselves unable to comprehend the elliptical and Hebraistic ποιῆσαι. Hence they have either dropt the word out, or they have shoved in before it πόλεμον, taken from Revelation 13:7. forty and two months. The expression, there was given, is very consolatory. The word, “what hast thou, which thou hast not received,” holds here also; if it is the true God who moves the tongues of his enemies, and wields their arms, it can be no real evil, so far as the church is concerned, it can only be a concealed good, which he gives to the enemy: in his own time he will again resume what he has taken; so that the loud cry, “Who is like the beast?” can no longer occasion bitter tears, but should only be matter for derision. It is not without meaning, that the “It was given” is so frequently repeated in this chapter. It appears in three pairs; two of which belong to the first beast. Revelation 13:5; Revelation 13:7, and one to the second, Revelation 13:14-15. We are taught by the analogy of the second part of the verse not to think, in respect to the giving, of the inclination to blaspheme, but only of the liberty granted for the indulgence of this inclination by God, who could with one stroke have brought the beast to the ground (Exodus 9:15-16), or the presenting of such conditions as were necessary to its being indulged. De Wette is of opinion: “We would say, It was permitted him to speak; but that according to the style of Scripture the permission of God is considered as a doing.” The idea, however, of mere permission, is not worthy of Him in whom we live, and move, and have our being; who has our breath and all our ways in his hand; without whom we cannot so much as lift our arm or our tongue. Such an idea places the creature in a certain, though limited independence, beside his Creator.The simple doing forms an antithesis to the speaking. What was to be done is more specifically described in Revelation 13:7.[Note: The doing is not put for acting, but it is used elliptically, as ςωδ very frequently is, for example, Psalms 22:31, Psalms 37:5, Psalms 52:10; Daniel 8:12; Daniel 8:24; Daniel 11:7; Daniel 11:30, to which passages of Daniel allusion is here made—and the object is to be supplied from the context: what he wished; or still belter: what the mouth spake. Here no indication is as yet given of the object of the doing (though that may be gathered from the connection in which it stands with the speaking), but the doing itself is put in contradistinction to the speaking.]In Daniel 7:8, Daniel 7:20, a mouth is attributed to the little horn speaking great things; here blasphemies are also added. We have a specimen of these blasphemies in the words: “Who is like the beast, and who can make war with him,” spoken in the Lord’s presence, and before his anointed and his church.The forty and two months have already occurred, in ch. Revelation 11:2 (comp. Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14), as the signature of the world’s dominion over the church, or of the temporary subjection of the people of God. It shall last only forty-two months—so should the church say[Note: Dionysius of Alexandria says of the persecution under Valerian, in Eusebius VII. 10: “It was in like manner revealed to John: ‘And there was given to him,’ he says, ‘a mouth speaking great things and blasphemy, and power was given to him forty and two months.’ Both were wonderfully verified in Valerian.” The persecution of that time occupied the second half of his reign, which lasted about seven years. The emperor was stirred up to persecute the Christians by a certain teacher and principal person among the Magi from Egypt—a master in “abominable enchantments;” so that in him also was fulfilled what is afterwards (Revelation 13:12-18) said of the second beast.] (comp. what was said at ch. Revelation 2:10, on “Ye shall have tribulation ten days”), whenever power is given to the beast over them; and with that silence natural reason, which, as soon as it sees no human means of help at hand, is ready to exclaim, “All is lost!” The world has nothing, which has not been given to it by the Lord of the church, and in its rage against the church, there is still a prescribed period set to it, even when the church has been brought to the lowest condition, and that period not a long one. While the forty and two months continue, the saying of our Lord, “In the world ye shall have tribulation,” goes into fulfilment; but at the close the comforting assurance stands fast, “I have overcome the world.”The relation of the verse before us to Revelation 13:6-7, was correctly settled by Vitringa. We have here the general plan, there the filling up, first in reference to the mouth, Revelation 13:6, then in reference to the doing, Revelation 13:7. Revelation 13:6. And he opened his mouth in blasphemy[Note: Instead of βλασφημίαν several copies have βλασφημίας, from Revelation 13:5, as there some have βλασφημίαν from this verse.] against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and those that dwell in heaven. Bengel: “Blasphemy against God is elsewhere said to be committed in three different ways: when anything is attributed to him, which is contrary to his holiness; when anything is disowned that rightfully belongs to him; and when anything is ascribed to the creatures, which belongs to him alone.” The name of God (St John makes very frequent mention of the name of God and of Christ), is the product of his acts (comp. on ch. Revelation 11:18), of his revelation, of his historically manifested glory. When we hear his name, we remember all that he has done. The name is the focus, in which all the rays from his actions meet. In my commentary on Psalms 20:1, under the clause “The name of the God of Jacob exalt thee,” it was observed, “The name of the God of Jacob, is as much as, God who has manifested himself as the God of Jacob, or Jacob’s God, who by a fulness of deeds has manifested himself to be such. God is not merely the God of Jacob, but he is also named thus; he has made himself known in this character, and has gotten to himself a name, that is glorious and terribleDeu_28:58. His election is not a hidden, but a revealed one, confirmed by deeds. Without such deeds the God of Jacob would be nameless; his name would be a shell without a kernel.” See besides on Psalms 22:31, Psalms 23:3, Psalms 74:10, Psalms 83:16. The main element in the name of God is his revelation in Christ, and the most fearful blasphemy of his name is committed, when this most glorious revelation is consigned to the region of lies and sin—see Hebrews 1:1. Hence, we may understand, why the blasphemy of Christ is not mentioned along with the blasphemy of God. It is comprehended in the blasphemy of the name of God, and forms the kernel of it. Moreover, blasphemy is committed against the name of God, when attacks are made on the holy Scriptures, which are the original record of the acts and words of God, of which his name is composed.On the temple of God as a designation of the church, see vol. i., p. 395. Here the temple bears the name of the tabernacle, or the tent, because this was its original form; and it is the more suitable in this place, as at the period of the persecution here referred to the church was again in the wilderness (comp. ch. Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14), to which this original form of the sanctuary belonged. That the tabernacle of God is here used as a designation of his church, admits of no doubt, from the connection in which it stands with those, who dwell in heaven, saints and believers, corresponding to the connection between the temple and those who worship in it, in ch. Revelation 11:1. The name of God and his tabernacle hang very closely together. Without the name no tabernacle, and where the name is, there must also the tabernacle be. The church assembles, not about a concealed, but only about a manifested God—about the God, who has gotten to himself a glorious name (Isa. 64:14), which first reached its perfection in Christ; and in this especially she must find a point of union.On the dwelling of all believers in heaven, see at ch. Revelation 12:12; Philippians 3:20; Hebrews 12:22; Revelation 21:2; Revelation 21:10; Revelation 3:12, according to which, till the introduction of the new world, Jerusalem, the holy city, the mother of all believers (Galatians 4:26), who even in this vale of tears have their citizenship there, is in heaven. Those who are spoken of here as dwelling in heaven, are identical with the saints in Revelation 13:7; Revelation 13:10; here we have blasphemies, in Revelation 13:7, active persecutions. That believers on earth are not excluded, that, on the contrary, they are principally meant, is evident alone from the circumstance, that it is this section of the saints which forms the chief object of the blasphemies of the beast and his adherents; it is these, who are calumniated as evil-doers, and their good behaviour in Christ reproached—comp. 1 Peter 2:12, 1 Peter 3:16. Blasphemy against God is the genus; the different species are the blaspheming of his name, which is converted into an empty one, a nomen vanum, by transmuting history into poetry and lies—the blaspheming of his tabernacle, which is bereft of a present God (comp. Exodus 25:8; Matthew 28:20), and changed into a wretched building of man, unworthy any more of bearing the name of the tabernacle of meeting, where “God and angels meet with man”—finally, the blaspheming of those who dwell in heaven, denying that they possess his Spirit, and changing them from saints into evil-doers, thus blaspheming God himself, who dwells in them through his Spirit. These three kinds of blasphemy against God always go hand in hand, and are never found apart. They have now again become rampant, since the beast of Daniel in the little horn has once more come upon the stage, and Gog and Magog have taken the place of the beast in the Apocalypse. Revelation 13:7. And it was given him to make war and to overcome them.[Note: The words καὶἐδόθη—αὐτούς are wanting in important MSS., and are omitted by Lachmann. But they cannot be dispensed with-since, otherwise, only the first proposition of Rev 13:5 would be developed, and either both must have a fuller development, or neither of them. The words also are confirmed by a comparison of ch. 11:7, an anticipatory passage, which required to be resumed here and set in its proper place; and by Daniel ch 7:21. Bengel: “The words here do not so exactly coinc1de with those in Daniel 7:21 that we should suppose them to have been borrowed thence.” The omission can only have arisen from copyists gliding over one καὶἐδόθη to the other.] And power was given him over every tribe and people[Note: The word people is omitted by Luther (also in the English version), and thus the number four is lost, which, in all the parallel passages, is preserved in enumerations.] and tongue and nation. In ch. Revelation 11:7 it is said, “And when they have finished their testimony, the beast, which ascends out of the abyss, shall make war with them and overcome them.” To this anticipatory passage a literal allusion is intentionally made in the verse before us. Hitherto it has possessed the character of a riddle, but here the riddle is explained. There the object of the conflict and the victory was the testimony, here it is believers generally. The fundamental passage is Daniel 7:21, “I beheld, and the same horn made war with the saints and overcame them.” The reference to this fundamental passage is full of consolation; for there immediately follows in Daniel 7:22, “Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the Most High, and the time came that the saints should possess the kingdom.” What is said in Daniel primarily of the little horn is here applied to the beast, though that little horn corresponds with the Gog and Magog of Revelation. And so also what is said here of the beast, of his conflict with the church of Christ and his victory over it, holds good respecting Gog and Magog. Hence we may account for the extreme brevity of the description given us of Gog and Magog. What is merely indicated there, is to be extended and filled up from the delineation of the beast, whose activity, interrupted for a thousand years, is again resumed by Gog and Magog. Whenever this is duly attended to, the description of the beast acquires an entirely new meaning. It then no longer relates simply to things past, but has respect also to the conflicts which we ourselves have to maintain, and fills us with an apprehension of the desperate character which these conflicts may be expected increasingly to assume, as well as inspires us with courage to stand fast in the midst of them. The power consists in this, that all must either worship or suffer persecution; that the tribes and nations of the world have no choice left them between worship and death. By confining what is said here merely to the worshippers of the beast, the connection is lost with what precedes; and by confining it merely to Christians (Ewald), the connection with Revelation 13:8 is lost. In regard to the four number of the tribes, &c., see on ch. Revelation 5:9, Revelation 7:9, Revelation 10:11, Revelation 11:9; also Revelation 14:6, Revelation 17:15. Revelation 13:8. And all that dwell upon the earth[Note: The κατοικοῦντεςἐπὶτῆςγῆς is a standing formula in the Apoc.—see ch. 3:10, 8:13, 11:10, 13:14, 17:8. An argument might be drawn from this peculiarity of expression in support of the view, that John is not the author of the book. But this very peculiarity teaches us to be cautious in drawing such conclusions. For the expression is manifestly but a particular result of the dependence exercised in the Apoc. on the Old Testament—comp. Jeremiah 10:18; Psalms 33:8; Isaiah 18:13. That it is an Old Testament form of expression, is rendered plainer by ch. 14:6, where for κατοικοῦντεςἐπὶτῆςγῆς we have καθημένοιἐπὶτῆςγῆς. ιωα has the meaning both of dwelling and sitting.] shall worship him, whose name is not written in the book of life of the Lamb that was slain, from the foundation of the world. Shall worship him (not it)—the king, according to ch. Revelation 17:10, by whom the beast was then represented, the Roman emperor. The shall worship shews that the matter was viewed as still in the act of becoming, and that the prophet saw the end only in the beginning.[Note: To the future here, προσκυνήσουσι, corresponds in ch. 17 the future θαυμάσονται, for which we have ἐθαύμασεν in Revelation 13:3 of this chapter.] “The worship,” Bengel remarks, “is not to be regarded as a purely external homage, but consists principally in an inward veneration, holding the power of the beast to be divine, by which the light of faith in Jesus Christ comes to be greatly obscured, or altogether extinguished.” He observes also upon the clause “whose name is not written,” &c., as follows: “The trial shall be so general and so severe, that both here and in ch. Revelation 17:8, their election is set over against it as a security (comp. Matthew 24:24.) The elect alone shall be preserved. The human race will then be divided into two very unequal masses. The smaller will remain on the side of the Lamb; the far larger will worship the adversary.”With respect to the book of life, see on ch. Revelation 3:5. Here this book is more exactly defined, as belonging to the Lamb that was slain. (In ch. Revelation 21:27, simply “the Lamb’s book of life” is named.) The ground of our salvation is not our good deeds, but Christ, or more precisely the sacrifice of Christ, the atonement made by his blood (comp. ch. Revelation 12:11, Revelation 5:9); whence it is, that Christ appears here under the designation of the Lamb that was slain. Whatever name is not written by him in the book of life, that name shall never be found there. Since the book of life is unreservedly ascribed to the Lamb that was slain, all salvation, not excepting that of the saints of the Old Testament, is thus represented as depending on the one sacrifice of Christ. Those who have been reconciled through the blood of this Lamb, and have their names written in his book of life, have power to overcome Satan and the beast (comp. ch. Revelation 12:11). But if salvation has been won for believers by blood and death, they are thereby made to understand, that through blood and death also they must gain the victory—see Romans 8:17, Romans 8:36, and Revelation 2:10; Revelation 12:11. That the expression, “from the foundation of the world,” must not be referred to the slaying of the Lamb—as was often done before the time of Bengel—but to the writing of the name in the Lamb’s book of life, appears from the parallel passage, ch. Revelation 17:8.[Note: Bengel besides presses the following considerations: “The Apocalypse often speaks of the Lamb slain; it never adds from the foundation of the world; nor, In truth, was he slain from the foundation of the world, Hebrews 9:26; they who hold him to have been slain in the divine decree from the foundation of the world, may with equal justice speak of him as having been also born, raised from the dead, ascended to heaven.”] Instead of, “from the foundation of the world,” it might have stood, “from before the foundation of the world,” as in John 17:24; Ephesians 1:4; comp. Ephesians 3:11. But we should not on this account, either here or in Matthew 25:34, have naturally expected before, in place of from. The Seer here desires to carry the matter no higher than the foundation of the world; he wishes merely to express the thought, that election precedes existence, which must necessarily be subsequent to the foundation of the world. The words declare the fixed and immoveable nature of the divine counsel, which was formed even before a single individual of the persons embraced in it had come into being. A reference to such a counsel so fixed and determinate is full of consolation for those, who are oppressed by the mighty and apparently irresistible power of this world, for the purpose of constraining them to worship the beast. Here there is a rock, on which its waves must break. Wherever temptation reaches its greatest height, there nothing preserves but the eternal election, which rests as to its foundation on the atonement of Christ. The world constantly does homage to what, in point of fact, holds possession of the power. We have been taught this by our recent experience. But this eternal election secures us of a safe protection. It is impossible, as our Lord testified (Matthew 24:24), to deceive the elect to their ruin. We have a parallel to the words before us in ch. Revelation 11:1, where, notwithstanding the pressure of the power of the world, the temple and those who worship in it are described as being preserved. The true members of the church are simply those, who by virtue of Christ’s blood, which they have appropriated by a living faith, have come to be among the elect. Such may, indeed, be outwardly overcome and even killed by the beast, but they can never be drawn by him into apostacy. Revelation 13:9. If any one has an ear, let him hear. Revelation 13:10. He that leads into captivity, shall go into captivity; he that kills with the sword, must be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and the faith of the saints. According to Revelation 13:9 there is a double point to be attended to. What is to be heard follows in Revelation 13:10. In the epistles the call, “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches” (the latter part of the clause is also to be supplied here), is addressed in respect to the mysterious promises given to the churches, which required to be explained and understood in a spiritual manner (see on ch. Revelation 2:7). Here also the words intimate that the consolatory truth which follows, is a very hard one, and is above the discernment of the natural heart. The heart in a state of nature always cleaves to the visible, and the truth, “There is a reward for the righteous, there is a God who judges in the earth,” must be hard for it. The words here (which purposely, for the sake of avoiding what might seem a standing formula, present a slight deviation from those employed in the epistles—there “He that hath,” here “If any one has”), call aloud to all, that they should endeavour to make their escape from this natural condition into the region of the Spirit, so that they may come to enjoy the divine consolation, as it is presented in what follows. Many, who have had an ear, lose it when the temptation rises to its highest pitch (Luke 24:25). To unfold the divine consolations to such, is to preach to deaf ears. Besides, the consolation, which the ear is here called to hear, is only a preliminary one—a sharply pointed utterance, in which all is concentrated, that afterwards is set forth at large for desponding hearts, and in the strength of which they might be enabled to look the formidable beast in the face, till further help should arrive. The prophet, or rather the Lord, in whose name he speaks, cannot, in a manner, find it in his heart to leave believers so long altogether without consolation, till the description of the first beast’s ferocities could be placed beside those of the second. It was necessary, that he should even now address to them a powerful word of encouragement.The meaning of Rev 13:10 was given quite correctly by Vitringa, as intimating that the persecutors of the church should experience the vengeance of God, and should suffer the same evils which they had inflicted on the saints. There are parallels, for example, in Deuteronomy 32:43, “He will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries;” and Psalms 94:12-13, “Blessed is the man whom thou chastenest, O Lord, and teachest out of thy law, that thou mayest give him rest from the days of adversity, until the pit be digged for the wicked.” According to Bengel, the recompense spoken of is “that which awaits those, who defend themselves against the beast otherwise than is agreeable to the intention of God.” But in the carrying away of prisoners and killing with the sword, all naturally think, not of the conquered, but of him to whom it was given, according to Revelation 13:7, to make war on the saints, and to overcome them. The analogy of the use made in the epistles of the formula, “He that hath ears,” etc., also seems to indicate, that it is a promise, and not a warning, which we have in the words before us.St John himself belonged to the number of the captives, being in the isle of Patmos, for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. In the original it is properly prisoners of war that are meant.[Note: The phrase συνάγειναἰχμαλωσίαν occurs also in 1Ma 14:7 : καὶσυνήγαγεναἰχμαλωσίανπολλήν. It corresponds to the Hebrew ωαδωαι and δβμδβμεϊ, and denotes the bringing together of captives (Luke 21:24), for the purpose of transporting them from their own to a foreign land. The reading adopted by Tischendorf from the Cod. Alex.: εἴτιςεἰςαἰχμαλωσίαν, εἰςαἰχμαλωσίανὑπάγει, which introduces a harsh ellipsis into the text, originated in an ignorance of the Hebrew idiom, which is so appropriate to this book, and was certainly not introduced by any copyist, and which also goes hand in hand with the representation of the persecution under the image of war. For this was derived from the Old Testament relations, according to which the Lord’s people formed a separate nation. The Hebraism was the more readily missed here, as αἰχμλωσία (which is used of prisoners of war in Numbers 31:12; Amos 1:6; Ephesians 4:8), occurs presently afterwards in its usual Greek meaning of captivity.] But this arises merely from the same figure being continued that was used in Revelation 13:7, where the persecution appears as a war, which the beast makes on the saints. If we leave out of view what belongs to the figure of war, we shall find simply marked the deportations which first appeared in the persecution under Domitian (see Introduction.) As an example of those killed with the sword, we find Antipas mentioned in ch. Revelation 6:9; Revelation 6:11, where it is pre-supposed as a fact, that many had even then suffered death for the testimony of Jesus, and also implied that many more had still to suffer. From such passages as ch. Revelation 12:16, “And the earth helped the woman;” Revelation 17:16, “And the ten horns which thou sawest, and the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire;” Revelation 18:6,—we see that under the expression, he shall be killed with the sword, we are not merely to think of God’s avenging sword.”He who sheds man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” this declaration—which lies at the foundation of what is written here—must be fully realised. As in the original passage, and in Matthew 26:52, we have before us here, not a command, but a prophecy—not the rule by which the civil power was to proceed, but that by which God was to work. The two, however, are not so different from each other as they may seem to be. The rule of God’s procedure is, at the same time, the rule by which the magistrate should regulate his doings, as certainly as he is the servant of God for the punishment of evil doers. Those who would withhold from the magistrate the right of capital punishment are always the persons who have no living sense of the punitive righteousness of God. The declaration of our text has often been fulfilled in particular cases; we need only think of Domitian, Valerian, Julian.[Note: Bossuet: “St. John, distressed by the long sufferings of the saints, with which all the chapters of the book are occupied, enters into their sorrow, and consoles them with this declaration. It has been verified to the letter, even in the case of the emperors. Valerian, who had dragged so many of the faithful to prison, was himself dragged thither by the king of Persia, and reduced to a harder servitude than what he had imposed on others; his blood was shed, as he had shed that of saints,” etc.] But these were only preludes of the more comprehensive fulfilments it was to receive in persecuting Rome and the other persecuting monarchies that have trod in her footsteps, and are still treading (see on Gog and Magog the ungodly power of the last times, ch. Revelation 20:9).That we must explain, “Here is the patience and the faith of the saints,” here they are in their right place, and they have here their proper work (not: in this word respecting a coming retribution they have their root), appears by comparing Revelation 13:18, ch. Revelation 14:12, Revelation 17:9. Patience and faith are here in their place; whatever individual, whatever church possesses them, if they but shine forth in the lustre of these graces, it will be seen how soon the wicked go to destruction, coming to a dreadful end, and how the righteous, on the other hand, flourish like the palm-trees, and grow like the cedars in Lebanon. Patience is that which prevents men from becoming faint and languid, as those who are spoken of in Matthew 13:21—see on ch. Revelation 2:3. Theroot of patience is faith, which keeps its eye on God’s sword of vengeance, hanging over the adversaries, and descries his avenging hand in the clouds. The prophet comes to the help of this faith and patience in what follows—as he there presents in the liveliest colours possible the divine retribution, clothes it, as it were, with flesh and blood, so that they may successfully maintain the conflict with what outwardly appears of an adverse nature. The Third Enemy of the Kingdom of God The Beast From the Earth (Ch. Revelation 13:11-18) The prophet sees a second beast ascend out of the earth, earthly and demoniacal wisdom. Its horns being like lamb’s horns indicated that in the secret, spiritual manner in which it should seek to operate on men’s minds, it was to resemble Christ; while its speech, being like that of the dragon, implied that it was to have, in common with the first beast, an ungodly nature, hatred to Christ and his church. It was to give itself to the service of this first beast, and in it the power of that beast was to find its chief support. Its whole energy is directed to the one point, of inducing the inhabitants of the earth to worship the first beast. Its origin, form, and nature are described in Revelation 13:11, and its activity in the one grand direction in Revelation 13:12. In the interest of its master it does great wonders, and employs the authority it thus acquires to the purpose of seducing the inhabitants of the earth to make an idol of the first beast, which by its art it inspires, as it were, with life, and accomplishes, that as many as refused to worship this idol should be put to death, Revelation 13:13-15. It brings the whole world to the alternative of either receiving a mark of the first beast, his name or the number of his name; or, in the event of their refusing it, having withdrawn from them the means of life, Revelation 13:16-17. In Revelation 13:18 the number of the beast is given, and consequently also his name. Bengel says, “The beast out of the sea is by much the more distinguished of the two. The beast out of the earth comes with all that he is and can do merely as the herald of the other—his armour-bearer, his advocate. Not this latter, but the first beast is the one that is worshipped, has the ten horns, &c. Mention is often made of the first beast alone, but never of the other without the first. The whole being and object of the second are summed up in its doing to the first the part of a false prophet.” This enemy, too, has a long past history: from the first it has been the attendant and helper of the second enemy of God’s kingdom. The God-opposing power of this world has constantly gone hand in hand with its wisdom. Pharaoh, when contending with the Lord and his people, was surrounded by his wise men;—see Exodus 7:11; 2 Timothy 3:8. In like manner we find the king of Babylon attended by his wise men, Daniel 1:20, Daniel 2:2, ss., Daniel 5:7-8; and they had their place around him as the props of the state, and its guardians against misfortune (Isaiah 47). However, in this case no survey is taken of the past, as in regard to the first and second beast. The influence of this enemy is only represented from the period, when the war of the first beast against the kingdom of God after the healing of its deadly wound burst forth anew. If it is certain, that the first beast revives again in Gog and Magog, we must not regard its inseparable attendant, the second beast, as for ever buried, but must consider every word that is said of it as of practical moment also for us. Wherever the ungodly state again flourishes, there also the ungodly wisdom is sure to be in attendance, to strengthen its hands and deck out its pretensions. Revelation 13:12. And he makes all the power of the first beast before him; and makes, that the earth and those who dwell on it should worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. Bengel remarks, “The other beast urges the worship of the first; and the first, whose power the other has entirely at command, has only, as it were, to look on, and allow himself to be worshipped. The earth and they who dwell on it are brought to this by the other beast.” The prophet had already spoken of the power of the beast, in Revelation 13:2; Revelation 13:4-5; Revelation 13:7. Of these passages respect is here had more especially to the last; “And power was given him over all tribes and peoples, and tongues and nations.” The wisdom of this world is the main support of this power. The state of heathendom would soon have sunk into utter ruin, if this had not lent its aid. Brute force is always impotent. That only which has an ally in public sentiment, can have a lasting existence. And it was to secure that, that the false wisdom put forth its energies. The lamb’s horns of science are more powerful than the bullock’s horns of the state. Neander in his Church History (vol. i. p. 213), remarks in unintentional coincidence with this verse: “Intellectual weapons united with external violence to attack the new principle, which had begun to manifest itself in the life of mankind.” Bengel also remarks, “What the first beast has power to do, this other does in his name, since the first can no longer take the business directly in hand—although his power in itself still continues.” He improperly substitutes for the power itself that, which the first beast has power to do. The expression, before him, implies that he acts as his servant, works in his interest. Following Vitringa, Zόllig erroneously explains: “Before his eyes, not only as his servant, who as such should stand before him, but also as his servant of hearty good-will, who delights to be seen acting for him.” In the Old Testament phraseology, to stand before any one, simply means to serve him, without the collateral idea of good-will in the service. It is enough to compare Exodus 24:13, “Joshua his servant,” with Deuteronomy 1:38, “Joshua who stands before him;” then Numbers 3:6, “Bring the tribe of Levi near, and present them before Aaron the priest, that they may serve him,” 1 Kings 10:8, “These thy servants who stand continually before thee,” (LXX. ἐνωπιόνσου), Daniel 1:5. In Revelation 19:20, the before him is explained by the preceding with him. The second makes resumes the former:[Note: On this account alone the reading, καὶἐποίει instead of ποιέι cannot be the correct one.] It makes, or exercises the power of the first beast, as it brings the inhabitants of the earth to the length of worshipping the first beast, and thus to recognize his power, and submit themselves to him. That the earth is named beside and before its inhabitants, was probably done with a view to the contrast with the heaven and them that dwell therein, in Revelation 13:6, and in reference to the ascending of the beast out of the earth, in Revelation 13:11. In this connection the earth and those that dwell in it would not be absolutely all who have their local habitation on the earth, but only the earthly-minded portion of its inhabitants (Philippians 3:19). The words, “whose deadly wound was healed,” cannot possibly have been given as a mere note of distinction; the simple epithet of “the first beast” would have been quite sufficient for that. They are rather intended to point to what the second beast urged as the ground of his solicitation, that men should worship the first. He appeals to the new life that was manifested by the first beast, the great success of his persecutions, and the helpless and prostrate condition of the church (see on Revelation 13:3, and also on Revelation 13:14). Besides, the healing can be no perfect and thorough one, in the feeling of the beast himself, and of those who serve him. The strenuous exertions made to help his cause, bear evidence to this. The old naive confidence is gone. The efforts of a worldly philosophy to prop up and maintain the worship of idols, also come under the class of things here referred to. For this was only another form of the service which was yielded to the dominant worldly power. The Roman state was honoured in the idol gods which it had set up. At the time when Christianity appeared, faith in these gods had already been much shaken. “Pious sentiment,” says Tzschirner, on the Fall of Heathenism, p. 118, “had vanished from the soul, no longer did any faith in the avenging and protecting gods dwell in the depths of the heart. Polytheism Lad become a mythology without doctrine, a bodily service without devotional feeling, a lifeless form, a mere shell.” Neander also says, in reference to the letter of Pliny, “He requires, inasmuch as he looks upon religion as a matter of state, unconditional obedience even here to the laws of the empire. With the character of the religion he has nothing to do. Whatever that might be, defiance of the imperial laws must be severely punished” (History, vol. i., p. 134). And again, at p. 136, “He was of opinion, that open contempt of the ‘Roman ceremonies,’ open resistance to the laws of the empire, could not be suffered in any case to go unpunished, even though no act was connected with it of a morally punishable nature.” Bengel says in his closing prayer, “What the Spirit of truth has done in thy servants, the same is done in the contrary direction by the false prophet in the men of the world. Imprint the truth of thy testimony deeply upon our hearts, that we may hold it fast against all temptations.” Revelation 13:13. And he does great wonders, so that[Note: Bengel: “ἱ ?́να, a particle much used by John. In all his writings, he has never but once, Gos. iii. 16, employed ὠ ?̀στε, and there a ἱ ?̀να immediately follows.” An important observation! This predilection for the ἱ ?̀να is of great moment in regard to the question of the authorship of John’s writings.] he even makes fire come down from heaven before men. Revelation 13:14. And deceives them that dwell on the earth, because of the signs which are given him to do before the beast, saying to those who dwell upon the earth, that they should make an image of the beast which had the wound of the sword, and became alive. Revelation 13:15. And it was given to him to give spirit to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should even speak; and that he should make, that whosoever would not worship the image of the beast, should be killed.This third does or makes at the beginning of Rev 13:13, points back to the first. The great wonders which the second beast works, are the means by which he establishes the power of the first. The fundamental passage is Matthew 24:24, “There shall arise false Christs and false prophets, and shall do great signs and wonders, insomuch that, if it were possible, they shall deceive the very elect.” Here, as there, the same word is used to denote the means of seduction; it was to be through the working of great wonders. Our verse comes the nearer to the fundamental passage, when it is considered that it would be an arbitrary limitation of the first, if we should understand by the false prophets only wolves in sheep’s clothing; as also if by the false Christs should be understood, not solely, nor even pre-eminently, the poor subjects who gave themselves out for the Jewish Messias or Christ; but we should much rather understand those, who in palpable opposition to Christ, lay claim to what belongs only to him. The passage 2 Thessalonians 2:9 is also to be compared. It is said there of the adversary, whose first great manifestation was the raising up of heathen Rome against Christ: “whose coming is after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders.” No indication is given in any of the three passages, that the great wonders, when more closely examined, should prove only cheats and delusions. For, that the lying wonders in 2 Thess. are not false wonders in the ordinary sense, needs no proof. The reality of the wonders in the several passages is neither denied nor admitted. It appears inadvisable to go more closely into the examination of the material composition of these signs and wonders. It was possible that they might rise above the sphere of mere semblance and deceit; there might be much going along with them, that would bring them to the very borders of the miraculous, that, by means of demoniacal excitement, would make what was done exceed the ordinary powers of nature. Scripture has a more efficacious way of dealing with the matter than criticism. It lets the wonders, by which the world suffers itself to be deceived, be what they give themselves out for, and what they are reckoned, and yet laughs in their face. It took this course even in respect to the wise men of Egypt (see my work Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 79, sq). And it is the course prescribed in Deuteronomy 13:1-3, “If there arise among you a prophet, or a dreamer of dreams, and giveth thee a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder come to pass, whereof he spake to thee, saying, Let us go after other gods which thou hast not known, and let us serve them; Thou shalt not hearken to the words of that prophet, or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God proveth yon to know whether ye love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” Soothsaying and witchcraft also are rejected in Scripture, not on the ground of their nothingness, but because they are an abomination to the Lord, Deuteronomy 18:9, sq. Though the signs should here and there rise above what is common, they still remain widely different from true wonders through their aim, the merely natural character of which they never can get rid of, and by their mixture with common frauds. Besides, as the signs of the Egyptian wise men were occasioned by those of Moses, so are the signs of the false prophet here occasioned by those of Christ. He would undo the powerful impression which these had made upon the minds of men.[Note: It is unnecessary to adduce any historical quotation to show, that in the conflict of heathenism with Christianity, wonders and signs played an important part. Every church history supplies the proof. Bossuet remarks, “All the writings of Jamblious, all those of Porphyry and the others, so much esteemed by Julian, are full of those delusive prestiges, which the people generally take for miracles; and the weakness of Julian outrun that of others, Amm. Marc. XXII., XXIII., XXV. We find also a vast number of the prodigies of those philosophers of Julian, even to resurrections from the dead, reported by Ennapins. Julian himself declared his belief in those arts, which he called holy; that is to say, in magic, ap. Cyrilhim, L. VI., c. Jul., p. 198.”] Then, as times change, so in the room of the old material signs come, in the progress of civilization, the pretended wonders of the intellect. Beside the general expression, great wonders, there is also mentioned by way of individualizing that wonder, which from John’s peculiar temperament was especially fitted to strike him. Fire from heaven was what he and James would have brought down upon those, who would not receive Christ (Luke 9:51). Fire from heaven also, according to ch. Revelation 20:9, falls upon the last enemies of God’s kingdom, and consumes them (comp. ch. Revelation 11:5).The expression, before, men, here, corresponds to, before him, in Revelation 13:12. The second beast forms, as it were, the agent between the first beast and men.[Note: This ἐνώπιοντῶνἀνθρώπων also shews, that the former ἐνώπιον must simply mean before. So also the ἐνώπιοντοῦθηρίου in Revelation 13:14.In Revelation 13:14, is given the aim, which the great wonders serve. The inhabitants of the earth[Note: In Revelation 13:12, the earth and those who dwell in it, after the Hebrew comp. for example, Psalms 24:1; here it is more after the Greek style, those who dwell upon the earth.] are mentioned so frequently, in order to bring distinctly into view the critical position of the little flock, who have against them a whole deceived world, the huge mass of worldly-minded persons on the earth (comp. on Revelation 13:12). The greatness of the danger has also occasioned the copious, repetitionary description of our section. Since the history of the deluge Scripture has employed the method, in describing great catastrophes, conflicts, dangers, critical moments, of using frequent repetitions, which tend to bring the scene more vividly before the eye of the reader. Such, for example, is the narrative of the image of Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 3; and the account of Haman’s elevation, pride, and cruel plot against the Jews, in Esther 3. That a description of this kind, so full of repetitions, should be employed in what is said of the second beast, more than in the case of the first, corresponds to the declaration in Revelation 13:12, that all the power of the first beast is exercised through the second, and rests upon the discernment, of the heathenish and demoniacal intelligence being a still more frightful enemy than the coercive power of heathendom. The effort is everywhere apparent, to render manifest the danger and the tribulation in their real depth and magnitude. Scripture looks the reality full in the face, because it has even for the greatest sufferings and dangers the strongest consolation. The world, on the other hand, deceives itself regarding the danger, and would have all in that respect diminished, because it sees no alternative but despair, whenever it opens its eyes on the entire magnitude of the danger.It is not images that are spoken of, but an image. But in regard to the sense a multitude of images are meant. The oneness of the image belongs only to the vision, in which the manifold nature of the reality is compressed into one great drama. It was very natural also to speak only of one image, on account of the example already given in Daniel, to which allusion is not doubtfully made here. The king of Babylon there collects all his officials from every province, and commands them to worship the image set up by him. The image there is the image of a god. But this difference is not essential. The worship was required for the god, not on account of his own nature, but merely because he was the god of Nebuchadnezzar. Disobedience was punished as high treason. Nebuchadnezzar reproaches the persons accused in Revelation 13:14-15, with having refused to worship his god and the image, which he had caused to be made (see my Beitr. I., p. 83, ss). The setting up of the likeness of the emperor was one of the most effectual means, which heathen despotism could employ, to place itself in the centre of the world. By means of this image the beast was rendered in a manner omnipresent. Its living representative, the Roman emperor, was confined to no particular place. In this way the choice was set before Christians between martyrdom, for the true confession, and apostacy.In the beast’s return to life again lies the reason, for which an image behoved to be made for him. Persecution appeared to proceed with every mark of success. The beast seemed to make a sport of Him, who had alleged, that all power was given to him in heaven and on earth, and who had said that the very hairs of his people were numbered. Ground enough in this for preparing an image for the beast, and holding it up as an object of adoration to the whole world, with which also we have to think of the cursing of his apparently impotent rival as immediately connected.[Note: Pliny, in L. X. ep. 97, reports, at H time very near to the composition of the Apocalypse: Propositus est libellus sine auctore, multorum nomina continens, qui negant se esse Christianos aut fuisse; cum praeeunte me deos appellarem, et imagini tuae (he writes to Trujan), quam propter hoc jusseram cum simulacris numinum afferi, thure ac vino supplicarent: praeterea maledicerent Christo, quorum nihil cogi posse dicuntur, qui sum revera Christiani, ergo dimittendos putavi. Alii ab indice nominati, esse se Christianos dixerunt: et mox negaverunt, fuisste quidem sed desiise.Omnes et imaginem tuam Deorumque simulacra venerati sunt; ii et Christo maledixerunt.]The Spirit, which, according to Revelation 13:15, belongs to the image of the beast, is not one properly residing in him, but flowing out of him, along with the speech given to him by the wisdom of this world. It can only, therefore, be an apparent life that is spoken of. The spirit is first given to the image of the beast in this way, that men’s minds are filled with exalted representations of the beast himself and of his almighty power, in contrast to the supposed impotence of his opponent. Admiration of the object naturally passes over to the image. Then, it is also to be taken into account, that according to the heathen manner of viewing things, the apprehension of a very close connection between the image and its object immediately presented itself, whenever the beast was raised into the rank of super-human beings, and invested with divine glory. An idol was no mere image to the heathen mind, which always sought an objective ground for its feelings; it was penetrated by the divinity which it represented, and formed a visible representation of it. The one partook of the life of the other; spoke though without uttering audible words, threatened and promised. How vividly such conceptions were entertained, is evident from the reports so often circulated of voices actually uttered by these images of the gods.[Note: Grotius: Imagines loqui res mira, non tamen incredibilis. Habes id in histories Romanis et Valerio maximo, de simulacris Junonis Monetae, Fortunae Muliebris, Silvani.] On these reported utterances, however, no stress is to be laid here; and they are only so far of importance, as they shew, how deeply rooted was the imagination of a speaking spiritually by the images.The import of the speeches we may learn from Revelation 13:5-6. The image speaks what the beast does—great and blasphemous things against God and his name and his church, threatenings to his adversaries, who worship the Lamb that was slain, and promises to his own worshippers. It is difficult for us to render properly manifest the tempting nature of such a state of things. Now that time and the judgment of God have brought fully to light the vanity of the objects, which the world reverences and adores, we can scarcely comprehend, how vast a power they must have exercised on the minds of men, and how much they would carry of a temptation even for the chosen people of God. We shall only attain to some real acquaintance with this, if we learn to understand the past by the present—if we bring ourselves distinctly to apprehend the great power of the spirit of the age, so that with a clear eye we can discern the absolute poverty of the idols, to which the world now pays homage; and then put it solemnly to our own hearts, whether we find it quite easy to withdraw ourselves from all participation in the homage, to which the wisdom of this world so treacherously invites us, communicating life and spirit to things in themselves dead, and to which we are drawn by the almost resistless power of public opinion, which, like a mighty torrent, sweeps everything along with it, that is not firmly rooted in God. The danger in such circumstances is not simply of being killed; it arises fully as much from one’s own inclination to do homage. This discovers itself in the roughness, which so often meets us in the martyrs of the first centuries. It was the reaction against the internal temptation into which they were dragged by the force of public opinion. We must not explain: and made; so that the image is the subject; but rather: and that it made; so that the beast, the false prophet is the subject. Otherwise, instead of: the image of the beast, the pronoun would have been put: and made, that those who did not worship his image, should be killed. The insertion of the name instead of the pronoun was here indispensable, as thus alone could the dubiety be shunned. That the second beast is the subject, appears also from the repetition of the words, “and makes,” in Revelation 13:11. The being killed and the not buying or selling can have him alone for its author. We have here the commentary on the words: he spake like a dragon, in Revelation 13:11. We may further compare Daniel 3:6, according to which those, who did not worship the image of Nebuchadnezzar, were to be cast the selfsame hour into the fiery furnace. Revelation 13:16. And he makes all,[Note: The expression: be makes all, is as much as: he brings nil into such a position, he works upon them to this effect (comp. Revelation 13:12)—a Hebr. use of ποιεῖν; see Gesenius on ςωδ. Heb.] the small and the great, and the rich and the poor, and the free and the bond, that a mark should be given them on their right hand or on their forehead. Revelation 13:17.[Note: The καὶ ?, which several good manuscripts have here, so as to make “and that,” can scarcely have been original. The ποιεῖ ? would then have been repeated, as it occurred in Revelation 13:16 in a sense not quite applicable here.] That no one should be able to buy or sell, but he that has the mark, the name[Note: Luther follows the false reading, ἡ ?̀τὸὀ ?́νομα, or the name.]of the beast, or the number of his name. The named are seven; the all at the beginning, then the three pairs. We have a similar seven, and divided in a similar way, in ch. Revelation 6:15. The divisions are comprised in the number four, which is always in the Apocalypse the signature of the earth. The enumeration begins with the small, and concludes with the slaves. From the small a rise is made to the great, and from the rich there is a descent to the poor, from the free to the bond. We often find in the Apocalypse the contrast between the small and the great—see on ch. Revelation 11:18, Revelation 19:5-18, Revelation 20:12. The mark is also mentioned in ch. Revelation 14:9, Revelation 16:2, Revelation 19:20, Revelation 20:4. It belongs only to the vision, in which every tiling must become visible and possess form. Substantially it means confession. This confession, however, naturally drives at public notoriety by some visible mark—as we see in the present times the revolutionary, anti-christian spirit making itself known by the wearing of dark red cocades. The mark, however, is independent of these outward distinctions, although the idea involved in it is by means of them brought out in a lively and striking manner. The figure of the mark is only corporealized by such things.If the right hand had not been expressly named, the hand along with the forehead might have been simply taken for the uncovered parts of the body. But as it is, the hand must be regarded as named in respect to its being the instrument of acting. A person’s bearing the mark upon his right hand, is to be explained thus, that in all his actions he is to shew himself a true servant of the beast. The forehead comes into notice as the most open part of the body. Whatever is there is easily seen and is used for display—comp. Revelation 7:3, Revelation 9:4, Revelation 14:1, Revelation 17:5, Revelation 22:4. For any one to bear the mark of the beast on his forehead, is to declare himself before all the world as a servant of the beast. The forehead is the most appropriate place for a confession.Allusion is made to Deuteronomy 6:6-8, “And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart. And thou shalt teach them diligently to thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes,” (comp. the parallel passages, Deuteronomy 11:18-19; Exodus 13:9, Exodus 13:16, and on the sense of the passages, the figure of which was embodied in the Jewish phylacteries, my Beitr. II. p. 451, ss). That one should often think of the true God, of his commandments and his benefits (Exodus 13:9), and be always ready to make acknowledgment of them, this is enforced by what is said figuratively in the law concerning the marking on one’s hand, and binding between the eyes. But those blind and deluded victims—horrid thought!—bear upon their hand and forehead the mark of the beast. (The agreement, too, is the greater, as the μέτωπον properly means, what is between the eyes.) It is well remarked by Zόllig, “John has as little thought here of the Roman custom of marking slaves on the hand and forehead, as generally of referring to heathen matters.” He continues to stand at “the rough, almost disdainful contrariety that was manifested to the precept in Deuteronomy 6:8; Exodus 13:9-10.” The aim and result of imprinting the mark is, that no one is able to buy or sell, who has not the mark, Revelation 13:17. He that cannot buy and sell is as one excluded from human society, and deprived of the necessary means of existence. The mark consists either of the name of the beast, or of the number of his name. Hence it follows, that the number of the name must be equally significant with the name itself—that the nature of the beast must thereby be definitely exhibited. This also is plain from ch. Revelation 15:2, where those are spoken of who obtain the victory over the beast, and over the image, and over the number of his name. There the name itself is not specified. Revelation 13:18. Here is wisdom. Let him that has understanding consider the number of the beast; for it is a man’s number, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six. That we must here explain; here wisdom is in its proper place, is plain from what was already said at Revelation 13:10. From that passage, and from ch. Revelation 17:9, we expect, in what follows, not a child’s play with letters, but a problem, which belongs to the region of a more profound spiritual discernment. Wisdom used absolutely, is always that wisdom which comes from above (James 3:15), which has an ethical foundation, and bears an ethical character. Properly a prerogative of God (Revelation 7:12), and of Christ (Revelation 5:12), it comes to be possessed only by those to whom the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, “has given the spirit of wisdom and of revelation (Ephesians 1:17; James 1:5; Acts 6:3; Colossians 1:9, also the classical passage upon the heavenly origin of wisdom in the book of Wisdom, Wis 7:25-26), and along therewith a deeper insight into divine and human things, and the capacity generally of apprehending the right in knowledge and duty. The passage before us would stand entirely out of the sphere of the New Testament usage, if by wisdom were here meant something, for which no spiritual discernment is required, and which might be attained even by the most carnal mind. If wisdom generally is required for the elucidation of this book, as certainly as it is the product of the Spirit, it must be quite peculiarly so here. They only have understanding, whose understanding Jesus has opened by his Spirit, (Luke 24:45). The understanding is a mere name, if it has not wisdom—comp. Revelation 17:9. The understanding is properly the seat of wisdom, being the mental power to which it belongs, where it exists. Still, since this mental power, when devoid of wisdom, might as well not exist, is a shell without a kernel, so he alone has understanding in the more distinctive sense, who has wisdom—comp. Daniel 12:10, “The wicked shall not understand it, but the understanding shall understand it,” where wickedness and understanding stand opposed to each other. In those passages, of which this is one, where wisdom comes into consideration only in a theoretical respect, to have understanding and to have wisdom are one and the same. The history of the exposition of this book has amply justified the appeal to wisdom and understanding.We are called literally to count the number. But as here such a counting is meant, as belongs to the sphere of wisdom and of spiritual discernment, it cannot be a counting in the ordinary sense that is intended. Nor would this afford any proper exposition; for though we should set out from the view, that the number of the beast is that which arises from the summing up of the letters of his name, read as numerals, there should still be no proper reckoning of the number of the beast. (This is clear alone from the circumlocution of Ewald: “let him compute the number of the beast, let him see by computing, what name will be expressed by the sum of the number.”) In a looser sense every mental exercise which has to do with numbers, may be drawn into the category of reckoning.The beast, being named unconditionally, is the first beast—not, however, in contrast to the second, which is rather to be regarded as its inseparable attendant. Here the subject of discourse is the number of the beast, and in Revelation 13:17, and in ch. Revelation 15:2, the number of his name. The number of the beast, according to these parallel passages, is primarily, on this account, the number, that it is the signature of his name. Whence we obtain the result, that we must not stand at the point of endeavouring to discover an internal relation between the nature of the beast and his number; that the number also, and above all, must be employed in reference to a name; and that every determination of the number must be false, which does not fulfil this condition.[Note: Hofmann, in his Weissagung und Erf. I. p. 312, thinks, “that we cannot gather from the words of John, that he himself knew the name, and that the contrary is the more credible, the more extraordinary the import of the number is.” But if John did not know the name of the beast, (which would ill accord with his being the organ of the revelation of Jesus Christ. and on this ground alone is incredible, because it must necessarily be a name of nature that is meant, the knowledge of which must be essentially bound up with the knowledge of the nature itself,) how, then, could he speak, not only of the number of the beast, but also of the number of the name of the beast? He, who is ignorant of the name of the boast, cannot possibly know the number which corresponds to this name, and is indicative of it.] This result is confirmed by the circumstance, that whenever we dissever the number of the beast from his name, the latter remains unknown to us. But it is not to be imagined, that John, after having spoken in Revelation 13:17 of the name of the beast and his number, should here announce only the latter. If John had not wished to note (indirectly) the name of the beast, he would certainly have made no mention of it. On the other hand, however, the number must have a signification even apart from its reference to the name of the beast. It must stand in an independent relation to the nature of the beast. For, were this not the case, it could scarcely be understood, why the number should have been spoken of beside the name, why the name should not have been put without circumlocution. Then, there can be no doubt that here of purpose, not the number of the name of the beast, but only the number of the beast, is what is mentioned; and it will not do to take the expression as a mere abbreviation. The result therefore is, that alone can be the right explanation of the number which, first, supplies a name; and, secondly, indicates a direct relation between the number and the nature of the beast.What we are to understand by “the number of a man,” is plain from the parallel passage, ch. Revelation 21:17, where the “measure of a man” is the common measure, that is used among men, and from Isaiah 8:1, where “with a man’s pen” means, with the instrument commonly employed by men in writing. Accordingly, the number of a man forms a contrast to a mystical or mysterious number; and the words indicate, that in the solution of the riddle we must seek for no mystery in the number itself. Against the explanation, “for it is the number of the name of a man,” a number which is made up of the numerical value of the letters of a name; we oppose, 1. The fact, that the beast is not a man, not an individual; 2. The fundamental and parallel passages. To say nothing of other reasons—for example, that the for in that case would be unsuitable. Rightly understood, these words overthrow the hypothesis, which would construct a number out of the numerical value of the letters of a name.The for belongs to both clauses. Were the number not an ordinary, a common one, the call to compute it, or to reflect on it, would be to no purpose; as is clear alone from the endless diversity that prevails among the advocates of the reckoning by letters; and in order to be able to count the number, one must know what the number is.It admits of no doubt, that John wrote the number 666. The same Irenaeus, who mentions the variation 616, also tells us, that the number 666 was found in all the best and oldest manuscripts; and that those who had seen John, testified to its correctness.[Note: B. 13:30: ἐνπᾶσιτοῖςσπουδαίοιςκαιἀρχαίοιςἀντιγράφοιςτοῦἀριθμοῦτούτουκειμένονκαὶμαρτυρούντωνἐκείνωντῶνκατʼ ? ὀ ?́ψιντὸνΙωάννηνἑωρακότων.] And the more importance is to be attached to the latter portion of the statement, that he makes no appeal to such confirmatory testimony, in reference to the signification of the number. In the manuscripts are to be found only faint and unimportant traces of the reading 616. On internal grounds, too, the other reading is to be preferred. “The three sixes,” says Vitringa, “placed together, have something of an enigmatical appearance, which does not exist to the same degree in 616.” Probably the number 616 is not a proper variation, but only the conjecture of some who could not bring the number 666 into accordance with the name, which they had got fixed in their heads. Irenaeus, certainly, is of opinion that the reading 616 was originally a slip of the pen; but, at the same time, he says expressly, that on the number 616 were raised calculations of names, and he himself offers in consequence grounds for an easier explanation. Then, as it is evident from Irenaeus alone, that the number even in the earliest times had awakened much attention, it is scarcely to be imagined that a deviation from the correct reading should have arisen from mere carelessness. From the preceding remarks, it is obvious, that our business is first to discover the name of the beast which furnishes the number 666. And here we must not wander about after our own imaginations. The Seer of the Apocalypse lives entirely in holy Scripture. On this territory, therefore, is the solution of the sacred riddle to be sought. And there also it can be found with perfect certainty. In the whole of the Old Testament there is but one instance in which the number 666 occurs in connection with a name. It is said in Ezra 2:13, “The sons of Adonikam 666.” The name Adonikam must therefore be the name of the beast. It was admirably fitted for being so. It means: the Lord arises,[Note: ΰγεο without the article is used of the Lord in Psalms 114:7. The Jod is commonly in the proper names a connective vowel, and not the suffix—see Ewald, p. 499, Anm. 2. So also in other proper names, which are compounded of Adon: Adoniram (Jehoram corresponds), the high lord, a designation of him, to whom the bearer of the name was devoted, as so many similar names—for example, Eliab, God father, Joab, Joel, Jehoshua; Adouijah, the Lord is Jehovah (not my Lord). The χεν is used of the Lord, who rises up to the help of his people, and for vengeance on his enemies; comp. χεξδιδεδ in Ps. in. Psalms 7:6; Psalms 9:19; Psalms 10:12; also Psalms 12:5; Psalms 44:26; Psalms 68:1. The name took its rise from these passages of the Psalms; as indeed it was very natural that the Psalms, whose words were continually sounding in the ears of the Lord’s people, should especially exercise an important influence in the formation of names. A reference is found to those passages even in Isaiah 33:10. The name Asrikam is formed in the same way; the help (the Lord as helper) rises up, resting on Psalms 44:26. We must take the name Adonikam in no other signification than that in which it occurs in the fundamental passages; not, for example, with Vitringa in the sense of the Lord’s enemy; which is also grammatically inadmissible.] and is in excellent agreement with the watch-word of the worshippers of the beast: “Who is like the beast, and who is able to make war with him?” It combines all, that in the preceding description had been said to characterize the beast. It is a name of blasphemy; it corresponds to the mouth speaking great things; it accords admirably with the demand upon all the inhabitants of the earth to worship the beast. It points to the war against the saints, and the carrying away of these into captivity, and killing them with the sword. It also perfectly agrees with the description, which St Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 2:4, gives of the man of sin: “Who opposeth and exalteth himself against all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he, as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God.” The Lord arises—this name originally consecrated to the true God, and derived from the songs of the church, that celebrate him as the Almighty Being, who rises to avenge his enemies, the beast appropriates to himself, as his adherents had already in 2 Thessalonians 2:4 claimed for him the name Michael. By this reference of the name to its original destination, its blasphemous character is heightened; q.d. not that one, the miserable product of the vain imaginations and arrogant claims of his wretched worshippers, it is not he who is the Lord, but I, whose omnipotence is palpable to all; it is not he, who arises to help his poor worshippers, and execute vengeance on his enemies, but I that arise to extinguish those wretched saints with their crucified One and their God. Besides, the name Adonikam in its original reference to the living God reacts against the claim, as also the number 666, according to what is presently to be remarked, at once indicates the claim, and marks its presumptuous and shameful character.Our second problem was to show, that a direct relation exists between the number and the nature of the beast. That this is the case appears, besides the reasons already adduced, from the circumstance, that in the immediately following verse, the number 144,000 occurs with manifest design, and so, that it is used simply and directly, without any intervening expression, of the church. The 666 is, as it were, the swollen, blown up six, the six in its highest potency, but still, even when swelled up and increased to the uttermost, no more than the six. This number has in Scripture but a very subordinate dignity. As the five only occurs as the half of the ten, the broken number of perfection, so the six appears either (as often, in particular, in the arrangement of the Psalms, for example in Psalms 7, Psalms 80), as the half of the twelve; or as the preliminary step to the seven (for example in Job 5:19; Proverbs 6:16) therefore in a subordinate relation to the two numbers, which are formed by a similar combination of three and four, and which generally, but especially in the Apocalypse, are consecrated to the church. (See in reference to the twelve on ch. Revelation 7:4). By the six being carried through units, tens, and hundreds, the number marks the soaring pretensions and might of the beast; while, on the other side, the relation of the six to the seven and twelve, implies, that in respect to the church he still after all came short. To the number 666 thus explained, corresponds the number three-and-a-half, which in the Apocalypse is the signature of the apparent victory of the world over the church—see on ch. Revelation 12:6-14—merely on account of its relation to the number seven. Even Irenaeus, in his early age, seeks in the number 666 an import by itself, brings it into connection with the nature of the beast. He supposes a connection between, it and the image of sixty cubits high and six cubits broad, which Nebuchadnezzar caused to be set up in the plain of Dura (Daniel 3:1, and my Beitr. I., p. 94). And, indeed, if we look upon this image, not with our own, but with Israelitish eyes, if we consider the great attention which was paid to numbers in Old Testament times, as recent investigations have shown, nothing is more natural than to suppose, that the book notices the dimensions of that symbol of the ungodly power of the world (for such the image was), because it saw in these a shadowy representation of the nature of that power. So colossal, and yet indissolubly bound to the fatal six, the broken twelve, and the incomplete seven! The name of the valley, too, is ominous. It properly signifies the valley of the funeral pile (comp. Ezekiel 24:5, Ezekiel 24:9).This is what we can maintain with certainty respecting the 666, as the number at once of the name of the beast, and of the beast himself. Perhaps, however, there is also an import in the mode of writing the number. It is expressed by the three letters χξς. That this writing by letters was the original form, is certified by Irenaeus.[Note: It is evident also from this consideration, that where the number has been written out, the gender of the words is differently given, sometimes ἐξακόσιοι, and sometimes ἐξακόσια.] The first and the last of these three letters are the common abbreviation of the name of Christ. The ξ standing in the middle, is like the serpent, under the name of which Satan appears in ch. Revelation 12:9, Revelation 20:2. Through the whole, therefore, the Antichrist, that is raised up by Satan, is placed before our eyes. This ingenious hypothesis was first advanced by Heumann, and afterwards recommended by Herder. But we are not to seek in it the chief matter, it is only a thing of secondary moment.The other explanations are to be altogether rejected. The wide-spread supposition, that the number 666 is made up of the aggregate numerical value of the letters of a name, is disproved by the following reasons among others. 1. For the solution of so common an enigma, there is required no wisdom and no understanding. A cunning Jew is as capable of it as an enlightened Christian. 2. It is impossible by this view to come to a certain explanation of the sacred riddle. Even Irenaeus remarks, that this number is to be got from a multitude of names; and one only needs to glance at the numberless solutions, that have actually been attempted on this ground, to be convinced, that such a riddle could have no place in the “Revelation of Jesus Christ.” Not even the simplest conditions necessary to the solution are given. It is never so much as said, for example, in what language the name is to be sought. 3. Most of the advocates of this view set out from the idea, that John had in his eye a common proper name of the beast. But in a book which never employs common proper names, which everywhere makes use of descriptive names, we can expect none but such also in regard to the beast. 4. The most current explanations of this sort, for example Lateinos, mentioned even by Irenaeus, Nero Caesar (a ludicrous contest, too, about the prior right to this miserable discovery!), furnish a name which does not properly suit the beast; since this represents the whole of the ungodly power of the world, not simply or peculiarly Rome, and far less still, a particular Roman king; so that it is not worth while to advance any other considerations that might be urged against this name. The defenders of the view, which refers it to the papacy, have set forth the opinion, that the number 666 announces the period during which the beast was to continue. Luther took the lead hero. In the German Bible with marginal notes, it is said on this passage: “666 years, so long lasts the worldly papacy.” But how could the number apply to the period of 1he beast’s continuance? The number must be descriptive of the nature of the beast. Otherwise, it could not go by the side of the name, so that the mark should consist either of the name, or of the number. How also could one obtain the victory, according to ch. Revelation 15:2, over the number of the beast, if this announces only the period of its duration? Further, it were a misplaced appeal to wisdom and understanding, if the problem were merely to discover, what not a word seems to indicate, that the number of the beast is the period of his duration, (though, in the whole context, the beast’s duration never comes in question), and that 666 is simply 666 years. One might have much wisdom and understanding, and never light upon this; and one might want all wisdom and all understanding, and yet discover it. How little does the wisdom suit here, according to Bengel’s own explanation! “He who sanctifies God in his heart, who abides in the true fear of God, and with his soul cleaves to the salvation of Christ, is wise. Though he may not be discerning for himself in natural things, nor able to discover much, yet, if the good and the evil are set before him, he still has a sound taste to reject the evil and cleave to the good.” And then it must be left to each one’s own liking to find out in history where the commencement of the period is to be made! Usually, and in particular by Bengel, the age of Gregory VII is fixed upon as such. But with that starting-point the hypothesis has already long since been wrecked on the facts of history. THE THREE ENEMIES OF GOD’S KINGDOM (CH. 12-14) The Revelation of St John gives no regularly progressive disclosure of the future, advancing in unbroken series from beginning to end; but it falls into a number of groups, which indeed supplement each other, every successive vision giving some other aspect of the future, but which are still formally complete in themselves, each proceeding from a beginning to an end. There can be no doubt that at ch. 12 we have the commencement of a new group, and the remark of Bengel, “Those are in a great prophetical error who break off here, and if nowhere else, yet here at least make an entirely new beginning,” is quite wrong, and ought to be precisely reversed. For at the close of ch. 11 we are manifestly brought to the last end; so that the Seer, if he will not altogether conclude his book, must commence anew. For what could it be but a description of the last end, which has for its object the development of the kingdom of God, when it is said, in ch. Revelation 11:15, in anticipation of what was immediately to follow, “The kingdom of the world has become (the kingdom) of our Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever?” When the four and twenty elders, the ideal representatives of the church in heaven, say in prospect of what is presently to be done, “We give thee thanks, O Lord God the Almighty, who art and wast, that thou hast taken thy great power and reignest?” When the “and art to come,” which before the last end has so deep a meaning, and was spoken with so strong an emphasis, appears now as antiquated, and there is only a past and present in the kingdom of God? When the elders say further, in Revelation 11:18, “Thy wrath is come, and the time to judge the dead, and to reward thy servants, the prophets and the saints, and those that fear thy name, the small and the great, and to destroy those who destroy the earth?” Such, surely, have the time of the last judgment, and the consummation of grace immediately in prospect. What we now, according to ch. Revelation 11:15-18, expect—the appearance of the Lord, the final victory of God’s kingdom, the resurrection of the dead, the last judgment, the glorification of the church—all this is represented in Revelation 11:19 as having entered, but only by way of gentle indication, which few have understood. For, the Seer would reserve the more particular delineation of these last things for a later part of his book, and precisely by the enigmatical brevity with which he here treats them, would set expectation on the stretch regarding that more particular delineation in reserve. “And the temple of God (it is said) was opened in heaven, and the ark of his Testament was seen in his temple; and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and a great hail.” The temple in heaven is a symbol of the church, the ark of the covenant a symbol of the gracious relationship in which the Lord stands to his church; that it has become visible, imports that this relation is now in a glorious manner maintained, and becomes manifest to view. All that the Lord does toward the realization of this, and in suspending judgment over the church’s enemies, is here concealed under the lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and earthquake, and great hail—exactly as in ch. Revelation 8:1 by the silence, where the closing scene appears under the same kind of veil. So the end of the vision reverts to the beginning, as a certain proof that we have here a termination before us. What is said in ch. Revelation 8:5, “And the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from off the altar, and threw it upon the earth; and there were voices, and thunderings, and lightnings, and an earthquake,” is a prophecy, which we here see brought to fulfilment. [By the view now given, the foundation is withdrawn from the hypothesis of Bleek (in the Berlin Theol. Zeitsch. Th. II. p. 281), according to which the book originally consisted of Revelation 1 and Revelation 4-11, and between Revelation 11, 12 something must have been taken away which originally formed the conclusion of the whole book, the representation of the Lord’s second coming, and the setting up of his kingdom. It rests primarily on the groundless supposition, that the book in its original form must necessarily have contained a continuous, regularly progressive representation, whereas here we are met with a quite new beginning. “The artificial plan, by which the future gradually advanced and rose into view, is made to vanish at ch. Revelation 8:2, where we have also a new beginning, not less than at ch. Revelation 12:1. Bleek, indeed, labours there to discover a connection. He says, “We have to consider the matter so, that what comes forth in the particular trumpet-voices, taken together, makes up the whole still remaining part of the contents of the book, inclosed in the seventh seal; so that we are here still in very close connection with the preceding context.” But if we must be still within the compass of the seventh seal at the end of ch. 11, it is very strange that no reference whatever is made to what goes before ch. Revelation 8:1; the seven trumpets have entirely the appearance of an independent position, and never make any allusion to the seals. The silence in ch. Revelation 8:1 is alone to be regarded as belonging to the seventh seal; and the idea, that the seven” trumpets are to be drawn into the circle of the seven seals, was long ago very satisfactorily refuted by Vitringa. Among other things against it is the brevity of the description belonging to the other seals in proportion to this, which would then embrace the contents of four entire chapters; while, “the events of most of the other seals are declared in the short and simple delineation of a single figure or two.” Farther, if the trumpets were subordinated to the seals, and contained the issues of the seventh seal, there would have been no need for a new preface or an introductory vision, by which John sought to prepare the way for the seven trumpets. For, the vision of the sacrificing angel, ch. Revelation 8:3-6, is a sort of prelude, heralding the new scenes, that were soon to present themselves to John. If we have a quite new beginning even at ch. Revelation 8:2, the view must be abandoned, which regards the Revelation as a regularly progressive and continuous whole, a view that has been most pernicious to the right exposition of the book; and it must not be regarded as at all strange, that at chap. 12 we are entirely cut off from the earlier series of representations, so that we should go about to construct groundless hypotheses, with Bleek, or with Bengel and Lücke, try to build a bridge out of our own materials. The attempt of the latter to bring the whole of what follows even to the end of the book within the compass of the last trumpet and of the last woe, is proved to be unavailing by the fact, that never after ch. 11 is a word said about a trumpet or a woe; secondly, by the first six trumpets and the two first woes having so limited a range; and lastly, by the circumstance that the immediately following portion, Revelation 12-14, has not at all the character of a trumpet and a woe. Bleek urges further: “It has already been remarked, how the threefold repetition of the woe, ch. Revelation 8:13, is intentional, since to each of the three still remaining last trumpet voices there belongs a woe; this is expressly noticed in connection with the fifth and sixth. But now in this third and last woe, for which preparation had been so carefully made in the preceding part, that we might certainly expect the same to be at least as solemnly and expressly uttered in regard to it, as in regard to the two first, it is not at all mentioned either here or anywhere in what follows.” In the proclamation, however, at ch. Revelation 11:14, “The second woe is past, behold the third woe comes quickly,” the third woe is expressly announced, and is realized in Revelation 11:19 where the great hail especially appears as the divine instrument of punishment and the symbol of the divine judgment—comp. Revelation 16:21. Any more explicit mention was unnecessary; because the boundary-line in respect to the second was so plainly drawn at Revelation 11:14, and there was to be no fourth. It would even have been confusing; for there was not to be expected here any formal conclusion, but rather something to indicate the supplement still to be expected, the unfinished character of the issue. What Bleek still further urges in proof of the fragmentary character of ch. 11 in its present form—that we should have expected the personal appearance of the Lord at Revelation 11:19, and the judgment therewith connected—has been already met by the remarks made in the text. It would only be of force, if Revelation 11:19 formed the close of the whole book, and not merely of a single group. In the latter case, it is quite enough, exactly as at ch. Revelation 8:1, simply to mark the place, which is to belong to what is to be unfolded afterwards more at length, and this here is sufficiently done, especially if we take into account, not merely Revelation 8:19, but also what in Revelation 8:15-18, is said in announcing what was immediately at hand. We shall then have no doubt remaining as to what really belongs to the seventh trumpet, and it will be clear, that we have here before us in the plan, what is brought out in detail in the last groups. Besides, Ewald has already remarked with justice, that the mere hypothesis of Bleek, countenanced only by some appearances, is effectually disproved by ch. Revelation 11:7 alone, according to which the beast, which rises out of the abyss, is to wage war on the two witnesses, and overcome and kill them. By that we are pointed forwards to ch. 13. Only an author could have written thus, who meant to give afterwards a more extended description of the beast, as, indeed, without the future explanation we should not know what to make of such a statement. (This passage also is decisive against the hypothesis of a regularly progressive representation in one and the same line; it implies, that the book consists of groups, which run parallel with each other. How, otherwise, could the beast, which is here spoken of as already being on the field, be represented in ch. 13 as then only making its appearance?) It is not worthwhile to advance more arguments against the hypothesis in question—as that the seven seals and the seven trumpets, which keep very much to generals, and have the character of a prelude, cannot possibly make up one whole, etc.] As certainly as at the end of ch. 11 we stand at the final close of things, so certainly do we find ourselves at the beginning of ch. 12 thrown back to the commencement of the New Testament economy; so that it is vain to speak of a continuous representation. The sufferings of the Lord’s people first pass before the soul of the prophet, which were endured before the birth of Messiah; then follows the birth itself, then the ascension, and the description, how through the accomplished atonement of Christ the power of Satan has been broken. And though we should consider all this as an introduction, which is its real character, as shall presently be made to appear, yet it does not conduct us over the very first beginnings of the Christian church. The starting-point in that case is the present of the Seer, the time of the Roman persecution, and the tendency of the section appears to be, to direct those, who had to suffer under the persecution, to the grace of God, which was to preserve the church through all the coming troubles, Revelation 12:6; Revelation 12:14, and at last bring the persecution to an end by the overthrow of the persecuting power. Having thus determined the relation of this section to the preceding context, we shall farther endeavour to fix its relation to what follows. A new scene opens to us with the beginning of ch. 15. The section of Revelation 12-14, or the fourth group, is occupied by the three enemies of God’s kingdom; the capital enemy Satan, who, as such, to indicate his great power, appears in heaven, ch. Revelation 12:1-17,—the beast, who arises out of the sea, the symbol of multitudes of people, the ungodly world-power, ch. Revelation 13:1-18,—and the second beast out of the earth, the earthly, sensual, demoniacal wisdom, ch. Revelation 13:11-18. The fourteenth chapter consoles the faithful, who are to be tried and oppressed by these enemies, by pointing to the blessedness in heaven, which awaits them, Revelation 13:1-5, and to the judgment, which is to be executed on the enemies at the close of all. But the representation given of this judgment is of a very general kind; the detailed account of the divine judgment on the three enemies is reserved for a separate group, the sixth, Revelation 17-20, which in a reverse order ascends from the beasts to Satan, and for which the fifth group, the vision of the vials in Revelation 15, 16, forms a sort of prelude. According to the historical starting-point of the Revelation, as it is unfolded in ch. Revelation 1:9, which declares the book to have been written by John during the Roman persecution; and according to its design as announced in Revelation 1:1, to shew to the servants of Christ, what must shortly come to pass; farther, according to Revelation 1:19, “Write what thou hast seen, and what is, and what shall be done hereafter,” and according to ch. Revelation 4:1, “Come up here, I will shew thee, what shall be done after these things,” which shew that the past as such cannot be the proper object of the things here unfolded, we must regard what is said in ch. Revelation 12:1-5; Revelation 12:7-12, only as introductory. What Christ has accomplished in the past comes here into consideration only in so far as it formed the basis of confidence and blessing to his oppressed people in their present troubles—comp. Revelation 1:11, where this aim comes plainly out; where it is announced that the glorious victory of Christ, described in the preceding context, is only to be taken into account so far as it is the foundation of victory to Christ’s people in the hard conflict which they have to maintain with the dragon. Revelation 1:6 and Revelation 1:13-15 have respect to the present and the immediate future; Revelation 1:16-17, to the more remote future. It is justly remarked by Hartwig in his Apologie der Apoc., II. p. 288, “that in this whole representation there are such unmistakeable allusions to the true history of the child Jesus and his mother, and the tyranny of Herod, as related in the second chapter of Matthew, that this chapter receives from it a new confirmation.” THE SECTION (CH. Revelation 14:1-5) Prophecy everywhere notices distresses, dangers, temptations, for the purpose merely of fortifying the heart in respect to them, and imparting under them counsel and consolation, “that we through patience and comfort of the Scriptures may have hope,” (Romans 15:4). The character of the whole of this chapter is that of the administration of comfort, and, indeed, more immediately of an anticipatory administration of comfort, in prospect of the great tribulations and dangers delineated in ch. 12, 13, that were to proceed from Satan, the beast from the sea, and the beast from the earth. Here first is an answer given to the most anxious of all questions, which must have been awakened by the preceding description—the question: Who, then, can be saved? In the prospect of such trials the prayer, “Lead us not into temptation,” almost died upon the lips. To help believers to utter it again with a vigorous manly voice—to place in a flood of light the parenthesis in our Lord’s word—“that (if it were possible) they would deceive the very elect,”—which a weak faith is so apt to glide rapidly over; this was the first object, which John, or rather the Holy Spirit, who in this book acts peculiarly in that office of Paraclete, so prominently unfolded in the Gospel of John, had to accomplish. And he does accomplish it, by suddenly transporting us out of the tribulations of time with its conflicts and trials, and placing us on the heavenly Zion, where we find the company of saints gathered around their Saviour, after the warfare is finished, steadfast and unmoved in their confession, rejoicing in their victory, pure and holy, in spite of all the temptations which the earth had presented to them. The consolation also carries in its bosom an exhortation. Is fidelity possible— who would not aspire after it? Are the 144,000 gathered there around the Lamb, with his name and that of the Father on their foreheads—who would not strive unto blood to be of their number, and courageously resist everything that might try to blot out the sacred names from his forehead? In the two last verses especially does the admonitory import come distinctly out. This section, while it has a near relation to ch. Revelation 7:9-17, is yet essentially different. There the heavenly glory is exhibited for the consolation of those who should have to suffer with the world under the mighty hand of God, when visiting the world on account of sin; here, on the other hand, the guarantee afforded is, that fidelity to the Lord is no mere fancy—that it can triumphantly overcome all the assaults which it has to endure from the world. In the two sections, therefore, an essentially different assault is met, though they are both such as strongly beset believers. The proper import of the section before us is misapprehended by those who would find in it a representation of the future glory of believers, or of their recompense, which are only indirectly contained in it. But it is much more grievously misapprehended by those who would drag down to the earth what belongs to heaven, and conceive that the truth here represented is the preservation of the true church upon earth. Indirectly, no doubt, this is certified here; but when the heavenly band appears shining before the throne of God in the glory of their steadfast profession, it is done only on the ground of that steadfastness which they have manifested during the tribulations of time. Revelation 14:2. And I heard a voice from heaven, as a voice of many waters, and as a voice of great thunder; and the voice which I heard was as of harp-singers playing upon their harps. Revelation 14:3. And they sing a new song before the throne, and before the four beasts and the elders; and no one could learn the song, except the hundred forty and four thousand who have been redeemed from the earth. The question that naturally arises first is, to whom does the voice belong? The answer is, beyond doubt, to the 144,000. For, any other can only be guessed at. The comparison of ch. Revelation 15:2-4 leads to the elect in their heavenly perfection. The harps, according to ch. Revelation 5:8, belong to the church (see the remarks there). The “new song” is in Scripture always represented as being sung by those to whom it relates (see on ch. Revelation 4:9). The expression “before the elders” is no objection to this view. For, why might not the multitude of believers be distinguished from their representatives? The elders belong to the necessary attendance around the throne.The voice of those who have been redeemed from the earth (Revelation 14:3), and have now happily reached the place of their destination, sounds from heaven. That the voice is heard from heaven does not prevent, that he who heard it might be in heaven; although it may be right, that the real stand-point on the earth should here in some measure shine through the ideal one in heaven.Several expositors would here divide between the voice like many waters and great thunder, and the voice of harpers. Such a division, indeed, has at first sight much in its favour. The first voice would then be the voice of God, frightening the enemies as with a mighty call: Thus far, but no farther; touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm; and giving to his people the promise of victory. The first voice, in that case, would only serve to give a present existence to what, at the time of this scene, was already past. It would place before our eyes God’s powerful help, which he pledges to his people during the time of this hot conflict, that they may not be tempted above what they are able. The second voice would then be the product of the first. And it can be alleged in support of this view, that the voice “as the sound of great waters,” in ch. Revelation 1:15, is the voice of Christ, with which he chides his enemies, and that also in the passages quoted there from the Old Testament the voice of the Lord is compared to that of many waters; that thunder in the Revelation usually has a polemical character, bearing respect to the dreadful judgments of God, threatened or accomplished; and that the same voice could scarcely be compared with thunder and with the soft notes of a harp. But this is all put to flight by the parallel passage, ch. Revelation 19:6, “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia.” From this it can no longer be doubted that here too the voice of the elect is compared with the voice of many waters and with the voice of thunder. The adjunct mighty or strong there, to which the great here corresponds, shews, that in the thunder the sound alone is taken into account, not, as commonly elsewhere, the threatening element belonging to it. This proceeds, according to the parallel passage, in which “as a voice from a great multitude” goes immediately before, from the vast assemblage of persons speaking, singing, playing. The comparison of the voice with many waters occurs in the Old Testament, not merely of the voice of the Lord, but also of the wings of the Cherubim, the representatives of what is living on the earth (Ezekiel 1:24), whose noise is there also compared to the voice of the Almighty, to thunder, and the noise of a host. The correct reading also, “And the voice which I heard was” (ἡφωνὴἣνἤκουσαὡς), is against the division. It plainly indicates that the same voice is here described only under another aspect, and is meant to divert the mind from thinking of any second voice being intended here. If one will hold to a difference in the voices, then the preference must be arbitrarily given to the ill-supported reading: And I heard a voice (φωνὴἤκουσα).That we are not to distinguish between the voice of many waters and the voice of great thunder—as, for example, referring the first to the multitude, the second to the frightfulness it possessed for the worshippers of the beast, or the first to the song, the second to the instrumental accompaniment,—is also quite evident from the parallel passages referred to, ch. Revelation 19:6 and Ezekiel 1:24. The louder the voice sounds, the more comforting is it; it addresses a more powerful call to remain steadfast in the midst of temptations. For so much the greater is the number of conquerors. Who should despair of reaching the glorious end which so many have actually reached! The strong voice is, at the same time, lovely; it is that of praise and thanksgiving, to which always in the Revelation the harps are appropriated, according to what is written in Psalms 43:4, “To thee, O God, will I give thanks on the harp, my God.” They are called, not harp-players, but harp-singers, those who sing to the harp; hence, after “they play upon their harps,” we should not make a point, but should connect thus: The harp-singers, who play upon their harps, and sing a new song.[Note: If this connection is recognized, it becomes more clear that the ὡς, which several even important critical helps have shoved in before the ᾠδὴν (Luther: and sang as a new song) is unsuitable, and must have been derived from the preceding context. Ch. 15:3 and 5:9 are also against it. With the voice, too, of the harp-singers the ὡς would not have been found but from respect to the preceding ὡς.]The subject of the new song must not be made a matter of conjecture; it is plainly to be understood from what precedes. The subject of it is not the work of redemption itself, but that the harpers have still the name of Christ and the name of his Father upon their foreheads, and that they stand with the Lamb upon Mount Zion, which they often despaired of attaining in seasons of darkness and trouble upon earth. Such a theme of praise, doubtless, has its root in the work of redemption; for it is owing simply to the blood of Christ that, notwithstanding all the rocks and tempests of life, they have reached in safety their heavenly home.They sing the new song before the throne and before the four beasts and before the elders. The four beasts, as representing the earth or whatever lives on it (see on ch. Revelation 6:1), could not fail to form part of the accompaniments of the throne, when the bloom of all earth’s living creatures, out of whom the redeemed have come, celebrate their triumph. The elders always appear where a session is held in matters relating to the church.The learning is from Deuteronomy 31:19, where it is said of the song of Moses, “teach it to the children of Israel;” comp. Deuteronomy 31:22, “and Moses taught it to the children of Israel.” The song, which no one can learn except the 144,000, corresponds to the new name, which no one knows, saving he who receives it, in ch. Revelation 2:17. In the promises to the churches in the seven epistles, the call, “He that has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches,” always indicates, that to understand them is a privilege belonging to the living members of the church. Even now on earth no one but the true believer can learn the songs of the church. For all others they are too high. What God has prepared for those who love him even here, and still more in heaven, is such that no eye has seen it, no ear has heard it, nor has it entered into the heart of man, (1 Corinthians 2:9). How glorious must that be, which entirely transcends all ordinary powers of comprehension. How exuberant the joy of those, who are made blessed there with the name of Christ. The 144,000 are described as those who have been redeemed from the earth. The costly price is the blood of Christ (ch. Revelation 5:9), by virtue of which they have pressed through every thing that would have arrested their progress toward heaven. The expression, “from the earth,” is explained by the “out of every tribe and tongue and people and nation” in ch. 5, and here in Revelation 14:4 by the “from among men.” Revelation 14:4. These are they who have not been defiled with women, for they are virgins; these are they who follow the Lamb, whithersoever he goes; these have been redeemed from among men, first fruits to God and to the Lamb. Revelation 14:5. And in their mouth is found no lie, for they are without blame. Along with the name of God and Christ, or faithfulness in confessing him, their whole walk of purity in him has been set free from the temptations of this world. Those, who shine forth in the splendour of an unwavering profession, shine also in the splendour of a holy and virtuous life. A mighty call is this, to strive after such a life on earth with unwearied diligence, as it shows, that the labour is not in vain in the Lord! An urgent admonition to shun every, even the smallest stain of sin! And a solemn warning not to imagine that we can separate what is essentially united, that we can keep the name of Christ on our forehead, while in our walk we deny the power of his truth! The way and manner in which faith and works are here interwoven together, is peculiarly that of John. Faith in Jesus always has the keeping of the commandments of Jesus as its inseparable attendant.The conquerors are first described as those, who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins. Sin does not confine itself in its consequences to the sphere of the Spirit. It presses deeply also into the bodily sphere. Its consequence is first death, then the whole host of sicknesses, of untoward and disagreeable circumstances, which are to be met with in the world. It even extends its sway to the irrational creation, where much exists now, that could not have originally belonged to it; much that plainly reflects the image of sin, much that is disagreeable, hateful, nauseous, impure. These fruits of sin in the visible creation are intended to make us sensible of sin itself. We should not shut our eye on them; we should lay to heart their complaining and accusing voice. Not to do this is the mark of a coarse, irreligious spirit; for example, to stand unmoved at the sight of a corpse, instead of beating on one’s breast and exclaiming, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Now, the Mosaic law always aimed at bringing sin to remembrance; it gave utterance to these natural feelings, sought to awaken them in those, who still had no experience of them, and, at the same time, led such as had come to a deep sense of sin, to acquire also a sense of forgiveness through the appointed purifications and atonements, which, along with the conviction of sin, and on the ground of that conviction, is the privilege of the people of God. Of these legal arrangements, as to their substance, not one iota or title can fail—as sure as they have proceeded from God. What is past in them refers merely to the form. The peculiarity as to form consisted only in this, that, agreeably to the symbolical spirit of antiquity, the feeling embodied itself in outward circumstances and acts, which had, however, their signification in their fitness to awaken or express the spiritual feeling. Thus, he, who touched a dead body, was thereby rendered impure, and must undergo a rite of purification; and no one was allowed to eat of a beast, which bore on it the image of sin. But the Mosaic law did not draw every thing of a corporeal nature, which has any relation to sin, into the circle of this representative system. Otherwise, it must, for example, have incorporated into it the wide range of diseases. It confined itself to the more salient points. The several classes of the legally impure are the following. 1. Impurity arising from death. Death is the wages of sin (Romans 6:23); the corporeally dead are the sad image of those who are dead in trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1; Colossians 2:13). The rankest impurity is that of the human corpse. For, there death is directly the wages of sin, while, in other parts of the animal creation, it prevails only in consequence of man’s sin. That outward defilement was taken into account only for its spiritual meaning; that it was not itself sinful, but only the image of sin, and should have called forth the sense of sin, was very clearly shown by the order appointed respecting defilements from the dead. It was a matter of duty to defile one’s self for the dead; any one, that for the sake of avoiding the defilement, failed to do what was proper to his dead relatives, incurred a heavy guilt. 2. The impurity of the leprosy. This disease renders a man, even while living in the body, a foul and disgusting object. That such a condition should befal a man, plainly indicated how it had stood with him. Hence, the leprosy, which is to be regarded as at the head of all diseases, was specially set apart in the law as the symbol of sin. Any one smitten by the leprosy, must be removed from all intercourse with the pure, and in tattered clothes, with bare head, with a covered chin, was to go about as a personified Sin, and walking Repentance, crying-aloud, Unclean, Unclean! See Leviticus 13:45-46, on which it is to be remarked, that such a mournful lot befel not a pure and holy person, but only a sinner, and that the person suffering it represented not another’s but primarily his own sin. 3. The impurity of corporeal issues—as, for example, gonorrhea, bloody issues, etc. That the point of view in circumstances of this kind—which still ought to produce a feeling of humiliation in those, who either experience them, or are brought into contact with them—is entirely that of the impure and unclean, on account of which they were employed as an image of sin, as they are themselves the consequence of sin, is evident from the passages Ezekiel 36:17; Isaiah 64:5; Lamentations 1:17, where sin is represented under the image of these impurities. Indeed the flowing out from the flesh itself, the impure flowing, is always represented as the occasion of impurity; see, for example, Leviticus 15:30. 4. The impurity of beasts. The following passages refer to impurity of this kind, Proverbs 11:22; Matthew 7:6, “Cast not your pearls before swine,” 2 Peter 2:22, “The dog has returned to his vomit again, and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” Every human evil has its image in the animal creation, and when beholding that, man should turn his eye back upon himself.Now, to the third of the above classes of legal impurities belongs also sexual intercourse, both in the married and the unmarried, which, in the respect here contemplated, are not distinguished from each other. The legal view of the matter is made quite plain in Leviticus 15:18. “Come not at your wives,” said Moses, in Exodus 19:15, when he called upon the people to prepare for the manifestation of the Lord. The high priest said to David, on his asking for bread, “There is no common bread under my hand, but there is hallowed bread, if the young men have kept themselves at least from women.”(1 Samuel 21:4). The appointment in Leviticus 24:9, that the hallowed bread should be eaten only by the servants of the sanctuary, he feels at liberty to set aside, on the ground that necessity admitted of exceptions to the rule, but he considered the existence of legal purity as an indispensable condition. Of Bathsheba also it is said in 2 Samuel 11:4, after her adultery with David, “and she sanctified herself from her impurity.” Now, this legal impurity appears here, by an interpretation of the ancient symbolism, as a figurative description of sinful defilement. There might also have been chosen others of the same class. Sexual intercourse was peculiarly fitted for the end in view only in so far as the relation of the man to the woman presents an image of man’s relation to sin. Even in the Old Testament sin is sometimes represented by the woman. Comp. Genesis 4:7, “And if thou art not good, sin lies before the door, and its desire is toward thee, and thou shalt rule over it,” with Genesis 3:16, “And thy desire is toward thy husband, and he shall rule over thee:” as much as, thou must in respect to sin be the man, and it the woman. The woman, who sits in the middle of the Ephah, in Zechariah 5:7, is wickedness, as explained in Zechariah 5:8, Job’s wife is a symbolical figure: she represents weak flesh in contrast to the willing spirit. In this book itself, by the wife of the angel is denoted, in ch. Revelation 2:20, that portion of the governing body which had been carried away by the false teaching. The starting-point for the representation given here of the relation of man to sin under the image of man’s relation to woman, is first, that sin came through the female sex. Another point of comparison is indicated in Genesis 4:7, namely, that man should rule over sin, as the man over the woman. Then, it is also to be taken into account, that by means of the primeval history this figurative representation was quite natural; comp. 1 Timothy 2:14, “And Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and brought in transgression;” Sir 25:24, “Of the woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die;” and 1 Peter 3:7, which states what is connected with this, that the woman is the weaker vessel. From what has been said, it is evident that the passage before us substantially agrees with 2 Corinthians 8:1, “Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God.” The 144,000 are those, who have responded to this exhortation of the apostle. We may also compare 2 Corinthians 11:2, where, as here, the virgin- state is represented as consisting in freedom from sin.Other expositions betray their untenableness at the very first look. We are not to think of “freedom from incontinence and fornication, which in the Apostle’s view stands connected with the service of idolatry.” The expression, “They are virgins,” decides against this; and it also excludes the intercourse of married life.[Note: Jerome even in his day took the right view: Ne puitaremus illud: non inquinati sunt mulieribus, de iia dici, qui scorta non norunt, statim intulit, virgines enim sunt; per non inquinatos igitur intelligit non uxoratos, per virgines caelibrs innuptas.] Nothing but helpless embarrassment could dispose people to fall on such an entirely groundless explanation, and to revive it after its untenableness has long ago been demonstrated. If one will not decide for the figurative interpretation, there remains only the alternative, that sexual intercourse generally, even that of married life, is here unconditionally condemned. For even the refuge is cut off, of supposing that the state of virginity is contemplated as being the highest stage of human perfection: the discourse here is not of some more select persons, but all the 144,000 are such as have not defiled themselves with women, the whole Christian church consists only of virgins. The rejection of marriage, however, is so decidedly against the spirit and letter of holy scripture (see 1 Timothy 4:1, ss., where those who prohibit marriage, are represented as apostates from the faith, and teachers of the doctrines of devils; 1 Corinthians 7; Hebrews 13:4), and against the example of the apostles themselves, that no person of sound understanding can imagine such a thing to be taught here. Could John possibly have wished to exclude Peter from the heavenly kingdom? Even the Catholic expositors, with all their disposition to obtain recommendations of celibacy, find themselves obliged to resort here to the figurative meaning, though they have not understood properly how to handle and establish it. Bossuet, for example, remarks, “These are pure and courageous persons, who have not shared in the common weaknesses of men.” He would also find, in addition, a secret allusion to the privileges of celibates, but only because he had not made, or did not wish to make clear the obviously enough existing alternative—either, or. If the literal interpretation is adopted, celibacy must be taken as the mark of all true Christians; if the figurative is preferred, then nothing whatever is said of celibacy in the ordinary sense.The 144,000 are further described as those, who follow the Lamb wherever he goes. This is a second mark of a state of grace. According to the concurring reports of all the Evangelists, Christ often spake during his sojourn on earth of his followers, and usually, indeed, with a respect to the sufferings therewith connected. See, for example, Matthew 10:38, “And whosoever does not take up his cross and follow me, he is not worthy of me;” Mark 8:34. Special reference, it would seem, is made here to Luke 9:57, “And it came to pass, that as he went in the way, a certain man said to him, Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest.” That the going there was of a difficult nature, is evident from the reply our Lord gave to him. The whole section of Luk 9:57-62 serves as a commentary, since it shows, what the following of Christ draws along with it, what earnestness is required for it, how many say in a light spirit, “I will follow thee,” how one must renounce everything in order to follow him in truth. Vitringa, therefore, remarks with perfect propriety, “If the Lamb goes to mount Calvary bearing his cross, we must also go with him bearing his cross, Hebrews 13:13.” Those, who understand the following of the Lamb here in the sense of reward (Zόllig: “They must follow the Lamb, and shall consequently be guided and protected by him, as a flock by their shepherd”), have, besides the fundamental passages in the Gospels, the connection here also against them. It is the following of the Lamb as a matter of duty that alone is meant here—although this, certainly, has following him as a reward for its corresponding recompense. Such as have followed the Lamb here, wherever he goes, are those whom the Lamb shall there feed, and lead to living fountains of waters, ch. Revelation 7:17.—“These, these, these are they, occurs thrice in the one verse. Such are the characters of those who belong to the true church, and are members of Christ” (Berleb. Bible).The third mark is, that they have been redeemed from among men to be first-fruits to God and to the Lamb. That the first-fruits were considered by themselves, and apart from their consecration as the best, as Bδhr supposes, (Symbolik vol. ii., p. 47), is destitute of all solid proof. Numbers 18:12 refers only to a part of the first fruits, such as were taken from an entire mass, and where one was obliged to take the best. The first-fruits of a tree, for example, are not the best, Leviticus 19:23-24. Neither is the first sheaf, Leviticus 23:10. Here, at least, what is taken into account is simply and exclusively the consecration, the holiness, by means of which the first- fruits were separated from the whole mass of the increase. The holy, as contrasted with the common, to which the rest of mankind corresponds,—this is the point of comparison between the first-fruits and Christians—the reason why Christians are here described as spiritual first-fruits. Respect is had, as appears from the connection, to the preservation of this holiness through the whole walk; so that we may regard as exactly parallel in meaning the words in Titus 2:14, “Who has given himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good works.” The first-fruits are mentioned precisely as here in James 1:18, “Of his own will begat he us, through the word of truth, that we might be first-fruits of his creatures,” where the central thought is, that those who have been begotten again in the kingdom of God are to be viewed as standing at the head of humanity. The “first-fruits” are parallel to the “perfect and entire” in James 1:4, In James also the spiritual characteristics are especially taken into account, through which their pre-eminent place is maintained. Such expositions as that of Grotius, “They are called first-fruits with respect to those who shall come after them,” and of Zόllig, “To other pious persons still dwelling on the earth the prospect is unfolded in this word that they, too, can enter, along with these first-fruits, into this state of blessedness,” are sufficiently disposed of by the single remark, that the 144,000 represent the whole church; so that no followers of these first-fruits can be contemplated. It also serves for a refutation of this wrong way of presenting the point of comparison, that in the parallel passage in James the subject of discourse is first-fruits, not of Christians or of men generally, but of creatures; so that there, too, no respect can be had to a following. In Revelation 14:5 it is given as a characteristic trait of believers, as a part of the glorious inheritance which they have happily carried along with them into heaven, that in their mouth is found no lie.[Note: Luther has: and in their mouth is found nothing false. He follows the ill-supported reading: δόλος, which has come from a comparison of 1 Peter 2:22. As John in particular makes frequent mention of the truth (see on ch. Revelation 3:7), he declares himself also most frequently in the strongest terms against lying (Bengel: “The word ψεῦδος, with its derivatives and compounds, occurs very frequently in the writings of John.) Comp. ch. Revelation 21:8; Revelation 21:27, Revelation 22:15. Freedom from lying appears not rarely as the mark of the elect in the writings of the Old Testament: “The remnant of Israel shall do no iniquity, nor speak lies, and in their month shall be found no deceitful tongue.” But there is a peculiar depth in John’s idea of the truth, and so its sweep is with him very wide, and to be destitute of it is something very great. A liar, in his account, according to 1 John 2:4, is one who does not confess Christ, nor exhibits his faith in his works. He notes it as the crowning point of lying, in 1 John 2:22, to deny Christ, with which idolatry and the deification of men, described as a work of lies in Romans 1:25, goes hand in hand. What is here ascribed to the honour of Christians, they owe, according to 1 John 2:27, to the anointing, to the Holy Spirit; it is a privilege of the Christian, of the anointed, as generally not to sin (1 John 3:9), so in particular not to lie. All men are by nature liars, and freedom from lying, especially from that worst form of it, which withholds divine honour from him to whom alone it is due, and ascribes it to one to whom it does not belong, can be derived only from above; the rather so, as man’s natural inclination to lying has so powerful a coadjutor in Satan, the father of lies (John 8:44). Allusion is made to 1 Peter 2:22, “Who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth.” (Berleb. Bible, “After the example of their master, of whom the same words are used in 1 Peter 2:22.”) The allusion is especially seen in the expression “was found,” which does not occur in the original passage, Isaiah 53:9, and leaves little room to doubt, that John had the passage of Peter in his eye. The other expression also, “for they are without blame,” has its exemplar in what is written of Christ in 1 Peter 1:19. The words, “before the throne of God,” which Luther retained, are too slenderly supported to find a sufficient justification in the appeal to Jude, Jude 1:24, They have probably been introduced into the text by combining together that passage in Jude and Revelation 14:3 here. THE SECTION (CH. Revelation 14:6-13) In Revelation 14:1-5, believers are invigorated by having their eye directed to the noble company of those who have carried their confession with them, pure and undefined, to that place where they are no longer exposed to any trial and temptation. Here the sting is taken out of the temptations by pointing to the judgment, which threatens the world that plies the temptations, which in particular will bring to desolation the seemingly omnipotent Babylon; by pointing to the frightful temporal, but more especially the eternal punishments, which await the worshippers of the beast, who, for the sake of the world’s favour, would deny him who will soon come to execute judgment on the world! Who would allow himself to be deceived by the mere appearance of power, that he may soon, when the real Omnipotence comes forth from its concealment, be involved with it in the punishment which is suspended over the apostate! Who, in order to escape the tribulation which is light and temporal, would have his portion appointed in the eternal lake of fire! These truths are announced by a threefold angelic message, Revelation 14:6-11. In Revelation 14:12, the admonition is raised from it to continue steadfast in the faith; and Revelation 14:13 sets over against the doleful fate of the worshippers of the beast, the glorious destiny of those who have maintained to the end their fidelity to the Lamb. Revelation 14:8. And there followed another angel, a second, who said, She is fallen, she is fallen, Babylon the great, which made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. In the preceding verse the judgment generally was announced, upon all the beastʼ ?s forms of manifestation, from those that existed  in the prophetʼ ?s time, till the resuscitation of the beast in  Gog and Magog; here, on the other hand, what is specially set  forth is the judgment on that particular phase of the power of the  beast, by which the members of the church were then harassed and tempted to apostacy. If we were to understand here by Babylon the ungodly power of the world in general, the messages of the two angels would not be properly distinct from each other. But as Babylon here is brought into view only as an individual phase of the anti-christian power, what is said more immediately of it, undoubtedly holds good in substance of the other phases that are to follow. The second (δεύτερος) was left out by several critical helps, which Luther follows, merely because it was regarded as superfluous after another. This, however, is by no means the case; it indicates, as does also the following (not coming), that the angels, although different, still were connected together, and that their messages bore respect to each other. “With a loud voice, it is said in regard to the first and third angel, but not in regard to the second.” That the expression should be wanting here is certainly not accidental. As the announcement in this case stands related to the preceding one, only as the particular to the general, the loud voice here was not necessary; the message of the first angel was still, in a manner, sounding in the ear. In the message of the third angel, when a rise is made from the particular back to the general, it appears again. That Rome is to be understood by Babylon, is almost universally agreed, and admits, indeed, of no doubt. But that we are to think only of heathen Rome, and not, with the older Protestant expositors, of Christian Rome, is abundantly plain from ch. Revelation 18:20, alone, where we are told, that God avenges on Babylon his apostles and prophets. It was heathen Rome alone that had to do with the apostles, who were, at the same time, prophets (see vol. i. p. 41.) It slew Peter and Paul, and sent John into banishment. The same thing is clear also by comparing the fundamental passage, 1 Peter 5:13. The connection, too, leads in this direction. That the heathen worldlypower is the object of the judgment announced by the first angel we have already seen. But the message of the second angel stands related to that of the first, as the particular to the general. Then, Babylon is only a particular aspect, under which the beast manifests itself, and the beast cannot possibly be the Papacy. Finally, the addition, “which made all nations drunk with the wine of the wrath of her fornication,” does not snit papal Rome; and those, who have adopted this interpretation, have found themselves driven to a forced explanation of these words. It is the case, not rarely, in the Old Testament, that the worldly powers of the present and the future are described under the names of those of the past. Zechariah, for example, after the return from the Babylonish exile, designates the place destined for the reception of the Jews, when the measure of their sins should have again become full, and they should once more be expelled from their land, by the name of the land of their former exile; in Zechariah 10:11, he speaks of their future oppressors under the name of Assyria and Egypt (see the Christology there, where other examples are produced). This transference of names carries with it a strong emphasis. It makes the whole of God’s earlier procedure start forth to life again. The word of God, which has once already passed into fulfilment, cannot now be treated as a vain imagination. In the New Testament the name of Babylon was first applied to heathen Rome in 1 Peter 5:13, “the co-elect in Babylon greets you, and Marcus my son.” It is inexplicable, that persons should still always insist upon Babylon being taken here in the literal sense. What difficulties they thus involve themselves in need not be stated at length. The only reason which has been urged for it of any weight, is disposed of by the remark, that the epistles of the New Testament are not entirely written in common prose, and that the poetical character of a large portion of the sacred books, necessarily exercised an influence on the rest. The co-elect is the associated church, according to 1 Peter 1:1, 1 Peter 2:9;1 John 5:13;—the co-elect in Babylon can only be such an one as had there a settled abode—not a person who happened to be there by accident. Marcus is the spiritual son of Peter; how, in such a connection, could Babylon be the literal Babylon? The contents of the epistle, also, are in perfect accordance with this view. It was written when Rome had just begun to tread in the footsteps of Babylon. The designation of Rome as Babylon corresponds to the passage, Be vigilant, and sober, for your adversary the devil goeth about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” Comp. Jeremiah 51:38. Here we have the first rise of the designation. The word, written in the true prophetical spirit, gave much cause for reflection. As the Nicolaitans in John point to the second epistle of Peter (2 Peter 2:15), so does Babylon to the first; nor are there wanting in the Apocalypse other references to the same epistle (see vol. i., p. 78). Among the Jews also Rome went by the name of Babylon.[Note: Buxtorf Lex. P. 2230, Schφttgen Horae, vol. i, p. 1125. Whether this was done before the time of Peter and John, we can allow to remain undecided. The probability certainly is, that it was. But for Christians, at any rate, Rome first became Babylon, when it entered on the persecution of the true people of God. Not what it inflicted on the mere fleshly Israel; but only what it inflicted on the true, could have justified its being called by that name. In this first did the spirit fully display itself, which had impelled it during its earlier career. If, in the case of the beast, the blasphemy against the name of God and his tabernacle, and those who dwell in heaven, is essentially the war against the saints (ch. Revelation 13:6-7), the same also must hold in respect to Babylon. In ch. Revelation 18:20, it is represented as the chief feature in Babylon’s guilt, what she had done against the apostles and prophets. The other only became manifest in this. Also, in the Old Testament, whatever the great monarchies of the world might do in regard to merely worldly kingdoms, it was only when the same came to be practised against the Lord’s people, that it appeared as the occasion of divine judgment; see, for example, Habakkuk 2.—“As often as a delineation is given of Babylon in this book, it has the epithet of the great city, or simply the great, which still conveys an idea of magnificence.” (Here it is called merely the great; the “city,” which Luther retains, is wanting in the best manuscripts, and to be deleted). The designation is taken from Daniel 4:27, where Nebuchadnezzar speaks of Babylon the great. But the permanence of the designation, as if it formed a component part of the proper name, cannot but appear somewhat strange. It is to be explained from an allusion to the name Rome, strength, which still plainly discovers itself in ch. Revelation 18:2. That it is not called the strong- but the great, was on account of the fundamental passage of Daniel.Babylon the great, is fallen. Allusion is made to Isaiah 21:9, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon.” Comp. Jeremiah 50:2, Jeremiah 51:8. The fundamental passage shews, that the omission of one of the expressions, “it is fallen,” in some copies, has arisen from negligence. In that passage also, the preterite is a prophetical one, denoting the certainty of the overthrow, which had already as good as taken place. With an intentional repetition it is again said in ch. Revelation 18:2-3, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon— because she has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.” The preterite there is an actually historical one: what is predicted here, is represented there as fulfilled, as also in ch. Revelation 16:19, it is the actual overthrow of Babylon that is treated of. In the description of the fulfilment the words of the prophecy are again repeated, only some further enlargement is given to them.Babylon, the great, has made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.[Note: The original reading is: which, ἡ ?́ ?, bus made drunk. The ἡ ?́ ?, on account of the cacophony, an ἡ ?́ ? immediately preceding, and on account of ch. 18:13, was by many copyists changed into ὁ ?́τι. Others have nothing, either to avoid the cacophony, or because on account of the first ἡ ?́ ? they overlooked the second, or, perhaps, because they were perplexed by the vacillating of the MSS. between ἡ ?́ ? and ὁ ?́τι. This is the worst reading. The asyndeton is harsh and without any occasion, and against ch. 18:8. The ὁ ?́τι there jis related to the ἡ ?́ ? here, as πέπωκε to πεπότικε. Scripture delights in such intentional repetitions to introduce some unimportant alterations.] The wine of the wrath is the wine, which consists of wrath. As wine makes the drinkers helpless, so does her wrath the nations. The making the nations drunk with wine is a very common image in the Old Testament. The point of comparison is always the impotence, the helplessness, misery, degradation, shamefulness of the condition (see my Comm. on Psalms 9:5). In Habakkuk 2:15-16, it is said of the king of Babylon: “Woe to thee, who dost give thy neighbour drink, pouring out thy wrath, and makest him drink that thou mayest see their nakedness. Thou shalt be filled with shame for glory. Drink thou also, and be uncovered, and let shame come upon thy glory.” The sense of Hab 2:15 is: Woe to him, who in his wrath makes his neighbour impotent, in order to take advantage of his humiliation. The wrath is the wine—comp. Jeremiah 25:15. This figure is likewise applied to Babylon in Jeremiah 51:7, “The golden cup of Babylon is in the hand of the Lord (to be now presented to herself, according to Jeremiah 25:26, while hitherto in executing the Lord’s commission she had presented it to others), that makes all the world drunk; the nations have drunk of her wine; therefore have the nations become mad.” Comp. also Nahum 3:11, where it is said of Nineveh, “Thou also shall be drunken, be hid” (the latter expression gives the meaning of the figure; accordingly the drunkenness denotes the impotence, the total degradation, the utter vanishing); and Obad. Obadiah 1:16, And all the heathen drink continually, and they drink and swallow down, and they are as if they were not.”The wine of the wrath of which Babylon has made the heathen to drink, is more particularly described as that of her fornication. By the image of fornication is denoted in some passages of the Old Testament the selfishness, that under the veil of love disguises itself, and in this form seeks the gratification of its own lust. In Isaiah 23:15, ss. Tyrus is named a whore on account of its commercial alliances, and its commercial gain is represented as the hire of a whore.[Note: The words: She whores with all the kings of the earth, is rendered by the LXX.: καὶἔσταιἐμπόριονπάσαιςταῖςβασιλείαιςτῆςοἰκουμένης.] The point of comparison is the making one’s self agreeable, feigning love for the sake of gain. In Nahum 3:4, the term fornication is employed to denote the diplomatic arts of the Assyrian power, by which she insinuated herself upon the nations’, in order to ensnare and destroy them under the semblance of love. Among conquering nations there always goes along with their rough power a hypocritical love and friendship, by which they endeavour to wheedle the nations and make them subservient to their purposes. What is described as fornication in Nahum 3:4—“Because of the multitude of the whoredoms of the well-favoured harlot, the mistress of witchcrafts, that selleth nations through her whoredoms, and families through her witchcrafts”—is in Nahum 3:1 described as deceit. The point of comparison is quite the same in Nahum as in Isaiah, viz., selfishness concealing itself behind the appearance of love. The difference simply is, that the gain sought for is there represented as gain of merchandise, here of countries. In the same way we are to explain here, “her fornication.” It is added to give additional strength and elevation to the meaning. Without it we might have thought merely of rude force, which here is relatively the least of the bad qualities. It is as much as, “Her wrath has made the nations poor, and that (not merely by means of rude force, but also) under the fair covering of love, inveigling her neighbours to their greater destruction, whom she was bound in truth to protect, by means of an artful and cunning diplomacy.” The terrible character of this fornication of Rome, John had probably learned from his own experience. It shewed itself also in the treatment of Christians. In the history of her persecutions we are not so much shocked at their ferocity as at the cunning, by which under the semblance of love it was tried to seduce Christians into apostacy to the faith.The common supposition is, that the giving to drink of the wine of her fornication, means seduction to the service of idolatry. So Bengel: “This fornication is also mentioned in ch. Revelation 17:2; Revelation 17:4, Revelation 18:3; Revelation 18:9, Revelation 19:2; and hence Babylon herself is called the whore, the great whore, the mother of harlots, ch. 17. Such fornication is properly the false worship of God, even with a Christian name and appearance; and it is compared to wine, on account of its pleasantness and its power to make drunk.” But this interpretation makes shipwreck on the circumstance, that the subject is the wine of the wrath, or the wrath-wine of her fornication. It is impossible to shew, in regard to fornication of that sort, how it proceeds from the principle of wrath. The different ways, in which commentators have tried to meet this argument, only shew how invincible it is. Several, with Bengel at their head, cut the knot, and declare the expression, “of the wrath,” to be spurious. The omission of it, however, in some manuscripts, which Luther has followed, can lend them no support; it merely shews, that there were already scribes, who did not know what to make of it. Others have tried to help themselves by an explanation. Most have gone in with the assertion, that wrath stands here for glow or for poison; the wrath-wine denotes drink that is heating, burning, that is, filling or poisoning the mind with zeal for idols. But this interpretation is contrary to the ascertained signification of θυμός, wrath,[Note: Bengel already remarked: Supersedemus labore illo, quo nonulli vocabulo θυμός significationem aestus conficere conantur.] and especially against the constant use of it in the Apocalypse; more particularly against Revelation 14:10, where the wrath of God refers back to the wrath of Babylon here. Others, still again, abide by the signification of wrath, but the wrath must not be that of Babylon, it must belong to the drunkards: the wine, which turns into wrath. But the wine must here, as in Revelation 14:10, belong to the party, who gives the wine to be drunk. All these shifts, however, are at once put to shame by Habakkuk 2:15. And even apart from the expression, “of the wrath,” which places an insuperable barrier against the explanation of the clause that would understand it of seduction to idolatry, it is also quite opposed to the common usage of the figure of making drunk with wine in the Old Testament, and to Revelation 14:10, where the figure is likewise employed in the description of the recompense. Further, that the fornication here can only be feigned love for the sake of self-interest, is clear from the undeniable reference of the parallel passage, ch. Revelation 18:3, to Isaiah 23. And in that same passage, since “the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,” is coupled with, “and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies,” it would be impossible to make out any proper connection, if we should understand idolatry by fornication. Finally, in ch. Revelation 19:2 it is said, “He has judged the great whore, who corrupted the earth through her fornication.” From the words that immediately follow, “And has avenged on her the blood of his servants,” and from the parallel passage, ch. Revelation 11:18, it cannot be spiritual corruption that is meant here, but only material, and such judgment as carries along with it complete destruction. Revelation 14:9. And another, a third angel followed them, and said with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast, and his image, and receive a mark in his forehead or in his hand; Revelation 14:10. The same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed unmixed in the cup of his wrath; and shall be tormented with fire and brimstone before the holy angels and before the Lamb. Revelation 14:11. And the smoke of their torment ascends up for ever and ever; and they have no rest day and night, who worship the beast and his image, and if any one receives the mark of his name.The two first messages are preliminary stages to the third, as is clear from the circumstance, that this last connects itself immediately with ch. 13. It is here also that the aim of all the three messages first comes clearly out. They were intended to strengthen men’s minds against the temptation which the seeming omnipotence of the beast should present to the followers of the Lamb, and arm them against his seductive arts by the solemn call: worship not the beast, for the hour of judgment has come, Babylon is fallen, etc. How great the temptation is, and how weak the human heart, is evident from the strong colours, which are here thrown into the delineation. Bengel: “This above all measure dreadful threatening is undoubtedly the most severe to be found in scripture.”Fear can only be driven out by a stronger fear. “The ancient Cyprian often strengthened his exhortations to steadfastness under bloody persecutions with this word.” Let us shut it fast up in our hearts! The times are drawing nigh, when we shall again need such heroic means against fear! The threatening is directed against the worshippers generally, not against those, who suffer themselves to be seduced. But the aim, toward which it is spoken, is to guard against seduction. Who, to avoid drinking out of the beast’s cup of wrath, would join himself to the company of those, who must drink out of the cup of God’s wrath, and be tormented with fire and brimstone for ever?The assigning of a ground for the preceding threatening furnishes, at the same time, the starting-point for the threatening here. This refers to the punishment in general, and in its widest compass; then follows the allusion to the fearful acme of the punishment, the pains of hell.[Note: The καὶ ? at the beginning of Rev 14:10 is the accented and; it points to the inseparable connection between the action described in Revelation 14:9, and the fate here threatened. In a quite similar way the καὶ ? is also used in ch. 10:7. We are not to explain: he will also drink, as Babylon; for that Babylon shall drink had not been expressly said in what precedes; nor do Babylon and the worshippers of the beast form any contrast; our message also would then lose its substantiality.]On the figure of drinking of wine, comp. on Revelation 14:8. It is not infrequently used in the Old Testament with reference to impending judgments. The fundamental passage is Psalms 9:4; on which rest Psalms 75:8; Isaiah 51:17, Isaiah 51:22; and again on the latter, Jeremiah 49:12, Jeremiah 25:15, ss., on which Bengel remarks, “Jeremiah must, out of a cup of wine full of wrath from God’s hand, pour out to many nations; by which is meant, the misery that the king of Babylon was to bring on them.” Here the allusion is more especially to Psalms 75:8 of Psalms 75, which treats of the overthrow of the proud enemies and persecutors of the church: “For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup, and it foams with wine; it is full of mixture; and he poureth out of the same; and yet its dregs must sip, drink all the wicked of the earth.” By comparing this fundamental passage, we perceive also in what sense it is said here of the wine, that it is mixed (Luther improperly poured out[Note: The usage, as well us the fundamental passage, is against Ibis explanation, which is still defended. The signification, in winch it takes κεράννυμι, rests in merely upon certain passages in the classics, which arc analogous to ours—passages, in which at first sight the ascertained meaning seems not to suit—see Stephani, thes. ed. Paris. But if mix might really stand for pour out, the following ἀκράτου would still render it improper here. For the mixed and unmixed evidently form an enigmatical contrast. Finally, in the parallel passage, ch. 18:6, the signification to pour out is unsuitable.]) in the cup of the wrath of God. According to it we can only think of a mixture with ingredients, which increase its intoxicating power, give to the wine the character of wine of drunkenness (Psalms 9:4). or wine which produces the effect of drunkenness. The addition of such ingredients[Note: See Gesenius in his thes. under ξρκְ, Wilner in his Real wόrt. Under wine, Drechsler on Isaiah 5:22. is supported in the fundamental passage, not merely by the mention of mixture (mixed drink), but also by the fermenting, foaming. The presence of this pernicious mixture carries along with it the absence of all alleviating mixtures: the mixed is unmixed. Among the Greeks it was customary to drink wine mixed with water. This sort of mixture occurs also in the Old Testament, as a weak drink (Isaiah 1:22). In the wine of God’s wrath, what corresponds to this mixture with water is the element of grace, of compassion. This can have no place here. That God does not mix for the worshippers of the beast, has its foundation, according to ch. Revelation 18:6, in this, that they also had not mixed, that their wrath, before the day of visitation, had been a terrible one, tempered by no exercise of clemency. From the frightful punishment, generally, the threatening ascends to its highest point, the punishment of hell: he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone. It was with fire and brimstone that Sodom and Gomorrah were punished; Genesis 19:24; Luke 17:29, “The same day that Lot went out of Sodom, it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all.” On the ground of this prophetic action temporal judgments on the wicked appear in the Old Testament under the image of fire and brimstone—see Psalms 11:6; Isaiah 34:9-10, where it is said, in the threatening against Edom, the type and representative of the enemies of the church, “The streams thereof shall be turned into pitch, and the dust thereof into brimstone, and the laud thereof shall become burning pitch. It shall not be quenched night nor day; the smoke thereof shall go up for ever; from generation to generation it shall lie waste; none shall pass through it for ever and ever.” In the passage before us the peculiarly disagreeable fire of brimstone is used as an image of the torments of hell. For that these are what are meant here, there can be no doubt from the parallel passages, ch. Revelation 19:20, where the beast and the false prophet are cast together into the lake of fire, which burns with brimstone, ch. Revelation 20:10, where Satan himself is cast there, and ch. Revelation 21:8, according to which the lost have their part in the lake, that burns with fire and brimstone. Nor do the fundamental passages in the Gospels leave any room to doubt, such as Matthew 5:22, Matthew 13:42, Matthew 18:8; Luke 16:24, and, in particular, Luke 12:4-5, to which the words before us are very closely related, “Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do; but I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, who after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell. Yea, I say unto you, fear him.” We have only a variation of this declaration of our Lord, in the passage now under consideration. The practical point of view in both is the same. Both aim at driving out the fear of man by means of the fear of God. The fire of brimstone, besides, as a punishment, is the righteous recompense for the unrighteous brimstone-fire of their passion, their wrath, their hatred; comp. ch. Revelation 9:17-18. The torment of the fire and brimstone seizes them, before the holy angels, and before the Lamb. These stand over against the instruments of the beast, before whom the true confessors of the Lamb were tormented. That they are to be regarded as the executors of the judgment, is clear from the closely related passage 2 Thessalonians 1:6-9, where the Lord Jesus appears with the angels of his power, to execute in flaming fire vengeance on those, who know not God and are not obedient to the Gospel. The angels and the Lamb cannot be mentioned as those against whom they have fought, and whom they now see present with shame in their punishment. For, nothing is ever said of a battle against the angels. The angels are designated as holy.[Note: This predicate is wanting in man; MSS. But the omission has been occasioned merely by the invertion in others, and the uncertainty thereby produced. The bare angels would be too bald.] In 2 Thessalonians 1, “the angels of his power” is a corresponding expression. Holy = glorious (comp. ch. Revelation 4:8), is applied as an epithet to the angels, in contrast to the impotent creatures on earth, who can give no resistance to the strokes of these august servants of the divine vengeance. Christ appears here under the name of the Lamb, for the same reason that he did so in ch. Revelation 6:16. The words, “the smoke of their torment ascends up for ever and ever,” refer to Genesis 19:28, where Abraham is represented as looking down upon Sodom and Gomorrah, and the whole plain of Jordan, “and lo! the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.” In that great monument of the righteous judgment of God. there was given a matter-of-fact prophecy of the one before us. Hell would be a fable, if it had not such earthly types. What is to be done hereafter, can only be regarded as a reality, when the same law that necessitates it is found to be in operation here. An allusion is made to the same passage in ch. Revelation 19:3, where it is said of Babylon, “and her smoke ascends up for ever and ever.” There, the catastrophe of ancient times is referred to as giving assurance of an earthly judgment. The words, “And they have no rest day and night,” &c., merely resume the preceding clause about the smoke of their torment ascending up for ever, in order to join thereto the emphatically repeated description of those who are appointed to that dreadful fate: the end of the message returns by a sort of refrain to its beginning. From what they have no rest, enjoy no relief, is to be learned from the preceding words; it is from being tormented with fire and brimstone. The meaning is, and they have there no rest. Against the interpretation of Vitringa: but in this life they must carry about with them an evil conscience, which gives them no rest day and night, a decisive objection is furnished by ch. Revelation 20:10, “and they are tormented day and night for ever and ever;” as it shews, that we can only understand what is said here of hell-torments, and as the contrast to the heavenly rest of the saints in Revelation 14:13. The threatening is a frightful one. But it has the security for its truth in the word of the Lord, Matthew 25:41, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” In the presence of such an appalling truth, who would ever think of making concessions to the beast, or of yielding a finger’s breadth to the world? The clause, “they have no rest day and night,” points back to the words in ch. Revelation 4:8, “and have no rest day and night, and say, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God.”This restlessness in intolerable suffering forms the contrast to that other restlessness in the blessed discharge of duty, which needs no relaxation, because activity here is itself refreshing. The choice lies only between these two kinds of restlessness. An intermediate condition, the rest of inactivity, does not exist. Revelation 14:12. Here is the patience of the saints, those that keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus. (Luther improperly omits the article before patience, and after saints repeats here are). The verse contemplates the point of view from which the preceding description is to be considered, the end it is intended to serve. The object was to strengthen believers in patience, in the willing endurance of all that they had to suffer for Christ, while steadfastly adhering to their confession. Is the hour of judgment approaching? Is the Babylon, that now boasts of her victories, destined to destruction? Are there inexpressible torments awaiting the worshippers of the beast? Then, assuredly, the patience of the saints is here in its proper place (comp. on ch. Revelation 13:10), which is not weakened and impaired through suffering. Bengel: “It is patience, when one adapts himself to all that he has to suffer, and will comply with nothing that is forbidden.” The words, “those that keep,”&c., have respect to that, which by means of patience is to be maintained against all assaults; q.d., that they keep.[Note: That the τηρεῖν is used by John, in passages of this sort, in the sense of keeping (see on ch. 1:3, 2:26, 3:8, 12:17), comes out here with peculiar clearness. For this sense alone will suit both the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.] That under the commands of God faith in Jesus, that is, faith toward Jesus, is to be regarded as holding the foremost place, in which the fulfilling of all the rest has its root, is evident from 1 John 3:23, “And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ.” Where the faith in Jesus is but maintained, there, as a matter of course, will be found the keeping of all the other commandments of God, which here come more especially into notice; such as, thou shall have no other gods before me, thou shalt love the Lord thy God, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Revelation 14:13. And I heard a voice from heaven saying, Write: Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord, from henceforth. Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours, for their works follow with them. In the preceding verse we have the negative reason assigned for patience, in the reference that is had to the heavy judgments of God on the Antichrist, and those who allow themselves to be seduced by him; here is given the positive reason, in the view that is presented of the eternal blessedness of the faithful. Who, that has his eye fixed on it, would not willingly surrender his poor life on earth? Who can hang in doubt, when the alternative is placed before him between having no rest day or night from the torments of hell, and a repose from his toils? The voice from heaven can neither be that of Christ, nor of God, for it speaks of those who die in the Lord. It may well be conceived to be that of one of the just made perfect, testifying, from his own experience, what the true members of the militant church on earth have to expect in heaven, perhaps one of the elders (ch. Revelation 7:13-14). For, the order to write, bespeaks the high importance of the declaration. Berleb. Bible: “This command to write is repeated twelve times in the Revelation, to indicate, that all the things it refers to are matters of importance, which must not be forgotten by the church of Christ. What, then, is it, that John was to write? What is of the greatest moment for us poor, fallen creatures, to know in life and death?So then may the Spirit of Jesus Christ himself write these words, which are so true and certain, with his finger on all our hearts, and engrave them on our minds, that they may no more be overlooked or forgotten! They shall indeed be of good service to us, if with all seriousness we lay hold of them, and treasure them up in a really good heart.” That the blessedness spoken of does not refer to the great distress of the world, which the persons in question have escaped, as is supposed by some, who, unseasonably, compare Isaiah 57:1-2, but only to the felicity of heaven, appears from what follows, where they are declared to be blessed on account of their resting from their labours. It is the dead that are the subject of the declaration, because the blessedness belongs to the state after death; q.d. Blessed after their death are those, &c. It is not said, they are dead; for it is intended to give courage for death; but it is said: the dead, in order to determine the sphere of blessedness. Some suppose, that the dead are here regarded in the spiritual sense; thus Bengel: “In respect to the heavenly life, we are all dead. Hence our Lord said to a disciple, Let the dead bury their dead. Not only the buried, but also the persons who bury, are alike dead.” But the faithful, who alone are spoken of in the context, are never described in Scripture as dead. In Matthew 8:22, the dead are the unbelieving as opposed to the believing. In Romans 8:10, it is said, “But if Christ is in you, the body is dead, indeed, because of sin, but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” Comp. on ch. Revelation 3:1. The Lord is the Lord Jesus; comp. Revelation 22:20, Revelation 11:8, and the fundamental passage, 2 Thess. 4:16; 1 Corinthians 15:18, where the discourse is of the dead and such as sleep in Jesus. A commentary on the expression, in the Lord, by faith incorporated with him, is supplied by John 15:4, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide in me.” Those that die in the Lord are not the martyrs alone; but the blessedness of dying in the Lord is celebrated, in order to excite to martyrdom, to inspire the determination to be faithful even unto death, ch. Revelation 2:10. The connection shews, that we are not to think of the martyrs alone as such. For the blessedness mentioned belongs manifestly to the 144,000, the whole Christian host, in contrast with the worshippers of the beast, who have no rest day and night. Then, the expression itself is against the limitation to the martyrs, as is also the comparison of the fundamental passages. (The brief description in 1 Thessalonians 4:16, “the dead in Christ,” is here unfolded). We find the right view given by Bengel, “To die in the Lord. means to depart in the faith of Jesus Christ the Son of God, as a Christian, 1 Peter 4:16; it takes place alike on the death-bed, and through the power of the beast; which last, indeed, at such a time was the common mode.”The dead, who die in the Lord, are blessed from henceforth. This from henceforth does not form a contrast with an earlier time, during which the dead, who die in the Lord, were not blessed. Not that; for the blessedness is quite as old as the dying in the Lord, and this dates from the death of Christ, which brought life to light also for the intermediate state (2 Timothy 1:10). But the expression forms a contrast in respect to a distant future, in respect to the completion of the kingdom of God. It means substantially, even now; not merely in the new Jerusalem which is one day to be set up on the renovated earth, but from the very moment of their departure to heaven. It is explained by the conversation between Christ and the penitent thief. This person prayed that the Lord would remember him when he should come in his kingdom, viz. at the setting up of his kingdom of glory on the earth. But the Lord grants him more than he sought:” Verily, I say unto thee, to-day shalt thou be with me in paradise”(Luke 23:43). When the malefactor called Jesus Lord, he showed that he was one who died in the Lord. For it is to die in the Lord, when one in the immediate prospect of death confesses to him with full confidence as the Lord. In this book a distinction is drawn in ch. Revelation 6:11 between a glorious inheritance which is obtained immediately after departure, and another which is to accrue at some period in the remote future; and the former, the heavenly blessedness which begins immediately when life here has ceased, is portrayed at considerable length in ch. Revelation 7:9-17; comp. also ch. Revelation 14:1-5. The word here: Write, blessed from henceforth, has its proper complement in that recorded in ch. Revelation 19:9, Write, blessed are they who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb; which bears respect to the second stage of blessedness. The first is referred to, besides our verse, in ch. Revelation 20:6, “Blessed is he and holy, who has part in the first resurrection.” This word, from henceforth, is a precious jewel, an antidote against the cheerless doctrine that would make a long night go before the bright day; such, for example, as theirs is, who dream of a sleep of the soul. The real- sting of the comfortless character of this doctrine does not exactly lie in its throwing the full inheritance of salvation so far back. The throwing back is so much at variance with the essential nature of faith, that the matter itself becomes thereby uncertain. If it is true what our Lord says in the gospel of John, John 5:24, “Verily, verily, I say to you, whosoever heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me, has everlasting life, and does not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life;”then the soul’s life in Christ can suffer no interruption; and whenever any interruption is believed to exist, eternal life itself is indirectly denied. The from henceforth is a strong shield to the Christian, which may keep him from falling away under all temptations. If in this now he must die for the faith, he attains from henceforth to a life, in comparison of which the life he surrenders may be regarded as a death.—“Yea, saith the Spirit; this”—as Bengel remarks—“is a very agreeable interpellation in which the Spirit catches up the words that were uttered by the voice from heaven.” The Spirit (comp. on ch. Revelation 2:7) is the Spirit by which John was inspired. What is uttered here needs a higher security than can be given to it by “the Christian consciousness.” We are not, with Luther, to render: yea, the Spirit saith; but only, yea, saith the Spirit. Hence, we are to supply from the preceding, “blessed are the dead who die in the Lord;”[Note: In like manner is the main statement to be repeated after the ναὶ ? out of the preceding context in Matthew 11:6 : ναὶὁπατήρ (ἐξομολογου·μαίσοι) ὅτιοὕτωςἐγένετοεὐδοκίαἔμπροσθένσου, comp. 15:27. and the following words, “that they may rest from their labours,” &c., will then denote more precisely wherein the blessedness consists, or wherein this makes itself to be known.[Note: Exactly corresponding is ch. 22:14, Μακάριοιοἱπλύνοντεςτὰςστολὰςαὐτῶν, ἵναἔσταιἡἐξουσίααὐτῶνἐπὶτὸξύλοντῆςζωῆς, where also ἵνα is used to indicate more precisely the manner of the blessedness; see also for another example of a similar use of ἵνα in ch. 8:12, 9:20. Along with the resting from labours, goes the not resting from saying, Holy, holy, holy, which it is the highest felicity of the elect to be ever uttering. Berleb. Bible, “Souls, which have become truly soft and weary under the burden of this life and the service of vanity, which have learned to sigh after rest, like a servant and day-labourer, these have much work lying upon their back, and it is a sweet word for them to hear, that they ‘ shall rest.” The labours here referred to are those they have had in the service of the Lord; comp. ch. Revelation 2:2; John 4:38; Thess. Revelation 1:3, 1 Thessalonians 3:5; 1 Corinthians 3:8, 1 Corinthians 15:58. He that would rest must work—work, not merely for his own interest, but for him who has bought him. We must the rather think here only of labours in the Lord (in particular of such as were undergone in the conflict with the beast), as the following works are manifestly to be regarded as the product of the labours. “Work (remarks Bengel) elsewhere imports reward, but not here. For reward follows no one out of this world into the next, but is met with in that world. However, the following of the works indicates that there is to be reward.” This furnishes a refutation to the remark of De Wette, “By a metonymy deeply seated in the nature of things work is put as identical with the consequence or reward of work, while elsewhere the latter, according to the lower view of barter, is looked upon as different from the former.” This “lower view of barter” has place also here, and wherever the living God is truly recognized. If we identify work and reward, placing the latter only in the satisfaction to one’s natural feelings, which accompanies virtue,[Note: So Grotius; memoria factorum, unde pax et tranquillitas conscientiae.] we should make man his own rewarder.The for has been changed into a but by those who have changed the resting into a simple repose. A resting is not to be thought of, if their works do not follow them.When once the idea of resting is rightly conceived, the antithesis introduced by the but, Se, will not appear suitable.It is said: not, their works follow after, but they follow with them.[Note: The expression ἀκολουθεῖνμετά ? is found out of the Revelation only in Luke 9:49, where John also speaks in a remarkable manner.] By this the immediate consequence and accompanying is denoted. The expression” with them,” corresponds to the “from henceforth” going before. The works would follow, though they were only rewarded at the last judgment. Bengel: “Whether there may remain a short, and little regard, or even none at all, of their works in the world, this does them no harm, nor do they inquire about it.” THE SECTION (CH. Revelation 14:14-20) In Revelation 14:6-13, the temptation, which the apparent omnipotence of the beast carried along with it, has had its sting taken out by the reference to the judgment, which threatens the world, that plies the temptation. Here, the judgment, as already entered, presents itself to the eye of the Seer, and indeed under a double image—that of the harvest, Revelation 14:14-16, and that of the vintage and the wine-press, Revelation 14:17-20. Both representations possess a comprehensive character. What in history is realized in a whole series of judicial acts, which at last run out into the final judgment, is here brought together in one great harvest, one great vintage and pressing of the grapes. Here, as also in the concluding portion of Joel, which is to be regarded as the fundamental passage, it is quite in vain to attempt to refer to a single phase of the judgment, what by its throughout general keeping is at variance with every more special interpretation. Those who attempted this, were led to do so merely from not perceiving the relation of this fourth group to the sixth, the peculiar characteristic of which consists in the representation of the particular phases of the judgment, the harvest and the vintage. But the real import of this section is also misapprehended by those, who speak of the typical or preliminary character of the two transactions. The sharp sickle, with which the harvest of the whole earth is reaped, and the clusters of the vine of the earth are cropt, has a quite peremptory character. It leaves nothing over for a future judgment; the range of the judgment is an unlimited one; its sphere is the whole earth; and its severity also is such as to admit of no further increase. The expositors in question have falsely substituted the provisional nature of the judgment itself for the general character of the description given of the judgment.The practical aim is, to give courage before the world. For this nothing can be better adapted, than to “consider its end,” Psalms 73:17. Whoever, looking beyond its seeming almightiness, will fix his eye on the white cloud, and the Son of man on it with his sharp sickle, he can afford to laugh at the threatenings of the world; he knows, that it will soon itself suffer something far worse than it can inflict on him; and that he should inevitably be involved in its punishment, if he were to follow its guidance. Stephen, indeed, found it an easy matter to be steadfast. But the secret of his strength lay in this, that he was full of the Holy Ghost, and in consequence looked up toward heaven and saw the glory of God, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. The Spirit would also raise us to like strength, when he speaks through John and sets before us such representations as those under consideration. Any one, that will take these to himself, will find himself cured of that natural cowardice, which still clings to all, even the most courageous, and shall be enabled to ride upon the high places of the earth. Revelation 14:15. And another angel went out of the temple, and cried with a loud voice to Mm that sat on the cloud, Send thy sickle and reap, for the hour for reaping is come; for the harvest of the earth has become dry.The heavenly temple (comp. on ch. Revelation 7:15, Revelation 11:19), is the symbol of the church; and the seat of God, not generally, but only in so far as the affairs of the church are concerned. It is simply on this account, that the command to reap goes forth from the temple, the misdeeds to be punished being such as had been committed against the church, and so the judgment had its root in the relation of God to his church on earth.The call to send the sickle, rests on a personification of the sickle, the instrument is represented as an assistant.[Note: In Mark 4:29, the expression ἀποστέλλειτὸδρέπανον occurs exactly as here. The poetical expression points to a poetical ground, the passage in Joel. In other respects also the passage in Mark is the most nearly related to ours of all the Evangelists.]The expression, the hour is come, occurs in no part of Scripture so often, as in the Gospel of John, comp. John 2:4, John 7:30, John 8:20, John 16:21, John 16:25, John 16:32, John 17:1, etc. There are not properly two reasons assigned for the call, as Bengel supposes, but only one—the hour is come; and this again is based on the consideration, that the harvest of the earth has become dry. The punishment must not be delayed, if the measure of iniquity has become full (see Genesis 15:16; Matthew 23:32), “Where the carcase is, there the eagles shall be gathered together.” If any one, therefore, would know, whether a new phase of the harvest may be drawing nigh, he has only to inquire, whether the fields are becoming “white to the harvest.” That such is the case in the present day, that now the harvest of the earth has become dry, who can doubt? Bengel even in his day complained, “Any one that will carefully investigate the matter will find, that formerly people were wont to dig more deeply, that they possessed a spirit of greater seriousness, that they held more firmly by the word of God, that the obligations of holiness and the experiences of spiritual influence were much more inward, more savoury and tender, and more deeply rooted than they appear to be now. It seems as if much of what had been provided in earlier times, still continued to exist, but with enough ado to save itself from ruin.” And during the century which has passed since he wrote thus, matters have been retrograding more and more. Revelation 14:16. And he, who sat upon the cloud, thrust in his sickle on the earth, and the earth was reaped.The harvest of the earth is ripe, the harvest of the earth is reaped. Whence we plainly perceive the comprehensive character of this judgment. The harvest of Babylon is only a part of this harvest, the beginning of it. The last great harvest day is described in ch. Revelation 20:9. The word in ch. Revelation 14:7, “the hour of his judgment is come,” entirely agrees as to the meaning, only with this difference, that the judgment is there spoken of as at hand, and here of having already entered. He, who may be brought before an earthly judge, should above all have his eye intently fixed on the heavenly judge. “God judges on the earth”—this is the best preservative against the denial of the truth out of fear for human judges, not excepting the court of judgment which is formed by public opinion. Revelation 14:17. And another angel went out of the temple in heaven, who had also a sharp sickle. Bengel: “If the world will always do what it pleases in its own time, and makes one display after another, God, on the other hand, knows still better, what is to be done, when his long-suffering has reached its end.” The angel is described as another, primarily with reference to Revelation 14:15. For only the angel there mentioned is expressly called by that name. If any one, however, would go back to Revelation 14:14, no doubt can be raised on this ground, from the expression, another angel,” as to Christ being here also meant by it. For the name of angel has respect, not to the person, but to the mission. We can think of none but Christ. For, the two images of the harvest and the vintage are too closely connected with each other, to admit of the latter, along with the treading of the grapes, being given up to another than him to whom the former belonged; the rather as the badge of the sickle is common to both. The work, besides, is too great, to be committed to a single ordinary angel, and the office would tread too closely on the honour of Christ, to whom all judgment has been committed by the Father. The character of the judgment also, as exercised upon the enemies of Christ, would thereby be darkened. Finally, the one who treads the wine-press can, according to Isaiah 63, be no other than Christ, and he also appears as such in the passage, ch. Revelation 19:15, from which the one before us cannot be divorced.That the angel proceeds out of the temple, shews that Christ appears for the good of his persecuted church, with the sickle.In regard to the words, “Who had also a sharp sickle,” it is clear, that we must not substitute for the sickle another instrument, one commonly used in the gathering of grapes. The small agricultural interest is overbalanced by the higher design of indicating, through the oneness of the instrument, the internal connection that subsists between the harvest and the vintage.When fear would drive any one to concessions, let him only glance at this angel with the sharp sickle, that comes out of the heavenly temple, and he will feel as if a sword pierced his heart. Revelation 14:18. And another angel went forth from the altar, who has power over fire, and cried with a loud cry to him, who had the sharp sickle, and said, Send thy sharp sickle, and cut the clusters of the vine of the earth, for its clusters have become ripe.Bengel: “In the harvest he, to whom it is cried with a loud voice, is more gloriously described; but in the vintage a peculiar power is ascribed to him, who calls with a loud cry, and demands the gathering of the grapes.” The fact, that here he who has the sharp sickle is less pointedly described, is to be explained from the closely related character of the two images of judgment. The second representation is to be supplemented from the first. The altar, without any additional epithet, is the altar of burnt-offering. That the angel goes forth from it may be explained by a reference to Amos 9:1, “I saw the Lord standing upon the altar; and he said, Smite the lintel of the door, that the posts may shake; and cut them on the head all of them; and the remnant of them I will slay with the sword; he that fleeth of them shall not flee away, and he that escapeth of them shall not be delivered.” Ezekiel 9 is also to be taken into account as a farther enlargement of this declaration, and as the oldest commentary on it. There, at the Lord’s command, who comes to deliver his people, appear the ministers of his righteousness. They step forth (the scene is in the temple) beside the brazen altar. Hence, with Amos this altar is the place of transgression. There lie the unatoned iniquities of the people in one huge mass, the iniquities of both houses of Israel, instead of the rich treasury of love and faith which should have been found there embodied in sacrifice. In that place of transgression the Lord appears for the purpose of glorifying himself in the destruction of those who would not glorify him in their lives. So now, we might suppose here also that the angel comes from the altar on account of the foul gifts which had been presented on it—on account of the brimstone-fire of the hellish wickedness which had been burning there instead of the holy fire of God’s sacrifice. But what decides against this interpretation is the circumstance that the altar belongs only to the church, while the heathen, who are the subjects of the judgment, had nothing to do with it; they had not defiled it with their gifts, and could not call forth the divine vengeance upon the desecration. We must, therefore, seek for an explanation of this passage in ch. Revelation 6:9-10. Under the altar of the heavenly sanctuary lie the souls of those who were slain for the word of God and the testimony which they had, in consequence of their being sacrificed on the altar. From thence the slain cry with a loud voice, and say, “How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thon not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth!” The angel comes forth from the altar to avenge the blood of the saints which had been shed upon the altar. Then, we can also understand why the angel should come out of the altar and not from it, as if ascending from its base, because, according to ch. 6, the souls of the martyred saints lay there. (Ewald’s attempt to substitute from for out is quite unsuccessful.) Ch. Revelation 16:7 also, where the altar is represented as saying, “Yea, Lord, righteous and true are thy judgments,” favours this explanation. The altar is there viewed as the place where the blood of saints and prophets had been shed. Still further, ch. Revelation 9:13 is analogous, where the punishment of the world is sought from the golden altar, as the place of the prayers of God’s people. There, as having respect to the thirst for the execution of God’s judgment on the world, the ardent supplication of the saints; here. their blood.The angel has power over fire. Fire is commonly used in the Revelation as the symbol of divine wrath and judgment (comp. on ch. Revelation 4:5, Revelation 8:5); and that it is to be taken in this sense here also, is plain from the message that follows, which treats of the execution of judgment without making any mention of fire, which consequently must be fire, not in a literal, but a figurative sense. In Revelation 14:19 the wrath of God corresponds to this fire. That his wrath should appear under the image of fire has its foundation in the reference to the fire of the altar. The fire of God’s wrath utterly consumes those who are accused before God by the fire of the sacrifice of his saints; comp. ch. Revelation 8:5, where, in like manner, the wrath-fire is used in reference to the fire of the altar, only with this difference, that the fire there is the fire of prayer, here the fire of sacrifice. The power is of such a kind as may belong to an angel; he who has power is at the same time under power (Matthew 8:9). The power is that only of a subaltern. In the full sense God alone has power over fire (comp. Revelation 16:9). A limitation is also supplied by what follows; as from this it appears that the power over fire consists in the circumstance, that he has to carry to him, to whom the Father has committed all judgment, the message that the time for it had now come. On the words, “the clusters of the vine of the earth,” Bengel remarks, “The blood-stream (rather, the sea of blood) thereof is so deep, and runs (extends) so far, that no other field but that of the whole world is great enough to bear such vast clusters.” Revelation 14:19. And the angel struck with his sickle at the earth, and cut the vine of the earth, and threw (the cut-off clusters) into the great wine-press of the wrath of God. What the wine-press is for common clusters, that is the wrath of God for these. Revelation 14:20. And the wine-press was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the wine-press, even unto the bridles of the horses, a tract of a thousand six hundred stadia broad. The city, without any accompanying epithet, can only be the city, which was the city by way of eminence in the strictly bible territory, “the holy city” (ch. Revelation 11:1), Jerusalem. But this in the Revelation is always a designation of the church (see vol. i. p. 425.) That the wine-press was trodden out of the city, indicates that the members of the church are not the object of the judicial agency of God, that this has respect to the execution of judgment on the world as opposed to the church. Parallel is ch. Revelation 7:1-8, which represents the preservation of believers amid the judgments that threaten the world. The despised and hated “city” is now the only place of security and deliverance; but its gates are shut  against its despisers and enemies. What is said of the triumphant church in ch. Revelation 21:27, “and there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination or maketh a lie,” and in ch. Revelation 22:15, holds true also of the church militant. Bengel: “We here learn that the wicked are to be altogether excluded from the city of God as castaways; that they themselves shall be made to feel to their cost how great a salvation they have despised, and that they shall be made to serve as a salutary and refreshing spectacle to the inhabitants of the city of God.” Comp. Isaiah 66:24. According to ch. Revelation 20:9 we have probably to conceive of the “city” as being besieged by those who are here thrown into the wine-press. In the last chapter of Joel, also, the enemies on whom the judgments of God alight are gathered against Jerusalem; by which is expressed in a sensuous form the idea, that hostility to the church is the occasion of the judgment.Blood comes forth from the wine-press. Wine is called in the Old Testament (Genesis 49:11; Deuteronomy 32:14) the blood of grapes, not on account of its red colour, but because it is prepared from the juice and strength of grapes; comp. Isaiah 63:3-6. But these grapes yield real blood.The blood reaches, so deep is the sea of blood which comes from the destruction of all the wicked on the earth, even to the bridles of the horses. “Oh! how vast a supply of fruit must there have been to afford so great a stream of blood!” The mention of the horses’ bridles seems at first sight to shew that in the execution of the judgments, which are here gathered into a great and appalling image, God may serve himself, to some extent at least, of men; comp. ch. Revelation 9:7; Revelation 9:13-21, where the four angels invade the earth with an incredible warlike force. But the warlike forces may also be those of the heavenly hosts (comp. ch. Revelation 19:14-15), by which the treader of the wine-press is accompanied in his vengeful enterprise. And this is the natural supposition, according to the passage just referred to, as there the warlike hosts come forth on white horses in connection with the work of treading the wine-press; and as elsewhere no mention is made of human instruments of judgment, either in the harvest or in the treading of the wine-press. What is written there stands related to the representation here, as a part to the whole. The mention of the horses would be too isolated if they did not belong to the train, by which the angel with the sharp sickle is immediately attended. In the fundamental passage of Joel also, the heroes or mighty ones are those of God, the angels.Such is the depth of the sea of blood, but its breadth measures 1600 stadia. We are here to take for our starting-post the holy city, before whose gates the sea of blood (a sea, not a river, as also in Ezekiel 32:6 and Isaiah 34:3) begins, and completes a circle of 1600 stadia.[Note: The á̓ ?ðï̀ ? of distance from. This peculiar usage is found in the whole of the New Testament only in the Apocalypse and in the Gospel of John, ch 11:18, 21:8. The number denotes a judgment encircling the whole earth. Four, the signature of the earth (comp. on ch. Revelation 4:6, Revelation 7:1, Revelation 9:14, Revelation 13:7, Revelation 14:6) is first multiplied by itself, and then again by 100. Quite similar is the formation of the 144,000; the fundamental number is twelve, first multiplied by itself, and then by 1000. Similar also is the formation of the number 666. According to several expositors the number here must be the length of Palestine. But this proceeds on the false supposition that it is a stream of blood which is here spoken of, instead of a sea of blood. Besides, the length of Palestine cannot be made properly to square with such a measurement; so that we are thrown on mere conjecture, to which no licence is given in the Apocalypse. Finally, one does not see what Palestine could have to do here, since throughout the Apocalypse it has no signification attached to it. THE GROUP OF THE SEVEN VIALS (Ch. 15 and 16) The fourth group delineates the conflict waged by the three enemies of the kingdom of God against it; the sixth, how they are one after another vanquished. The fifth forms a sort of prelude to the latter. The kingdom of God has no absolute past; all the old deeds of God become new again in it, whenever the circumstances recur, which called them forth. Thus, here, the Egyptian plagues revive again, by means of which in ancient times the beast, whose fury had once more begun to exhibit itself in the days of John, was visited in its first form of manifestation, and was at last crushed. The Seer beholds seven angels, who have the last seven plagues, ch. Revelation 15:1. In the presence of these angels and their work the just made perfect sing, with anticipative confidence, the praise of God, Revelation 15:2-4. Then the seven angels proceed forth from the temple of God, and seven vials are given to them filled with the wrath of God, Revelation 15:5-8. How the seven vials, one after another, are poured out, and what effects proceed from them, is represented in ch. 16, at the close of which we find the power of the world lying shattered to pieces on the ground. Ch. 15 Revelation 15:1. And I saw another sign in heaven, great and wonderful; seven angels, that had the last seven plagues; for with them is finished to wrath of God. A great and wonderful sign (comp. the expression, “a great sign,” in ch. Revelation 12:1, and “another sign” in ch. Revelation 12:3) this vision is called, not in respect to the others, but considered by itself; not in contrast to the others, but as a part of the whole. This book consists of simply such signs. The words indicate, that a new scene begins. That the sign is called great and wonderful on account of the height of the matter denoted by it, is evident from the intentionally corresponding expression in Revelation 15:3, “Great and wonderful are thy works.”The question, whether the seven angels here are identical with the angels to whom the seven trumpets were given, is a frivolous one. As seven angels are mentioned quite indefinitely, we are alike without grounds for considering them either as identical or as different.For the present, John sees merely the seven angels, and only afterwards the temple and their proceeding out of it. That they are there represented as coming out of the temple, does not imply, that they had been shut up in the temple. Their connection with the temple serves merely to express a thought, which still could not he distinctly expressed here.The angels have the seven last plagues. The instruments of these plagues, the seven vials, are only said to have been given to them at Revelation 15:7. How John should have already known, that they had the seven last plagues, is not said. But they no doubt had their signature, which was revealed to him by the Spirit. Their countenance alone must have bespoken them to be ministers of judgment. The eye as of a flame of fire speaks not less distinctly than the vials.It has often been supposed, that this verse supplies the place of a superscription, introduces by a brief anticipative survey, what is reported at length in the description that follows. And undoubtedly, it is the case, that the verse to some extent supplies the place of a superscription. But it is not the less certain, on the other hand, that it is not reported on the appearance of the angels by way of anticipation, but that a preliminary view of the seven angels was already granted to the Seer. What was perceived by him in Revelation 15:2-4 implies this; it must have been intelligible to him, if he had not previously seen the great and wonderful sight of the seven angels. It is to what these were destined to accomplish that the song of praise refers, which was raised by those who stood on the sea of glass mingled with fire. Only in the presence of the seven angels could they sing as they did. The song forms a commentary on the appearance of the angels. We have an air without words, if these did not precede. Ch. Revelation 8:2 is quite analogous. There the prophet sees the angels with the seven trumpets. Then in Revelation 15:3-5 follows a sort of prelude, the vision of the angel with frankincense. Thereafter commences the work of the seven ministers of divine vengeance.The prophet sees the angels who have the seven last plagues. Why they are so called is expressly stated: “because by them is the wrath of God finished.” We have here a clear and certain proof for the division of the Revelation into groups. After these seven plagues no others can come. If the wrath is finished (comp. Isaiah 9:20; Daniel 11:36; Lamentations 4:11) no further manifestations of it can possibly enter. Bengel’s remark, “after the completion of the seven plagues, the holy displeasure of God toward the other enemies does not therefore cease,” is only an evidence of embarrassment. The subject of discourse is of the last plagues generally, of the finishing of the wrath of God, without any limitation as to the object. The song, also, which the conquerors sing on the sea of glass, shows that matters can proceed no farther on the same scene. It implies, that the end is absolutely reached. And if still in the chapters that follow (Revelation 17-20), there are delineated frightful judgments of God, the only possible explanation is, that a co-ordinate series is introduced, that at ch. 17 we have a new beginning. By these seven plagues the worldly power is completely annihilated. But this does not hinder, that in the following portions other aspects of this great drama should be exhibited; nay, it is necessary that this should be done; a group must still follow, to disclose what we naturally expect after the vision of the three enemies in Revelation 12-14. These plagues are all inflicted on the first beast and his worshippers; of the fate of the second beast, and of the great author of the seduction, Satan, we learn nothing here. And even in regard to the first beast, we still do not receive a complete answer to the questions which naturally arise out of Revelation 12-14. The beast is here always represented as a whole, and as the object of the judicial severity of God. But in ch. Revelation 13:1 mention is made of the heads and horns of the beast. What becomes of these, of the former in so far as they are still present and future, we expect some disclosure to be given. We expect to find represented, not merely the judgments on the beast, the ungodly power of the world in general, but the judgments also on its individual phases. Now, all this we do find in Revelation 17-20, to which the present group stands in the relation of a prelude.The “last” judgments of God are represented also by the two groups of the seven seals and the seven trumpets. This is as certain as that they each bring things to a termination, have their issue in exhibiting the ungodly world prostrate on the ground. The difference between the present group and these earlier ones is merely, that the former take for granted what is described in Revelation 12-14—that here the judgments alight on the ungodly power of the world, while there the object of the judicial severity of God is more generally delineated. There ungodliness, here the ungodly power of the world. It accords with this, that the seven plagues are here brought in. This designation of the judgments of God has respect to the plagues of Egypt (comp. Exodus 9:14), the object of which was not the ungodly world in general, but specially the ungodly world-power. The plagues and the beast necessarily go together. Because the name of plagues was formerly appropriated to denote the judgments of God on the first phase of that power, so here also the judgments that were impending over it are called by the name of plagues.[Note: That the word has here the limited sense indicated above, is clear from the correspondence of the references to the Egyptian plagues, which pervade the whole description, and is also confirmed by ch. 11:6. It is only in an exceptional way, that in ch. 9:20, the judgments of the trumpets are denoted by plagues. The general phraseology does not exclude the particular. If this finds place here, then the plagues, even apart from the explanation we have given, cannot be called the last with reference to earlier ones; for no earlier plagues had been spoken of.]As compared with the two earlier groups the shortness of this, in its representation of the judgments of God, is peculiar. These follow stroke upon stroke. The meaning of this racy shortness—which has the same end in view as elsewhere the full delineation—which is but one of diverse ways to impress the mind, and is here the more in its place, as the exhibition of the important sixth group hastens on—has been quite misapprehended by those, who conclude from it, that the seven plagues, which accompany the worldly power through whole centuries, and each of which brings together in a condensed form what is constantly repeating itself anew, as often as the worldly power renews its hostility toward the kingdom of God, shall have to run their course in a very brief space of time.The expression, “is finished” is used by way of anticipation; it shall be finished, when all the seven shall have taken effect. Revelation 15:2. And I saw as a sea of glass mingled with fire, and them that had gotten the victory of the beast and of his image, and of the number of his name, that they stood on the sea of glass and had the harps of God. The sea denotes the great flood of the wonderful works of God, of his righteous and holy ways, of his judicial acts manifested among men. The glass denotes their blamelessness and purity; and the sea being mingled with fire, indicates that it is chiefly about the manifestations of God’s wrath, his punitive righteousness, that the vision is occupied (comp. on ch. Revelation 4:5-6). The meaning of the symbol is given by the song, which those standing on it sing. Both the symbol and the song anticipate what is to be accomplished by the seven angels with the seven last plagues; precisely as in ch. Revelation 11:15-18 in immediate prospect of the last catastrophe, the blessed in heaven rejoice, and the four and twenty elders give thanks, that the Lord now comes in his kingdom. The sea of glass is the product of the deeds of the seven angels, who have not as yet begun their work. But to the eye of faith, whose part it is to anticipate the future, the sea is already there. That those, who stand on the sea of glass, have to do with the impending work of the seven angels, that the sea is a symbolical embodiment of their work, and that their song celebrates it, is clear, not only from the narrative beginning with the angels, and again returning to them after the interlude of Rev 15:5, but also from the correspondence between the words in Revelation 15:3, “great and wonderful are thy works,” and those in Revelation 15:1, “a sign great and wonderful.”The expression, “standing on a sea of glass,” carries an allusion to Exodus 15:1, where Moses beside the Red Sea, with the children of Israel, sings a song to the Lord,—comp. “they sing the song of Moses and the Lamb,” in Revelation 15:3. The Red Sea, in which the Egyptians were drowned, and which therefore presents itself as an image of the righteous judgments of God, was a type of this sea of glass.The subjects are the conquering, not those who have conquered, if viewed with respect to the present of the Seer, in which the victory was still in being. Bengel justly compares “these are they who come out of the great tribulation,” in ch. Revelation 7:14. The words are literally: the conquering out of the beast. This peculiar construction, quite unusual elsewhere, points to the circumstance, that before the victory they were in the power of the beast, and are rendered plain by ch. Revelation 11:7, where it is said of the beast, “and it shall overcome them and kill them.”[Note: Mark: “It is not without emphasis, that along with the conquering of the enemy, an indication should be given of his former power, from which they had vindicated themselves, and of a full escape being made by the victors from his power.” There is a similar pregnancy in Psalms 18:21, “Out of the horns of the buffalo thou hearest me.”]The text followed by Luther, after “and of his image,” adds  “and of his mark,” καὶἐκτοῦχαράγματοςαὐτοῦ ?, in opposition to the best authorities, and also to ch. Revelation 13:17, according to which the mark consists either of the name of the beast, or of the number of his name; so that the latter cannot be put co-ordinately with the other.Harps in the hands of the glorified saints are also mentioned in ch. Revelation 5:8, Revelation 14:2; but harps of God, such as are consecrated to his praise, occur only here.[Note: The “instruments of the song of God,” in 1 Chronicles 16:42; 2 Chronicles 7:6, are not quite analogous. For these denote instruments, which accompany the praise of God. The words in 2 Chronicles 30:21, λμιςζμιδεη more nearly correspond.] Vitringa and others would transfer the scene to the earth, instead of placing it in heaven; but the parallelism of the section ch. Revelation 7:9, Revelation 14:1-5, decides against this. Accordingly, it is the just made perfect, who here, after having themselves overcome by blood and death, celebrate the earthly triumph of the cause, which they once themselves served on earth, and the judgments of God, by which he brings to destruction its enemy, the beast. Revelation 15:3. And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, and say, Great and wonderful are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou king of the heathen. Revelation 15:4. Who would not fear thee?[Note: Very important MSS. have merely φοβηθῃ ?͂ ? without σε. But in the fundamental passage of Jeremiah, it is said, “Who would not fear thee?”And the simple, who would not fear, has something bald, comp. also ch. 11:18, 14:7, 19:5. O Lord, and glorify thy name? For thou alone art godly. For, all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are become manifest. From the expression in Revelation 15:2, “standing on the sea,” from the accompanying harps, which indicate the lyrical character of the song, and from its laudatory matter, we can only understand by the song of Moses the song recorded in Exodus 15, not the prophetical song in Deuteronomy 32. So also we are led to infer, from the mission of the angels, which is celebrated by this song. Their work was to renew the plagues of Egypt, the completion of which in the overthrow of Pharaoh was celebrated in that song of Moses.The song is at the same time the song of Moses and of the Lamb. The latter does not belong to the Lamb as its author, but gives glory to him as the Saviour of his suffering people. It is for the sake of the Lamb, that the seven angels are sent forth by God for the destruction of the world, and for the relief of his saints. Hence the song of Moses will also be the song which celebrates the glorious salvation that was obtained for the church through his instrumentality. This is confirmed by a comparison of the passage from which the designation of Moses as the servant of God is taken, Exodus 14:31, “And Israel saw that great hand, which the Lord showed towards the Egyptians: and the people feared the Lord, and believed on him and his servant Moses.” In Exodus 15 Moses is not expressly called the author of the song. By the analogy of Exo 15:1, and by Revelation 14:1, where the Lamb stands at the head of his hundred forty and four thousand on Mount Zion, it may well be supposed, that the Lamb sings this song along with his people. The addition alone “of the Lamb” forbids us to expect a literal agreement with the song of Moses. It would let down the salvation effected by the Lamb, if it were represented as a mere repetition of the earlier one. A new salvation, a new song. Isaiah, too, who, in Isaiah 12, applies the song of Moses to the Messiah’s salvation, satisfies himself with some merely verbal allusions, the place of which is here supplied by the express reference to the song of Moses, that is wanting in the prophet. But it is common to this song of the Lamb and the song of Moses, that in both alike the power of the heathen world is the object of the judicial energy of God. The (Habakkuk 3) third chapter of Habakkuk also is such another variation of the song of Moses. It begins with the prayer, that God would revive his work in the midst of the years; and then praises God for the fulfilment of this prayer, since he had in a glorious manner made the old new again, which there, as well as here, is anticipated by faith. On the words, “Great and wonderful are thy works, Lord God Almighty,” comp. Psalms 92:6, “How great are thy works, O Lord, very deep are thy thoughts.” They are the works and purposes of God for the deliverance of his people, which can only be accomplished by the destruction of the wicked, their enemies. See also Psalms 66:3, “Say to God, how terrible art thou in thy works, because of the fulness of thy power must thine enemies feign to thee.” The works of God there also are his judgments on the proud heathen world. Their greatness and wonderfulness here consist in this, that he has given to the feeble the victory over the apparently omnipotent. Berleb. Bible, “Now the works of God come to their height, just as formerly the wickedness of the world had come to its height.” In the epithets, Lord God, Almighty, by which what is said of God is traced up to its necessity in the divine nature, it is implied, that this nature is the source from which the stream of the actions hits flowed; comp. on ch. Revelation 1:8. On the words, “Just and true are thy ways,” comp. Psalms 145:17, “The Lord is just in all his ways, and holy in all his works.” The justice or righteousness is manifested in this, that he gives to each their own, to his church salvation, to his enemies destruction. The truthfulness of God’s ways refers not merely to his faithfulness in keeping promise, but also to his omnipotence. The truthfulness of God would then also be affected, if he could not perform what he had promised to his church, or what the relation in which he stands to his church on earth, essentially demands.The justice and truthfulness of the ways of God may be perceived by this, that he makes himself known as the king of the heathen. (Luther, by following an unsupported reading, and against the fundamental passage in Jeremiah, has: thou king of saints, a title not given to God in all Scripture). For, the heathen are the power which opposes itself to the glorification of his righteousness and truth. When once this power is laid prostrate on the ground, as it shall be at the end of the seven plagues, then every month shall be stopped from complaining against the justice and truthfulness of his ways. The designation of God rests on Jeremiah 10:7, “Who would not fear thee, thou king of the heathen?” We can have the less doubt of the reference to this passage, as with the first words of it also the following verse begins. The whole subject of that chapter of Jeremiah, which is, that not idols, but God must be feared, is by such a reference quickened into new life in the soul.In seasons of tribulation on earth, when the worldly power appears to triumph over the church, she has often been led to doubt the greatness of God’s works, the justice and truth of his ways; to doubt whether he really were the king of the heathen. Now this doubt is put to shame; it is dispelled by deeds; the clouds, which veiled the glory of God from her eyes, are made entirely to vanish.The fear in Revelation 15:4 comprehends reverence. That God is everywhere to be feared, and his name to be glorified, has its foundation in the truth, that he alone is holy. The word ὁ ?́σιος, godly, when used of men, denotes a tender and solemn regard toward God and the relations appointed by him;[Note: Plato, Gorg. p. 507, B: περὶμὲνἀνθρώτουςτὰπροσήκονταπράττων, δὶκαιἀ ?́νπράττοι, περὶδὲθεοὺςὁ ?́σια. Plutarch. Demetr. c. 24: τοῦτοδὲκαὶπρὸςτοὺςθωοὺςὁ ?́σιονκαὶπρὸςἀνθρώπουςδίκαιον. Polybius 23. 10. 8, παραβῆναικαὶτὰπρὸςτοὺςἀνθρώπουςδίκαις, καὶτὰπρὸςτοὺςθεοὺςὁ ?́σια.] when used of God, which, in the New Testament, it is only here and in ch. Revelation 16:5, it denotes regard to his own character and the government of the world as grounded therein. In ch. Revelation 16:5 also, the word is used in reference to his regard for justice, which he maintains through his judgments. It differs essentially from holy. For this, in the language of Scripture, denotes the absoluteness that is in God, and comprehends not merely sinlessness, but also omnipotence. Uprightness, ιωψ, when used of God, much more nearly corresponds to what is meant by godly. But God is called godly, not only in contrast to men, but also to the heathen gods, which violently broke through the limits of the moral order of the world. Indeed, according to the fundamental passage, Psalms 86:8-9, “Among the gods there is none like to thee, O Lord, and nothing is like thy works; all heathen whom thou hast made shall come and worship before thee, O Lord, and give glory to thy name,” the contrast with heathen gods is pre-eminently to be taken into account, which in this antagonism to the proper idea of the divine must necessarily be abolished. How much there is to do with the “Thou only art godly,” is most clearly exhibited in the representation of Nδgelsbach in his Homeric Theology. He says there, at p. 31, “We never find holiness expressed as a constituent element of divinity, so long as this is considered by itself, or may be understood from the converse of the gods with each other. Never is an epithet applied to deity, which indicated the consciousness of anything like that which is meant by the Bible when it speaks of the holiness of the true God. The famous declaration of Herodotus: the deity is envious, finds an ample confirmation even in Homer. Among themselves, indeed, the gods are not envious of good fortune. And the representation given in Homer of human affairs has provided for the gods an instrument, as it were, in the furies, for avenging as guilt and sin uninterrupted good fortune, which, though in itself guiltless, yet appears as unnatural, and trenching on their prerogatives.Because the wrath of deity in Homer has respect, not so properly to the sin as to the person of man, it is never appeased by a confession or renunciation of sin. The personally offended deity can at pleasure strike so high the worth of the offence committed against it, that all satisfaction offered by man will still remain below the estimate. Hence, even on this territory the gods continue standing in the sphere of common human nature, as they do also generally in all mental affections.”That God alone is godly is affirmed primarily on this account, that all heathen shall come and worship before him; and this again grows out of the circumstance, that his righteous deeds (ch. Revelation 19:8) or his judgments have become manifest. We might suppose that the coming of the heathen serves as a reason only in connection with this its foundation, q.d. for thy righteous deeds are made manifest in so glorious a manner, that all heathen shall come and worship before thee. But for this supposition we have no sufficient ground; the coming of the heathen also of itself is a proof of the declaration, that God alone is godly. For such a result could take place only in consequence of God making known his righteous character. And the fundamental passage of Psa 86:8-10 quoted above, from which the expression “glorify thy name” is taken, is against the supposition, as is also the alone. There, too, the maintaining of the glory of God is made primarily to appear from the coming of the heathen—comp. Zephaniah 2:11; Zechariah 14:9, Zechariah 14:16. But the confidence in respect to the coming of the heathen is founded in the fact, that God’s greatness manifests itself in glorious deeds, corresponding to the word, “for thy judgments are become manifest.” It is the reference to this fundamental passage which has given rise to the future, “shall come and worship.”Otherwise, the preterites would have been used according to the general style of the song, which anticipates the future. Now also in reality the future has in great part been changed into the preterite. In consequence of the righteous procedure of God all heathen are already come. The “all heathen” receives its limitation from what follows, ch. Revelation 16:19; Revelation 16:21, according to which the heathen to the very last harden themselves against the judgments of God that fall upon them, and repent not to give him glory. The heathen referred to, therefore, are only those who among all sorts of people fear God and do righteousness (Acts 10:35), persons of susceptible minds, who are capable of laying to heart the righteous deeds of God, and of receiving a deeper impression from his holy procedure toward men on earth. Minds of this description are at all times to be found on earth; minds feelingly alive to the fact, that God avenges the cause of Christ and his church on an indifferent and persecuting world, and that by mighty deeds he shows himself to be a God that judges in the earth. Revelation 15:5. And after that I saw, and the temple of the tent of the testimony was opened in heaven. The expression, “After that I saw,” indicates that here the main scene begins, and that what went before has only the character of an introduction, a prelude. That the building of this group is provided with such a portal, draws a broader line of demarcation between it and the preceding vision, and tends to make its independence more manifest.[Note: Vitringa: “For this reason, doubtless, among others, that the Spirit did not wish us to connect the vision of the vials with the former one, which we have seen had its termination in the destruction of the beast.”] What is signified by the opening of the temple, and the procession of the angels out of it, may be understood from the more specific description given of it: the tent of the testimony. (The temple of the tent of the testimony, q.d. the temple in its property as the tent of testimony; it is not said: the temple of the testimony, because in the Old Testament mention is made only of the tent of the testimony. The expression might the more fitly be retained, since the heavenly temple consists as little of stones as of wood). The tent of the testimony,—so was the tabernacle called, because it contained the ark with the testimony, the law of God which testifies against sin. Importance must here be given to this in the punishment of those who have impiously transgressed it; comp. on ch. Revelation 11:19. The word of the Lord, that no iota or title of the law shall fail, maintains itself in this, that the law is fulfilled on all those who withdraw themselves from a voluntary fulfilment of it. The commandments of God are not a dead letter, but a living force, which falls on the despisers of it, and crushes them to the dust. It is an elevated spectacle, when the temple of the tabernacle is opened in heaven—dreadful for the world, but joyful, though mingled with trembling for the church. Revelation 15:6. And the seven angels went out of the temple, who had the seven plagues, clothed in pure white linen, and girt about their breast with golden girdles.The angels have the seven plagues even before the seven vials are given to them. This is to be inferred, not merely from the words, “who had the seven plagues,” but also from their going forth out of the tent of testimony. This implies, that they had already been intrusted with the work of vengeance.In the clothing of the angels their mission is represented, the work which they had to accomplish. Even because they are angels, they come into consideration only in respect to their mission, and the clothing cannot, as in the case of Christ (in ch. Revelation 1:13), of Michael (Daniel 10:5), refer to the person, but only to the business. The linen clothing is not mentioned as “the attire of waiting and serving,” but on account of its shining whiteness. In ch. Revelation 19:8, the righteous deeds of the saints are denoted by pure and bright clothing. So here, the righteous deeds of the angels and indirectly of God—comp. Revelation 15:4. To the pure corresponds in Revelation 15:3 the “just and true are thy ways;” to the white, glittering, the “great and wonderful are thy works;”comp. the difference between washing and making white at ch. Revelation 7:14. The sea of the divine judgments and deeds of righteousness is compared in ch. Revelation 4:6 to glass and to crystal: as a sea of glass, like to crystal. To the glass, denoting blamelessness, corresponds here the pure; to the crystal, denoting terribleness, awfulness, glory, the white. The pure and white also holds in respect to the gold. It is employed here on account of its glittering purity, as in ch. Revelation 1:13, comp. ch. Revelation 21:18, “and the city is pure gold, like unto clear glass.” In Job 37:22 the bright pure splendour of the sun is called figuratively gold, and to it is compared God’s frightful majesty. Revelation 15:7. And one of the four beasts gave to the seven angels seven golden vials full of the wrath of God, who lives for ever and ever. That the vials are presented to the angels by one of the four beasts, is explained by ch. Revelation 16:1, “Pour out the seven vials of the wrath of God on the earth.” The cherubim act here us the representatives of the living creatures of the earth (comp. on ch. Revelation 4:6), on which the judgments of God are to alight. The agency of the cherubim in ch. 6 is quite analogous; see on ch. Revelation 6:1; Revelation 6:6. The symbol of the vials rests on the passages of the Old Testament, which speak of the pouring out of the wrath of God; comp. the pour out in ch. Revelation 16:1. The pouring out has respect to the copiousness of the manifestations of God’s wrath. The vials serve the same purpose. They are regarded as vessels, from which it may be conveniently and copiously poured out. The two fundamental passages, in which the pouring out of the wrath of God occurs in reference to the heathen, are Zephaniah 3:8, “that I may pour out upon them mine indignation, all my fierce anger; for all the earth shall be devoured by the fire of my jealousy;” and Psalms 79:6, “Pour out thy wrath upon the heathen that have not known thee, and upon the kingdoms that have not called upon thy name” (comp. the passage, which depends on this in Jeremiah 10:25). By the connection there, the heathen and the kingdoms are not the heathen nations generally, but those which had acted hostilely toward Israel, consequently the same as those, which are here threatened by the vials. The expression pour out points back to Revelation 15:3, “have shed their blood round about Jerusalem.”The vials being of gold indicates, that the wrath does not stand opposed to righteousness, but rather forms the energetic exercise of it. The purity and the splendour are here also, as in Revelation 15:6, the properties of gold, that are taken into account.The two fundamental passages lead us to regard the contents of the vials as of a fiery nature, and in the Revelation also fire is the common symbol of wrath.That God lives for ever (comp. on the expression: who lives for ever and ever, at ch. Revelation 1:18, Revelation 4:9-10, Revelation 10:6), was given even in Deuteronomy 32:40 as a pledge, that he would completely avenge his own and his people’s enemies. In Hebrews 10:31 it is represented as a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God. With God’s eternity his omnipotence is inseparably bound up—see my Comm. on Psalms 90:2. To the wrath of the Eternal here corresponds the wrath of the Almighty in ch. Revelation 19:15. How dreadful the wrath of the Eternal and the Almighty in comparison of the wrath of impotent mortals! Revelation 15:8. And the temple was full of the smoke of the glory of God and of his power; and no one could go into the temple, till the seven plagues of the seven angels were finished. Smoke in the Revelation is always the product of fire, Revelation 8:4, Revelation 9:2, Revelation 14:11, Revelation 18:18, comp. Psalms 148:8; and must rather be regarded in this light here, as fire was all but expressly named in Revelation 15:7. For, when the golden vials are said to be full of the wrath of God, this can only be rendered visible by the symbol of fire. But fire, in so far as it belongs to God, constantly appears in the Revelation as a sign of his wrath. It is no contradiction to this view of the smoke, as proceeding from the fire of God’s wrath, that it is said to be the smoke “of (literally, out of) the glory of God, and of his power.” For, this does not properly denote the origin of the smoke, but the origin of the fact, that the temple was full of the smoke of God. In Habakkuk 2:14, also, “for the earth is full of the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as waters cover the sea,” the glory of the Lord is an angry one, manifesting itself in judgments. So also in the fundamental passage, Numbers 14:21; and here in ver. 10, and in ch. Revelation 16:19, where the wrathful glory of the Lord appears before the whole community. It is decidedly confirmed by Isaiah 6:4, “and the house was full of smoke.” The whole manifestation there bears a wrathful character. Isaiah cries out before an angry God, “Woe is me, for I am undone.” The message he receives is one of wrath. Of the same description, too, is the smoke in Exodus 19:18, “And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended on it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace.” The whole manifestation there also was an angry one—comp. Hebrews 12:18. It called aloud to Israel, that his God was a consuming fire, that no one could escape, who might venture to set at nought his commandments. Nowhere in Scripture is smoke a symbol “of God’s presence as rich in grace,” or “a covering of the divine majesty, so that no one might come too near, or approach at an unseasonable time.” (See my Comm. on Psalms 18:8, and for some further remarks on smoke as a symbol of divine anger).The second part rests on Exodus 40:34-35, “Then the cloud covered the tent of the congregation, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation, because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.” Comp. also 1 Kings 8:10-11, “And it came to pass, when the priests were come out of the holy place, that the cloud filled the house of the Lord; so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud. For the glory of the Lord filled the house of the Lord.” The cloud there corresponds to the smoke here, and produced the same effect; although we must still carefully distinguish between them, and not, like Vitringa, put the cloud in place of the smoke in both passages alike. That the cloud, as usual in other cases, bears also a threatening character in the pillar of cloud and fire, is plain from the correspondence between the fire by night and the cloud by day (Numbers 9:15-16). It was out of the cloud that destruction came forth on the Egyptians (Exodus 14:24). In the pillar of cloud the Lord came down to execute judgment on Miriam and Aaron (Numbers 12:5). But there, as well as here, the threatening carries a promise in its bosom. If Israel is truly Israel, it affects only the enemies, and is to him a pledge of salvation (Num. 9:35). The God of energetic zeal for righteousness is his God. So long as Israel was the people of the Lord the pillar of cloud exclaimed to all his enemies, “Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm.” So here; that the temple is full of smoke, and no one is able to go into it, this is “a sign for believers, that the Lord in love to them was now going to complete the destruction of their enemies.”(Züllig). Besides, we see quite plainly in Isaiah 6 the reason why none could enter in. If God manifests himself in the whole glory of his nature, in the whole energy of his punitive righteousness, the creature must feel itself penetrated by a deep, feeling of its nothingness— not merely the sinful creature, as there in the case of Isaiah, but also the finite, according to Job 4:18, Job 15:15. Comp. on the words in ch. Revelation 1:17, “and I fell down at his feet as dead.” Bengel remarks, “when God pours out his fury, it is fit that even those who stand well with him should withdraw for a little, and should restrain their inquiring looks. All should stand back in profound reverence, till by and bye the sky become clear again.” Bossuet, too, “while God strikes, one betakes to flight, and rather endeavours to conceal one’s self than to enter into the place whence the strokes proceed. When he has ceased to send forth his plagues we may then again enter into his sanctuary to consider there the order of his judgments.” THE GROUP OF THE SEVEN VIALS (Ch. 15 and 16) The fourth group delineates the conflict waged by the three enemies of the kingdom of God against it; the sixth, how they are one after another vanquished. The fifth forms a sort of prelude to the latter. The kingdom of God has no absolute past; all the old deeds of God become new again in it, whenever the circumstances recur, which called them forth. Thus, here, the Egyptian plagues revive again, by means of which in ancient times the beast, whose fury had once more begun to exhibit itself in the days of John, was visited in its first form of manifestation, and was at last crushed. The Seer beholds seven angels, who have the last seven plagues, ch. Revelation 15:1. In the presence of these angels and their work the just made perfect sing, with anticipative confidence, the praise of God, Revelation 15:2-4. Then the seven angels proceed forth from the temple of God, and seven vials are given to them filled with the wrath of God, Revelation 15:5-8. How the seven vials, one after another, are poured out, and what effects proceed from them, is represented in ch. 16, at the close of which we find the power of the world lying shattered to pieces on the ground. Revelation 16:1. And I heard a great voice out of the temple, which said to the seven angels, go away and pour out the seven[Note: The seven is wanting in Luther.]vials of the wrath of God upon the earth. The loud voice out of the temple can only, according to ch. Revelation 15:8, be the voice of God, in whom the judgment going to be executed for the welfare of the church has its origin. In like manner in Ezekiel 9:1 a similar call proceeds from God, “with a loud voice,” to the ministers of divine judgment; comp. there Ezekiel 9:8, “When thou pourest forth thy wrath on Jerusalem;” Ezekiel 7:8. The same voice which here delivers the commission to pour out the vials, says, after they have been poured out, in Revelation 16:17, “It is done.” There the voice is more exactly characterised as the voice of God. It proceeds out of the temple from the throne. Here the same definiteness in the description was not necessary, on account of the relation the verse holds to ch. Revelation 15:8. The words: out of the temple, are wanting in several copies. But even if they were not genuine they would require to be supplied. To the earth belongs also the sea, in the sense in which it occurs at Revelation 16:3. First Vial Revelation 16:2. And the first went away and poured out his vial on the earth. And there came an evil and grievous sore on the men, who have the mark of the beast, and worship his image. Bengel: “In the trumpets the word angel is repeated (‘And the seven angels prepared themselves to sound; and the first angel sounded,ʼ ? and so on). Here, on the other hand, the style is briefer: the first, the second, &c., and the seventh poured out his vial. The vials make short work.” In the text followed by Luther, this peculiarity in the group of the seven vials vanishes at Revelation 16:3, and the word angel is shoved in.In Revelation 16:1 the earth is used locally. That the word must be used in another sense here is manifest alone from the circumstance that the sea is distinguished from the earth, and so also are the rivers. There must be an earth upon the earth, which was set off as a special region for the first vial. It indicates the earthly minded, the men who shut themselves up in alienation from heaven. So also in ch. Revelation 13:12 “the earth and those who dwell on it” mean not at all, those, who locally and corporeally have their abode on earth (for those also sojourn on it who dwell in heaven, ch. Revelation 13:6), but the earthly minded upon earth. The commentary on the “earth” is formed by “the men, who have the mark of the beast.” The worshippers of the beast have themselves become beast-like. In ch. Revelation 13:11 it is said, “And I saw another beast ascend from the earth. The designation there of a beast corresponds to the origin out of the earth.[Note: It is from overlooking the distinction between the earth here and the earth in Revelation 16:1, that the reading εἰς for ἐπί ? has arisen, as also the exchanging of εἰς with ἐπί ? in what follows, which goes hand in band with the other. In the former the εἰςτὴνγῆν is quite suitable, since the earth is only the locality, not the proper object of the pouring out. Here, on the other hand, ἐπί ? is the more suitable.] The evil and grievous sore refers to the sixth Egyptian plague, that of the sore or boil in Exodus 9:8-12 (see my Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 117). In Deuteronomy 28:27 the same disease appears under the name of the “sore (botch) of Egypt,” as one common in Egypt. In Deuteronomy 28:35 it is described as an evil one, hard to be healed, “with a sore (botch) that cannot be healed.” It was a chronic disease, a bad eruption. In Deuteronomy 27 it is mentioned in connection with other diseases that were loathsome, painful, lingering, difficult of cure, but not absolutely fatal. The chief seat of the disease appears from Deuteronomy 28:27 to have been in the knees, and the legs. It is certainly not without meaning, that men and cattle were alike smitten by this distemper. The vile and disgraceful character of it appeared also in this, that those, who were affected by it, after that they had presumptuously entered into a conflict with the Almighty, could not stand before Moses. That we are not to abide by the letter here, is clear alone from the reference to the Egyptian plagues. Bengel’s remark, “as we understand the Egyptian plagues in a literal way, so should we also understand the plagues under the vials, which are so like to the other,” is precisely the opposite of the right view. There is nothing new under the sun; but in regard to the form of judgments the divine righteousness is extremely inventive; and there rarely happens in this respect a simple repetition. The Egyptian plagues, besides, stood in a very close connection with the natural state and circumstances of Egypt. If, therefore, a similarity does exist in respect to those plagues, the conclusion obviously is, that we must distinguish between the matter itself and its historico-symbolical veil. Nor ought we to suppose, that the sore here represents the whole genus of diseases, with reference to that historical type, in which they became manifest after this kind. That it is rather an image of a distressed condition, is clear from Revelation 16:11, where sores are again mentioned in connection with pains, and where they appear as a consequence of the darkness suspended over the kingdom of the beast. The repetition there is an intentional one: it is intended to serve as a finger-post for the right exposition. Disease has also had no independent position assigned it in the seals and trumpets. The correct view has been made particularly easy for us. For, it is such an evil and grievous sore, such a vile, painful, inveterate eruptive distemper, that our people are affected with at the present time. The remark of Bengel, “Because in the vials, and even in the vial of the first angel the image and mark of the beast is pre-supposed, this is also an indication, that they belong to a later period,” gives a wrong explanation of a right fact. The right explanation is, that the introductory groups have to do in general with the judgments of God on the wickedness of the world, while here the representation advances to the judgments on the ungodly power of the world, first in the general, then (in ch. 17, sq)., in regard to its particular phases. Second Vial Revelation 16:3. And the second poured out his vial in the sea, and it became blood as of one dead, and every living soul died, that is in the sea. The sea in the language of the Apocalypse, the sea of the peoples, the restless wicked world (comp. on ch. Revelation 13:1). On no account can we think of the sea in the literal sense. For that is no sphere for God’s punitive and avenging agency. If any doubt might still exist, it would be removed by a comparison of the corresponding symbolical representation in ch. Revelation 8:8-9, “and the second angel sounded, and like a great mountain burning with fire, was cast into the sea; and the third part of the sea became blood. And the third part of the living creatures in the sea died.” What was said on this passage, serves also in substance for an explanation of the one before us. That the sea is the subject in the expression, “and it was,” is plain from the words in the passage referred to, “and the third part of the sea became blood.” Here, as also in ch. Revelation 8:8-9, there is a reference to the first Egyptian plague; Exodus 7:20, “And all the water that was in the Nile was changed into blood, and the fish that were in the Nile[Note: According to the fundamental passage “which (were) in the Nile,” the well-supported reading τὰἐντῆ ?ͅθαλάσσῃ ? is to be preferred, not: all living creatures died in the sea; but: all living creatures in the sea died.] died.” This plague itself possessed a symbolical character; it indicated, that the blood of the Egyptians should in just recompense be shed, if they did not repent. Peculiar here is the expression, “as of one dead.” This refers to the import of the symbol. If the blood has the appearance as of that of the dead, we are not to think merely of the blood-colour of the water, as anciently in Egypt. In point of fact it is the blood of the dead. Only, here, we have not the fact itself, but merely its symbol. The as has respect to this, comp. on ch. Revelation 9:7; Revelation 9:9. The dead did not need to be more definitely described than as the slain, because it is only in this kind of death that the blood flows out. That we are not to think here of some general mortality, but of the shedding of blood in war, is evident alone from the symbol of the sea, out of which the beast arose. In ch. Revelation 20:13 also the dead that are in the sea, are those who perished by a violent death in political conflicts.The scourge of destroying war is placed before our eyes by a double image—the changing of the sea into blood, and the dying of the living creatures in the sea. But the two, perhaps, are not simply co-ordinate. In the Egyptian plague the changing of the sea into blood stands in a causal connection with the dying of the fish. Accordingly. the changing of the sea into blood may be referred to those, who perish in actual battle, while the dying of all the living creatures in the sea may be understood of the infinitely greater number of those, who die in consequence of the war, by distress, hunger, sorrow, and disconsolateness, as we may learn from what happened in the thirty years’ war. In reference to the all, see my work on Egypt, p. 107. Third Vial Revelation 16:4. And the third poured out his vial on the rivers, and on the fountains of waters, and they became blood. The water of the rivers is an image of prosperity, and good fortune; the fountains of water indicate the source of a prosperous condition. We find the same symbol also in ch. Revelation 8:10-11, where at the sounding of the third trumpet a great star falls from heaven, burning like a torch, on the rivers and fountains of water, and changes them into wormwood, so that many persons died of the waters, because they had become bitter. In unison with that passage, where the waters became wormwood, (“and the third part of the waters became wormwood,”) we must also translate here: and they became blood. The correspondence between the second and third vial and the second and third trumpet is intentional. It furnishes a sort of finger-post for the internal connection between the two groups. But it is not less intentional, that the correspondence is only in part. That the rivers and fountains, which latter are also expressly named in Exodus 7:19, become blood, shews, that in the place of a prosperous and flourishing stale there has come the shedding of blood. Similar is Psalms 42:3, “My tears have been my meat day and night,” instead of eating I weep; Psalms 80, “Thou feedest them with bread of tears,” instead of bread with tears; Psalms 88:18, “My acquaintances, the place of darkness,” q.d. the dark region of the dead has come into the place of all my acquaintances; Job 17:14, “The grave I name, my father art thou, mother and sister, the worm.” In the first Egyptian plague there was a twofold symbolical element. It first points to the shedding of guilty blood as a punishment for the shedding of innocent blood. This element was brought prominently out in the preceding plague. The second element is contained in the words of Moses, Exodus 7:21, “And the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river.” As in the first aspect of that plague every thing was indicated, which in those that followed touched the life of the Egyptians, even to the slaying of the first-born, and the destruction of the Egyptians in the Red Sea, so in the second it contained a prophecy of all that should damage the prosperity of Egypt, of which the water of the Nile was the better fitted to serve as an emblem, since upon it the temporal well-being of Egypt wholly depended. Both the elements are found in Psalms 78:44, “he turned their streams into blood, and their waters they drank not. “How the threatening contained in the second symbolical element was fulfilled, is shewn in Psalms 78:45-48, and that of the first, Psalms 78:49-51. Revelation 16:5. And I heard the angel of the waters say, Thou art righteous, who is and who was, the godly, because thou hast judged thus. Revelation 16:6. For blood of saints and prophets have they shed, and blood hast thou given them to drink; they are worthy! Revelation 16:7. And I heard the altar say, Yea, Lord God Almighty, true and righteous are thy judgments. The Epiphonem in these three verses attaches itself primarily, indeed, to the third vial; but the second is closely connected with this, and the first is only a prelude to the two that follow. The seals are divided by the four and three. On the other hand, this very Epiphonem serves, in the case of the vials, to separate the three from the four. In accordance with this the three first vials are united to each other by the brevity that is employed in the description of them: each occupies but one verse. The four last begin with the sun, and conclude with the air, while the three first keep below—to the earth, the sea, the rivers and the fountains. Those who are here also for the division into the four and three, found upon the remark at the fourth vial: “and they blasphemed the name of God.” But this remark occurs again at the fifth, Revelation 16:11, and at the seventh, Revelation 16:21. It is not fitted, therefore, to serve as a boundary line, but rather connects the four last plagues together, and divides them off from the three first. The angel of the waters is wanting in the text followed by Luther. The angel alone is mentioned. We may discern the reason of the omission in the visible embarrassment of the expositors, and their vacillating hither and thither. It is God, who sends rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, and fills our hearts with food and gladness (Acts 14:7). But the words: “Ah! Lord my God, this comes from thee, Thou, thou alone dost all,” only exclude all independent agency; in this matter also, in the distribution and withdrawal of all, that pertains to the necessities of life, God avails himself of the services of his “ministering spirits,” (Hebrews 1:14,) in whose hand more immediately are the operations of nature (Hebrews 1:7). The angel of the waters here represents the whole host of angels, whom God employs in this service, and so far is a purely ideal form, which only belongs to the vision (precisely as the speaking altar in Revelation 16:7), and in the reality becomes manifest in a multitude of individuals. The angel of the waters here stands in a near relation to the angel, who moves the water in John 5:4. For, if the water there also is to be taken in a figurative sense, as a designation of the sources by which life is sustained, this figurative use still rests on the circumstance, that the water in the proper sense holds a primary place among these sources of vital sustenance. We have here a delicate and intimate bond, uniting the Apocalypse with the Gospel. The omission here of the words: of the waters, sprang from the same Rationalism, that sought there also to set entirely aside the angel (see vol. i. p. 115). The assaults on the genuineness of the Apocalypse are a more general attempt to satisfy the same craving, as that which has sought relief to itself in the particular, by silently pushing aside the angel of the waters here, and the speaking altar in Revelation 16:7, as also the speaking altar in ch. Revelation 8:13. In the address to God: “who is and who was, the godly,” (the text, which Luther followed, improperly prefixes, Lord, and instead of “the godly,” has “and holy,” or “godly,”) those attributes of God are particularly specified, which were manifested by his judgments, and from which these judgments flowed. In regard to the expressions, “who is and who was,” comp. on ch. Revelation 11:17. In that passage the addition, “and who comes,” could not be made, because the Lord had there already fully come. Here we have still not reached the last end; four vials are yet to follow. But still, “who comes,” would not be properly suitable here, and there was no reason for resuming it now again, after it had already been laid aside at ch. Revelation 11:17. Here respect is not had, as in ch. Revelation 1:4; Revelation 1:8, Revelation 4:8, to what the Lord is going to do in the future; but what he has done, is brought into view. Here it was only in a fitting way indicated, that the old God proved by deed, that he still lived. As there the emphasis lies on the “who comes,” so here it lies on the “who is;” q.d. Thou, who by thy deeds hast shewn that as thou hast been, so thou also art. The godly, as an epithet is applied to God, in reference to his regard for the moral order of the world, which admits of nothing alien to him, nothing opposed to him or rising above him, but only what is conformable to his own essential nature (comp. on ch. Revelation 15:4).The judicial rule, according to which God appears as righteous in the judgments, which he here threatens, was laid down in Genesis 9:6, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” where, according to the connection with Revelation 16:5, it is primarily declared, not what should be done by man, but what God would accomplish by means of his righteous judgments; comp. on ch. Revelation 13:10. But since the rule holds with God, blood for blood, so should it also hold with those, to whom he has committed judicial authority (comp. Exodus 21:23).Upon the distinction between saints and prophets, corresponding to that of righteous persons and prophets in Matthew 10:41, comp. at ch. Revelation 11:18. Among the prophets the first place is held by the apostles, whose blood was shed upon the altarPeter and Paul; comp. on ch. Revelation 1:1; and also in Matthew 10:41 the term prophets comprehend the apostles, comp. Matthew 10:40, That Rome takes the lead in the guilt and the punishment, appears from ch. Revelation 18:24. In the declaration, “Blood hast thou given them to drink,” we must supply, instead of the water, which they formerly enjoyed; as is evident from the circumstance, that the angel speaks of water. The drinking of blood, (Bossuet, “People fill themselves with the blood of which they are greedy, chiefly in civil wars, in which each seems to drink the blood of his fellow-citizens”), is brought into notice here, not as a crime (as it is in ch. Revelation 17:6, where the woman is drunk with the blood of saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus), but as a punishment; as it is also in the fundamental passage, Isaiah 49:26, “And I will feed them that oppress thee with their own flesh, and they shall be drunken with their own blood.” In place of the pleasant drink of water they are made to take the horrid draught of their own blood; their prosperous condition disappears, and in its stead a bitter but righteous doom impels them to rage against one another. The mere, “they are worthy,” is more emphatic than, “for they are worthy,” of the text which Luther has followed.Instead of: and I heard the altar say, Luther has—following an ill-supported reading, and one that has had no better origin than exegetical incompetence—“And I heard another angel out of the altar say.”[Note: We recognize the origin of this rending in the explanation of Ewald: altare, vocem progresaam a coelicola arae adstanti.] In ch. Revelation 6:9-10 the souls of those, who were slain for the word of God and the testimony which they held, are represented as lying under the altar of the heavenly sanctuary, in consequence of their having been offered on the altar. From thence they cry with a loud voice and say, “O Lord, holy and true, how long dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth.” In ch. Revelation 14:18, the angel comes out of the altar, to execute vengeance for the blood of the saints, which had been shed on the altar. Here the altar itself rejoices in anticipation of the revenge, that was to be taken for the blood that was shed on it. Even Bengel’s interpretation, “as in the fifth seal the souls under the altar cried with a loud voice, so without doubt it is they, who here make themselves to be heard, having found after the shedding of their blood a resting-place under the altar; and hence it is, as if the altar itself spoke,” is still too realistic. The altar itself might as well be said to speak here, as the blood in Genesis 4:10. The yea does not contain “a perfectly cordial response toward God in all that he wills, and does and says;” but it expresses agreement with the preceding speech of the angel of the waters. It is necessary, so that the two voices of the angel of the waters and of the altar may not fall out with each other; comp. Revelation 14:13. Without omnipotence (comp. ch. Revelation 4:8, Revelation 11:7, Revelation 15:3, Revelation 19:6), the judgments of God would not be true and righteous. The truth here also refers not merely to fidelity in regard to the promise (comp. on ch. Revelation 6:10, Revelation 15:3); it stands opposed to all mere show, every thing of a partial and superficial kind, such as constantly attaches itself to human judgments. Fourth Vial Revelation 16:8. And the fourth poured out his vial on the sun, and it was given to him to scorch men with fire. The sun is introduced here, not in respect to his light-giving quality (so that ch. Revelation 8:12 is not to be compared), but in respect to his scorching power; so that ch. Revelation 7:16 is parallel, “the sun shall not light upon them, nor any heat,” and the fundamental passage of Isa 49:10, quoted in the remarks there. As in ch. Revelation 8:12, the splendour of the sun represents a happy condition, its darkening distress, so here the sun in its scorching heat is the image of the sufferings of this life. That the angel pours out his vial on the sun, denotes the extraordinary growth, which through the righteous judgment of God, as a punishment for the growth of sin, was imparted to the sufferings of life for the enemies of Christ, the servants of the beast. It is not of the natural scorching of the sun’s rays that we are here to think, and of the injurious effects flowing from it; as Bossuet, for example, conceives, “signifying excessive heats, drought, and at length famine. One sees in St Denis of Alexandria the Nile dried up, as it were, by scorching heat.” It is not this, however, as appears not only from the symbolical keeping of the whole,—in the preceding portion, the earth, the sea, the water in a figurative sense—but also from the addition, with fire. Fire in the Apocalypse is the usual symbol of the divine wrath and judgment (ch. Revelation 14:18). Only when we consider the sun in a figurative sense, is the fire, which is poured out of the vial (comp. ch. Revelation 15:7) homogeneous to the fire of the sun.That we must not render, “it was given to it,” the sun, but “it was given to him,” the angel, is still more decidedly clear from ch. Revelation 7:2 (comp. also ch. Revelation 4:8), than from Bengel’s remark, “it was more properly given to an angel than to the sun.” But we must explain thus: it was given him so, through the medium of the sun, when inflamed to an unusual heat by the pouring out of the vial.The heat, as a figurative designation of sufferings and assaults, is found also in Jeremiah 17:8; 1 Peter 4:12. Men are not of themselves to be regarded as fleshly men, as Vitringa supposes; but the limitation is to be understood here, as in ch. Revelation 9:20, from the consideration that in the whole context the subject of discourse is the judgments that were to befal an ungodly world. It is remarked in the Berleb. Bible, “But since they will also be self-tormentors, and one shall vehemently inflame another, one child of the world others around him; so they shall be in the highest degree a hell to themselves, each shall do to his neighbour the part of a tormentor and executioner.” In regard to the fate of the members of the church in this vial, which, like all the rest, comprises in one image what is realised by successive stages in different epochs of the worldly power, the solution is given in ch. 7. The preservation of the children of Israel during the plagues which fell on the Egyptians, among whom they dwelt, and with whose fate their own seemed inseparably bound up, has the import of a matter-of-fact prophecy for all times; only, we must thoroughly discard all Mahommedan views of prosperity in life. Here the word holds that is written in Jeremiah 17:7-8, “Blessed is the man that trusteth in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is. He is like a tree planted by the water, and rooted on the brook. And he fears not when heat comes, and his leaf remains green, and he is not concerned when a year of drought comes, and ceases not to bear fruits.” Revelation 16:9. And the men were scorched with great heat, and blasphemed the name of God, who has power over these plagues, and repented not to give him glory. The words: and the men were scorched with great heat, stands related to what follows, as the cause to its effect. It is the loose Hebraistic mode of placing the two in juxtaposition; for: And because the men were thus, etc., they blasphemed. The blaspheming is mentioned in connection with all the four plagues, with the exception only of the sixth. This exception is explained, not so much from the description there being in other respects much more extended than in the others, as on the ground that in it the catastrophe was nearly prepared, and hence the occasion for blaspheming was not fully given. They could not deny the being of the Great God; it presses itself upon them with power; it even lies upon them as a frightful load; and if the mouth should deny, the heart would revenge the falsehood. But because they would not recognise the sin as sin, they rage against him as a revolting tyrant; they blaspheme him, because they cannot murder him. “The heart of Pharaoh was hardened,”—this is the perpetual refrain in the history of the Egyptian plagues, which for all times refutes the rationalistic error, that an inherently beneficial power resides in suffering, and which loudly witnesses against every theory that propounds another aim for divine, and by consequence also for human punishments, than that of retributive righteousness. Bossuet points to the fact, that in the times of Roman dominion the heathen threw upon the Christians all the blame of the misfortunes that befel the empire. If we abide by the letter, this certainly cannot be included here. The heathen ascribed their misfortunes to the neglected worship of their gods. But faith in these had so little root in their minds, that we are justified in regarding the allegation merely as a pretext or a self delusion, and in considering the real ground of their exasperation to be, that the hand of the God of the Christians lay heavy upon them, and that they were bruised by him, whom they would not worship. Bengel remarks, “Blasphemy is a dreadful sin. But in spite of the wicked themselves it still contributes to the glory of God. Blasphemers themselves admit their impotence, since they only resist with their impious mouth; and confess the power of God, which, without any thanks to them, tends to glorify the name of God. They revolt against God, and are in pain, but he is honoured upon them. The saints, when they are overcome by their sufferings, may wish in the depth of their dejection that they themselves were not, as Job anciently cursed his being. But the wicked go much farther, and blaspheme the holy name of God.” In regard to the persons blaspheming, the limitation is to be derived from ch. Revelation 15:4. We there learn that the suffering does not prove to all a curse, that many find it a blessing, and, like the penitent thief, are filled with contrition, when they receive what their deeds have deserved. But, if we look more narrowly into the case of such, we shall find “that something existed beforehand, which is only quickened into life. What, however, was dead and corrupt, that remains under pains and sufferings as it was, or, if any change takes place, it is for the worse.”They blaspheme the name of God (comp. on ch. Revelation 13:6), not the Deity, but the God who has manifested himself by his deeds, the God of Jesus Christ, the God of the church which inflames the worshippers of the beast to more wrath, that she constantly confesses this same God to be the author of the calamities under which they groan. They blaspheme the name of God, who has power over these plagues. (The best MSS. have τὴνἐξουσίαν, which Luther omits). That they blaspheme him because he has the power is shown by Revelation 16:11, “because of their pains and their sores;” and Revelation 16:21, “men blasphemed the Lord because of the plague of hail.” These plagues is to be explained on the ground, that in this plague the others were substantially contained.On the words, “and they repented not,” comp. ch. Revelation 9:20. The repentance is placed in this, that men give glory to God. Glory is given to God by him, who recognizes, that the suffering is a deserved punishment of a sin, and, therefore, that it serves to glorify God, who is sanctified by the judgment. Berleb. Bible: “To give glory to God—to recognize his righteousness, and to fall down under his rod with humble supplication.” Bengel: “In repentance, the most essential thing is to give glory to God. Man must at once shut his mouth, or even lay his hand on it: but God receives the glory. Now, where man does not yield, but stands out in a spirit of proud and hardened defiance, there God also does not yield, and in such a conflict man must come far short, he must be consumed. “For a moment Pharaoh gave God glory, in Exodus 9:27, when he said to Moses and Aaron,” The Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.”But it did not last long. “When Pharaoh saw that the thunder and the rain ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants.” Fifth Vial Revelation 16:10. And the fifth poured out his vial on the throne of the beast, and his kingdom was darkened. And they bit their tongues for pain. Revelation 16:11. And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pains, and because of their sores, and repented not of their deeds. The former plagues fall upon the circumference of the kingdom of the beast, but this strikes its centre and the circumference at the same time, in a peculiarly touching manner. The preceding plagues affect the throne, inasmuch as they distress the subjects; this descends from the throne to the subjects. When God seeks to destroy a people, he cannot smite in a more effectual manner than by smiting the rulers. The throne of the beast is situated at different places in different times; this is as certain as that the beast has seven heads (comp. on ch. Revelation 13:1). At the period of the Chaldean dominion, it was at Babylon; comp. Isaiah 47:1, Psalms 94:20, where the church, in immediate prospect of the Chaldean ascendancy and oppression, says to the Lord, “Is the throne of iniquity bound to thee, which frameth mischief as a law?” At the time of the Seer it was at Rome. At the end of time, after the thousand years, it will be set up again in some sort of way under Gog and Magog. But wherever it may stand, it will be struck by the fifth vial. For, like all the others, this has a comprehensive character; it accompanies the ungodly power of the world through the whole of its history. In such facts as these—that Valerian was vanquished and imprisoned by the Persians, and that he had to serve as a foot-board for their king when mounting on his horseBossuet sought to find, not the fulfilment, but only a fulfilment. The whole character of the group of the vials is misapprehended, if an exclusive application is made of it to the relations of Rome in one respect or another. They have all to do, not specially and exclusively with the whore, Rome, but with the beast, the ungodly world-power in its collective character. To suppose an exclusive reference to Rome, is to carry them over into the sphere of the following group.That the throne of the beast is not the capital city, but the governing power, appears from ch. Revelation 13:2, and also from ch. Revelation 2:13. Comp. Jeremiah 13:13, “the kings that sit upon David’s throne.” Rome was not the throne of the beast at the Seer’s time, but the throne stood there, and the Roman emperor occupied it.In consequence of the pouring out of the vial on the throne of the beast, his kingdom is darkened. Bengel: “It properly means: it was put into a dark state. It is, therefore, an abiding, and not a passing and transient darkness, coming over the former long-continued splendour.” It is asked, whether the kingdom stands here in a passive sense, of the subject-territory, or in an active, of the governing power, the ruling body. In the latter sense it occurs, for example, in John 18:36; in this book at ch. Revelation 1:6; Revelation 1:9, Revelation 17:12; Revelation 17:18, “the great city, that reigns over the kings of the earth.” The passage last referred to in particular supports the active sense of the expression here. Adopting this, the larger point after beast must be removed, so as to allow the cause and effect to stand in close connection with each other; q.d. and his throne was darkened.On the darkening comp. Psalms 105:28, where in reference to Egypt it is said, “He sent darkness, and darkened.” The doom of darkness is there to be taken in the figurative sense of the doom of displeasure and calamity; from the first to the last plague Egypt was covered in this sense with darkness. There is only an allusion to the last plague but one in Egypt. This was the more fitted to serve as a foundation for such a figurative representation, as even in the Mosaic narrative it manifestly bears a symbolical character, from which alone is to be explained the one-sided prominence given to the darkness: the darkness which covered the Egyptians, the image of the divine wrath. Comp. Wisdom, Wis 17:21, “Over them was spread a heavy night, an image of that darkness which should come upon them.” That the darkness here also, which had already occurred in ch. Revelation 8:12 as an emblem of distress, is used in a figurative sense, is clear from the circumstance, that in what follows pains and sores are spoken of as identical with it.The subject in, “they bit,” are the possessors of the throne, and those whose fortune was bound up with theirs. When one bites his tongue for pain (it is something quite different to bite down, to stifle a laugh or a passion), this can only be an attempt to produce a reaction against the insufferable pain that presses on one, by means of another voluntarily inflicted—to deaden the passive pain by means of an active one; according to the couplet, “What one chooses to suffer, ‘tis easy to bear; if suffer we must, pain and anguish are there.”In Revelation 16:11, “because of their pains,” etc., q.d. because of their darkness, that is, their pains and their sores. They blaspheme the God of heaven, who by his almighty hand brings upon them this suffering, and whom they can indeed blaspheme, though they cannot come at him (comp. Psalms 2:4). There is a verbal reference to ch. Revelation 11:13, where it is said of the members of the church, “and they gave glory to the God of heaven.” The church is improved by suffering, the world is only the more exasperated by it. Sixth Vial Revelation 16:12. And the sixth poured out his vial on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared of the kings from the rising of the sun. From the rising of the sun (that is, the regions whence these risings proceed,)[Note: Wherever the plural ἀνατολαί ? is used, it refers to the daily recurring act of going forth—comp. Matthew 24:27; Luke 13:29; Revelation 21:13. The ἑλίον is always to be supplied, when the ἀνατολαί ? are mentioned. The reading ἀνατολῆς has merely arisen from the word being token in the sense of eastern regions, in which case ἑλίον appeared unsuitable Ch. 7:2 is also to be compared.] from the east, the lands beyond the Euphrates, conquering hordes were wont to come from the earliest times down upon lower Asia, and especially upon Cannan—comp. on ch. Revelation 9:14. (It cannot be accidental, that Euphrates is here mentioned under the sixth vial, as there under the sixth trumpet). From that quarter come here, in vision, the hosts of the enemies of the church, which is represented under the image of Jerusalem (comp. on ch. Revelation 14:20). That the designation of the place, from which the enemies come, is only to be understood typically is evident from comparing ch. Revelation 9:14, from the circumstance that the object of the assault is only typical Jerusalem, and finally from Revelation 16:14, where, in the room of the kings from the rising of the sun, come the kings of the whole earth putting the actual in immediate juxtaposition with the typical description.The typical preparations of a way through water (the Red Sea and the Jordan) were done for the behoof of the people of God. So also the typical preparation of a way through the Euphrates itself in Isaiah 11:15-16, and the figurative leading through the sea and the Nile in Zechariah 10:11, “And the Lord goes through the sea, the distress, and smites in the sea the waves, and all the floods of the Nile are put to shame.” The preparation of the way must serve the same design here, though it seems to have primarily a quite different character (the Lord appears here to do for the enemies of his people what elsewhere he did only for his people), is clear alone from this, that the drying up of the Euphrates is a result of the pouring out of a vial. All the vials were poured out in behalf of the church, for the destruction of her enemies, and to prepare for her final victory. More prominently still does this object discover itself in Revelation 16:16, which so far is immediately connected with the verse before us, as it continues the description of God’s share in the matter. Revelation 16:13-15 take into account the hellish- human machinery, the subordinate importance of which is manifest from the single fact, that it is hemmed in on both sides by the divine agency. Bengel: “The text is here wonderfully interwoven together, and is like an artificial web, in which what is covered for a time afterwards comes forth to light again. Revelation 16:12; Revelation 16:16 are connected together, and the three verses between are also of a fine texture.” In Revelation 16:16 we see, that the way through the Euphrates is opened to the kings, only that they may get to the place of their overthrow. The Euphrates is mentioned here merely in respect to the hindrance it presented to the march of the ungodly power of the world into the holy land, against the holy city, against the church. This hindrance—to the terror of all persons of little faith, to the triumph of the world and the strengthening yet more of its enmity to God and Christ—is removed by God himself; what would arrest it is by him taken out of the way—as when, for example, in the time of the Seer, Peter and Paul, the pillars of the church, were beheaded, John himself banished to Patmos, and the church, thereby left exposed to the seductions of heathenism. But when faith is well nigh disposed on account of such things to give way, and the world is preparing to deal out the last blow against the church, then comes the place of Armageddon.Precisely as God here dries up the Euphrates for the enemies of his church, did God, according to Isaiah 43:17, lead forth Pharaoh with his host to pursue after Israel. Scripture brings clearly out the truth, that every step which the ungodly world takes for the destruction of the church, stands under the divine direction—not merely under the divine permission, which a Rationalistic theology would so fain substitute for it,—that God does not simply overthrow the enemies of his church, but also arms them, and that the success of their plans belongs not less to him than their discomfiture; so that we have everywhere to do only with God. (See my Comm. on Psalms 104:25). Here, too, it is not prophesied what was to be done once, but what was to be continually repeated anew, so long as the conflict of the beast with the church should last, which substantially revives again in Gog and Magog. We have also in this vial, as in all the rest, a collective representation before us of that which in history realizes itself by degrees, and in a succession of acts and scenes. He who has properly received into his heart the contents of this book, can look on with painful delight while he sees one bulwark of the church after another laid prostrate, so that it might seem to be going into remediless destruction.— From the false supposition, that the expedition of the kings is directed toward Babylon, an allusion has sometimes been sought here to the warlike manoeuvre of Cyrus, who, according to Herodotus and Zenophon, accomplished the conquest of Babylon by diverting the waters of the Euphrates.[Note: Forbesius shewed a just acquaintance with the peculiar style of the Apocalypse, when he remarks against this idea: Spiritum Dei nihil ex Herodoto vel Xenophonte accersere, sed omnes ejus allusiones esse ad Scripturam sacram.] That the expedition is directed, not against Babylon, that is, Rome, but against Cannan, that is, the church, is rendered manifest by Revelation 16:16;[Note: Bengel: “Armageddon lies in the land of Israel, and from the rising of the sun the way to it is right over the Euphrates.”] manifest, too, by Revelation 16:14, according to which the kings assemble together to a decisive battle against God, and of course also against his tabernacle and those who dwell in heaven, the church and believers, (ch. Revelation 13:6). The Euphrates appears here also not as a hindrance to the conquest, but to the way, as the Jordan was and the Red Sea. But it could not have stood in the way of the kings on their march from the rising of the sun, if their course was directed toward Babylon. It would have been quite perplexing, if the prophet had not preserved the relations, as to territorial position, of ancient Babylon, and had removed the Euphrates from the western to the eastern side of the territory. Further, if the expedition was directed against Rome, then, kings from the east would have been mentioned as the instruments of punishment. But against this, it was already remarked by Bengel, “One might suppose, that those eastern kings were to be the instruments of this plague, but in all the seven plagues men are never represented as the instruments of working. It is these kings themselves, that in the plagues are overthrown blindfolded.” Finally, an exclusive reference to Rome is against the analogy of all the other vials; they all bear an oecumenical character, sweep over the whole earth, the whole of the God-opposing wickedness, and not merely some particular phase of it. The special reference to Rome in Revelation 16:19 does not comprise the whole contents of the seal, but the universal reference goes along with it. Quite unseasonable is the comparison of ch. Revelation 17:12, instead of ch. Revelation 14:20, Revelation 19:11, ss., Revelation 20:7, ss., where the battle, as here, is directed against God andChrist and his church. Revelation 16:13. And I saw out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits as frogs.[Note: Instead of ὡςβάτραχοι, the text followed by Luther has, ὁ ?́μοιαβατράχοις. The ὡς is to be preferred even on internal grounds. The lighter ὡς suits better, as the resemblance is not of a general nature, but refers merely to the impurity.] Revelation 16:14. (For these are spirits of demons, which do wonders) which go forth over the kings of the whole earth,[Note: Luther has: to the kings upon earth, and upon the whole compass of the world, follow ing the incorrect reading, τῆςγῆςκαὶτῆςοἰκουμένης.] to gather them together to the war of that great day of God the Almighty. The words, for they are, etc., can only be regarded as a simple parenthesis. The expression, which go forth, must be immediately joined to, the frogs. For the statement, I saw out of the mouth, requires to be supplemented by, “to go forth,” ἐκπορεύεσθαι; and this is substantially done by the expression: which go forth.[Note: Bengel has correctly perceived, that the εἶδονἐκτοῦστόματος needs to be supplemented : sine infinitivo abrupta esset oratio, non enim. dicitur bestia ex mari, ex terra, ex abysso, sed ascendens ex mari. But he erroneously prefers the less supported reading ἐκπορεύεσθαι, which is also to be rejected on internal grounds.]Revelation 16:13-14 are of a regressive character. While they delineate the activity of the enemies of God in the matter, they go back to the first beginnings. In Revelation 16:12, the kings with their people have come on their way against the holy city, as far as the Euphrates. Here it is reported, how the summons to the expedition by them goes forth. If the regressive character of Rev 16:13-14 is not perceived, it will be necessary to resort to such forced interpretations as that of Bengel, “The kings from the rising of the sun were before more inclined to such an expedition, but with the kings from the three other quarters of the globe there might be more reluctance, and so the three unclean spirits ply their wicked and powerful ministrations.” But, in addition to the incredible nature of this difference, the view is decidedly opposed by Revelation 16:14, in which the subject is not the kings from the three other regions of the globe, but the kings of the whole earth; and also by ch. Revelation 20:8, where Satan is represented as deceiving the nations in the four quarters of the earth.The dragon, or Satan in his property as the prince of this world, who contends with Christ for the dominion of the world—the beast, and the false prophet, who is for the first time mentioned here under this name, earlier as the second beast from the earth, these have already been represented in ch. 12 and 13 as the bitter enemies of Christ and his church. The undertaking to which they stir up, can therefore only be directed against Christ and his church. All three struggle for their existence.Out of the mouth of these three enemies of the kingdom of God proceed three unclean spirits. Out of the mouth, not because the speech, but because the breath belongs to this—comp. Isaiah 11:4. The proper dispenser of this impure, seductive spirit, stimulating men against the church and its head, is the dragon. The beast and the false prophet have it only at second hand, but it finds in them its chief organs. It goes out, however, from the dragon to the kings of the earth, not merely through the medium of the beast and the false prophet, but also directly; Satan is not confined to his organs. Therefore there are three spirits. The dependence of the spirits of the beast and of the false prophet or the dragon, is clear from Revelation 16:14, where also these spirits are represented as spirits of demons, which are ranged under Satan as their head. Ch. Revelation 20:7 also—where in the last phase of the conflict delineated here, Satan goes forth, to deceive the nations in the four ends of the earth, and assemble them to the battle, to him alone the whole work of seduction is ascribed—shews that the unclean spirits do not proceed from the whole three as on one footing of independence.Real influences proceed from Satan as well as from Christ. Men are placed mid-way between the good spirit, that is of Christ, and the bad one, that proceeds from Satan. In ch. Revelation 9:2, the smoke denotes the hellish spirit, which comes up to the earth. In Zechariah 13:2, it is said, “I root out the names of the idols out of the land, and mention shall no more be made of them, and also the prophets and the unclean spirit will I remove out of the land.” According to this passage the false prophets as well as the true, the worshippers of idols as well as those of God, stand under the dominion of a power lying beyond them, to which they have surrendered themselves by a free act of their own will. The same thing is clear also from the narrative in 1 Kings 22, where the spirit of prophecy, personified in accordance with the character of the vision and appearing in a corporeal form, offers to deceive Ahab by putting false prophecies into the mouth of the prophets of the calves. From this it is manifest, that the false prophets as well as the true stand under the influence of a power, that exists out of their own nature. By the parable of the tares among the wheat (Matthew 13:38-39), Satan is in possession of the minds of his followers in like manner as Christ of his; he appears as the originator of their wickedness. Bengel remarks, “These are three enemies, that in a horrible way oppose themselves to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. To God the Father is opposed the dragon, the great prince in the kingdom of darkness. To Christ Jesus is opposed the beast, and as the Father has committed all things into the hands of his Son, so has the dragon given his power to the beast. To the Holy Ghost is opposed the false prophet, and as the Holy Ghost glorifies Christ, so the false prophet drives forward the worship of the beast.” But this parallelism is not correct. Christ rather stands opposed to the dragon (comp. ch. Revelation 12:10); Christian rulers form the contrast to the beast; and the contrast to the false prophet is found in Christian instruction and the office of witnessing (comp. ch. Revelation 11:3, ss). By likening the spirits to frogs, some respect is had, according to the just remark of Bossuet, to one of the plagues of Egypt. The point of comparison is the uncleanness, the loathsomeness, which is expressly noticed; on which account frogs in the Old Testament belong to the unclean animals, the symbols of sin in the province of beasts. The contrast between the clean and the unclean spirit cannot be more distinctly exhibited to one’s view than by the image of the dove and of the frog. The croaking of the frogs can only be brought into consideration as the symptom of their unclean state, their loathsome nature. The parenthetical remark, for there are (that is, exist—the being in the sense of existing, as very commonly in John; the for, too, in that case quite suitable, since in order to go forth, they must first exist) spirits of demons (on the demons, evil spirits, see at ch. Revelation 9:20), which do signs, makes preparation for Revelation 16:15, and is like an impressive call, “Watch and pray.” Nothing is better fitted, as to solve the enigma of the world’s history, so also to stir us up to watchfulness and zeal, than the conviction that we have to contend not with flesh and blood, but against evil spirits (Ephesians 6:12). This must powerfully awaken the feeling, that if left to our own resources we are undone, and impel us to seek in the height help against the depth. In regard to the signs, see on ch. Revelation 13:14. Bengel, “They do signs, the more readily to mislead the kings. To the kings, whom the people will follow.”After the words, “To gather them together to the war,” a dash is, as it were, to be introduced. The war is denoted here in respect to its final result. The design was a quite different one, to bring to an end the kingdom of God and his Christ and his church.[Note: So already Berengaudus, an expositor of the ninth century: non quod contra deum pugnare audeant in die judicii, a quo tam terribiliter judicabuntur: sed congregabunt eos in proelium ad persequendam ecclesiam, ut in die magno Dei omnipotentis perpetua poena damnentur.] The day of God has a comprehensive character. All manifestations of God’s judgment on the impious wickedness of men, are in it concentrated into one image. Bengel remarks incorrectly, “The conflict of that great day of God Almighty is afterwards described in ch. 19 where the beast and the kings of the earth and their hosts of war are actually gathered together to the battle.”It is not the entire conflict of that great day, which is there described, but only a single scene of it. Another important scene, the overthrow of Rome, precedes it, and it is likewise to be followed by an important scene, the catastrophe of Gog and Magog. But it is well remarked by Bengel, “Now the rulers of this world have many a day, during which matters go according to their own wills in transactions of state, and negotiations respecting peace and war, but God the Almighty has his eye upon one day, which is his, and in which he will bring to a point his controversy with all his enemies together.” Revelation 16:15. Behold I come as a thief. Blessed is he who watches and keeps his garments, that he may not walk naked, and they may not see his shame. That Christ is the speaker, is manifest from a comparison of ch. Revelation 3:3, and from a reference also to the fundamental passages in the Gospels. Yet the words stand immediately connected with what precedes. The “great day of God the Almighty” is also as certainly the day of Christ, as it is certain that the Father has committed all judgment to the Son. The allusion to the judgment, which threatens destruction to the enemies of the church, calls forth an admonition from the Lord to his own people. Whoever belongs outwardly alone to the church, but is internally united to the world, shall also be condemned with the world. Believers, too, are in the world, and the world has a troublesome ally in their hearts. When the world, therefore, rises up to fight against the Lord and against his anointed, it will be extremely difficult for them to watch, and keep their garments. In this respect a symbolical meaning may be found in the young man mentioned in Mark 14:51-52, “And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him; and he left the linen cloth and fled from them naked.” Not merely does fear urge them, but also inclination. Nothing can here preserve them but a fixed eye directed to the coming of the Lord. We have already remarked, that the great day of the Lord is the collective result of all his judgments on the ungodly world. In the historical realization it manifests itself in an entire series of calamities. At each of them, and hence also in those, which are now proceeding before our eyes, the word, “Behold I come quickly,” &c., a sort of miniature representation of the seven epistles, acquires new meaning; the letters, which in ordinary quiet times are dark, become then transparent.Clothing, when it is used figuratively, is elsewhere usually a symbol of the state and condition; sinners bear filthy clothing, the justified pure, the righteous have white; comp. on ch. Revelation 7:11. In this sense is the clothing mentioned here. The address is to Christians, so that the garments denote the Christian state. The world could not have been addressed so. The important thing for it is not to keep its garments, but to change them. The word in ch. Revelation 3:11, “Hold that which thou hast,” corresponds. Bengel, “Watch—garments. Two parts, which belong together and go together. When going to sleep one lays aside his garments, but when awake one keeps them. Now, if something suddenly happens, such as the arrival of the Lord, one who is asleep does not readily get himself clothed, but he who is in a wakeful attitude, is safe also in respect to his clothing.” In the words, “that he may not walk naked, and that they may not see his shame,” (his indecorous or scandalously naked state), it is more precisely indicated wherein the blessedness consists;[Note: So also the mode of coming at the blessedness is more definitely described in ch. 14:13, 22:14. The right pointing of this verse is the following: μακάριοςὁγρηγορῶνκαὶτηρῶντὰἱμάτιααὐτοῦ, ἵναμὴγυμνὸςπεριπατῇκαὶβλέπωσιτὴνἀσχημοσύνηναὐτοῦ.] in this, namely, that men’s destitution of what constitutes a Christian state may not be exhibited before all the world, to their great disgrace and painful humiliation, (“where there is but a little modesty, nakedness is very annoying, or even quite insupportable.”) How much hangs on the blessedness and the threatening here pronounced, the year 1848 has afforded many an occasion for enabling us vividly to realize. We must beforehand keep our garments, if we would not be overtaken by that coming of the Lord, which pervades all history (comp. on ch. Revelation 1:1; Revelation 1:7), and appear in a shameful state of nakedness. The nakedness here is not the guilt, but the punishment; by means of the judgment the nakedness, which existed already, becomes a matter of public shame. It is not the being naked, but the walking naked, that is mentioned; and the clause, “and that they may not see his shame,” serves as an explanation of the walking naked. The detected are the naked; the seeing of the shame appears often in the Old Testament as a threatening and punishment. Thus in Isaiah 3:17, Isaiah 47:3, “thy nakedness shall be discovered, and thy shame seen;” Hosea 2:10, “And now will I discover her lewdness in the sight of her lovers;” Nahum 3:5, “Behold I am against thee, saith the Lord of hosts; and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame.” Revelation 16:16. And he gathered them together into the place, which is called in the Hebrew Armageddon. The subject is God the Almighty. At the close of Rev 16:14, every thing was already connected with the divine agency: “of that great day of God the Almighty.” It was, too, God the Almighty that was substantially the subject in Revelation 16:15. For Christ, who there announced his coming, comes in his name. For this reason also God must be the subject, because otherwise the overthrow of the enemies would not be placed in a determinate point of view; the close would therefore be an unsatisfactory one. We are led to think of God as the subject also by the fundamental passage, Joel 4:2, “And I gather all peoples and bring them into the valley of Jehoshaphat,” (Vitringa, “the place of conflict, which Joel calls the valley of the judgment of God, the Spirit calls here Armageddon,”) comp. Ezekiel 38:4, Ezekiel 39:3, where also the Lord leads the enemies of his church into his land, in order to judge them there; Ezekiel 38:16, “bring him upon my land, that the heathen may know me, when I am sanctified in thee, Gog.” Another subject would have required to be more definitely marked. The three unclean spirits are at too great a distance, and the verb joined to them, in Revelation 16:14, is in the plural; they are. The agency cannot be ascribed, with Bengel, to the angel of the sixth vial; for the angels have nothing more assigned them, than the pouring out of the vials. Armageddon means the mountain of Megiddo. In the valley of Megiddo, Pharaoh, the type of the ungodly power of the world, had once killed the pious Josiah, who in Zechariah 12:10-11, appears as a type of Christ, “And I pour out upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of gracious supplication, and they look on me whom they have pierced, and they lament for him like the lamentation for an only son, and mourn for him like the mourning for the first-born. At that time there shall be a great lamentation in Jerusalem, (over Jesus, who, like Josiah, was slain by the hand of the heathen, on account of the sins of his people,) like the lamentation of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddo.” The fact of its being God who gathers them together, does not exclude the mind of the heathen themselves, but pre-supposes it, in unison with Revelation 16:12, where they desired to pass the Euphrates, and by means of the vial the Euphrates was dried up for them. What they once accomplished there against Josiah, they would now again accomplish against Jesus; He, the risen one, must there receive from them the stroke of death, and his church must go down with him to the grave, as formerly the theocracy was borne to the grave with Josiah. But that they shall not succeed in this, that the ancient deed of heathenish wickedness shall not be renewed in Armageddon, but be avenged (comp. 1 Kings 21:19, 1 Kings 21:23; 2 Kings 9:33, ss)., is evident alone from the circumstance, that it is God, who gathers them together into this place, to which they themselves also hasten; and still more determinately from Revelation 16:14, by which the great day of God the Almighty breaks in at Armageddon. It makes no material difference, that here, not the valley, but the mountain of Megiddo, is mentioned, as mountain and valley are inseparably connected together, (comp. Deuteronomy 8:7, Deuteronomy 11:11). The change was not, however, adopted merely for the sake of a better sound. Armageddon has more of strength in it, and the moun1ain is as natural an emblem of victory, as the valley was of defeat, (comp. Psalms 23:4).The objection that has been raised against the reference to the death of Josiah on account of the result here being a happy one for the church, has been obviated by the remarks already made. It arises from not perceiving the human design that lies in the back-ground, for which the place carried an inviting aspect, as it had been the theatre of an earlier overthrow of the church and of its former head, who by name and position typified the present head. From failing to perceive this, it has often been thought, that Medgiddo comes into notice here as the place, at which Deborah and Barak gained the victory over the Canaanites. So, in particular, Bengel. But Megiddo is not mentioned there in the historical narrative; it is only in a passing way introduced in the song of Deborah (Judges 5:19). Nor is the subject there the valley of Megiddo, but Taanach by the waters of Megiddo. Mention is made of the valley of Megiddo only in the passages which refer to the death of Josiah. Nothing properly corresponds to the valley, but the mountain, and a close relation of this sort is necessary to exclude all guesswork. Further, only some event could be referred to as having happened at Megiddo, which had rivetted itself most deeply to the remembrance of the people of God; so that every one would immediately think of that, as soon as he heard the name of Megiddo. Now, there can be no doubt, that the death of Josiah, as the later and more important event, would overshadow all earlier reminiscences. Zechariah 10:10-11, in particular, shews this quite plainly. This passage, besides, is expressly cited by John in his Gospel, John 19:37, and in this book, ch. Revelation 1:7, an allusion is made to it. Finally, the reference to the victory of Pharaoh suits admirably to the Egyptian character of the whole group.Others (Vitringa, Bengel) have conceived, on the same ground, that Megiddo is mentioned here, not with reference to any historical fact, lint in respect to its etymology. But such a consideration does not obviously present itself here, as it does in the case of the name, the valley of Jehoshaphat, in Joel; and the prophet would, in that event, have left us (what he never does) to uncertain conjecture. If it turned on the signification of the name, this would, as in ch. Revelation 9:11, have been rendered also into Greek. Its being said, “which is called in the Hebrew,” shews, that not simply a proper name is brought forward, that the word has an element in it, which must be explained out of the Hebrew. That no Greek explanation is appended, shews, in connection with the fact of Megiddo presenting no obvious derivation, that this Hebrew element can only stand in the syllable, Ar (the Heb. δψ), which required no explanation.[Note: The Ἑβραϊστὶ in the New Testament is found only in the writings of John, in the Gospel, ch. 5:2, 19:13, 17, 20, and in the Apoc. Besides here, ch. 9:11.The sixth vial must of necessity break off here—must stand at what immediately prepares for the final catastrophe. Otherwise, there would be no room for the seventh. With the actual irruption of the great day of God the Almighty. with the overthrow of the kings of the earth, which suddenly takes place, all—the drying up of the Euphrates, and also the fatal parole Armageddon, which announced the overthrow of Christ—all is out, nothing more remains as an object for the avenging severity of God. As regards the substance, it is reported in the seventh vial on this overthrow. Still, the clothing there is of a different description.It is incorrectly remarked by Bengel, “Here the delineation of the conflict is broken off, which afterwards is carried out by the true and faithful one, who sits upon the white horse.” The seven vials form of themselves a separate whole, and there can be no continuation of what is broken off here. Add to this, that the battle in ch. Revelation 19:11, ss., is only a partial one, only a particular phase of the conflict described here, in which all the conflicts of the worldly power against Christ and his church are comprised into one whole. Seventh Vial Revelation 16:17. And the seventh poured out his vial upon the air; and there went out a loud voice out of the temple from the throne, which said: It is done. Bengel: “The air is, in a manner, the work-shop of lightning, etc., as also of hail, and even earthquakes arise from the air, mingling itself with hot vapours within the earth.”In Revelation 16:1 merely, “a loud voice out of the temple,” because there it is clear from what goes before, that the voice can be no other than the voice of God. Here this is rendered still more evident by the added expression, “from the throne.”From the reference to Revelation 16:1 the expression, “it is done,” receives its more definite meaning. The commission was to pour out the seven vials of God’s wrath on the earth. This commission was now, after the pouring out of the seventh vial, fulfilled; for the inevitable result that was to follow, could easily be anticipated, (comp. on ch. Revelation 11:17). The word, “it is done,” at the same time carries along with it the end of the ungodly world and its power. For, according to ch. Revelation 15:1 the wrath of God is filled up with these seven plagues; but the completion of God’s wrath pre-supposes the complete annihilation of its object. It would be a blasphemy to assert, that the wrath of God could come to an end, so long as enmity to him and his church is still upon the field. Ezekiel 9:11 is similar, “And behold the man, who had on the linen clothing and the inkhorn by his side, answered and said, I have done, as thou commandest me.”We must not explain, It has been. For, then we should want a definite subject. We cannot think of Rome. For nothing in the whole group is as yet said of it; and that the operation of the vials does not limit itself to Rome, is evident from what follows, in which Babylon the great appears only as a particular point, which was struck by the judicial severity of God under this seal. The γέγονε occurs also in ch. Revelation 21:6 in the signification of: it is done. It has been, has something disagreeably sharp in it, and is more poetical than prophetical. Revelation 16:18. And there were lightnings and voices and thunders, and there was a great earthquake, such as has not been since men were upon the earth, such an earthquake so great. We may compare ch. Revelation 11:19, “And there were lightnings and voices and thunderings, and an earthquake and great hail” (here also Revelation 16:21). The seventh vial agrees exactly in its main features with the seventh trumpet. Here again we have arrived precisely at the same point at which we found ourselves there, to the discomfiture of those who could turn the whole book into a continuous representation. At the same time, however, there is a difference between the vials and the trumpets. The particular in the vials comes more distinctly out on the ground of the general. Peculiar here are the contents of Rev 16:19-20, the reference to the God- opposing powers of the world, while the trumpets, like the seals, have to do simply with godless men.Luther follows the reading: voices and thunders and lightnings, which has arisen from an unseasonable comparison of ch. Revelation 8:5. That the lightnings should go first is clear from what was remarked at ch. Revelation 11:19. By the earthquake is denoted the shaking of the ungodly powers of the world. On the expression: such as has not been, comp. Exodus 9:18, “a very grievous hail such as has not been in the land of Egypt since the foundation thereof, even until now;” and the properly fundamental passage, Daniel 12:1, “And there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time,” on which also Matthew 24:21 rests. The expression in this last passage, “since the beginning of the world,” serves to explain that in Daniel, “since there was a nation.”[Note: To the βει in the fundamental passage (Michaelis falsely ex quo populous tuns factus est peculiaris gens, inde ab exitu ex AEgypto), the οἰἀνθρωτοι corresponds better than ἀ ?́νθρωτος, which Tischendorf prefers.] Revelation 16:19. And out of the great city there were made three parts, and the cities of the heathen fell. And Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give to her the cup of the wine of the wrath of his anger. Revelation 16:20. And all islands fled away, and no mountains were found. The division of the verses is here unhappy. Revelation 16:19 should properly have ended with fell. Then each verse would have begun with the particular, whose fall was of especial importance in respect to the present of the Seer, and from that would have risen to the general. Babylon the great corresponds to the great city, and the islands and mountains correspond to the cities of the heathen. These parts, after the number of the powers that bore rule in it—the dragon, the beast, and the false prophet; to each, as it were, a part. That with the threefold division we are to suppose a complete prostration concurring, is plain from the cause that produces it, the earthquake; and also from the parallel falling which is spoken of the great city itself, in ch. Revelation 14:8, Revelation 18:2. Two cities have in the Revelation the name of greatJerusalem in ch. Revelation 11:8, and Babylon, that is Rome, in all the other passages, and very commonly, ch. Revelation 14:8, Revelation 17:18, Revelation 18:10; Revelation 18:16; Revelation 18:18-19, Revelation 18:21. It is quite incomprehensible how some expositors should understand the great city here of Jerusalem. By so doing they show that the whole import of the group of the seven vials has remained hidden from them. The object of judgment throughout that group is the heathen worldly power as opposed to God. In the preceding and following portions Babylon is so commonly called the great, that this may be regarded as a sort of proper name. On the other hand, Jerusalem is not spoken of in so broad and general a way. But what is more is, that the designation of the great city is used neither of Jerusalem nor of Babylon without some other term or description—without something in the context to indicate with certainty what precisely is meant. Hence the following expression, “and Babylon the great,” must be a resumption, as otherwise the common epithet of the great would be attended only with perplexity. The pain of uncertain conjecture in the Revelation belongs only to those who voluntarily surrender themselves to it. Farther, the complete destruction that is announced here does not suit Jerusalem. In the Apocalypse Jerusalem always denotes the church (vol. i., p. 425). But this can never become wholly degenerate and fall away; and as little can it be the subject of consuming judgments—comp. ch. Revelation 11:13. The cities of the heathen—whence the great city can only be a heathen one, to the confutation of those who would understand it of Christian Rome. (On ἐ ?́θνη, not the nations, but the heathen, see vol. i., p. 306). The heathen are to be regarded, according to ch. Revelation 11:18, as full of wrath, burning with rage against the church of Christ. For the persecution of this they here receive their reward. From the connection with the great city, the cities of the heathen are here to be conceived as possessors of the power of the heathen world.In the designation of Babylon as the great there is a reference, at the same time, to her guilt, since she had only become great through her disregard of what is just and right. That Babylon denotes heathen Rome has already been proved at ch. Revelation 14:8. The expression, “Babylon was remembered,” alludes to Psalms 9:12, “For the avenger of blood remembereth them, he forgetteth not the cry of the miserable.” On the words, to give her the cup, etc., see on ch. Revelation 14:10. In the expression, of the wrath of his anger, which occurs also in ch. Revelation 19:15, the anger is the genus, and the wrath, θυμός, the species—the excitement—the intense feeling that appears in the energy and vigour of the mode of action. This is a necessary accompaniment of fulness of love; and, indeed, a want of perception in regard to the energy of divine love always goes hand in hand with a want of perception in regard to the energy of the divine righteousness in punishing. The islands, like the mountains, denote kingdoms; comp. on ch. Revelation 6:14. The difference is merely this, that in the designation of kingdoms by islands respect is had only to their separate existence, while they are called mountains, in so far as they exercise dominion over others. The addition “of the heathen” in Revelation 16:19 is to be understood also here. Along with the islands and the mountains the sea also has vanished. The last event, which is comprised in the comprehensive representation, is the destruction of Gog and Magog in ch. Revelation 20:7-10. Revelation 16:21. And a great hail as an hundred-weight fell from heaven on the men; and the men blasphemed God upon the plague of hail, for its plague is very great. On the hail comp. on ch. Revelation 11:19. Instead of: as an hundred- weight, properly, as large as a talent.[Note: Comp. Josephus de Bel. Jud. Revelation 16:6, ταλαντιαῖοιμὲνἠ ?͂σανβαλλόμενοιπέτροι, which were thrown by machines for the purpose.] The talent weighed between fifty and sixty pounds. They still blaspheme, therefore, dying. For this hail leaves no one in life who is struck by it. It brings destruction to all that had been still left to the enemies of God by the other plagues. The deadly character of the hail is clear also from this, that here no mention is made, as in the parallel passages, of their repenting of their works along with their blaspheming. They no longer have time to repent. But even when dying they can still blaspheme. Bengel: “The blaspheming of God had twice already been mentioned under these plagues, and along with that it was said they did not repent; but here, when the blaspheming of God is delineated the third time, no notice is taken of the other point, whether they repented or not; from which we may infer that the men were killed by this hail as the Amorites in Joshua 10:11. Men cannot receive the punishment due to this blasphemy in time. But the more on that account must we suppose a respect had to the judgment of God in eternity. We have here the end of God’s judgment on the earth, though still not the end of all things.” Under the seventh trumpet “the time for the dead to be judged” had also come; comp. ch. Revelation 11:18. But this is not said in respect to the seventh vial, however nearly it otherwise touches on the seventh trumpet. For the seven vials or plagues, after the example of those of Egypt, do not alight on individuals as such, but on the powers of the world; they all, therefore, belong to the earth (comp. ch. Revelation 16:1). Hence, in this group the wicked feeling that prompted the still unpunished blasphemy cannot be met. We are thus pointed forwards to the following group, at the close of which, in ch. Revelation 20:12, ss., the dead who have not died in the Lord shall be judged according to their works. Bengel remarks, “In the midst of all, the saints, who are found among the ungodly mass, are preserved in safety. God distinguished in the plagues of Egypt between the Egyptians and the children of Israel, and a similar thing takes place in the seven vials.” But we must not understand the distinction too outwardly. When two suffer the same thing, it is still not the same. THE SIXTH GROUP THE OF THE THREE ENEMIES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD (Ch. 17-20) As the fourth group Revelation 12-14) represents the conflict of the three enemies against the Lamb and those who follow him with preliminary indications of their overthrow, so this sixth group, to which the fifth formed a sort of prelude, represents the judgment on the three enemies. In doing this, it does not stand merely at what is altogether general, but goes as far into detail as it could properly do without transgressing the limits which separate prophecy from history. In many respects we have here the most important part of the book before us. The striking clearness and accuracy with which we have here unfolded to us the most important evolutions in the history of the church, during the times which we can now long back upon, strengthens our faith in looking forward with confidence to the one event announced here, which still belongs to the future, ch. Revelation 20:10. Whoever has attained to a right apprehension of the meaning of this group, he will find it a tabernacle into which he can retreat in tempestuous times. It is capable of affording an inexpressible rest and confidence to the soul. The arrangement is as follows. In the representation of the conflict waged by the three enemies against Christ and his church, a descent is made from Satan down to the two beasts; but here, inversely in the representation of Christ’s victory, a rise takes place from the two beasts to Satan. In the first beast, again, it rises from the destruction of the two last heads, which, in St John’s time, were still present and future, the two last phases of the ungodly power of the world, in its heathen state, to the destruction of the beast itself. In the time of the Seer, the beast oppressed the church through the medium of the sixth head, the Roman monarchy; and through the medium of the possessor of this monarchy, the great whore, the Babylon of the then present timeRome. The judgment of the great whore, the destruction of Rome in its property as the heathen mistress of the world, is unfolded in ch. 17. And now the ungodly power of the world must be conducted under the directing hand of God through its seventh and last phase, which, as had already been imaged in ch. 13, by the ten horns on the seventh head, was to possess, not a united, but a divided character, consisting of ten kings or kingdoms. These, as is said in Revelation 17:14, by way of anticipation, were to war with the Lamb, and the Lamb was to overcome them. The overthrow of heathen Rome, which is simply and in some sharp features announced in ch. 17, is vividly portrayed in ch. 18. The prophecy as to its matter makes no advance here. The aim is only to imprint deeply in men’s minds what had already been represented in ch. 17. In ch. Revelation 19:1-4, the whole of this first part, so important and consolatory for those who, in the time of John, were sighing under the persecutions of Rome, and struggling with her seductions, concluded by the Te Deum laudamus of the just made perfect, celebrating God’s righteous judgment upon Rome. This first song of praise of the heavenly church, which magnifies the grace of God contemplated as already past, is immediately followed up in ch. Revelation 19:5-10 by a second, which anticipatively gives thanks for what was still to be done, even to the setting up of the kingdom of Almighty God, and the celebration of the marriage feast of the Lamb; so that it forms the introduction to all that follows. The following portion represents how these anticipations are gradually realized. By means of the two songs of praise the whole of the group is divided into two great halves—the first containing the victory over the enemy, that at the time of the Seer pressed so hard upon the church; the second, the victory over all the other enemies. First, in ch. Revelation 19:12-21, in further enlargement of what was indicated in ch. 17, we have the victory of Christ over the ten kings, the instruments of his judgment on Rome. Along with these, as the last phase of the heathen worldly power, the ten horns on the seventh head of the beast out of the sea, the beast himself also, the heathen state, goes down, and his tool likewise, the beast out of the earth, the false prophet, the God-opposing wisdom of the world. Of the three enemies of the kingdom of God in ch. 13, two now lie prostrate on the ground. Ch. Revelation 20:1-6 represents how the third, Satan, is rendered for a time harmless. He is shut up for a thousand years in hell, and allows to the church, during that thousand years, a secure and unimperilled existence. At the end of the thousand years opportunity is given to Satan anew for seduction; the earth again rises up against heaven; the church on all sides is heavily oppressed; but fire comes down from heaven and consumes her oppressors (“he who reads, let him understand.”) Satan is for ever disarmed of his power, and the final judgment overtakes all, who during the course of time have acted in a hostile manner toward the Lord and his church, ch. Revelation 20:7-15. Now, since all the enemies of the kingdom of God have been brought to desolation, the opening song of praise has found its realization, the Almighty God has taken to himself the kingdom, the joyful time of the marriage of the Lamb has come, and the only thing that remains as an object for the seventh and last group is, the solemnization of this marriage. Ch. 17. This chapter, according to the just remark of Bengel himself, divides itself into three parts, marked by the angel thrice commencing his discourse with the word, he spake, etc. In the first part the judgment of the great whore, that sits upon the beast with the seven heads and ten horns, is shewn. The two others give the signification of the symbol. The first treats, as preparatory to the second, after the introduction in Revelation 17:7, of the beast in Revelation 17:8, of his seven heads in Revelation 17:9-11, of the horns in Revelation 17:12-14. The second treats of the whore and the judgment that is held upon her, Revelation 17:15-18. The Great Whore Revelation 17:1. And there came one of the seven angels who have the seven vials, and spake with me and said, Come, I will shew thee the judgment of the great whore that sits upon the many waters. Revelation 17:2. With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and they that dwell on the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication. That one simply of the seven angels is spoken of, without determining which, shews that the matter turns not on the personality of the angel, but only on the genus. The function being attributed to one of the angels, who have the seven vials, must point to a close connection subsisting between this sixth vision and the fifth. The judgment of the great whore, which forms the theme here, was comprehended in the seven vials. It can neither proceed alongside of them, nor follow after them. For in the last plague, which annihilated the ungodly power of the world, Babylon the great is expressly named as a chief object of the judicial energy of God (ch. Revelation 16:19), hence, what is said here of her judgment can only be a more extended representation of a particular point; and it is to indicate this relation, that one of those angels appears as the leader. It is the same angel also that shews John, according to ch. Revelation 21:9, the bride, the Lamb’s wife. This is a simple result of his having here shewn the judgment of the great whore. There is no independent reason to be assigned. It hangs merely on the circumstance, that by the likeness of the individual showing, reference is made to the parallelism between the two women—the one of whom is brought down from the height to the depth, and the other raised up from the depth to the height. That the reason is no other than what we have stated is evident from the manifestly intentional verbal agreement of the second passage with the first, “And there came one of the seven angels, who have the seven vials, which are full of the seven last plagues, and spake with me, and said[Note: The μοι, which is added to the text that Luther follows, must be spurious for this reason alone, that it is wanting in this second passage.]: Come, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife; and he brought me in the Spirit to a mountain great and high.” In every part that did not absolutely require to be changed, the agreement is quite literal, only that the seven vials are more particularly described as being “full of the seven last plagues;” because there the seven vials lay more remote.The angels are represented here as still having the seven vials. We might explain this with Bengel on the ground that the vials were poured out, indeed, but that the angels continue to hold them in their hands, as a memorial of what has been accomplished. But, according to the second passage, they not only have the vials, but the vials are still also full. We must therefore explain it on the ground that what John saw, was as to the substance only a symbolical representation, and that in reality the judgment was still future. The come, which the angel here calls out to the church in John, is like the come to Lazarus in John 11:43. It ought to place vividly before her the destruction of her enemies, and, in close connection with this, her own resurrection to new life. The judgment does not actually proceed here, as in the vials, but is only shewn.The angel would shew John the judgment of the whore. John has properly to do here only with the woman; what he says of the beast, of his heads and horns, serves only as a foundation for what he has to say of the woman; and what is said in other respects of the woman, serves only as a preparation for the judgment. The judgment is the proper theme. In perfect correspondence with this is the circumstance of John being presently led away into the wilderness.[Note: Several, and even Bengel, have sought in vain to press upon κρίμα another signification; it corresponds to ξωτθ in Jeremiah 51:9, comp. ch. 18:8: ἰσχυρὸςκύριοςὁθεὸςὁκρίναςαὐτήν, Revelation 17:10: ἡκρίσιςσου.]The judgment is here already shewn to the Seer, and not, as some have supposed, first in ch. 18:He sees immediately in Revelation 17:3 the woman in the wilderness, and obtains the explanation in Revelation 17:16, that thereby her desolation is denoted.Why Babylon or Rome is called the great whore—viz., on account of her selfishness concealing itself behind the appearance of love, on account of the diplomatical and deceitful arts. by which she strove to extend her dominion—is clear from what is said at ch. Revelation 14:8, “She is fallen, Babylon the great, who has made all the heathen drink of the wrath of the wine of her fornication.” The impropriety of comparing the passages in which apostacy from God appears under the figure of fornication, was perceived by Vitringa, who, however, made no farther use of this perception. Babylon still appears standing, and in ch. Revelation 16:9 is called the great. There can be no doubt that an internal connection must subsist between the greatness of the whore and the greatness of Babylon; the rather so, as in ch. Revelation 14:8, the greatness of Babylon is brought into remembrance with her fornication. If the fornication denotes cunning policy, then the being great in that implies being great in general: the great whore is at the same time the great mistress of the world. From the whole connection it turns here, not upon a moral property alone, but also upon the great power which must be brought to an end by the judgment. That the theme here is the judgment of the great whore, implies that her doing, her guilt had already been treated of at length in the preceding portion. The brief indication in ch. Revelation 14:8 is not sufficient, the less so, as there also the guilt was mentioned only in a passing way, as a reason for the threatened punishment. We must therefore seek for the representation of the guilt in ch. 13. There, in Revelation 17:3-8, are described the severe persecutions, which the Roman power, the sixth head of the beast, inflicts on the church. The great whore is only so far different from the sixth head, as this head denotes the Roman power, while the whore is the city of Rome—“the great city, which has dominion over the kings of the earth,” (Revelation 17:18) in which that power concentrates itself. Substantially, therefore, a report is there given of the misdeeds of Rome.The whore’s sitting upon the many waters also is presupposed as a thing that must be known from what precedes, and must, therefore, in substance, be contained there. It is enough to compare ch. Revelation 13:3, “and the whole earth wondered after the beast;” Revelation 17:7, “and there was given to it power over every tribe, and people, and tongue, and nation,” Revelation 17:12-16. From Revelation 17:15 it seems impossible to doubt, that many waters, when used without anything additional, is equivalent to many peoples. It is said there, “the waters, which thon sawest, where the whore sits, are peoples and multitudes, and nations and tongues.” But in opposition to this view a twofold consideration presents itself. First, that the figure can scarcely be justified as characteristic. Bengel, indeed, remarks, “There is a great similarity when a great multitude of people is represented by many waters. Great waters have something powerful in them, and make a mighty noise; as do also many people when they are assembled together. At annual fairs, in loyal acclaims, and on other occasions, when multitudes raise their voices together, they then become like resounding waters.” But the words marked in italics show that Bengel must first have thrown out of view the point of comparison. The many waters might also have been at rest. The second consideration is this, that waters elsewhere, in the symbolical language of Scripture, are an image of prosperity, of a happy and flourishing condition—so for example, Hosea 13:15, “it dries up his spring and desiccates his brook, he (the enemy) plunders his treasure, all glorious possessions.” (See my Comm. on Psalms 107:33-34). That it is used specially in this sense in the Revelation, comp. on ch. Revelation 8:10, Revelation 16:4, and in the Old Testament in regard to ancient Babylon; so, in particular, in the properly fundamental passage, Jeremiah 51:13, “Thou who dwellest beside many waters art rich in treasures,” where the second part of the verse is an explanation of the first, and forms the foundation of Babylon’s natural fulness of water. So, too, Jeremiah 50:38, “Drought upon her waters, that they dry up,” which is immediately preceded by the words, “Sword upon her treasures, and they are plundered.” Isaiah 44:27, “Who says to the deep, Be dry, and I will dry up thy streams.” Psalms 107:33-34, where it is said, in reference to Babylon, “He changes streams into deserts, and water springs into dry land; a fruitful land into salt-heath, because of the wickedness of its inhabitants,” q. d. he causes the waters of Babylon’s well-being and prosperity to become dry. We may, therefore, suppose, that in the explanation given in Revelation 17:15, the peoples, etc. are brought into view only in respect to the advantage, which they yield to the mistress of the world; and that it is this advantage, which properly is imaged by water; as also Nineveh (in Nahum 2:9, “Nineveh is like a water-pond,”) is compared to a pond of water, merely on account of the advantage which it derived from the concourse of men: the contrast is formed by the plundering in Revelation 17:10. That the sitting here is not equivalent to being enthroned, but to dwelling, according to the Hebrew usage, (comp. ch. Revelation 14:6), appears from the fundamental passage, Jeremiah 51:13. We may explain: upon, or by many waters; either way she appears as the possessor of waters.When the commerce with kings in Revelation 17:2 is represented as fornication, the point of comparison is the making herself agreeable, showing feigned love for the sake of her own interest—comp. on ch. Revelation 14:8. Rome, according to Revelation 17:1, is “the great whore,” that allures the kings into this commerce, as it is said of Tyre in Isaiah 23:17, “She commits fornication with all the kingdoms of the earth;” but the behaviour of the kings themselves is also of a whorish nature. Rome whores with the kings, in order to bring them under her dominion; the kings whore with Rome, making hypo-critical professions of their love and devotedness, in order to find their servitude tolerable.That the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk by the wine of her fornication, indicates, that she had rendered the whole world helpless and miserable by her artful policy, and had laid it at her feet; comp. on ch. Revelation 14:8. Revelation 17:3. And he brought me into a wilderness in the Spirit. And 1 saw a woman sitting on a scarlet coloured beast, that was full of names[Note: γέμονὀνόματα. In the Rev. also, γέμω is usually construed with the genitive. In the Hebr. constr. here, and in Revelation 17:4, with the accusative, the copyists lost themselves. (In Revelation 17:4 the Hebr. and Greek construction are combined together.) Hence the different readings.] of blasphemy, and had seven heads and ten horns.That the wilderness is an image of the state into which the woman was to be brought, is plain from the explanation in Revelation 17:16; comp. Revelation 18:2; Revelation 18:16. Then, the corresponding expression, the judgment (of condemnation) in Revelation 17:1; the theatre merely points to the judging, the rest is represented by the subject of the judgment. So that if we do not refer the words “into a wilderness” to the approaching desolation, the promise of the angel to shew the (condemnatory) judgment of the great whore would remain unfilfilled. We are led to the same result by the contrast of the great and high mountain in ch. Revelation 21:10. And, finally, all doubt is removed by the fundamental passages of the Old Testament In Jeremiah 50, 51 the threatening constantly returns, that ancient Babylon should be turned into a wilderness. In Isaiah 21:1, Babylon, on account of the approaching desolation, is called the desert of the sea. (See Christology II. p. 98). What is said here of Babylon, holds substantially in respect to every worldly power that is opposed to God, and treads in her footsteps. Continually is the church called anew to stand unmoved amid the proud triumphs of that power, and allow herself to be carried by the Spirit into the wilderness, to see there with the eye of the Spirit the ruin that lies hidden behind the greatness.In regard to being in the Spirit, comp. on ch. Revelation 4:2. That the subject is not the woman, but a woman, not the beast, but a beast, is to be explained on the ground, that the Seer describes what he saw. It is otherwise in Revelation 17:1. There the subject of discourse is the great whore. It is a strange question to put, whether the beast here is identical with that in Revelation 13:1. It proceeds from entirely overlooking the relation of the two groups to each other. The allusion to ch. 13, which one misses, is only formally wanting, as appears from the reasons already mentioned. The beast is here indicated in a quite cursory manner, and in terms that bespeak the closest connexion with ch. 13; so that we are thence to borrow what is needed. This close interconnexion supplies the place of a distinct allusion. Here the Seer has not to do with the beast, but with the woman, who sits upon the beast, and indeed more especially with the judgment that is to be passed upon her.The woman’s sitting upon the beast brings those who have taken up a false view of the beast, into no small perplexity. If we understand by the beast heathen Rome, or if we understand by it the papacy, the sitting of the woman on the beast cannot be explained but with the greatest arbitrariness. If, with Bossuet, who follows the former of these views, we identify the beast and the woman (“St John clearly explains that the beast and the woman are at bottom but the same thing, and that both the one and the other is Rome with its empire”)—a supposition that in itself alone is extremely violent—how then can the woman sit upon the beast? Bengel, who adopted the second explanation, understands by the woman the city Rome, which will free itself from the dominion of the Pope. But, apart from all the other considerations which oppose this interpretation, at the moment, when Rome vindicates her freedom from the Papal dominion, she ceases to be the great whore in the sense of Bengel. On the other hand, if the beast is the ungodly power of the world in general, it was quite natural, that Rome, the possessor of that at the time of the prophet, should appear sitting on the beast.The woman sits upon a scarlet coloured beast. As a moral qualification is denoted by the beast, godlessness (ch. Revelation 13:1), it is most natural to regard the epithet also as indicative of a moral quality; the more so as the mention of names of blasphemy immediately follows. Scarlet colour is employed as being the colour of blood. It is used so in Isaiah 1:18, and also in the symbolism of the law. (See my Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 182). With the godlessness hatred toward true piety goes hand in hand. To the scarlet coloured beast the red dragon in ch. Revelation 12:3 corresponds. In this chapter we have a correspondence in Revelation 17:6, where the prophet sees the woman drunk with the blood of saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus, (comp. ch. Revelation 13:7; Revelation 13:10; Revelation 13:15). In opposition to those, who with an appeal to Revelation 17:4 would understand the scarlet coloured of the royal pomp and glory, there is this farther consideration. that here the beast itself is described as scarlet coloured, whereas in Revelation 17:4 the apparel is spoken of. This plainly implies, that by the scarlet coloured here a quality is denoted, a blood-thirsty disposition, and not a property. In regard to the names of blasphemy, names by which the glory is usurped that belongs to God and his Son, see on ch. Revelation 13:1. Revelation 17:4. And the woman was clothed with purple,[Note: Comp. with the ἦνπεριβεβλημένηπορφυροῦν, John 19:2 : καὶἱμάτιονπορφυροῦνπεριέβαλοναὐτὸν, while Matt. in ch. 27:28 has: περιέθηκαναὐτῷχλαμύδακοκκίνην.] and scarlet colour, and gilded with gold and precious stones and pearls, and had a golden cup in her hand, full of abominations, and of the filthinesses[Note: τὰἀκάθαρτα, the accus. after the Heb. idiom, in order to avoid the threefold genitive.] of her fornication. The apparel and the adorning of the woman is significant of the rich and proud pomp of a sovereign, comp. ch. Revelation 18:12; Revelation 18:16, and Ezekiel 28:13, where Tyre is radiant with gold and gems. In regard to the golden cup, comp. at ch. Revelation 14:8, and the fundamental passage quoted there, Jeremiah 51:7, “The golden cup of Babylon is in the hand of the Lord,” etc. From this passage, and from the standing use of the figure of the cup, (comp. on ch. Revelation 14:8) the cup can only be filled with what renders those, to whom it is given, helpless. The abominations and impurities are the wine of the cup. The point of comparison is the overpowering, the casting to the ground, the reducing to a state of impotence. Hence, we cannot think of the abominations of idolatry, but only of political enormities. The additional expression, “of her fornication,” might hold either way. But fornication can only mean love-feigning policy, according to the usage of the Revelation. The abominations and filthinesses, therefore, are the shameful transactions of that artful policy, by which Nome reduced the nations to a state of utter impotence.[Note: The word βδέλυγμα is used of all actions of a shocking nature in Leviticus 18:27; comp. Luke 16:15, ὅτιτὸἐνἀνθρώποιςὑψηλὸνβδέλυγμαἐνώπιοντοῦθεοῦ; in this book, ch. 21:27, καὶοὐμὴεἰσέλθῃεἰςαὐτὴνπᾶνκοινὸνκαὶποιῶνβδέλυγμακαὶψεῦδος.] That the cup is golden points, in accordance with what precedes, to the glory of the person who has it, and who presents it to the nations, that they may drink of it. Revelation 17:5. And on her forehead a name written: mystery, Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, and of the abominations of the earth. The name, which she has written on her forehead, is not a title, which she takes to herself, but the expression of her nature. The name consists of a whole sentence, and substantially, though not formally, Revelation 17:6 also belongs to it.On mystery, secret, see at ch. Revelation 1:20, Revelation 10:7. It was there shewn that the notion of mystery is that of a matter lying absolutely beyond the reach of the common, the natural understanding. In what respects, then, was Babylon a mystery? It was so precisely by its greatness, as still continuing after the appearance of Christ, and also pressing with frightful weight upon his confessors; comp. with Revelation 17:6, which stands in close connection with the one before us. The secret is told, Revelation 17:7, or discovered, through the announcement, that this greatness is not, as the natural mind fondly imagines, an abiding one; but is destined to an entire destruction. To the secret here corresponds the great wondering of the seer in Revelation 17:6. An end comes at the same time to the mystery and the wondering. The conflict, which the “mystery” of the prosperity of the wicked awakens in the souls of believers, is most vividly portrayed in Psalms 73. The victory and the unveiling of the mystery is attained there, by the Psalmist recovering himself from his error, and going into the sanctuary of God, where alone an insight can be obtained into the secrets, with which the natural understanding labours in vain, (Psalms 73:16-17). The solution of the mystery there, too, is found by “marking their end.” According to the common supposition, the word mystery points, it is thought, to the circumstance, that by Babylon is meant, not the ancient city bearing that name, but Rome. This, however, would be no mystery in the Scripture sense; it is at most but an enigma, and no longer even that, after the composition of the first epistle of Peter.The predicate of Babylon the great, refers to “the wide circumference of the city,” only in so far as that represented the vast extent of her territory. Thus it appears, that “the great,” and the mother of harlots,” etc., are very closely connected together, and that we are not, with Bengel, to make out the relation thus: “beside her greatness, she is also called, on account of her internal spiritual constitution, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.”The mother of harlots, as much as the great whore in Revelation 17:1; the arch-harlot, she who practises through the widest bounds, a policy the most cunning and destructive to the nations. All, who practise the same within narrower bounds, are, as it were, her daughters. The abominations here also can only be political enormities. Under these are comprehended what she did against the church. For, the root of her conduct in that respect was not false religious zeal, but despotism. In Revelation 17:6, this is still more explicitly brought out. Revelation 17:6. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of saints, and with the blood of the witnesses of Jesus. And I wondered very much when I saw her. The witnesses of Jesus, according to ch. Revelation 11:3, where the Lord speaks of his witnesses, are not those, who testify of Jesus, but those who belong to him, as also the testimony of Jesus is always the testimony which belongs to him, (comp. on ch. Revelation 1:2; Revelation 1:9, Revelation 6:9). We can suppose, that the witnesses of Jesus are not personally different from the saints, but that only by means of a rise that quality in the slain is brought out to view, which makes the mystery still more impenetrable, still heightens the guilt of Rome. They had been killed in their very service—not in spite of, but on account of their confession. How is it possible that God could look quietly on at this? But we may also suppose that the witnesses of Jesus are the more prominent part of the whole—not those, who generally delivered a good confession, but such as in the strictest sense filled the office of witnessing, the witnesses by profession. It is in favour of this latter view, that in ch. Revelation 18:21, as here the saints and the witnesses of Jesus, so there the prophets and the saints are connected together; that in ch. Revelation 19:10, “to have the testimony of Jesus,” is explained by “having the spirit of prophecy;”that also in ch. Revelation 11:3, the two witnesses step forth at once in the act of prophesying, not representing Christians generally, but the teaching office; and, finally, that in ch. Revelation 11:18, and the other passages quoted in our exposition there, Christians are divided into two classes, prophets and saints, the great and the small. The first place among the witnesses, according to ch. Revelation 18:20, is held by the apostles.The wondering of John corresponds on the one side to the designation of Babylon as a mystery in Revelation 17:5, as quite manifestly appears from Revelation 17:7, “wherefore wonderest thou? I will shew thee the mystery.” Accordingly, the mystery of the woman must be the object of wonder. If it should continue to abide in its greatness notwithstanding its fearful guilt, only this could be an object of wonder to the Seer. On the other side, there is a manifest correspondence between the wonder of the Seer, and the wonder of those whose names are not written in the book of life, mentioned in Revelation 17:8. Now, if the object of wondering to the latter is the power of the beast, that seemed to remain still unimpaired after Christ, we shall not be warranted in inferring from the wonder of the Seer, that he did not know what to make of the woman (Züllig, “the prophet’s perplexity, who knew not what it meant”). Ch. Revelation 13:3 is also to be compared, “And I saw one of his heads as slain to death, and the stroke of his death was healed. And the whole earth wondered after the beast.” The object there of the astonished wondering is the heathen, and specially the Roman power appearing still unbroken after Christ had come. Bengel: “John nowhere else speaks of himself as being seized with wonder, excepting that he calls the seven angels with the seven last plagues a wonderful sign. There must, therefore, have been something singularly fitted to astonish about the woman.” That description of the angels with the seven vials, as a sign great and wonderful, stands in a certain correspondence with the wondering of John upon the woman. The judgment on the beast, the whore, is, as it were, the counter-wonder to the beast, the whore herself. Revelation 17:7. And the angel spake to me, wherefore dost thon wonder? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast, that bears her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. The question, wherefore wonderest thou? corresponds to that, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” (Matthew 14:31). It is the accusation against human nature in John, which is always rivetted to the visible. John would not have wondered if his mind had been alive to the sayings, “How are they brought to desolation as in a moment! they are utterly consumed with terrors;” tolluntur in altum ut lapsu graviore ruant. Such sayings are indeed easily spoken, when the overthrow of the gigantic mischief has already been accomplished, but by no means so, when its power still exists in undiminished force. The wherefore shews, that the wondering is a groundless, or foolish one. It is said of Jesus in Mark 6:6, “And he wondered because of their unbelief.” That wondering of Jesus corresponds to the wondering here.[Note: The rare θαυμαζεινδιὰτι also in John 7:21.The mystery of the whore is, that she is made desolate; the mystery of the beast, that it goes into perdition. The mystery of the beast is indicated here rather than fully disclosed (this being reserved for ch. Revelation 19:20, where the beast is represented as being cast into the lake of fire); it is unfolded only in so far as is necessary, to set in its proper connection what is said of the whore. According to ch. Revelation 17:1, we have properly to do only with the judgment on the great whore. In this judgment the whole runs out. What is said in Revelation 17:10-11, of the destruction of the beast generally, serves only to give a brief survey of the whole circumstances. That the chief object is the judgment on the whore, is clear alone from this, that the beast is mentioned only in the second place. The subject of the whore is immediately and wholly disposed of; but in regard to the further treatment of the beast, a general sketch merely is given, which is afterwards completedThe subject of the beast is handled in Revelation 17:8, of his seven heads in Revelation 17:9-11, of his ten horns in Revelation 17:12-14, of the whore in Revelation 17:15-18, which verses shew, that what is said of the beast, was necessary as a foundation for that which was to be said of the woman. That the chief subject is discussed in Revelation 17:15-18, is expressly indicated by the new beginning. (“And he spake to me.”) Revelation 17:8. The beast which thou sawest, was and is not, and shall ascend out of the abyss, and go into perdition; and they that dwell upon the earth shall wonder, whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they see the beast that it was, and is not, and again shall be present. The beast was, it held its being upon earth, so long as the dominion of Satan as the prince of this world was unbroken. By what his not being was accomplished, appears from ch. Revelation 13:3, “And I saw one of his heads as killed to death.” As the deadly wound there, so here the corresponding not being must have its ground in the atonement of Christ. Further, if it is Christ who puts an end to the beast’s coming again out of the abyss and his resumed existence on the earth (comp. Revelation 17:14, Revelation 19:11, ss., especially Revelation 19:20), in him also must its not being have its cause. The not being is also to be regarded as continuing during the coming again and renewed being. This appears from Revelation 17:11, where the whole duration of the beast is denoted by the two stages of having been and of not being.On the abyss, that is, hell, see on ch. Revelation 9:1. Mention was already made in ch. Revelation 11:7, of the beast’s ascending from thence, “the beast, that ascendeth out of the abyss shall make war on them.” See on the ascending at ch. Revelation 13:1. That the “it shall (is going to) ascend,” and the corresponding, “it shall again be,” had a foundation in the present, and that an increase only belongs to the future, is manifest from all that was said regarding the time of the composition of the Apocalypse, as one in which there was an organized bloody persecution against the Christians. An absolute future cannot be intended, otherwise John would not have been on the island of Patmos. How little the future excludes the present, is shown by the “shall worship,” in ch. Revelation 13:8, compared with “they wondered,” in Revelation 17:3. Compare also on the words, “was and is not, and shall ascend out of hell,” the remarks already made at p. 81. Perdition is used here of perdition in the full sense, the perdition of hell. The beast goes to “its own place;” what comes out of hell, goes to hell. Of the perdition of hell, perdition is also used in John 17:12, where Judas is called the son of perdition, corresponding to the child of hell in Matthew 23:15, and it is also found in 2 Thessalonians 2:3, comp. 2 Thessalonians 1:9. We have a commentary in ch. Revelation 19:20, “they were both cast alive into the lake of fire, that burneth with fire and brimstone.” It is plain, from Revelation 17:11, that the perdition of hell is meant. (The reading ὑπάγει for ὑπάγειν is from Revelation 17:11).On the words, “and they shall wonder—from the foundation of the world,” comp. ch. Revelation 13:8, “And all shall worship it that dwell on the earth, whose names are not written in the book of life, of the Lamb that was slain, from the foundation of the world.”[Note: Here there is omitted merely the τοῦἀρνίουτοῦἐσφαγμένου. There it is ἐντῳ ?͂βιβλίῳ ?, here ἐπὶτὸβιβλίον. These other deviations should lead us to prefer also the reading ὀνόματα. The τὸὀ ?́νομα, which certainly has important authorities on its side has probably flowed from the parallel passage.] Bengel remarks, “At both places the highest thought, that, namely, of election, is brought in to meet the great temptation.”As the second, was and is not, corresponds to the first, so the and shall again be present, corresponds to, shall ascend out of the abyss. It is not said, shall be, but, shall be present (da seyn wird).[Note: Bengel: ad ἠ ?͂νκαὶούκἐ ?́στι, καὶπάρεσται aptissime adsonat, et minus quiddam dicit, quam si diceretur καὶἐ ?́ρχεται vel καὶἐσταί ?.] The wound was an absolutely mortal one, as will be shewn by the end. It comes again out of the abyss, from which it derives, as it were, its last power, but only as a kind of spectre.The emphasis rests on the expression, again shall be present, q.d., when they see, that the beast, which was and is not, again shall be there. The reading καίπερἐστίν, “although it still is,” which Luther follows, is to be rejected. It gives, properly, no right sense. By it the wondering must turn upon the not being; for the being would only be incidentally noticed; although it is, cannot signify as much as, and still is. But ch. Revelation 13:4 is against it, as there only a wondering of astonishment can be meant, such gaping admiration as a lost world feels toward the beast. So also here, Revelation 17:6, by which the wondering can only refer to the power of the beast. And, lastly, the correspondence between the again shall be present,” and “shall ascend,” is decisive against this reading, which is at any rate badly supported, and on external grounds also is deserving of rejection.[Note: Add to this still, that to the fut. πάρεσταὶ ? the fut. θαυμάσονται corresponds, then the μέλλειἀναβαίνειν. Farther, that the καίπερ never occurs elsewhere in the Apocalypse, and that, where it does occur in the N. T. and in classical Greek, it is coupled with the part. not with the verb fin.: (See Bleek on Hebrews 5:8.)The reading of several MSS. καὶπάρεστιν is only another attempt to get rid of the difficulty arising from this that the Seer, writing from his own standing point, uses the fut.: when they see that it again shall be present, for, shall see, that it again is present.] Revelation 17:9. Here belongs the understanding, that has wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sits, and are seven kings. The here belongs is properly here is, meaning that wisdom here has its right place, and intimating that a problem is presented here, which it is the province of the more profound spiritual insight to handle; comp. on ch. Revelation 13:18. That the mountains are to be understood spiritually is evident alone from ch. Revelation 13:3, where it is said that one of the heads was killed to death, which does not suit a natural mountain (as the seven hills of Rome, of which so many expositors think here). Then Revelation 17:3 is to be compared, in which the woman is described as sitting on a scarlet-coloured beast. To this manifestly corresponds the sitting on the mountains here. If by the first Rome is denoted, as the holder of the world’s power, then the sitting upon the mountains will also have the same meaning. In the symbolical language of Scripture, and especially of the Revelation, mountains signify kingdoms. That they have this signification also here, is plain from the term “seven kings,” or kingdoms, added by way of explanation. The seven phases of the ungodly power of the world were definitely marked at ch. Revelation 13:1. And from the remarks already made, the seven hills of Rome could only be pointed to as a symbol of the seven-formed worldly power.That the kings here are not individuals, but ideal persons, personified kingdoms, is clear alone from the corresponding expression: mountains. For these denote, not single rulers, but kingdoms. In Revelation 17:12 also kings stand for kingdoms. That the heads of the beast here are called kings is decisive against the opinion which considers the beast to be the papacy. The horns, likewise expressly mentioned, must, according to Bengel, be “worldly kings,” while he would regard the heads as “seven diverse popes succeeding each other;” though it is quite clear, that if in the former case worldly kingdoms or monarchies are spoken of, it must be these also in the latter. Revelation 17:10. Five are fallen, one is, the other is still not come, and when he comes, he must abide a short time. Of the seven kings mentioned Jive belong to the period already past; and of the two others one appeared at the time then present on the stage of history, and the other had still not entered on it. The falling denotes the overthrow of the kingdoms; comp. ch. Revelation 18:2, “She is fallen, she is fallen, Babylon the great,” ch. Revelation 14:8. The five kings or worldly kingdoms that had already fallen at the time of the Seer, are the kings of Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece. The one that is, accordingly, must be the sixth great monarchy, the Roman, for it was this which was in existence at the time of the Seer. The being denotes here, not being simply by itself, but only in contrast to the being fallen, the being as king. Otherwise, a contradiction would be presented to Revelation 17:8; Revelation 17:11, where the not being of the beast is affirmed. With the beast the power also of this sixth head is broken. It was precisely this sixth head which received the deadly wound. Bengel: “This one king, however impotent he may be, is still not off the stage. If he indeed were not, the continued duration of the beast, from his ascending out of the sea to his precipitation into the lake of fire, would thereby be interrupted. The beast is no longer what it was, but it has still not gone into destruction. The one king does not stand as the five preceding kings stood before their fall; he is, as he even now can be, in the non esse of the beast, which was represented before.” The Lord said, “I have overcome the world.” In that lies the foundation of the difference between the one and the five.When the other is come, then the sixth falls, that is now the king of Rome. But from the statement made respecting the seventh, that he shall abide but a short time, we infer, that with the one then being it was likely to continue still a pretty long time, and that by means of it the church should be for a considerable period exercised in patience.That the kings are ideal persons, there can for this reason be no doubt, that the seventh king is represented here in Revelation 17:12 as a compound of ten kings. He has not yet come, because his time has not yet arrived, (John 7:8; comp. 7:6, 8:20). When it is said that he shall remain only a short time, the subject is not the continuance of the seventh generally, but the duration of the seventh power as a God-opposing one. To the declaration here, “he must abide a short time,” corresponds in Revelation 17:12 the statement,” as kings they receive power one hour with the beast.” How an end is put to his abiding is represented in ch Revelation 19:11, ss. Revelation 17:11. And the beast, which was and is not, he is an eighth, and is of the seven, and goes into perdition. The words, “which was and is not,” do not serve as a personal designation, but form the basis of that which was to be declared in respect to the destiny of the beast. If it has received its death-blow from the atonement of Christ, if its existence from that time is only an apparent one—if, with all its swaggering, it is but a bloodless spectre—its end can only be palpable destruction. The destruction of the beast, with all that belongs to it, is the proper theme of the whole group. It was only destruction that was spoken of in what immediately precedes: fire have already fallen; the one that is, must fall; the seventh, that had not yet come, is to continue but a short time. So that at the words, “is an eighth,” there naturally suggests itself to be supplied, “in destruction.”If there stood merely, “he is of the seven,” it would be natural to suppose, that he personally belonged to the seven, (Acts 21:8); as it is decidedly against the manner of the Revelation of John, to put forth enigmas for the solution of which it does not itself provide the means, and to leave space to uncertain conjecture. But as the words “is an eighth” precede, the relation to the seventh is withdrawn from the personal sphere, and by the connection limited to the manners or the issue. In the present case it must be the latter, as in what precedes all has respect to the destruction of the parties in question. But every doubt is removed by the appended statement, “and goes into perdition,” q.d., and like the seven, or with the seven, the beast goes also into perdition. With the seventh phase of the ungodly power of the world itself also ceases, the heathen state generally comes to an end. We have a commentary on what is meant here in ch. Revelation 19:11-21 . There the conflict of the seventh head or king against the kingdom of God is delineated. In this conflict, according to Revelation 19:20-21, the beast also is comprehended, and is cast into the lake of fire (corresponding to the perdition), whereas before the beast survived its particular heads, and soon appeared again on the stage of conflict with a new head.From the interpretation now given every thing in this verse refers to the destruction of the beast. The current exposition is quite different. It finds the announcement here, that after the seven heads of the beast the personal antichrist shall appear. But the following reasons oppose this view. If the beast were a proper independent power, along with and after the seven heads, then, what was to be said on it, would not belong to this portion, where the author is dealing merely with the seven heads. At all events, it must still he made the subject of discourse elsewhere in its proper place. Further, if it is certain that Revelation 17:9-11 treat of the heads of the beast, this verse cannot contain anything properly new; it can only bring clearly and distinctly out, what had already been indirectly contained in the preceding part. If the heads of the beast are only seven, then it is self-evident, that with the seventh head the beast itself goes to destruction. For, without a head the beast can have no existence. Then, those who understand antichrist here by the beast, fall into either of two equally untenable suppositions. One party, with Vitringa at their head, feign an eighth head, without any foundation for it in the text, and against the express limitation of the heads to the number seven. How should it be possible, that exactly the mightiest and most frightful head in the whole assemblage of heads should have been omitted (The other party have Bengel on their side, who remarks, “The beast consists, as it were, of eight pieces. The seven heads are for themselves, and the eighth piece is the corpus, or the whole body, and, therefore, the beast itself (ch. Revelation 11:7) with his feet, mouth, etc.” But the beast cannot be thought of as existing without its head. The mouth belongs to the head, as that with which it blasphemes, the teeth as that with which it tears. As formerly the heads were not without the body, so now the body cannot be without the head. At any rate it would be, not an increase to the frightfulness, but a diminution of it. Bengel himself felt this, and in a very artificial way sought still to vindicate for the eighth a head, the seventh, though after every effort it always remains, that by it the body of the beast is denoted as the beast in contradistinction from the heads. This, too, decides against the interpretation respecting the antichrist, that what was above all to be said of him, his horrid and savage procedure, his “fathomless wickedness and power,” must be added by these expositors at their own hand. Bengel’s soul was conscious of this. He says, “One might suppose, that in this prophecy there is scarcely enough said of the things, which this adversary will do.” He thinks the mere indication enough, as elsewhere this doing was described at sufficient length. But it has already been shewn, (p. 87), that the New Testament elsewhere also knows nothing of a personal antichrist. Finally, the words, “and goes into perdition,” resume with intentional literality the “and go into perdition” in Revelation 17:8. Now, if the beast there is the whole of the worldly power as opposed to God, it cannot denote antichrist here as an individual. The identity with Revelation 17:8 is clear from the “was and is not,” which itself also does not suit a personal antichrist. For such had not been before. Revelation 17:12. And the ten horns, which thou sawest, are ten kings, which have not as yet received kingdoms; but they shall receive power as kings one hour with the beast. The angel turns now from the heads to the horns. The beast, according to Revelation 17:7, has ten horns. It would be a monster if it had these in any other place than where all beasts have them, where the Lamb also has them, according to ch. Revelation 5:6, on the head. But if they could exist only on one of the heads, it is impossible to think of any but the seventh. For this is what was spoken of in the preceding context, at the close of Rev 17:10, and also in Revelation 17:11. We are led also to the same result by comparing the words, “which have not as yet received a kingdom,” with those in Revelation 17:10, “the other is not yet come;” also by comparing the “one hour” here, with “the must abide a short time” there. See the proof for the horns being held to be on the seventh head at p. 77. The seventh phase of the ungodly power of the world, which is denoted by the ten horns on the seventh head, is to be a divided one, in contradistinction to all the earlier ones, in contradistinction especially to the sixth, the Roman—as a proof, that the Revelation is really what its name imports, and did not owe its origin to a conjecture formed after the analogies of the past.The horns, it is said, are kings. That we are not to think of individual kings, is plain from the whole character of the Apocalypse, which never has to do with single human individuals, but everywhere represents the future only in its most general features. The designation by horns alone leads not to individuals, but to powers. For the horn is the symbol of power, victorious strength—comp. on ch. Revelation 5:6, Revelation 13:1. Further, in the fundamental passage of Daniel, in Daniel 7, the ten horns are the ten kingdoms, into which the fourth great monarchy, the Roman, was to fall.[Note: What comes out of the interpretation, that finds the papacy here, may be gathered from this, that Vitringa on that ground denies the correspondence between the ten horns here and the ten horns in Daniel, ch. 7.See on this correspondence at ch. 13:2. So also in Daniel 8:8, Zechariah 2:1, powers, or monarchies are denoted by horns. Revelation 17:9 here shews, that we are not to think of individual kings. And if kings are kingdoms there, they most also have the same signification here.[Note: Vitringa mentions, that the sense of kingdoms is the natural and obvious one: “no one could expect, that single kingdoms of various nations should arise in the world, should set up each single kings, and after these should immediately go to ruin.”] The number ten of kings or kingdoms as a round one itself shews, that there were not to be quite exactly and definitely ten, but that it is enough, if the different possible reckonings move somewhere about that number. Matters stand otherwise with the horns than with the heads. The heads denote world-monarchies, of which there was always but one at a time on the theatre. If the numbering is such as to admit of no license, then the whole number must necessarily be a determinate one. But, in opposition to this, the horns denote a constellation of powers, existing independently beside each other. And since it must be doubtful in regard to individuals, whether their independence was so complete, their importance so great, as that they should have a place assigned them in the series, the boundaries must be of a somewhat fluctuating nature.[Note: The ten horns and kingdoms were explained with substantial correctuess by Berengaudus in the 9th century, Expos. in Apoc. in the works of Ambros, T. vii. Ed. Yen. 1781, p. 834: Quatuor bestiae Danieli in visione demonstratae sunt, per quas quatuor regna figurabantur: quarta autem bestia, quae erat fortis atque terribilis, per quam Romani designati sunt, decem cornua habuisse describitur, per quae en regna, quae Romanum imperium destruxerunt, designata sunt. Eandem itaque significationem habent decem cornua in hoc loco; significant quippe ea regna, per quae imperium Romanum destrurtum est. Partem namque Asiae per se (1. Persae) primitus abstulerunt: postea vero Saraceni totam subogerunt: Vandali Africam sibi vindicaverunt, Gothi Hispaniam, Lombardi Italiam, Burgundiones Galliam, Franci Germanism, Hunni Panoniam: Alani autem et Suevi multa loca depopulati sunt, quae eorum subjacebant ditioni. The unsuitable mixture that is found here of the Persians and Saracens, who did not belong with the others to one conjunct state of things, which yet was required by the oneness of the seventh head, has been avoided by Bossuet, who also has some excellent remarks in regard to the number ten: “There appeared much about the same time Vandals, Huns, Franks, Burgundians, Suevi, Alani, Heruli, to whom succeeded Lombards, Germans, Saxons: more than all these the Goths, who were the real destroyers of the empire. We need not torment ourselves about bringing them precisely to the number ten; although it might be possible to reduce them almost to so many fixed kingdoms. But one of the secrets in the interpretation of the prophets, is not to seek after finesse, where it is not to be found, and to lose one’s self in minutiae, when we can see great characteristics, that strike the eye at once.”] The word kingdom is used here in an active sense, of the government, the kingly rule and authority—see on ch. Revelation 16:10. We are not to explain a kingdom, but rather: which had not yet received kingdom or dominion. (The οὐ ?́πω is at any rate the correct explanation of the οὐκ, if not the original reading, comp. Revelation 17:10). The matter concerns not a kingdom, but worldly dominion. It concerns not the existence of nations with their respective governments, but this, that they were no longer to come forth as the reigning power on the theatre of the world’s history. Not existence, but reiging power is what first belongs to the future.The expression, one hour, is explained by the ὀλίγον, a little, short time, in Revelation 17:10.[Note: Against Vitringa’s exposition: at one and the same time (Vulg. una hora) the parallel ὀλίγοναὐτὸνδεῖμεῖναι is decisive. So also in Revelation 17:14, where the ceasing of the ἐξουσία, indicated in the “one hour” is extended. The μίανὥραν, one hour long, occurs also in Matthew 26:40, μιᾷὥρᾳ, in one (single) hour, in ch. 18:10, comp. Revelation 17:8. Πρὸςὥραν, Galatians 2:5, πρὸςκαιρὸνὥρας, 1 Thessalonians 2:17, correspond.] History delivers for the “one hour,” a remarkable confirmation. The first appearance of the German tribes on the stage of public history almost entirely coincides with the commencement of their conversion to Christianity. But the short continuance is here affirmed, not of the power of the horns or kings generally, but only of their power with the beast. What lies beyond this, does not properly belong to the matter. Since after the overthrow of these kings through Christ (comp. Revelation 17:14 and ch. Revelation 19:11, ss), no new human monarchy is mentioned, since also this overthrow is to be accomplished by no inferior instrumentality (as was the case in all the earlier phases of the worldly power, not excepting the Roman), but only by Christ, and his church, we, therefore, cannot doubt, that on the power, which the ten kings receive with the beast, another will follow, which they shall receive from Christ. As kings, that reign not merely over their own subjects, but over the world. For the context treats of the dominion of the world; it is with the different phases of this, that the prophecy is occupied. The word, with the beast, is involved in the nature of the subject, and would have to be supplied, if it were not expressed. The character of their dominion, as opposed to God and Christ, is implied above in the circumstance, that they are horns on the head of the beast. The admission of the kings is inseparably connected with the abolition of Rome. But the beast is not affected by this change. As Rome at an earlier period received power with the beast, so now the kings receive the same. It is a change in the phases of the worldly power, while this itself continues for the time unchanged. Those, who understand by the beast heathen Rome, and those likewise who understand by it the papacy, are involved in no small perplexity by the expression here “with the beast,” and also by Revelation 17:13. They suppose, that the ten kings shall hold only at first with the beast (Bossuet, “with Rome which shall not lose all at once her power”), and that they shall afterwards rise up against her. But it is against this view, that in Revelation 17:12-14, the matter of the horns is so far cut off, that in Revelation 17:15-18, where the whore is the subject of discourse, nothing absolutely new can be introduced in regard to the horns, nothing can be brought in, which has not a point of contact with something in the portion preceding Revelation 17:15. But such would be the case if the beast were heathen Rome, or the papacy. Then, here it would be friendship, there quite suddenly and immediately enmity. Not to mention that according to Revelation 17:16, not merely the horns, but also the beast itself, shall hate and persecute the whore, Rome. Revelation 17:13. These have one mind and give their power and their authority to the beast. The expression, “with the beast,” is enlarged upon and explained. One mind, in reference to what is here under consideration, and which is expressly brought out in the second part of the verse (comp. Revelation 17:17). For, otherwise, the being of one mind is against the nature of evil. Sin is as certainly the mother of division, as selfishness is inherent in its very nature.If the beast is the God-opposing power of the world, impelled by a thirst of conquest, and a desire of dominion, then in the circumstance of their giving their power and authority with one mind to the beast, the foundation is laid of their unanimity in seeking to destroy Rome. The new possessors of the worldly power could only stand in an attitude of hostility toward its former possessors. But another consequence also springs from it, and one unfolded in what immediately follows—their war against the Lamb. Revelation 17:14. These shall war with the Lamb, and the Lamb shall overcome them—for his is a Lord of lords, and a King of kings—and with him the called, and chosen and believing. Our eye rests with deep emotion upon this passage; for it presents an insight into the destiny of our own race, which at the time lay profoundly concealed. The verse has altogether a provisional character. The proper theme here is only the judgment of the whore, and nothing of a particular and definite nature can be introduced respecting the ten kings, excepting what they have to do concerning this judgment. But for the purpose of giving a preliminary glance into what Is coming, there is an indication of the farther doings and fate of the ten kings. The whole of the divine purposes in regard to them must be apprehended, in order that the part taken by them from the first may be seen in its true light. We consider the instruments of the divine wrath with quite another eye, when we know, that they are destined to become vessels of divine grace. The filling up of the outline here is given in ch. Revelation 19:11-21, where the war of the ten kings against Christ, and his victory over them, is particularly described. However, this passage serves also to supplement the other (comp. on ch. Revelation 19:11-21).The war of the ten kings against Christ manifests itself in their assaults on his church (comp. Acts 9:4-5). It is in accordance with the real nature of things, that Christ should be mentioned as the proper object of the conflict, and as the proper author of the victory. It is only when a superficial view is taken, that the human comes into the fore-ground. But we must not on that account say with Bengel, “The victory belongs alone to the Lamb, and not to his associates. These must only follow, and even if the attack is directed against them, must look on at the victory.” Believers are expressly represented as sharers in the victory, and they must also be regarded as sharers in the conflict; there can be nothing here of a mere looking on; this holds only in regard to such conflicts as the one discoursed of in Revelation 17:16. Among the first witnesses for the war of the ten kings against Christ, which the history of the period presents to us, are the numerous martyrs, who fell among the Goths in the persecution of Athanarich.[Note: August. de civ. de. xviii. 52, Rex Gothorum in ipsa Gothia persecutus est Christianos crudelitate mimabili, quorum plurimi martyrio coronati sunt, sicut a quibusdam fratribus, qui tunc illie pueri fuerant, et se ista vidisae incunetanter recordabantur, audivimns. Orosius L. vii. c. 32: Athanaricus rex Gothorum, Christianos in gente sua crudelissime persecutus, plurimos Barbarorum ob fidem interfectos, ad coronam martyrii sublimavit, quorum tamen plurimi in Romanum solum non trepide velut ad hostes, sed certi, quod ad fratres, pro Christi confessione, fugerunt. See in regard to this persecution, Massmann, Exp. of Ev. John, in the Gothic language. In regard to the terrible persecution of the Christian church by the Vandals in Africa, see Ruinart, Historia persecutionis Vandalicae, Paris, 1694, and Papencordis hist. of the Vandal dominion in Africa. Quadi, Marcomanni, and others, passed the Danube in the 4th century, “spread desolation with fire and sword, broke down churches, scattered about the bones of the saints,” etc. See Kortόm Hist. of middle ages, p. 41. Of the irruption of Radogast, with his 200,000 men into Italy, this author says, “The devastation was frightful; villages, towns, churches, lay in ashes; no sanctuary, no monument of art, could escape the fury of these equally warlike and zealous worshippers of Odin.”] They were followed by a train of others, among whom appears the august form of Boniface.The Lamb shall overcome them; Berangarius remarks at the beginning of the ninth century, “We know, that these tribes have, with few exceptions, received the yoke of Christ.”Even at the beginning of the fifth century, Orosius says, that in the East and the West the churches of Christ were filled with Huns, Suevi, Vandals, Burgundians, and an incredible number of believers from among other barbarous nations.[Note: B. VII. c. 41: Quanquam si ob hoc solum barbari Romanis finibus immissi forent, quod vulgo per Orientem et Occidentem ecclesiae Christi Hunnis et Suevis, Vandalis et Burgundionibus diversieque et innumeris credentium populis replentur, laudanda et attollenda dei misericordia videretur: quandoquidem, etai cum labefactione nostri, tantae gentes agnitionem veritatis acciperent, quam invenire ntiqne nisi hac occasione non possent.] A rapid survey is given by Kortόm in his history of the middle ages, of the farther progress of Christ’s victory, “After the German-Arian confession had lost all its public importance, by the subjection of the Eastern Goths and Vandals, and the desertion of the Western Goths, Burgundians, and Longobards, the orthodox church attained to a purer form among the Irish, Scots, and Anglo-Saxons, than elsewhere, by the proscription among them of intolerance, the limitation of outward pomp in Divine worship, and the striving towards a cultivated and moral condition, not through fire and sword, but through doctrine and instruction. Persons reared under such principles, possessing a fearless spirit and a quick intelligence, and distinguished by a blameless walk, seldom failed to accomplish the end of their laborious and disinterested missions among rude but vigorous barbarians. This course was followed in the seventh century among the Germans of the high-country, by the Scotch Columba and Gallus, out of whose hermitage arose the monastery that became so active in the interest of Christianity and civilization, among the Bavarians by Emmeran, among the East Franks and Thuringians by Kilian, among the Frisians by Willibrod, among the Hessians by the Anglo-Saxon Winfred (Boniface), who was the centre of the new ecclesiastical direction of the eighth century, for the whole of north Germany. In East France the arch-bishoprick of Mentz (748), whose diocese comprehended Cologne, Strassburg, Worms, Utrecht, and other chapters, the bishopricks of Saltzburg, Regensburg, Passau, Wurzburg, Eichstadt, the monastery of Fulda (since 744), Ohrdruf, and Fritzlar, gave strength and order to the straggling efforts of the missionaries that chiefly came from the Anglo-Saxons, became nurseries of milder manners, and of advancing commerce and knowledge, but, at the same time, props of the state of things that was meanwhile gradually forming by the encroachments of the bishoprick of Rome.”The words, “King of kings and Lord of lords,” point to the foundation of Christ’s victory. The Lamb conquers because he is the Lord of lords; believers conquer because they are with the Lamb. Allusion is made here, as in ch. Revelation 19:6 (where Christ is called, in reverse order, the King of kings and the Lord of lords), to 1 Timothy 6:14-15, “Till the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ, whom in his times he shall show who is the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and the Lord of lords.” Intentionally that is here ascribed to Christ, which is there primarily declared of the Father, in accordance with the object of John, always to ascribe to the Son what belongs to the Father. The allusion to that passage in St Paul’s writings can the less be overlooked, as it goes hand in hand with what immediately follows in the passage. Besides, John ascribes to Christ nothing more than what he assumes to himself when he says that all power is committed to him in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18), and promises to be with his people always, even to the end of the world.The addition, and with the called and chosen and believing (properly, and who are with him, called, etc.), is of great importance. Rome, too, fought with Christ, and was conquered by him; not there, however, are the chosen the instruments, but the ten kings are so, who execute his work without knowing and wishing it. The spiritual conquest of Rome lies beyond the sphere of the Apocalypse. There the word in 1 Corinthians 13:9, “we prophecy in part,” holds with the Seer. The circumstance of the called, etc., being mentioned as the instruments of Christ’s victory, shows that the victory here meant can be no bloody and destroying one, but that it was to be won by properly Christian arms. such as are described by Paul in Ephesians 6:10, ss.The true members of Christ are described by three marks, the first and the last of a palpable nature, the second hidden, and manifesting itself in the existence of the first and third, so that where these are it cannot fail, nor can it be found where they are wanting. The expressions are rather Paul’s than John’s.[Note: The κλητός nowhere else occurs in the Apoc. nor in the other writings of John; ἐκλεκτός occurs only in 2 John 1:13, where it should also be regarded as written large; πιστός in the sense of believing only in John 20:27. That it has here the signification of believing, not faithful (Vitringa), appears from its connection with the two other Pauline terms.] But Paul had rendered them familiar to those for whom John wrote, so that they are here to be regarded as a sort of proper names. Revelation 17:15. And he says to me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sits, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues. The new addition, “and he says to me,” when viewed in connection with the words in Revelation 17:1, I will shew thee the judgment of the great whore,” shews that the angel here first properly reaches his object; that what in the preceding verses was said of the beast, the heads, and the horns, merely served as a foundation for what was to be said here of the woman, Rome. In regard to the waters, see on Revelation 17:1. It was there shewn that the peoples are brought into view here only in respect to the advantage which they afforded to the mistress of the world, and that it is properly this advantage, which is imaged by the waters. The contrast to the waters, as indicative of the advantage connected with an extensive worldly dominion, is formed by the dry and naked wilderness, and by what is said in Revelation 17:16, that they shall make her desolate, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.The prophet first sees the woman, according to Revelation 17:3, in the wilderness. There too, therefore, must he have seen the waters upon which she still sits—the present is to be carefully marked. But they could only have served as a symbol of her vanished glory, as indeed the sitting of the woman on the beast in Revelation 17:3 also denotes an already vanished condition. The symbolical representation of the former glory makes the wilderness appear all the more dismal.The question, How can the woman sit at once upon the beast and upon the waters? is to be answered thus, that she simply sits upon the beast upon or by the waters.The enumeration of the peoples, etc., completes itself in the number four, the signature of the earth. In the parallelpassages quoted at ch. Revelation 13:7, in place of the multitudes or masses, which occur only here, we have tribes, once kings; comp. at ch. Revelation 5:9. Here, where only an advantage’ is taken into account connected with dominion, the reference to the masses of the governed is the more suitable. Revelation 17:16. And the ten horns, which thou sawest, and the beast,[Note: Luther has: the ten horns, which thou sawest upon the beast, after the false reading ἐπὶτὸθηρίον, which merely arose from people not knowing how to begin with καὶτὸθηρίον (the reading which is found in all the best authorities), on account of the false idea they had formed of the beast. For the same reason, some MSS. altogether omit the words; Grotius would read καιτὰτὸθηρίον; and the Coptic version has, quae vidisti cam bestia. Bengel remarks against the reading ἐπὶτὸθηρίον: Ipsa phrasis cornua vidisti ἐπὶτὸθηρίον hiulca est, et dissimilis phrasibus, quibus nomen in fronte scriptum ac bestia cornua habens dicitur.] these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and shall burn her with fire. The angel says to John, in Revelation 17:1, “Come, I will shew thee the judgment of the great whore.” This shewing takes place even in Revelation 17:3. The angel conducts John in spirit into the wilderness, and lets him there see the woman. Here the meaning of what is shewn to John and seen by him, is disclosed. Here, therefore, the future is introduced. For, as to its import what was now seen as present belonged to the future. The ten horns are known to us already from the preceding verses, as the new holders of the worldly power. Here, where the angel arrives at the proper theme, the judgment of the woman, it is expressly declared, what in the preceding portion had been already indicated, that the horns shall put an end to the woman. The ten horns sit upon the seventh head. It is thereby intimated, that the new holders of the ungodly power of the world, with all their independence and self-sufficiency, are still bound to each other by a certain unity. We must not, therefore, draw into the number the Parthians or the Mahommedans, which has also against it Revelation 17:14; but must only think of nations of the Germanic race, and such as were immediately conjoined with them.On the expression. and the beast, comp. in Revelation 17:12 with the beast, according to which all the undertakings of the ten kings are placed under the auspices of the beast.The οὑ ?͂τοι, these, is employed with as much emphasis as the he in Revelation 17:11. It is designed to direct attention to those, who were destined by God to avenge the poor cause of Christ upon the persecutor Rome.The whore here represents not the city Rome as opposed to the kingdom, but the city as the mistress and centre of the kingdom, so that every assault, which is directed against the land, is also directed against it; every injury which affects the kingdom, also affects it.[Note: This, the only correct meaning, is found even in Berengaudus, when he remarks on the burning of her with fire: Scimus plurimas civitates, vicos et castella, quae Romano imperio subjacebant, ab hia gentibus fuisse concremata.]They shall make her bare or naked, while before she had been arrayed in purple and scarlet, and bespangled with gold and gems and pearls, sitting upon her throne.The flesh in the plural. Bengel gives the meaning correctly: “her much flesh.” By the flesh is denoted the material power and the kingdom. The powerful and rich evil-doer appears even in the Old Testament as thick and fat—comp. for example Psalms 73:4; Psalms 73:7. Nothing occurs, which does not suit the symbol of the woman; nothing that constrains us to go back immediately to the subject denoted by it.[Note: As Zόllig, for example remarks, They shall hate her—the whore, and shall make waste her—the city, and make her—the woman, naked, and shall burn with fire her—the city.] The being made desolate or waste not unfrequently occurs also of persons, since these are represented under the image of a city prostrated by enemies, or of a devastated country. So in Judges 5:27; Psalms 17:9; Sir 16:4. Accordingly we should refer also the words: and shall burn her with fire, not primarily to the city, but to the woman, of whom it is also spoken in ch. Revelation 18:8. The fire is here, according to ch. Revelation 8:7, not so properly material fire, as the fire of war.[Note: How the representation in the verse passed into fulfilment, may be learned from the following declarations of those, who lived at the time of the fulfilment. Jerome Says, in his ep. 123 ad Ageruchiam: Praesentium miseriarum pauca percurram. Quod rari hucusque residemus, non nostri meriti, sed domini misericordiae est. Innumerabiles et ferocissimae nationes universae Gallias occuparunt. Quidquid inter Alpes et Pyrenaenm est, quod Oceano et Rheno includitur, Quadus, Vandalus, Sarmata, Halani, Gipedes, Heruli, Saxones, Burgundiones, Aleminini et, O lugenda republica, hostes Pannonii vastarunt. He says also of the taking of Rome by Alaric in ep. 127 ad Principiam: Capitur urbs quae totum cepit orbem, imo fame perit antequam gladio, et vix pauci qui caperentur inventi sunt. Ad nefandos cibos erupit esurientium rabies, et sua invicem membra laniarunt, dum mater not parcit lactenti infantiae, et recipit utero, quem paulo ante effuderat. See also his introd. to his Comm. on Ezekiel and at the commencement of the seventh book for his lamentation on the destruction of Rome. Salvian says, De gubernatione dei B. VI. p. 115: Arsimus, arsimus, et tamen flammas, quibus jam arsimus, non timemus. P. 129: Ubi namque sunt antiquae Romanorum opes atque dignitates? Fortissimi quondam Romani erant, nunc sine viribus. Timebantur Romani veteres, nos timemus. Vectigalia illis solvebant populi Barba-rorum, nos vectigales Barbaris sumus. Vondunt nobis hostes lucis usuram. Tota admodum salus nostra commericum est. B VII. p. 143: Quid enim vel de nobis vel de Gothis ac Vandidis deus judicet, res probat. Illi crescunt quotidie, nos decrescimus; illi proficiunt, nos lumiliamur; illi florent, et nos arescimus, etc.] Revelation 17:17. For God has given it to (heir hearts, to do his mind, and to do one mind, and to give their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God shall be fulfilled. Before his mind, we are to suppose a dash to be placed. They appear to accomplish their own mind. The reference to this mind or purpose of their own, on the part of the kings and the beast, and the respect to the second mind, has effected, that here the subject of discourse is God’s mind—which of itself sounds somewhat strange—instead of his purpose. (See also in Ezra 6:14 for an example of the mind of God standing in immediate connection with the mind of man). Some are of opinion, that the subject of discourse is not the mind of God, but the mind of the beast. But the beast is too far distant, and in the preceding verses is not distinctly enough marked as the proper author of the hostile proceeding, while the destruction of the woman is expressly described as the determinate purpose of God. (Comp. the words in Revelation 17:1, “I will shew thee the judgment of the great whore,” and in Revelation 17:12, “They receive power as kings.”)And to do one mind. How wonderful that one mighty impulse should thus urge these peoples, each independent of one another, and in part even hostile to each other, so that they could not rest, till they had accomplished their end! That they do one mind, stands in the closest connection with this, that they do the mind of God, and from that alone receives its explanationThey give their kingdom to the beast, for the destruction of Rome, and at the same time to make war upon the church—comp. Revelation 17:14. The ground on which this giving proceeds, is their own sinfulness, their alienation from God, their unconverted state. On this ground God, who turns the hearts of kings, and their people like the rivers of waters, turns them so, that instead of being content to sit at home in their obscurity and sloth, they should come forth on the theatre of the world’s history. The sins, which they there committed, in the horrors they inflicted on Rome and the war they waged against the church, belonged to themselves; the bitter fountain from which they flowed, sprang in their own hearts and existed before these things were done. But the impulse awakened in their minds by God served, not only to execute his judgment on Babylon, but also to bring about their conversion, and along therewith the fulfilment of the word of God. It is clear as day, that we are not to substitute the mere permission of God in the place of putting it into their heart. That is to be rejected on doctrinal, as well as exegetical grounds. It is a grievous humiliation of God, when in anxious solitude for his glory one would ascribe to him only the part of an idle looker-on in the most important events of the world’s history. (See the considerations presented on the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart in my Beitr. vol. iii., p. 462, ss).What word of God is meant, is rendered more specific, partly from the parallel passage in ch. Revelation 10:7, “the mystery of God should be finished, as he hath declared to his servants the prophets,” and partly from Revelation 17:16 and Revelation 17:14. By these we are taught to limit the expression to the promises of victory given to the church. These pass into fulfilment, first when Rome is overthrown by the ten kings, and then when they themselves are overcome by the Lamb, and are received into the bosom of the Christian church. Revelation 17:18. And the woman, that thou, sawest, is the great city, which has kingdom over the kings of the earth. In regard to the great city, see on ch. Revelation 16:19. It is the city, which had dominion in the time of the Seer, that is spoken of. In vain have Bengel and others employed their ingenuity on the has. It never once means: which then has. In the presence of the great city, which then had dominion over the kings of the earth, John must necessarily have expressed himself otherwise, if he had not meant that city, which all his first readers would naturally think of, but another one. Besides, if the kings are worldly kings, then the kingdom, which the woman has, will be a worldly kingdom. Papal Rome, too, has never had for the papacy the same importance, which heathen Rome had for the Roman empire. The pope has never been, like the emperor, only the representative of Rome, so that the dominion might be attributed, not to him, but to Rome, as is done here.[Note: The close connection between Rom and the imperial dignity is manifest alone from this, that the same temple was erected at once to Rome and to Augustus—comp. Spanheim de usu numism. I., p. 138—and also from Hadrian building in Rome itself a temple to the city. Designations of Rome corresponding to what is written in the text may be found among Roman writers in great abundance; for ex. Marial: Terrarum dea gentiumque Roma, cui par est nihil, et nihili secundum; Amm. Marcellinus: Per omnes quotquot sunt partes terrarium et Domina suspecta et regina. The Roman senate was called by Cicero populorum omnium ac regum consilium. See also in Spanheim I., p. 138—and for proofs of Rome being called the queen or reigning city, Ib. II. p. 101. Ch. 18. The destruction of the Babylon of the time then present has already been announced in ch. 17. But the bare announcement was not enough in respect to an event, which it was so immensely difficult for the contemporaries of John to believe. It was proper, therefore, to clothe the announcement with flesh and blood, to meet the reality, which lay with an oppressive load upon their minds, with an ideal reality—to make a provisional draught on history. It was the custom of the old prophets, as in Jeremiah 50, 51 to portray the destruction of ancient Babylon in every variety of detail, in more than a hundred verses, at the time that she held the people of God captive under her cruel dominion, and was preparing to inflict upon them the last fatal blow. And Ezekiel, in Ezekiel 40-48 meets the despair, that was produced by the destruction of the temple by an extended delineation of its restoration, which might serve the purpose of an interim-temple to the tried and disconsolate people. In like manner is there given in this chapter a pictorial representation of the overthrow of the new Babylon. The fulness of detail and vividness of colouring with which this is done, proceeds on the supposition, that it is extremely difficult, not to see and yet to believe. We stand in a somewhat different relation to this representation, from the contemporaries of St John, as we have before our eyes the history which was anticipated and drawn upon in the words of the Seer. However, we have something more to do than to throw ourselves back to the case and position of the Christians of that age, in order that we may enter with interest into the consideration of all the particulars. It will go much farther to impart significance to it, if in the room of that now vanquished ungodly power we put all, that in our day is threatening the kingdom of God with destruction. In this course we shall be following the pattern of St John himself, who throughout makes the fulfilled prophecy of the Old Testament the foundation of his announcement, and delineates the downfal of Rome in the words that had already been verified; the words, in which Isaiah had depicted the coming downfall of rich Tyre, and Jeremiah that of the great Babylon of ancient times. There is for us in a sense even more in this chapter than there was for the contemporaries of the Seer, precisely as these found in a certain respect more in those prophecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah than the persons to whom they were primarily addressed. The inspiring idea remains perpetually living and powerful, and it has received, through the already accomplished overthrow of heathen Rome, a new security for its approaching realization. The comparison of prophecy and history in regard to heathen Rome strongly convinces us, that the fire from heaven, which, according to ch. 20, is to consume Gog and Magog, is no mere fancy. The chapter falls into three chief divisions. First, the appearance of the angel with great power, who comes down from heaven, and announces the fall of Babylon as accomplished, Revelation 18:1-3. Then, the announcement of the voice from heaven, Revelation 18:4-20. Finally, the appearance of the angel, who throws a great stone into the sea, and then explains the meaning of this symbolical transaction, Revelation 18:21-24. The first and the third parts may be regarded as a kind of introduction and conclusion. The voice from heaven forms the main burden of the prophecy. This voice first addresses the people of Christ, that may be in Babylon, Revelation 18:4-5, and then the instruments of God’s judgment upon her, Revelation 18:6-8. It next describes in Revelation 18:9-10, the mourning of the kings; in Revelation 18:11-16, the mourning of the merchants of the earth; in Revelation 18:17-19, the mourning of the mariners on the sea over the downfal of Babylon; and at the close, in Revelation 18:20, calls upon the heaven with its inhabitants, the members of the church, to rejoice over her. So that the conclusion returns to the beginning; for the whole had begun with an address to the members of the church. Babylon Fallen First in Revelation 18:1-3, Christ the conqueror of Babylon proclaims her downfall. Revelation 18:1. And after these things I saw another angel come down from heaven, who had great power, and the earth was enlightened with his glory. That the other angel is no other than Christ, we are led to conclude in the first instance from ch. Revelation 10:1, “And I saw another angel come down from heaven, who was clothed with a cloud and the rainbow upon his head, and his countenance as the sun, and his feet as pillars of fire.” The manifestly intentional agreement in expression with that passage points to the identity of the person. Farther, that the angel had great power, and made the earth light with his glory, has no proper connection with the end immediately in view. No application is made here of the power and the glory. The angel does not act, he only speaks; he proclaims the victory already accomplished over Babylon. The great power and glory, therefore, can only be intended to shew, that the announcer of the victory over Home was, at the same time, the author of it. But then any inferior angel could never be regarded as the one, who was to execute this great work. This may at once, however, be understood of Christ. ‘All that the Father does, the Son does likewise. In ch. Revelation 17:17, Revelation 19:1, the downfal of Rome is carried up to God; and as he does every thing for Christ, so he also does it through Christ. It is Christ against whom, in ch. Revelation 17:14, the ten kings war after Rome, and who overcomes them. He, the King of all kings and the Lord of all lords, must also show himself to be such in the destruction of that Babylon, which had risen up against him and his kingdom. Finally, it is to Christ that the words themselves point, “the earth was enlightened with his glory,” to which those in ch. Revelation 10:1, “his countenance was like the sun,” correspond. Glory is a prerogative of God the Father, and of his only begotten Son (comp. John 1:14, John 2:11, John 12:41, John 17:24; Revelation 1:16; Revelation 10:1; Revelation 21:23; where, as here, the illumination is represented as going forth from the glory). He also, by whose glory the whole earth was illuminated, can be no other than the Lord of the earth. But this is only Christ (comp. at ch. Revelation 10:2). All doubt, however, is removed by the fundamental passage, Ezekiel 43:2, where it is said of Jehovah, “the earth was enlightened by his glory” (comp. also Habakkuk 3:3, “and the earth is full of his praise,” Psalms 50:1, Psalms 94:1).This, therefore, is the result: Christ as Rome’s conqueror proclaims here the victory. In point of fact, that which he proclaims, who has great power and enlightens the earth with his glory, was still future. So much the more then should the express mention of his power and glory have served to comfort believers. It furnished a ground of security to them for believing, that what John as their representative had seen in vision, should at the proper time in the reality be brought in with irresistible power. Before this glory the glory of Rome must grow pale. In regard to the great power of Christ, see Matthew 28:18. Revelation 18:2. And he cried in strength and said, She is fallen, she is fallen, Babylon the great, and has become an habitation of demons, and a hold of all unclean spirits, and a hold of all unclean and hateful birds. The expression, in strength, alludes to Psalms 29:4, “The voice of the Lord is in strength.” What is declared there of the yoke of Jehovah, is here transferred to the voice of Christ, exactly as in Revelation 18:1 that is affirmed of Christ, which in the fundamental passage of Ezekiel is spoken of Jehovah.[Note: The LXX. render Psalms 29:4, φωην̀κυριουἐνἰσχύι. The significant allusion to this verse is in favour of what is here certainly the reading, that has least external support, ἐνἰσχύι; the more ao, as also in what immediately precedes that is transferred to the angel, Christ, which in the Old Testament is declared of Jehovah. The Hebraistic ἐνἰσχύι was an occasion of offence to the copyists. They therefore substituted for it the plain ἐνισχυρᾶ ?ͅφωνῃ ?͂ ?. We cannot understand how any should have thought of the heterogeneous ἐνἰσχύι. The thoughtful allusion to Psalms 29:4 can neither be conceived of as a matter of accident, nor as the design of a copyist. The variations in respect to the placing and omitting of the ἐν as connected with ισχυρᾶ ?ͅφωνῃ ?͂ ?; also seem to bespeak the fabrication of this reading, as does the combined reading followed by Luther ἐνἰσχύι, φωνῃ ?͂μέγαλη.] The power in the calling afforded a pledge for power in the doing, and was, therefore, full of consolation for those who were oppressed by the city that then had the name of power.In regard to the words, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great,” comp. on ch. Revelation 14:8, Revelation 16:19. The preterite there is a prophetical one; it denotes a fact, which even as a part of the vision was still future. But here it is used of a fact which, viewed in respect to the vision, had now entered—comp. ch. Revelation 17:3. For the vision the victory was even in the preceding chapter a completed fact; the judgment of the great whore was already put in force; the woman was already placed in the wilderness; only the exposition of the symbol there makes use of the futures. If we give due attention to this, and to the continuous use of the preterites in the discourse of the angel, we shall not doubt that proclamation is here made of what has already been done.In regard to the demons, evil spirits, see at ch. Revelation 9:20, Revelation 16:14. The fundamental passages are Isaiah 13:21, where it is said of ancient Babylon as fallen, “And bucks dance there,” in connection with owls and ostriches; and Isaiah 34:14, “And one buck calls to another, there also reposes the night-spectre and finds rest to itself.” From the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt, with its idolatrous worship of buck or he-goats, the heathen gods were primarily called among them bucks (comp. Leviticus 17:7; 2 Chronicles 11:15; and Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 213, also Beitr. II. p. 118, ss)., and then evil spirits, which constituted the back-ground of idolatry. The LXX. in Isaiah 13:21 have, “and demons shall dance there;” and in Bar 4:35 it is said, “and has been inhabited by demons for a very long time.” Now, if the passage before us and the fundamental passages of Isaiah were all, then with some justice we might speak, with Vitringa, of rhetorical descriptions of desolation, with Bossuet of the manner of speech drawn from popular discourse, although this is certainly not, as regards the usage of the prophets, what most readily occurs. But there are indications in other parts of Scripture, which place evil spirits in connection with the wilderness and desolation, and in which we cannot avail ourselves of such a resource. Satan bears, in Leviticus 16, the name of Azazel, the separated (see Egypt and Books of Moses, p. 166), and the he-goat is sent to him into the wilderness, as to his proper place of abode. In the declaration of the Lord, in Matthew 12:43, the waste and dry places appear pre-eminently as the seat of evil spirits, and the manifest allusion there to Isaiah 34:14 seems to withdraw this passage from the sphere of a simply poetical representation. In Luke 8:27 it is said of a man who had demons, “he abode not in the house, but was in the tombs.” In accordance with these indications of Scripture is the disagreeable horror which comes over us in such places. Analogous representations fetched from beyond the region of Scripture cannot properly be brought to invalidate its intimations, but rather tend to strengthen them, as a kind of consensus gentium.The unclean or impure spirits are personal spirits. Bengel remarks, “Between these two kinds (demons and unclean birds) stand impure spirits, which may consequently be human spirits, that in the bodily life had hardened themselves in impurity. In waste places, where men cease to dwell, such spirits rush in and take possession of them.Unclean spirits, as distinguished from devils and fallen angels, are departed souls of unholy men. This is a very clear passage for such spirits, which are called spectres when they appear to the living. That which during the bodily life had continued in impurity, in uncleanness, and other sins, remains impure in death and after death. Therefore should we prize purification through the blood of Jesus.” But in ch. Revelation 16:13-14, unclean spirits are first mentioned, and then the spirits of demons. Hence, and likewise from the common designation of demons as impure spirits, we cannot suppose that any essential distinction is meant to be introduced here between demons and impure spirits. Otherwise, countenance would be given to the manifestly false imagination that ruins are a dwelling for demons, a place of custody for all impure spirits. We ought rather to suppose that demons are spoken of under another name, for the purpose of placing them along with unclean birds, and to bring out the new and additional element, that their dwelling is there, where such birds are obliged to make their resort. At the most, we might suppose that the designation of unclean spirits is a comprehensive one, so that it may also comprise the spirits of dead men. It may, however, be asked if these also are not comprehended in the class of demons. But in any case we must not put the unclean spirits as contradistinguished from the demons in a separate class.A hold or place of custody is mentioned in connection with the unclean spirits. Bengel says, “Habitation—hold, two different words. The first denotes a much freer place of sojourn, while the second means a prison or guard-house, and in the Greek occurs also in ch. Revelation 2:10, Revelation 20:7.” The unclean spirits are banished to a place which is a true image of their state. As in the case of the unclean birds, so in theirs it is the law of their nature that banishes them thither. A ruined existence is at home among ruins. They leave them only to make others partakers of their misery.The unclean birds (comp. Psalms 102:6, “ I am like the pelican of the wilderness, I am as an owl of ruins,” Isaiah 13:21-22, Isaiah 34:14; Jeremiah 50:39; Zephaniah 2:14), on account of the natural impulses implanted in them by God, are in a manner banished to the haunts of desolation, from which all living creatures, it might seem, would shrink with horror. Revelation 18:3. For all heathen have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth have been made rich by her luxury. We have here only one reason for the downfall of Rome, viz. her oppression of the nations. In ch. Revelation 14:8, Revelation 17:2, also one cause only is assigned. According to Revelation 18:23 the luxury is brought into notice only in so far as by reason of extortions it was the means of contributing to that oppression. On the wine of the wrath of fornication, the canning, love-feigning policy whereby Rome compassed the destruction of the nations, see at ch. Revelation 14:8. On the committing of fornication with Babylon by the kings, which is considered as pressed on them, see on ch. Revelation 17:2. The power of her luxury, her powerful luxury. We have now in Revelation 18:4-20 the voice from heaven. Revelation 18:4. And I heard another voice from heave , which said, Go out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and receive not of her plagues. It is not said, another angel, but another voice. The voice must be the voice of Christ. For, in Revelation 18:5, God is spoken of in the third person, and the speaker calls the people of God his people. The identity of the person speaking in both cases is also indicated by the close manner in which the word here joins to the preceding verse: out of her, not out of Babylon. It is not against the reference to Christ that the voice is said to be from heaven—comp. with Revelation 18:1. For, the vision of Christ coming down from heaven is now to be considered as past. Its aim is accomplished in proclaiming the victory over Rome.The stand-point here is a somewhat different one from that in Revelation 18:1-3. There the storm has already discharged itself, here it hangs lowering from the heavens. Perhaps it is in unison with the difference of the stand-point, that here the voice is heard resounding from heaven. The coming down of the angel from heaven, in Revelation 18:1, presupposes that the storm of divine wrath has already discharged itself.The call to the people of God rests upon the two fundamental passages, Jeremiah 51:6, “Flee out of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul; be not cut off in her iniquity; for this is a time of vengeance for the Lord, he recompenses to her the gift;” and Jeremiah 51:45, “Go out of her, my people, and deliver every man his soul from the fierce anger of the Lord.” These fundamental passages (on which also Zechariah 2:10 rests) again point back to the type of Lot, to whom the angel in Genesis 19:15 said, “Arise, lest thou be consumed in the iniquity of the city;” and in Genesis 19:17, “deliver thy soul.” In the words, “that ye be not partakers in her sins, and receive not her plagues,” the second clause serves for an explanation of the first; it has respect to that, in which a participation in the sins consists. The mere “be partakers in her sins,” having a double import, could not properly stand alone. Sins are as little here, as any where else, punishments of sins. But that a participation in sins consists in a participation of the punishment inflicted on account of sins, is plain from the fundamental passages.The call here, as in the fundamental passages, is not meant to be taken in the strictly literal sense, as is evident alone from this, that Rome is not mentioned here as a particular city, but as the representative of the Roman empire. The object is more immediately to point to the certainty and greatness of the destruction that threatened Babylon, to give a powerful blow to that fear for Babylon, by which the minds of men were then so much moved. Why should they be afraid of that, which itself had to fear the worst! Still, this call leaves no room to doubt, that the care of the Lord to preserve and deliver his people in the midst of his judgments on the world, as was manifested of old in the case of Lot, and as was represented and pledged in ch. Revelation 7:1-8 of this book, should also unfold itself in the time of his judgment on Rome. And history has preserved to us many proofs, that this actually was the case. The quotations given by Bossuet, for example, shew how at the taking of Rome by Alarich, which was a particular act of the great drama of vengeance, the Lord manifested his watchful care and faithfulness. Revelation 18:5. For her sins reach to heaven, and God remembers her iniquities. It marks the highest degree of sin, when it is spoken of as reaching to heaven, pressing in before God’s throne and calling down his vengeance—comp. 2 Chronicles 28:9, where the prophet Obed says of a heinous transgression, that “it reaches to the heavens,” Ezra 9:6, “our guilt is great unto the heavens,” Genesis 4:10, Genesis 18:21, Genesis 19:13; Jonah 1:2. The fundamental passage is Jeremiah 51:9, “for her judgment reaches unto heaven, and extends even to the clouds.” It has been in vain tried to explain away the difference between this passage and the verse before us. By sins here punishments can as little be denoted, as the judgment in Jeremiah can denote sins. In Jeremiah himself, however, the foundation is laid for substituting sins here in the place of judgment. For the otherwise somewhat anomalous reaching up of judgment to heaven, presupposes the reaching up of sins thither, precisely as in the fundamental passage, Psalms 36:6 (comp. Psalms 57:10), the goodness and faithfulness of God reaching to the clouds and to heaven, forms the contrast to the arrogance of the wicked, which strives to scale the very heavens. Where sins are found piercing through even to heaven, there infallibly the judgment of God presses down to the earth, and thence again rises up giant-like to the heaven. It is said here literally, her sins have adhered even to heaven. This is a pregnant construction for: they reach to the heaven and adhere to it.[Note: A quite similar abbreviation with the same verb occurs in Lamentations 2:2 : τὰὀχυρώματαἐκόλλησενεἰςτὴνγῆν, Psalms 43:25: ἐκολλήθηεἰςτὴνγῆνἡγαστὴρἡμῶν; comp Psalms 118:25, Ἐκολλήθητῷἐδάφειἡψυχήμου. Then in Bar 1:20, ἐκολλήθηεἰςἡμᾶςτὰκακὰ, the evils that have come upon us and cleave to us. Also Zechariah 14:5, καὶἐγκολληθήσεταιφάραγξὀρέωνἕωςἀζαήλ, is only to be explained as an abbreviation, if we would not force on the verb the sense of reaching: it will join itself, reaching even to it.The harshness of the construction has occasioned the reading ἠκολούθησαν.] The sticking fast of guilt to heaven is an aggravating mark of its greatness.The second clause serves as an explanation of the first. Even in ch. Revelation 16:9 it is said, “and Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give to her the cup,” etc. Revelation 18:6. Render to her as she also has rendered, and double double according to her works;[Note: Read διπλώσατεδιπλᾶκατὰτὰἐ ?́ργααὐτῆς, not with Stephanus: διπλώσατεαὐτῃ ?͂διπλᾶ ?; still less with Tischendorf, διπλψώσατετὰδιπλᾶ ?. The variation has arisen from a misunderstanding. The double can only be the double of her works.] in the cup, which she has mixed, mix to her double. The voice from heaven, which in Revelation 18:4-5, has addressed the people of God, turns now to the instruments of vengeance, which, we learn from ch. Revelation 17:16, to be the ten kings. That the servants of the divine judgment are addressed cannot be doubted from the fundamental passage, Jeremiah 50:29, “Recompense to her after her deeds, after all that she has done, do to her.”Luther has: as she has rendered to you. But the to you is neither sufficiently confirmed, nor is it suitable. They are the instruments of divine recompense, not for what they had themselves specially suffered, but for what mankind had suffered from Rome. As she also has rendered, or recompensed, namely, responding love, or, at least, harmless, innocent behaviour with cunning, blood-shed, servitude.By the double is often denoted in the Old Testament abundance. The measure of the divine recompense corresponds both under the Old and under the New Testament, to the measure of guilt—comp. Exodus 21:24; Matthew 7:2. Scripture knows nothing of a double measure of punishment to a single one of guilt. In the expression also, according to her works, and in what immediately precedes, the recompense is placed in exact correspondence to the guilt. We must therefore suppose, that it is doubled to her, because she had doubled, because her works bore the character of aggravated wickedness, as in Jeremiah 50:21, ancient Babylon is called the land of double revolt (Merathaim), and Kushan of .Mesopotamia has the surname of Rishathaim, the double wickedness—comp. also Matthew 23:15. She has likewise mixed double in her cup. The fundamental passage is Jeremiah 16:18, “and I recompense double their iniquity and their sin;” comp. Jeremiah 17:18, “and with double destruction destroy them,” where also we are not to think of a double recompense for a single sin, but of a double recompense for a double sin.On the mixing, see on ch. Revelation 14:10, the only other passage in the Apocalypse where it occurs. In regard to the image of the cup with the wine of wrath, see ch. Revelation 14:8, Revelation 18:3. Revelation 18:7. How much she has made herself glorious, and has been luxurious, so much torment and sorrow give her. For she says in her heart, I sit as queen, and am no widow, and I shall not see mourning. At the words, how much, etc., we are to supply, at the expense of others. The words, “for she says,” &c., contain the reason for the heavy sentence against Babylon which was pronounced in the preceding verse. The reason is, the presumptuous security in which she trod beneath her feet all divine and human rights. All these words are still addressed to the ministers of the divine righteousness. But the address to them is only formally of moment. In substance the call, that they should render to her, is all one with, let it be rendered to her. The fundamental passage is Isaiah 47:8, where it is said of ancient Babylon, “who says in her heart, I am, and none else beside me; I shall not sit as a widow, neither shall I know the loss of children.” By the widowhood is denoted not the loss of empire, but the state of desertion, helplessness, humiliation—comp. Lamentations 1:20; Bar 4:12. Widows appear even in the law as representatives of personae miserabiles. Revelation 18:8 Therefore shall her plagues come in one day, death, and mourning, and hunger, and with fire shall she be burned; for strong is God the Lord, who judges her. The four plagues are mentioned with respect to her glory upon the earth, being one, as it were, from every corner of the earth. Death—which carries off a great part of her people (the pestilence would here be out of place, since from what precedes it is death by the hand of enemies that is more especially referred to)—mourning, and hunger, which overtakes the survivors, and by which, therefore, she is smitten as the mother of all. In regard to the burning, comp. on ch. Revelation 17:16. God the Lord (comp. on ch. Revelation 1:8) is here very suitably mentioned as the author of the judgment. This name confronts the imagined goddess of the earth, whose name also was derived from strength, with the eternal possessor of Godhead as the rock on which her little bark must dash to pieces. Bengel: “Rome means strong, but her strength is nothing. Strong is the Lord God, who judges her.”[Note: The Old Testament character of the designation “Lord the God” is opposed to those who leave out the ὁκύριος, as also to those who omit the ὁθεός. It is perfectly in keeping with the Apocalypse, and has in its favour the mark of originality; the copyists however, could not understand it.] It has been improperly supposed, that Revelation 18:9, ss. do not suit the voice from heaven. Yet the whole book is “the Revelation of Jesus Christ!” The difference between what is said here and in the preceding verses is only that, in place of a direct address, we have here a simple description; a difference of a merely formal kind, as under the address also a description was concealed. Besides, in the middle of Rev 18:14 an address is once more suddenly introduced, and in it the whole discourse of the voice from heaven runs out in Revelation 18:20. Revelation 18:9. And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication, and have lived luxuriously with her, shall weep and lament over her, when they see the smoke of her burning. Revelation 18:10. And they shall stand afar off, for the fear of her torment, and shall say, Woe, woe, the great city, Babylon the strong city. For in one hour is thy judgment come. In Revelation 18:11 the kings of the earth have placed by their side the merchants of the earth, as contradistinguished from those who traffic on the seas; and the common contrast to both is formed at the close in Revelation 18:20 by the heaven and its inhabitants. Earth and sea lament, heaven rejoices. The kings of the earth, as contrasted with the inhabitants of heaven, are, at the same time, to be thought of as earthly minded—comp. on ch. Revelation 13:11-12. The lamentation of the kings is not that of love; the opposite appears from the expression, “who have committed fornication with her;” it is the grief that arises from self-interest. They bewail the downfal of the mistress, because of the advantages which they, as faithful vassals, had derived from their connection with her.With all the three, kings, merchants, mariners, it is mentioned that they stood afar off; with all the three the lamentation begins with the words, Woe, woe, the great city; and concludes with the words, because in one hour. So much belonging to the parts in common prevents the several representations from falling asunder, and marks them as so many pieces in one whole. Then, the particular features of each part are rendered more prominent by reason of the contrast they present to this common ground.The fundamental passages are Ezekiel 26:15-16, “Shall not the isles shake at the sound of thy fall, at the sighing of the pierced through, when they are slain within thee? And all the princes of the sea come down from their thrones, and lay aside their robes, and put off their broidered garments; they clothe themselves with terrors, they sit upon the ground, and tremble continually, and are astonished at thee;” and Ezekiel 27:35, “All the inhabitants of the earth are astonished at thee, and their kings are frightened, they are troubled at the thunder.” As in former times Tyre, so in the times of St John Rome was the centre of the world’s commerce. The joining of the word here to that which was of old uttered respecting Tyre, was more significant, as the fulfilment of this afforded a pledge of the certainty of the other.They see the smoke of her burning, as Abraham, according to Genesis 19:28, saw from afar the smoke of Sodom and Gomorrah. In the superscription of Jeremiah’s prophecy against ancient Babylon in Jeremiah 50:1, “The word, which the Lord spake of Babylon, the land of the Chaldeans” (not: and the land), the land of the Chaldeans is mentioned along with Babylon; whence it is clear, that the city was referred to merely as the representative and centre of the kingdom. So here Babylon comprehends in itself the whole kingdom—comp. ch. Revelation 17:18. On this ground alone, therefore, we cannot take the burning literally, but must regard it as the emblem of the whole destruction.They stand afar off, because they are afraid that they shall partake of her sins and receive of her plagues (Revelation 18:4). It is not so properly their regard to self that is marked, disposing them to forget the sufferer, as the greatness of her punishment and suffering, which makes all shudder. It was impossible to think of rendering help, as the kings themselves perceive (thy judgment), that it is the Almighty himself who now contends with Rome. The double woe corresponds to the call, “double her double,” in Revelation 18:6. In regard to the great city, see on ch. Revelation 16:19, the expression, the strong city, still more plainly alludes to the name of Rome. The strong is here, as in Revelation 18:8, to be regarded as written large. Revelation 18:11. And the merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, ‘because no one any more buys their cargo. The fundamental passages for this and the following verses are the prophecies of Isaiah in Isaiah 23, and of Ezekiel in Ezekiel 27 against Tyre, especially the latter. As preparation is made for Revelation 18:9-10, by the declaration in Revelation 18:3, “And the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her,” so is it also made for Revelation 18:11, ss. by the immediately following declaration, “and the merchants of the earth have become rich by the power of her luxury.” Vitringa perceived quite well, that the features described here did not suit papal Rome, which was never at any period the centre of merchandize. He found refuge in the allegorical exposition. Rome appears as the storehouse of spiritual wares. But the one consideration, that the merchandize of Rome, different from that of Tyre, appears here as entirely of a one-sided passive kind, is decisive against this view: She does not sell the wares, but they merely serve for her use and consumption. The cargo (Luther translates, not quite exactly, wares, see Acts 21:3) is that of the ships freighted by the merchants.In the following enumeration the wares are divided into different classes, making in all seven. The transition from one to another where it is not in itself quite plain, is rendered manifest by the construction: the cargo of gold, etc., and all wood, etc., and (the cargo) of horses, etc., and souls of men. Revelation 18:12. The cargo of gold and silver and precious stones and pearls; and of linen-stuff, and purple and silk and scarlet; and all thyine wood, and every kind of vessel of most precious wood, and of brass, and of iron, and of marble. First come hard materials for show and ornament; then the soft (comp. Revelation 17:4)—both placed at the head on this account., because Babylon was not, like Tyre, a common commercial city, but merely, as the mistress of the world, drew toward herself the merchandize of the world. In her love for these materials her character as mistress of the world especially discovers itself.The hard materials of display are four—as indeed the number four, the signature of the earth, plays an important part in this chapter, which is occupied with the fate of the mistress of the world—gold and silver and precious stones and pearls. So also the soft. Purple and scarlet are the chief stuffs, according to ch. Revelation 17:4, as being the proper apparel of the dominant people. Silk and linen (byssus) appear only as accompaniments. Bengel: “The finest flax is called byssus, and is very fine, strong, and beautifully white, and beside it the purple, with its dark red, looks admirably, as the rich man in the parable well knew, who clothed himself with purple and fine linen (byssus).”Then follow the materials for expensive furniture, and furniture made from expensive materials. First we have, formed into a pair, the costly material itself, and the articles made from it; then four kinds of the articles or vessels. By the thyine wood we are not to understand things made of this kind of wood; for, in that case, it would have been superfluous to mention all vessels of precious wood.Thyine wood, wood of the tree Thyia or Thya, (which is mentioned even in Homer in connection with cedars, Od. IV. 59) according to Pliny and Theophrastus was a fine-cented, ever-green tree from the coast of Africa, like the cypress, of the wood of which the costliest pieces of furniture were made. Schneider regards it as an unknown kind of juniper; according to Sprengel it is Thyia articulata, Linnaei.In Athenaens 5:p. 207, thyine wood and ivory are connected together, as they are here: raτὰςδὲθύρας (εἰ ?́χε) ἐλέφαντοςκαὶθυρίου. Revelation 18:13. And cinnamon (and amomum) and perfumes and ointment and frankincense, and wine and oil, and fine flour and wheat, and cattle and sheep; and of horses and of chariots and of bodies; and souls of men. We have here first articles of perfumery. Whether amomum, an Indian aromatic shrub, stood originally in the text or not, is doubtful. It is omitted by Luther. If it is not genuine, then there are four aromatic substances. After these we have articles of food in three pairs.Then come articles of conveyance. Chariots—of which Bengel says, “here is the Latin rheda in the midst of the Greek words.” Bodies as contradistinguished from horses, can only mean bodies of men. And being named in connection with horses and chariots, they can only be thought of in their capacity for bearing, and more especially for bearing men, as equipages of this sort are mentioned immediately before.The bodies are by the construction united with the horses and chariots, and separated from the souls of men. However, they naturally lead on to this latter class. Slaves were brought into notice when mention was made emphatically of the body, in the special respect of sedan bearers, and now they are referred to in a more general respect, and under an appellation, which indicates their fitness for higher employments. Men’s souls appear in Ezekiel 27:13 among the goods in which Tyre trafficked. Revelation 18:14. And the harvest of the desire of thy soul is departed from thee; and all that was full and glorious, has perished from thee, and thou shall no longer find such things. After the wares, which were brought from without, mention is made of domestic goods; then every thing in the preceding enumeration is collected into the expression: all that was fat and glorious. The description of the mourning of the merchants is interrupted for a moment, to be again resumed in Revelation 18:15. This interruption may seem the less strange, as the description also of the mourning on the part of the merchants is given for no other purpose than to shew, how completely all the glory of Rome had departed. This object comes still more prominently out through the interruption; which serves to point to the design and kernel of the whole representation. The address is directed by the voice from heaven to Babylon, which is also spoken to in Revelation 18:22 by the angel, after he had previously spoken of her. The address can then only appear strange, when it is overlooked, that the whole uttered from Revelation 18:4 to Revelation 18:20 inclusive belongs to the voice from heaven.By the harvest are here denoted the fruits, which ripen in harvest. Among these the first place belongs to the grapes, which were gathered with the greatest rejoicing (“the harvest of the desire of thy soul”), and which in the Old Testament representations occupy a distinguished place in accounts of ravages and desolations—comp. Isaiah 16:9, “in thy reaping and thy harvest falls the enemy’s cry,” in contrast to the joy of the vine-dresser and reaper, Jeremiah 48:32, “the spoiler falls upon thy harvest and thy vintage.”The full, properly fat, used of the produce of the land, Isaiah 30:23, comprehends the immediately preceding, and besides a part of the things enumerated in Revelation 18:12-13; the rest is comprised in the term glorious. Bengel: “But so may it he said also in respect to all worldly people. What they have enjoyed before, is taken away in death, and perhaps even sooner, and they are left, it may be, without a drop of water. He, who has before doted upon such things with the whole desire of his heart, and now has in prospect only an eternal starvation, what courage any more can remain to him! It is better for one, by denying himself and the world, to wean himself from such things, and stand aloof; so that there may be no pain when the separation takes place. For such an one it may then be said, All that was distasteful to thy soul is past, all that was grievous and troublesome is gone; henceforth thou shalt no more have to do with such things.” Revelation 18:15. The merchants of such wares, who have been enriched by her, shall stand afar off for fear of her torment, weeping and mourning. Revelation 18:16. (And) saying. Woe, woe, the great city, that was clothed with fine linen and purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls; for in one hour is so great wealth laid desolate. Revelation 18:15 would possess the character of a needless repetition, if Revelation 18:14, as several have supposed, stood in the wrong place. The expression, such wares, refers more immediately to the full and glorious in Revelation 18:14. Revelation 18:17. And every shipmaster, and all who sail for one place, and sailors, and whosoever work the sea, stood afar off. Revelation 18:18. And cried, when they saw the smoke of her burning, and said, Who is like the great city! The classes named are four. Those who sail for one place, are such as pursue a determinate course. Luther’s translation: and the multitude, who do business in ships, rests on a false reading, πᾶςὁἐπὶτῶνπλοίωνὁὁ ?́μιλος, comprehend all that are here under consideration. The figurative expression: work the sea, has its analogies in Isaiah 23:3, where the many waters appear as the harvest-field, which bears for Tyre the corn of Egypt, and Ezekiel 27:33, “when thy wares came forth out of the sea, thou didst satisfy many nations,” Hitzig, “like the increase, the productions of the ground.” The fundamental passage for the lamentation of the mariners is Ezekiel 27:32. The exclamation: Who is like the great city! (comp. Isaiah 47:8, where Babylon says, “I am and none besides”) explains itself on the ground, that it is of the nature of pain for lost greatness and glory, to call to mind the previous existence of the greatness and glory. Some explain: Who is like her in her destruction! But the destruction would require to be more definitely expressed. The likeness, therefore, can only be understood of that, which is affirmed of the city, its greatness. In the fundamental passage also of Eze 27:32, “Who is like Tyre, like the destroyed in the midst of the sea,” the reference is simply to the earlier glory. Who, it is asked, is like her in this? Revelation 18:19. And they threw dust upon their heads, and cried, weeping and mourning, and said, Woe, woe, the great city, by which all were made rich, who have ships in the sea, from her costliness; for in one hour she is laid desolate. In Ezekiel 27:30, it is said of the mariners, “And they cry aloud over thee, they lament bitterly, and throw dust upon their heads, and wallow in ashes.” Dust and ashes, and whatever else lies on the dirty ground, is the symbol of a low and humbled condition. Any one that throws dust upon his head, denotes thereby, that a low and prostrate condition has overtaken him (comp. Psalms 102:9). On the words, “by which were made rich,” see Ezekiel 27:33, Thou didst enrich the kings of the earth with the multitude of thy riches and of thy merchandise.” The costliness is her pomp and glory, her luxurious mode of life. Revelation 18:20. Rejoice over her, Heaven, and ye saints, and ye apostles, and ye prophets, for God has judged your judgment on her. This verse forms the close of what is said by the voice from heaven, to which all between this and Revelation 18:4 belongs, without any interruption. That John himself in part appears as the speaker, is the less to be supposed, as in vision—understood in the closer sense—according to the rule, all is merely seen and heard; the Seer himself does not come forth as a speaker, no otherwise than in converse with his heavenly guide, and generally within the sphere of the vision—comp. at ch. Revelation 20:7. The joy forms the contrast to the mourning of the earthly-minded over the downfal of Rome.Upon heaven as the dwelling-place of the militant and triumphant church, see on ch. Revelation 12:12, Revelation 13:6. Heaven was first named, in contrast to the earth, Revelation 18:9; Revelation 18:11, and the sea, Revelation 18:17; and now those inhabitants of heaven are specified, to whom the joy more especially belongs.The saints are the genus, the apostles and prophets the most eminent species included in it—comp. on ch. Revelation 11:18. The apostles and prophets are personally identical, or in the possessors of the apostleship prophecy also culminates—comp. on ch. Revelation 1:1. If the apostles were diverse from the prophets, the order would have stood thus: saints, prophets, apostles. For, that the order corresponds to the rank, appears by the transition from saints to apostles. But it is contrary to the essential nature of the apostleship, that other persons should stand higher in the kingdom of God than the apostles. Besides, this passage shews, that the prophetical dignity is highest in the apostles.The apostles can only mean the twelve—comp. ch. Revelation 21:14. It has been urged, that since the apostles appear here as already in heaven, the author seems to have thought of himself as different from the apostles, and hence could not be the apostle John (Lücke, p. 389). But in this the proper import of heaven is misapprehended. By ch. Revelation 4:1, John was even in heaven when he saw the Revelation. Nay, if heaven were to be regarded only as the abode of the just made perfect, the conclusion would be an overhasty one. For by the time that the revenge should be executed, the still living saints, apostles, and prophets, must long since have gone to their rest.Your judgment (comp. ch. Revelation 17:1, Revelation 20:4), the doom which she pronounced upon you, the judgment which she held over you, your condemnation. To the judgment here corresponds in ch. Revelation 6:10, “How long dost thou not judge our blood?”—the blood which the unrighteous persecutor had shed. Ch. Revelation 13:10 is parallel, “He that leadeth into captivity, shall go into captivity; he that killeth with the sword, must be killed with the sword.” The doom or judgment of Rome was spoken of in ch. Revelation 13:7, where it is said of the beast in its Roman phase, “And it was given to him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them.” According to Revelation 18:10 there, it has carried the saints away into captivity, as also, from ch. Revelation 1:9, John himself, the saints, apostles, prophets, and killed them with the sword.The saints respond to the call which is here addressed to them, and express their joy in ch. Revelation 19:1-4. Those also rejoice among the saints, etc., who were not personally affected by the judgment of Babylon. For, when one member suffers, the other members suffer with it. There is besides an allusion to Jeremiah 51:48, “and heaven and earth rejoice over Babylon.” Revelation 18:21. And a strong angel lifted up a stone as a great mill-stone, and threw it into the sea, and said, Thus with violence shall Babylon the great city be thrown, and be no more found. The symbolical action of the angel here is typified in Jeremiah 51 Jeremiah gives to Seraiah, who was going to Babylon, the commission to read his prophecy there. Jeremiah 51:63-64, “And when thou hast made an end of reading this book, thou shalt bind a stone to it, and cast it into the Euphrates. And say, Thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise from the evil that I will bring upon her, but shall vanish away.” An allusion is made here also to Matthew 18:6, “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones, which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea;” and to the parallel passage in Mark 9:42.[Note: Mark has λίθοςμυλικὸς instead of μύλος, which in the New Testament occurs only in these two passages in the rare signification of a millstone. He also omits the somewhat difficult ὀνικὸς, to which the μέγας here corresponds, which from the fundamental passages must be coupled with μύλον, and not with λίθον. But the ἔβαλενεἰςτὴνθάλασσαν here comes nearer to Mark’s βέβληταιεἰςτὴνθάλασσαν, than to the words of Matthew.] The allusion to these passages admits of less doubt, as here in Revelation 18:20 it is mentioned immediately before, how Rome offends against the little ones that believe in Christ, and by its persecutions had tried to seduce them into apostacy. That word of our Lord, in which the doom of Rome was already announced, points back to the passage quoted from Jeremiah: it shall fare with him, as it once fared with Babylon, which so well understood how to offend against the little ones. In ch. Revelation 1:7 we have a quite similar reference to a declaration of our Lord preserved by St Matthew, and at the same time to its fundamental passage in the Old Testament. The declaration of Jeremiah, again, has reference to Exodus 15:4-5, comp. Nehemiah 9:11. In this last fundamental passage it is said of Pharaoh and his host, “he threw them into the sea, they sank down in the floods as a stone.” In the place of the sea there Jeremiah substitutes the Euphrates. But in the declaration of our Lord the sea returns again; and on account of the immediate reference to his declaration, the sea is also found in the passage before us—although here Euphrates would have been quite suitable. The strength of the angel here has its pre-requisite in the greatness of the stone—comp. ch. Revelation 5:2. A great stone is taken, because such an one makes a great fall. With violence, with a heavy force, so that it may remain firmly settled at the bottom, and may no more be found.Bengel: “This no more occurs here six times in rapid succession. Great glory before, great desolation afterwards.” According to ch. Revelation 17:18, Rome is brought into view here only as “the great city,” which has dominion over the kings of the earth—as the heathen mistress of the world. As such, it has completely, and without a trace, perished. Revelation 18:22. And the voices of the harp-singers, and musicians, and pipers, and trumpeters, shall no more be heard in thee; and no craftsman of any craft shall any more be found in thee; and the sound of a mill-stone shall no more be heard in thee. Revelation 18:23. a. And the light of a candle shall no more shine in thee; and the voice of the bridegroom and of the bride shall no more be heard in thee. In Revelation 18:22-24 we have the speech of the strong angel continued, which serves as an explanation of his symbolical action. The fundamental passage here is Jeremiah 25:10, “And I destroy from them the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the sound of the mill-stones and the light of the candle;” comp. Jeremiah 7:34; Isaiah 24:8; Ezekiel 26:13. The vanishing of all joy forms here the beginning and the end, the joy of marriage as the highest (Jeremiah 33:11), and in the middle there is the cessation of all commerce and life. The individuals chosen at the beginning as representatives of joy form two pairs, first the harp-singers (ch. Revelation 14:2) and the musicians, vocal and instrumental music; and again, of the latter, two related kinds are specified. Revelation 18:23. b. For thy merchants were the great of the earth. For by thy sorcery all the heathen have been deceived. On the first words comp. Isaiah 23:8, where it is said of Tyre, “whose merchants princes, whose traffickers the honourable of the earth.” The merchants of Rome are here not the master-merchants in Rome itself, but the commercial people who deal with her. This is shown by the corresponding words in Revelation 18:15, “the merchants of these things that have been made rich by her;” and still more those in Revelation 18:3, “the merchants of the earth have become rich by the power of her luxury.” The second for is not co-ordinate with the first, but carries back the immediately preceding declaration to what constitutes its ground. The proper guilt is first contained in this ground. That the merchandize with Rome produces so rich gain has its foundation in this, that she has drawn all nations into her net, and so all the world’s treasures flow into her lap. What was said at Revelation 18:3 against those who consider the luxury as the sole and sufficient cause of judgment upon Rome, may here be compared. Only such things are to be understood here as are characteristic of Rome, as “the great city which has dominion over the kings of the earth,” characteristic of a particular phase of the beast. That three quite different causes are given is in itself not probable. According to our view only two causes remain, and these have an internal connection with each other, as is already required by the parallel passages of Rev 18:3, and ch. Revelation 14:8, in which mention is made only of one crime of Babylon. From the same selfish ambition planting itself in the centre of the world, out of which proceeds the guilt spoken of in our verse, the second also in Revelation 18:24 proceeds. She persecutes the church of Christ because this will not yield to her pretensions. The sorcery here, as in ch. Revelation 9:21, comes into consideration, as the means by which injury is secretly done to a neighbour. It is the bewitching guile (as in Galatians 3:1) by which Babylon drew the nations into her grasp, and compassed their destruction. Agreeing substantially as to the chief matter is the fornication, the deceitful and cunning policy of Babylon, which is mentioned in ch. Revelation 14:8, Revelation 18:3. Besides this, however, other sorcerous arts were also called into operation—comp. Revelation 13:12-15. Have been deceived, for her deification and for their subjugation to her dominion—comp. ch. Revelation 13:14. Revelation 18:24. And in her was found the Hood of prophets and saints, and of all those who had been slain on the earth. We are to compare Jeremiah 51:35, “My violence and my flesh comes upon Babylon, saith the inhabitant of Zion, and my blood upon the inhabitants of Chaldea, saith Jerusalem;” and especially Jeremiah 51:49, “Also Babylon shall fall slain, ye slain of Israel, also Babylon fall slain, ye slain of the whole earth.” As there beside the slain of the whole earth, the slain of Israel are mentioned, so here we are to explain the “all who had been slain” as all the rest, in unison with Revelation 18:23, according to which the evils inflicted by Babylon on the church stand connected with her ambitious striving to oppress all nations, or generally all, so that the prophets and saints are to be ranged as a part under the whole. In the prophets time Rome was the great destroyer of men. In regard to the prophets and saints, see on Revelation 18:20. The saints and witnesses of Jesus are mentioned in ch. Revelation 17:6. The blood is in her, because it has been shed by her. THE SIXTH GROUP THE OF THE THREE ENEMIES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD (Ch. 17-20) As the fourth group Revelation 12-14) represents the conflict of the three enemies against the Lamb and those who follow him with preliminary indications of their overthrow, so this sixth group, to which the fifth formed a sort of prelude, represents the judgment on the three enemies. In doing this, it does not stand merely at what is altogether general, but goes as far into detail as it could properly do without transgressing the limits which separate prophecy from history. In many respects we have here the most important part of the book before us. The striking clearness and accuracy with which we have here unfolded to us the most important evolutions in the history of the church, during the times which we can now long back upon, strengthens our faith in looking forward with confidence to the one event announced here, which still belongs to the future, ch. Revelation 20:10. Whoever has attained to a right apprehension of the meaning of this group, he will find it a tabernacle into which he can retreat in tempestuous times. It is capable of affording an inexpressible rest and confidence to the soul. The arrangement is as follows. In the representation of the conflict waged by the three enemies against Christ and his church, a descent is made from Satan down to the two beasts; but here, inversely in the representation of Christ’s victory, a rise takes place from the two beasts to Satan. In the first beast, again, it rises from the destruction of the two last heads, which, in St John’s time, were still present and future, the two last phases of the ungodly power of the world, in its heathen state, to the destruction of the beast itself. In the time of the Seer, the beast oppressed the church through the medium of the sixth head, the Roman monarchy; and through the medium of the possessor of this monarchy, the great whore, the Babylon of the then present timeRome. The judgment of the great whore, the destruction of Rome in its property as the heathen mistress of the world, is unfolded in ch. 17. And now the ungodly power of the world must be conducted under the directing hand of God through its seventh and last phase, which, as had already been imaged in ch. 13, by the ten horns on the seventh head, was to possess, not a united, but a divided character, consisting of ten kings or kingdoms. These, as is said in Revelation 17:14, by way of anticipation, were to war with the Lamb, and the Lamb was to overcome them. The overthrow of heathen Rome, which is simply and in some sharp features announced in ch. 17, is vividly portrayed in ch. 18. The prophecy as to its matter makes no advance here. The aim is only to imprint deeply in men’s minds what had already been represented in ch. 17. In ch. Revelation 19:1-4, the whole of this first part, so important and consolatory for those who, in the time of John, were sighing under the persecutions of Rome, and struggling with her seductions, concluded by the Te Deum laudamus of the just made perfect, celebrating God’s righteous judgment upon Rome. This first song of praise of the heavenly church, which magnifies the grace of God contemplated as already past, is immediately followed up in ch. Revelation 19:5-10 by a second, which anticipatively gives thanks for what was still to be done, even to the setting up of the kingdom of Almighty God, and the celebration of the marriage feast of the Lamb; so that it forms the introduction to all that follows. The following portion represents how these anticipations are gradually realized. By means of the two songs of praise the whole of the group is divided into two great halves—the first containing the victory over the enemy, that at the time of the Seer pressed so hard upon the church; the second, the victory over all the other enemies. First, in ch. Revelation 19:12-21, in further enlargement of what was indicated in ch. 17, we have the victory of Christ over the ten kings, the instruments of his judgment on Rome. Along with these, as the last phase of the heathen worldly power, the ten horns on the seventh head of the beast out of the sea, the beast himself also, the heathen state, goes down, and his tool likewise, the beast out of the earth, the false prophet, the God-opposing wisdom of the world. Of the three enemies of the kingdom of God in ch. 13, two now lie prostrate on the ground. Ch. Revelation 20:1-6 represents how the third, Satan, is rendered for a time harmless. He is shut up for a thousand years in hell, and allows to the church, during that thousand years, a secure and unimperilled existence. At the end of the thousand years opportunity is given to Satan anew for seduction; the earth again rises up against heaven; the church on all sides is heavily oppressed; but fire comes down from heaven and consumes her oppressors (“he who reads, let him understand.”) Satan is for ever disarmed of his power, and the final judgment overtakes all, who during the course of time have acted in a hostile manner toward the Lord and his church, ch. Revelation 20:7-15. Now, since all the enemies of the kingdom of God have been brought to desolation, the opening song of praise has found its realization, the Almighty God has taken to himself the kingdom, the joyful time of the marriage of the Lamb has come, and the only thing that remains as an object for the seventh and last group is, the solemnization of this marriage. Ch. 17. This chapter, according to the just remark of Bengel himself, divides itself into three parts, marked by the angel thrice commencing his discourse with the word, he spake, etc. In the first part the judgment of the great whore, that sits upon the beast with the seven heads and ten horns, is shewn. The two others give the signification of the symbol. The first treats, as preparatory to the second, after the introduction in Revelation 17:7, of the beast in Revelation 17:8, of his seven heads in Revelation 17:9-11, of the horns in Revelation 17:12-14. The second treats of the whore and the judgment that is held upon her, Revelation 17:15-18. The Song of the Redeemed on Account of Rome’s Judgment Ch. Revelation 19:1-4. In response to the call of the voice from heaven in ch. Revelation 18:20, the church of the just made perfect here celebrates God’s judgment on Rome. First, the multitude of believers come forth praising and giving thanks in Revelation 19:1-3. Then, in Revelation 19:4, its heads and representatives, the four and twenty elders. These are joined by the four beasts, as representatives of all creatures on earth, that had fallen under the dominion of the oppressor of the world. With this full-toned conclusion, the subject of Rome’s overthrow is brought to a close. Revelation 19:2. For true and righteous are his judgments, for he has judged the great whore, that corrupted the earth with her fornication, and avenged the blood of his servants out of her hand. The truth and righteousness of God’s judgments (comp. ch. Revelation 16:7, also Revelation 15:3), lays the foundation for his being the sole possessor of salvation; his glory and his power, and the general principle, that his judgments are true and righteous, is again established through the true and righteous judgment, which he has executed upon Rome. It is characteristic of true piety to draw the general from the particular, out of facts to provide for itself ladders on which it rises to instructive, consolatory, edifying truths.In regard to the great whore and her fornication, that is, the cunning policy, by which she sought to bring the world and Christians to destruction, comp. on ch. Revelation 14:8, Revelation 17:1-2. In regard to the expression, that corrupted the earth, comp. on ch. Revelation 11:18, “and to corrupt (destroy) those that corrupted (destroyed) the earth.” The fundamental passage is Jeremiah 51:25, where it is said to ancient Babylon, “Behold I am against thee, thou corrupting mountain, saith the Lord, who dost corrupt the whole earth,”—the mountain, a symbol of the mighty kingdom. From this fundamental passage, which itself refers to Genesis 6:11-13, it is plain, we are not to think of moral corruption.The clause, “he has avenged the blood of his servants out of her hand,” intimates, that the offence, of which the faithful had complained in ch. Revelation 6:10, is now set aside. We should compare 2 Kings 9:7, “And I avenge the blood of my servants the prophets, and the blood of all the servants of the Lord out of the hand of Jezebel.” Along with the resemblance of the matter, the peculiar expression, out of the hand, is a satisfactory proof, that allusion is made primarily to this passage, and only through the medium of it to Deuteronomy 32:43, “He avenges the blood of his servants.” To avenge out of the hand, is spoken with similar pregnancy to that in ch. Revelation 15:2, “to conquer out of the beast.” So long as the blood remained unavenged, she had it, as it were, in her hand, under her power. By means of the revenge it is withdrawn from her. Revelation 19:3. And they spake a second time, Hallelujah, and her smoke goes up for ever. That is repeated, which was designed to be made emphatic and strong; comp. Psalms 62:11, “God has spoken one word, and there are two, that I have heard,” Job 33:14, “Once God speaks, and twice, though it is not thought upon.” Here the repetition points to the greatness of the fact, which is not attended merely with a momentary result; so that it goes hand in hand with the addition, “her smoke goes up for ever and ever.” Similar is Exodus 15:21, where, after the overthrow of Pharaoh with his host, the oldest type of the overthrow of Rome, Miriam utters a second time with the chorus of women, what Moses had said the first time with the men, “Sing to the Lord, for the sea;” and thus the fact becomes stamped, as it were, with the seal of completion.The and joins to that, which in Revelation 19:1-2 follows after the Hallelujah, and which is repeated here in thought, though not in words. We are not to suppose, that the heavenly voices only utter the Hallelujah the second time; and that the words, “and her smoke,” etc., are added by the prophet. For he describes only what he hears and sees, and restrains himself from introducing any such intermixture of his own; which would be the more unsuitable here, as the heavenly song of praise is only concluded in Revelation 19:4. In Isaiah 34:9-10, it is said of Edom, the type of the ungodly heathen world, “Her land shall be burning pitch, day and night it shall not be extinguished, its smoke shall go up for ever and ever.” This fundamental passage shews, that here ch. Revelation 18:9; Revelation 18:18 is to be compared, and not ch. Revelation 14:11, where everlasting fire is used as an image of the torments of hell. Revelation 19:4. And the four and twenty elders and the four beasts fell down, and worshipped God that sat upon the throne, and said, Amen, Hallelujah. The four and twenty elders, the heavenly representatives of the church, their elite as it were, stand forth, because the multitude of believers had begun the song of praise, and the flock cannot be separated from their shepherds; and also because the point of view from which the matter is contemplated is that of the revenge of God for the blood of his servants. The four beasts follow, the representatives of the living creation upon earth (see in ch. Revelation 4:6), to present their thanksgivings for the redemption of the earth, which the great whore had corrupted by her fornication— comp. Isaiah 13:7, where it is said in regard to the overthrow of old Babylon, “the whole earth is at rest, is quiet, they break forth into jubilee.” We may, perhaps, here as in ch. Revelation 5:8, regard the elders as the only speakers—comp. however ch. Revelation 5:14, where the four beasts utter a similar Amen, as also the angels in ch. Revelation 7:12. In ch. Revelation 11:15, ss. also, precisely as here, the multitude of believers first step forth, and then the company of elders. But there is this difference, that here the heavenly representatives of the church only assent, while there the theme merely indicated by the multitude of believers is expanded by them. The Amen, Hallelujah, is from Psalms 106:48. The Amen, Hallelujah, forms the conclusion of the extended and important announcement of the Seer upon the fate of heathen Rome. On this point we have a few additional remarks to make. That by Babylon, and by the great whore, heathen Rome is denoted, was understood even in the earlier ages of Christianity, during the dominion of Rome itself, and while the fulfilment was in progress; and that, not merely here and there, but by all who followed generally the historical exposition. Irenaeus, in B. V. c. 30, on the ground of this interpretation, expects the partition of the Roman empire among the ten kings. Tertullian says, that Babylon is with John the figurative designation of the city Rome, which was as great as ancient Babylon, equally proud in respect to her dominion, and equally, too, a persecutor of the saints of God.[Note: Adv. Mar. III. c. 13: Sic et Babylon etiam apud Johannem nostrum Romanae urbis figura est, proinde magnae et regno superbae et sanctorum dei dibellatricis. So also adv. Jud. c. 9. Lactantius says, with evident allusion to the Apocalypse, that the announcements of the prophets foretold, under the veil of another name, the immediately approaching downfal of Rome.[Note: Instit. L. VII. c. 15, sect. 17: Quod si haec ita sunt, quid restat nisi ut sequatur interitus senectutem? et id futurum brevi, conciones prophetarum denunciant sub ambage aliorum nominum, ne facile quis intelligat. Comp. s. 11: Romanum nomen, quo nunc regitur orbis (horret animus dicere, sed dicam quid futurum est) tolletur de terra.] Jerome always remains consistent with himself, in understanding by Babylon, the great whore of the Apocalypse, the Rome of his own day. It was not in his view an exegetical conjecture, but he considered it as a matter quite established, and generally recognized.[Note: So he says in his epistle, which in the year 386 he wrote in the name of Paula and Eustochium to Marcella, in order to warn her to flee from Rome to Bethlehem (epist. 46) Lege Apocalypsin Joannis, et quid de muliere purpurata, et scripta in ejus fronte blasphemia, septem montibus, aquis multis, et Babylonia cantetur exitu, contuere. Exite, inquit dominus, de illa, populous meus, et ne participles sitis delictorum ejus, et de plagis ejus not accipiatis. See also his Comm. on Isaiah 24, where he speaks of the spiritual Babylon, whose judgment is described in the Apocalypse of John.] Orosius in B. II. c. 1, represents the Roman state as the antitype and continuation of the Babylonian, and pursues the parallel between the two farther, in ch. 2 and 3, and in B. VII. c. 2. The testimony of Bereugandus was given formerly. Here we must examine a natural objection to this view, of which no notice has been taken in the preceding exposition. Rome, it is said, at the time of the overthrow of her dominion, had already renounced her heathenism. Is it credible, that God would have punished Christian Rome for the sins that had been committed by heathen Rome?[Note: This point was raised even by Berengaudus on ch. 17:8: Sed dicet aliquis, Quomodo per mulierem meretricem Romani designantur, cum illis temporibus, quando hae gentes diversas clades generi humano intulerunt, Romani Christiani exstiterint. Substantially, too, he gave the right answer: Ad quod nos respondemus, quia per mulierem meretricem non electi, qui ex eadem gente fuerunt, intelliguntur, quippe mundi gloriam pro amove gloriae coelestis contemserunt: sed reprobi sive pagani sive Christiani fueriut. Illorum ergo potestas ab iis gentibus destructal est, qui impia dominatione genus humanum premebant.] We remark, first of all, on the other side, that at the period when the judgment here announced began to be executed, heathenism still reigned uncontrolled in Rome, and that it continued to have a deep root there when the prophecy was actually going into fulfilment, when nothing but the shadow remained of the old dominion and glory. Constantine despaired of getting heathenism properly extirpated in Rome, and transferred the seat of empire to Byzantium, (see Gieseler’s History I. 2, p. 7). In the days of Jerome heathenism still had the ascendancy in Rome; and according to his commentary on the epistle to the Galatians, Rome was the capital of all superstition—comp. on ch. Revelation 4:3. The Christian zeal of Theodosins was not able to reach its end in Rome, (Gieseler, p. 29). Even in the fifth century it was still the centre of heathenism.[Note: How powerful the heathenish element was at Rome in still later times, strikingly appears from what Orosius relates, in B. VII. c. 38, of the attempt made against Rome by the Goths under Rhadagaisus: Hoc igitur Romanis arcibus imminente, fit omnium paganorum in urbe concursus, hostem adesse cum utiquo virium copia, tum maxime praesidio deorum potentem: Urbem autem ideo destitutam et mature perituram, quia deos et sacra perdiderit. Magnis querelis ubique agitur et coutinuo de repetendis sacris celebrandisque tractatur. Fervent tota urbe blusphemiae, vulgo nomen Christi tanquam lues aliqun praesentium temporum opprobriis gravatur.] But farther, even with the formal conversion of Rome to Christianity, it did not cease to be the object of the judicial agency of God delineated in this prophecy. For that conversion was in great part a merely external one. The sinful corruption, that had established itself in the time of Rome’s supremacy, continued to work still. It had penetrated so deeply, that the state, as such, was no longer capable of regeneration, and the renewing power of Christianity could take effect only on individuals. The overthrow of the Roman state itself shews this. This could not have happened, if the state had undergone a real revival through the Gospel. The same, too, is abundantly proved by the testimonies of those, who lived in Rome during the execution of the divine judgments.[Note: We have a striking picture of the corrupt state of Rome, especially in the work of Salvianus, composed in the first half of the fifth century, de gub. dei. In B. VI. c. 14, he says: Quae spes Christiania plebibus ante deum est, quandoquidem ex illo tempore in urbibus Romanis haec mala non sunt, ex quo in Barbarorum jure esse coeperunt? Ac per hoc vitiositas et impuritas quasi germanitas quaedam est Romanorum hominum et quasi mena atque natura, quia ibi praecipue vitia ubicunque Romana. In B. VII. p. 134: Prope idem omnes, paene unus gurges, omnium gula; paene unum lupanar omnium vita. See also p. 137, and again, p. 155: Minime minim est, si respublica Romana aliquando patitur quod jamdudum meretur. Haec impuritas in Romanis et ante Christi evangelium esse coepit, et, quod gravius est, nec post Evangelia cessavit.] Materials of another kind had to be sought for the formation of a Christian state; and these presented themselves in the people of the ten kings of the Apocalypse, the Germanic tribes. But that in the midst of the divine judgments, which alighted on the whole Roman state, as being now incapable of deliverance and full of corruption, the protecting grace of God should manifest itself in the case of individuals—this was expressly announced beforehand in the Apocalypse. For it contains an address, in ch. Revelation 18:4, to the people of Christ, who might be in Rome. At the same time in this book a veil is spread over the future existence of a Christian Roman state, which is to be explained on the ground, that this state was not to be a truly Christian one. That the grace of God, however, did really manifest itself in the way of granting deliverances, may be proved from many remarkable facts in history.[Note: Orosius says, in B. II. c. 3: Hic et Christiani fuerunt qui parcerent, et Christiani proper quorum memoriam et in quorum memoria parceretur. And again, in B. VII. Ci. 39, in regard to the taking of Rome by Alarich: Adest Alaricus, trepidam Romam obsidet, turbat, irrumpit. Dato tamen praecepto prius, ut si qui in sancta loca praecipusque in sanctorum Apostolorum Petri et Pauli basillcae confugissent, hos imprimie inviolatos securosque esse sinerent.] To this also it is to be ascribed, that amid the full and complete destruction, which in accordance with the prophecy befel Rome, in her imperial power and majesty, as the great whore, “the great city, which had dominion over the kings of the earth,” still the city itself, which was so often on the brink of entire destruction, continued to stand. It was otherwise with ancient Babylon, whose place can now hardly be discovered, because it possessed none of God’s people. What was historically realized in the course of centuries is in the prophecy compressed into one scene. This prophetical mode of representation was not understood by many of the older expositors, who perceived that imperial Rome was the object of the threatening. Overlooking the difference between prophecy and history, they supposed, that in the history some single event was to be pitched upon, which the Seer must have had in his eye. Thus Grotius points to the taking of Rome under Attila, Bossuet to the taking of Rome under Alarich. While they thus set in the place of the whole process that developed itself in the history of the world a single section of the process, they gave to the advocates of the view, which refers all to the Papacy, an important advantage, which these understood well how to employ. See Vitringa, for example, in his closing remarks on ch. 18. With such weapons, the interpretation that applied the prophecy to Papal Rome, was not to be driven from the field. Ch. Revelation 19:5-10. In these verses we have the porch to the building of Rev 19:11 to Revelation 20:15. A voice from the throne, the voice of the Lord of the church, calls upon the whole people of God to praise him, Revelation 19:5. The church of the Lord responds to this call; by faith anticipating what is to come, she rejoices in the thought, that the kingdom of God has entered, that the marriage of the Lamb has come, that the bride appears in suitable apparel, Revelation 19:6-8. The angel who stood at the side of St John, affirms the truth of the facts, which form the theme of the heavenly song of praise, Revelation 19:9. John is gladdened by this glorious message, testifies his profound regard to him, who had communicated it on behalf of himself and the church, and the angel returns his acknowledgment, Revelation 19:10. We cannot here think of a continuation of the preceding song of praise, which was raised over the destruction of Babylon, seen in vision as already accomplished. For, apart from the difference in the contents, the preceding scene was brought to a proper close. But we find in other parts of the Apocalypse songs of praise, which anticipate what is to come, comp. Revelation 15:2-4, Revelation 11:15-18. Revelation 19:5. And a voice went out of the throne and said, Praise our God, all his servants, and ye that fear him, small and great. According to ch. Revelation 16:17, the voice from the throne can only belong to him, who sits upon the throne. We cannot understand it of God the Father, as appears from the call, “Praise our God.” So that the voice must be the voice of Christ, who, according to ch. Revelation 5:6, occupies the space between the throne with the beasts, and the elders; according to ch. Revelation 7:17, is in the midst of the throne; according to ch. Revelation 3:21, sits with his Father on his throne; whence the throne is to be regarded as that of God and of the Lamb, ch. Revelation 22:1; Revelation 22:3. We are also led to refer the voice to Christ by comparing ch. Revelation 14:1, where we find the company of the saints in an act of adoration gathered around their Saviour after the attainment of victory; and by ch. Revelation 15:3, where the Lamb sings with his people the song of redemption. It becomes the author of salvation to his people to call upon them to give thanks for it.The voice cannot be attributed to the cherubim, not merely because they are not upon the throne, but because from their whole position they are not properly qualified for addressing such a call.It is of especial importance to note, that the voice of Christ proceeded from the throne, as this betokened, that he is equal to God in power and glory. The preceding song celebrated a salvation, which, as exhibited in the vision, had already been accomplished. Here a still higher salvation must be celebrated, which is contemplated even in the vision as future, and only begins by and bye to unfold itself in the portions that follow. The security, that this anticipative song of praise belongs to another sphere than that of pleasant dreams, could only be afforded by the true and proper Godhead of Christ. As the God of Jesus Christ (comp. ch. Revelation 3:12) and of his saints (comp. the declaration in John 20:17, “I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God”), God manifests himself in the most glorious manner, by conducting the church through the severest conflicts to victory and final glorification.[Note: The correct reading is τῷθεῷἡμῶν; comp. the δεγּ ?εμε in Psalms 100:4, and especially Psalms 116:1, where the Hallelujah is coupled with δεγεμιδεδ. The LXX. have often αἰνεῖν with the dative; for ex. In 1 Chronicles 16:36; 1 Chronicles 23:5. The reading of τὸνθεὸνἡμῶν has arisen merely from an ignorance on the part of copyists regarding this Hebraism.] In regard to the words, “all his servants and ye who fear him, small and great,” comp. on ch. Revelation 11:18. Revelation 19:6. And I heard as a voice of a great multitude, and as a voice of many waters, and as a voice of loud thunder, saying, Hallelujah! For the Lord our God, the Almighty has taken the kingdom. Bengel: “Here is the accomplishment of what was called for in Revelation 19:5.” On the words, “as a voice of many waters and as a voice of loud thunder,” see at ch. Revelation 14:2. In regard to the βασιλεύειν, to reign = to take the government, see at ch. Revelation 11:17. The full realization of the word is to be found at the close of ch. 20. For, there we see all hostile powers lying prostrate in the dust. The subject of the church’s song of praise is twofold; first that the Almighty has entered on the kingdom, (this here), and then that the marriage of the Lamb is come (in Revelation 19:7-8). The first is the negative side; the foundation of the dominion of God is the overthrow of the enemies (comp. on ch. 1 Kings 19:6); the second is the positive. As soon as the enemies of God are cast down, the glorification of the church breaks forth. Before this, immediately after the atonement of Christ, it is said in ch. Revelation 12:10, “Now is come the kingdom of our God.” What existed there in the germ must now be developed and unfolded, and it is here anticipated in respect to this state of coming development and unfolding. Ch. Revelation 11:17, is directly parallel. We have here no “new stage of what was announced there;” cannot possibly have it, as there already a time was spoken of, when not merely a particular phase of the worldly power, but this power itself was to fall under the heavy stroke of the Lord. There, however, the general plan only was announced, and here we have the plan filled up. Revelation 19:7. Let us be glad and rejoice and give him the glory; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife has made herself ready. The words: let us rejoice and be glad, seem to allude to those of our Lord in Matthew 5:12, (comp. 1 Peter 4:13). To give honour or glory to God, is as much as, to ascribe it to him, to acknowledge it as existing—comp. on ch. Revelation 4:9, Revelation 11:13, Revelation 16:9. On this very account, to give glory, is at the same time, to give the glory; that glory, namely, which God has manifested in the great events now under consideration.That we must distinguish between the arrival of the marriage and its celebration, appears from the added clause, “and his wife has made herself ready.” If the wife has first made herself ready, then the wedding cannot yet have begun. As to the future, the song of praise merely anticipates what lies within the limits of this group. But the group reaches no farther than to the immediate approach of the wedding. The solemnity itself belongs to what comes after. The marriage is come, whenever the wedding-day has dawned.— Here, as always in the New Testament, where the relation of Christ to his church is represented under the image of a bridegroom, as in John 3:29, there is a reference to the song of Solomon (comp. on ch. Revelation 3:20).The marriage here is not the marriage-feast, as Vitringa falsely infers from Revelation 19:9. Here, where the subject of discourse is the Lamb and his wife, or the church in its entire fulness, the marriage is in its proper place. There, where individual believers are spoken of, it is fitly the marriage-supper. Revelation 19:9 alone shews, that ãá́ ?ìïò here is the marriage itself.As over the transcendent future manifestation of the glory of God there may be descried the quiet and concealed glory, which he exhibits even in the times of the militant church, his reigning now in the midst of his enemies, so there is implied here the close internal connection, which Christ has with his church from the first foundation of it onwards through every dark and troubled age—comp. Matthew 28:20, “I am with you always even to the end of the world,” which contains in the background the surpassing display of glory, that is to be made to the triumphant church. It is as if he then first brought home his bride. In Matthew 9:15, also the time, that stretches from the death of Christ to his return, appears as a time of absence for the bridegroom. In the parable of the ten virgins the return of the bridegroom is in the first instance expected. According to 2 Corinthians 11:2, the marriage of Christ to his bride, the church, is only to take place in the future. In Ephesians 5:25-27, the church is represented as a bride adorned for a future marriage. We may learn from ch. Revelation 13:8, the reason why Christ appears here under the name of the Lamb. It is in Christ’s sacrifice, in his bloody atonement, that his whole relation to the church has its root, that the state of glory also has its root, to which he leads them. The anticipative character of this doxology discovers itself here quite plainly. Here the marriage is already at the very door. But it is only in ch. Revelation 21:2, that the new Jerusalem comes into view, prepared and adorned as a bride for her husband. We are here, therefore, already beyond the victory of the ten kings, beyond the thousand years, beyond the last victory over Gog and Magog. Those, who fail to perceive the anticipative character of the song, are driven to such constrained suppositions as the following—that the subject of discourse here is not properly the marriage union with the Lamb, but only an “ante-past for the justified.”The wife of the Lamb has made herself ready. In a looser sense, the betrothed was sometimes called the wife of the bridegroom—comp. Deuteronomy 22:24; Genesis 29:21; Matthew 1:20; and here, ch. Revelation 21:9, “Come, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” The making ready has respect to the worthy reception of the bridegroom. To make ready for the coming of the bridegroom, is represented in the parable of the ten virgins, as the great object of the church during the whole time that was to elapse between the first and the second appearance of the Lord. And, according to the parable, the preparation consists especially in having oil in the lamp—the emblem of the Holy Spirit—that is, in having the name of Christian, an anointed one, as something more than a mere name. Special allusion is made here to Matthew 25:10. Only those who were ready, went in with the bridegroom to the marriage. Revelation 19:8. And it was given to her to be arrayed in a clothing of fine linen, shining, pure. For the linen are the righteousnesses of the saints. After the expression, “it was given to her,” we might suppose, that by the white clothing here was denoted the glory, which the bride was to receive as the reward of her preparation—comp. ch. Revelation 6:11. But the impartation of the completed glory, which alone could be thought of here, lies beyond the limits of this group. The pure, added to the shining, points to the distinction between washing and making white in ch. Revelation 7:14. And all doubt is removed by the explanation given, which informs us that by the shining and white linen clothing is meant, not the glory of the saints, but their excellencies. The reference to the activity of the bride in the work of preparation was already mentioned in the declaration, “She has made herself ready.” So that here the other side of the matter might fitly be exhibited. In ch. Revelation 3:18, also (comp. Revelation 7:14), where the white garments likewise denote Christian excellencies, the communication of the excellencies is spoken of as a gift of grace from God. In Ephesians 5:25-27, the entire preparation of the church as the bride of Christ, is represented as proceeding from Christ. The wedding garment, too, in Matthew 22:12, has respect to the spiritual preparation that is required. Accordingly, what is mentioned here, stands related to the entire preparation as a part to the whole.The shining denotes the glory of the holy life of the righteous; the pure, their freedom from sin, their blameless and unspotted character. From the explanation subjoined the linen-clothing signifies the righteousnesses[Note: Δικαίωμα, the right or righteously made, signifies first a legal decision made in accordance with the rule of what is just and right, then an action in accordance with the same rule of what is just and right. So, in ch. 15:4, then in Romans 5:16; Romans 5:18; see Rothe’s Versuch όber Romans 5:12-21, p. 101. of the saints. The rule of justice and rectitude for the saints, according to Matthew 5:17, is the law of Moses. The clothing is elsewhere the symbol of men’s state—comp. ch. Revelation 7:14. By the righteousnesses, therefore, though primarily they denote particular actions, there is yet indicated here the whole moral condition, of which those particular actions are the outward expression. But let no one imagine, that there can be the condition of a righteous person, where the actions are wanting.Allusion is made to ch. Revelation 18:12; Revelation 18:16, comp. Revelation 17:4, where the clothing of the great whore is described. There the fine linen is also mentioned, but along with it the much-assuming and much-speaking scarlet and purple, and all, too, bespangled with gold and gems and pearls—the signs and indications of a false pomp, (1 Peter 3:3; Grotius: Cultus estgravis ut matronae, non pompaticus qualis meretricis antea descriptae). The words: and his wife, as far as the end of Rev 19:8, have also the import of an impressive admonition. Still, that is not the most important element; nor the most prominent, which is rather the tendency of what is spoken to administer consolation. The hardest temptation is that, which calls forth the question, who then can be saved; and the most precious promise is that which assures the church, that in spite of all the infirmities of the flesh, in spite of all temptations and assaults, she shall still be found in a condition, wherein she shall be counted worthy to meet the Lord at his coming, (comp. on ch. Revelation 14:1-5). Revelation 19:9. And he says to me, Write, Blessed are they that are called to the marriage feast of the Lamb. And he says to me, These words are true, (they are the words) of God.[Note: From the parallel passage, ch. 22:6, we are inclined to give the preference to the reading οὗτοιοἱλόγοιἀληθινοὶεἰσιτοῦθεοῦ. The true is here, as there, a predicate. To the second predicate there, πιστοί ? corresponds here the τοῦθεοῦ, these as sayings are true (they are the sayings) of God. The reading: Οὗτοιοἱλόγοιἀληθινοὶτοῦθεοῦεἰσιν; seems to possess the character of a kind of solution. That the τοῦθεοῦ here lakes the place of πιστοί ? in ch. 22:6, is plain also from the observation of Bengel, that the ἀληθινός in the Revelation is only here put alone, always elsewhere in connection with πιστός (comp. 3:14, 19:11, 21:5), or some other epithet. The passage, too, ch. 22:5, serves as a confirmation of the reading we prefer; it shews that the article was shoved in before ἀληθινοὶ by the copyists: καὶλέγειμου· γράψονὁ ?́τιοὐ ?͂τοιοἱλόγοιπιστοὶκαὶἀληθινοίεἰσι. This passage and ch. 22:6 are of more importance in determining the right reading here, as the three passages are very closely related.]That the speaker is an angel, appears from Revelation 19:10. We can think only of the angel mentioned in ch. Revelation 17:1. For since then no other angel has spoken to John; and it is the same also, who in ch. Revelation 21:9 shews him the bride, the Lamb’s wife. In regard to the special commission to write, see on ch. Revelation 14:13. The blessedness pronounced on those, who are invited, carries in its bosom a woe to such as are not (comp. Luke 14:24 with Luke 14:14; Matthew 25:12); so that the words, “blessed are they,” etc. contain a stringent admonition to put away with fear and trembling whatever might stand in the way of the admonition.The church is the bride; its individual members appear here, after the example of Mat 22:1, ss., Matthew 25:10, comp. Matthew 9:15, as the guests, who are bidden to the marriage feast, and are thus admitted to a participation in the joy of the wedding.The declaration, “Blessed are they who are called to the marriage feast of the Lamb,” corresponds to that in ch. Revelation 14:13, “Blessed are the dead, that die in the Lord from henceforth.” There the blessedness has respect to the blessedness of heaven. The “from henceforth” forms the contrast to the completion of God’s kingdom; even now, not afterwards merely in the new Jerusalem. Here we have the second stage of blessedness.By the second “and he says to me” what follows is intentionally cut off from what immediately precedes.The expression, “these words,” or sayings, can only refer to Revelation 19:5-8. For the plural alone decides against the reference to the “Blessed are they,” etc. The announcement, also, of the marriage of the Lamb is given there too indirectly; and the benediction by itself needs no confirmation. The things meant are the great and consolatory truths of the coming of the Lord’s kingdom, of the marriage of the Lamb, of the suitable preparation of the bride and her appearance in the bright and pure linen-attire of righteousness. These truths have been communicated in the form of a song of praise by the church of the just made perfect. But this was only the visionary form, is plainly indicated by the expression, “as a voice,” in Revelation 19:6. Substantially, they were the sayings of God, or the divine revelations, which had been imparted to the prophet by the mediation of the angel—comp. on ch. Revelation 1:1. The emphatic assurance given of the truth and credibility of what was spoken implies that here great and glorious things are referred to, which run counter to sight and reason. When the church lies prostrate on the ground, and the world triumphs, it is indeed hard to believe that the glory of God is yet to find its absolute realization. When Christ seems to have altogether cast off his church, the whole authority of God is needed to fill it with joyful thoughts of a wedding-season. And when it is obliged to utter the complaint, Ah! my sin is ever before me! it can only believe on God’s sure word of promise what is said here of being made ready. Revelation 19:10. And I fell before him at his feet to worship him. And he says to me: See thou, do it not! I am thy fellow-servant and of thy brethren, who have the testimony of Jesus. Worship God. For the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy. The angel was to John the mediator, who communicated the joyful message from the sovereign majesty of God, respecting the marriage of the Lamb and the preparation of the bride for it. John forgets, that he also had an important place in this communication for the church, and that without the Spirit of prophecy dwelling in him, the pre-requisite condition of which was his apostleship, the angel should have made it in vain. What John in his humility had forgotten, is the very thing which the angel in his humility brings out. Both, therefore, fulfil the word of Paul in Romans 12:10, “in honour preferring one another.” The contest between Jesus and the Baptist in Matthew 3:14 is quite similar. As there both was in its place—the will of Jesus to let himself be baptized by John, and the declinature at first of the Baptist, who forgot the dignity of his office and looked only to the surpassing dignity of Jesus (though he very well knew, that his declinature could not be allowed by Jesus)—so also here both the worship of John and the “See thou do it not” of the angel are in their place. We may compare Acts 10:25-26, where Cornelius falls down before Peter, while Peter raises him up and says, “Stand up, for I also am a man.” There, too, both is in keeping. It was becoming in Cornelius to take into view the surpassing dignity of Peter, in whose person the church was represented, and to fulfil the word spoken in Isaiah 49:23; it was becoming in Peter to give expression to the other side of the matter, that of the equality of all men before God, the common ground or basis on which individual differences rise.The worship was offered here, as well on account of the information already imparted, as on account of the farther enlargement to be confidently expected after this general plan. There is a correspondence between the worship here and that in ch. Revelation 22:8-9. What the worship here anticipates, is there devoutly and thankfully contemplated as finished. This anticipative character of the worship here is a simple consequence of the anticipative character of the song of praise. Bengel quite improperly remarks, “It appears, that John had taken the word of the angel, ‘These are the true sayings of God.’ for the conclusion of the whole vision; that he had for a good while contemplated the worship and now sought to perform it.” It is quite natural that John should present his adoring thanks at the first, though still only brief and preliminary communication of these soul-refreshing facts; the more natural the more clearly he apprehended its preliminary character.As John here did homage to the angel, so it becomes the church, which receives through John this glorious revelation, to bow before him on account of it, as also it behoves John to say to her, See thou do it not.It is manifest, that the worship, which John paid, could imply no slight on the divine prerogative, both from the personal character of St John, and from the very tender and almost imploring tone of the angel’s dissuasion. The common distinction between the civil and the religious proskynesis (worship) is not well grounded. The true distinction lies between the proskynesis, which is due to God, whether paid directly or to those who bear his image, his representatives, the possessors of his gifts and offices; and the proskynesis, which is yielded without and in opposition to God. The God of the Bible will be honoured in those, who bear his image, and who fulfil his offices; he will be honoured in father and mother, in the men of grey hairs (Leviticus 19:32), in princes (Exodus 22:27), in judges (Deuteronomy 1:17; Exodus 21:6, Exodus 22:7-8), and hence also in his heavenly messengers. It is godless to refuse this honour, and its natural expression in the bending of the body, under the pretext that it belongs only to God. It is to be avoided only where there is some danger, that the instrument of divine glory shall have an independent honour ascribed to it. But in the present connection nothing of this nature is to be imagined. The honour, that is here ascribed to John, consists in his receiving from Jesus the testimony, that he had the Spirit of prophecy: where the Spirit is, there God is. But the angel is only John’s fellow-servant.The angel describes himself as the fellow-servant of John and of his brethren, who have the testimony of Jesus. The testimony of Jesus is the testimony which Jesus delivers. According to the point of view taken in the Apocalypse the testifier is always properly Christ—comp. at ch. Revelation 1:2, Revelation 6:9. In a looser sense every true Christian has the testimony of Jesus; to be a Christian and to be a witness are coincident; comp. ch. Revelation 6:9, Revelation 12:17. But the witness-bearing exists in its highest degree in apostles and prophets: they are in the fullest and highest sense those, who have the testimony of Jesus. According to Acts 1:8 the witnessing office was by the Lord himself committed pre-eminently to the Apostles. In ch. Revelation 17:6 of this book the witnesses of Jesus correspond to the prophets in ch. Revelation 18:24. In ch. Revelation 11:3 the witnesses appear in public as prophecying. In ch. Revelation 1:2, it is said of John, that he has “testified of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.” Now, that the witnesses of Jesus are spoken of here in the latter sense, there can be no doubt. In ch. Revelation 22:8, after John had received from the angel the full exhibition of what was here presented to him in its general outline, he again falls down to worship him. It is said there in Revelation 19:9, “I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren, the prophets.” The prophets there correspond to those, who are here said to have the testimony of Jesus. Farther, even the word here, “I am thy fellow-servant,” shows, the subject of discourse cannot be Christians, but only God’s servants in his kingdom. The angels are servants of God as to their office. Therefore the persons, whose fellow-servants they are, must be contemplated with respect to their office, their mission (the names of angels and of apostles are alike in meaning). Comp. in regard to the apostles as servants of God, on ch. Revelation 1:1. Then, that John here is regarded, not as a Christian, but as a prophet and an apostle, and that his brethren, who have the testimony of Jesus, are not Christians, but prophets, appears from ch. Revelation 22:6, “And the Lord, the God of the Spirits of the prophets, has sent his angel, to shew to his servants, the prophets, what must come to pass.” Finally, all doubt is removed by the explanation given in this passage itself. According to it, “those who have the testimony of Jesus,” is as much as, those who have the Spirit of prophecy. With perfect justice, therefore, does Bossuet remark, “that the angel rejects the worship in order to place the apostolical and prophetical ministry on a footing with that of angels.”— The word here “worship God,” has nothing in common with that quoted by our Lord, “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.” This is directed only against those, who would worship a power, that sets itself up in rivalry with God and is opposed to him. Here, on the other hand, it is merely God’s grace and office that are worshipped in the angel. The dissuasion is not based on the consideration, that the worship trenches on God’s glory, but on the consideration, that it trenches on John’s honour. It is as if it were said, go directly to God with thy worship, so that thou mayest not throw into the shade the glorious dignity bestowed on thee, and represented by thee. If the worship had at all interfered with the glory of God, John would certainly never, in the face of the angel’s dissuasive, have repeated it a second time; supposing him to have been, on the first occasion (which, however, is not conceivable) carried into it by a sudden surprisal.[Note: The right view was given by Grotius: non dicet προσκύνησιν soli deo licite exhiberi, repugnat enim tota vetus historia, sed benigue agit, ut ei quis collegae dicat, serva hunc honorem regi.]The for introduces the reason, on account of which the angel had spoken of a testimony of Jesus. It stands in this, that the testimony of Jesus, which alone could here be made account of, is all one with the Spirit of prophecy. That the testimony concerning Christ is at the same time the testimony of Christ, and prophecy has its source in the Spirit of prophecy—these correspond to each other. Christ testifies in the prophets through his Spirit (1 Peter 1:11). That these last words have been so much misunderstood, is a mere consequence of the meaning of the testimony of Jesus, in the immediately preceding clause, having been incorrectly explained. The sense would have been the same, if it had been said in the discourse of the angel himself: those who have the testimony of Jesus, that is the Spirit of prophecy. TheVictory of Christ Over the Ten Kings (Ch. Revelation 19:11-21) Christ appears at the head of his heavenly hosts, in the full glory of his nature, which is described at length by the holy Seer; so that it was from the first clear what those had to expect, against whom he went forth to battle, Revelation 19:11-16. This is still more expressly announced by the angel, who stands in the sun, and calls the birds to a feast on the corpses, Revelation 19:17-18. The description of the battle is as remarkable for its brevity, as that of Christ is for its length; quite naturally, as there can properly be no sustained conflict against him, who slays with the breath of his mouth. According to Revelation 19:19 the beast and the kings of the earth are assembled together with their hosts to fight against Christ. But presently in Revelation 19:20-21, the beast and his assistant, the false prophet, are seized and cast into the lake of fire, and a great slaughter takes place on the human enemies of Christ. The kings of the earth under the command of the beast are described as the opponents of Christ in Revelation 19:19. By Revelation 19:15, these kings are to be regarded as heathenish; which accords with their subordination to the beast, as the beast certainly denotes the ungodly power of the world in its heathen state. The more particular account of these kings is to be found in what had been written previously of them. This group, which represents the victory of Christ over the three enemies, first addresses itself to the victory over the beast. This beast has seven heads, denoting the seven phases of the worldly power in its ungodly heathen state. Of these seven heads five had already fallen before the time of the Seer (ch. Revelation 17:10): the Egyptian, Assyrian, Chaldean, Medo-Persian, Grecian. The fall of the sixth head, the Roman, under whose tyranny the church groaned in the time of John, has been delineated at length in the preceding portion; it had to give way to the present. According to ch. Revelation 17:12, ss., this present must be introduced through the seventh head with ten horns, which denote ten kings, the seventh phase of the worldly power in its heathen state, which was not, like the earlier ones, to have a united character but to be a divided sovereignty. These ten kings are the only powers in amity with the beast, and in hostility to Christ, which still remain on the field; the only ones, therefore, which can be understood here under the kings of the earth. Their war with Christ and their overthrow has already been described in ch. Revelation 17:14. It has also been expressly said in ch. Revelation 17:11, that with their overthrow the beast goes into perdition (comp. Revelation 19:20 of this ch.), which may also, indeed, be understood of itself, since the beast has only seven heads, and its continued existence, after the seventh and last has fallen, is not conceivable. The ungodly power of the world exists only in its particular phases. But now the question may be asked, of what sort is the battle of Christ, that is here described, against the destroyers of the Roman empire, or, as history has determined, the Germanic tribes. We cannot think of the quiet effective power of the word, to which allusion is made in ch. Revelation 17:14. There is here, we are rather to conceive, a second power brought into view, which always goes hand in hand with that of the word. It holds with nations, as with individuals, that they only who suffer in the flesh cease from sin; that they only who are chastised, exercise themselves to repentance; that the way into the kingdom of God is only through much tribulation; that the wine-press alone brings out the wine; that the seed of the divine word takes root merely in such fields as have been opened up by the plough of God’s judgments. Every thing here bears the impress of anger; all points to blood and death; and however certainly this occupies but the foreground, however certainly there lies concealed behind the clouds of wrath, the sun of divine grace (which ch. Revelation 17:14 alone sufficiently proves), we are not by any means on that account to put it aside. The eyes of Christ are as a flame of fire; the sword, which goes out of his mouth; his iron rod, his garments stained with blood, the wine-press of his wrath, which he treads—all plainly indicate, that the mission of Christ here is one more immediately of wrath and judgment. John, however, has himself furnished us with a key. The commencement of the description of Christ’s appearance here, in ch. Revelation 19:11, presents an intentional verbal reference to ch. Revelation 6:2. This reference, therefore, must indicate that the battle of Christ described here bears the same character as the former one. But there the weapons of Christ’s warfare are hunger, pestilence, and especially bloody discord. If we take into account the history of the times, when the northern tribes roved about, a long series of scenes will present themselves to our view, in which the contents of this vision passed into reality. A heavy oppression, for example, on the part of the Hunns, was the occasion of the western Goths being converted to Christianity (Kortüm, p. 40). Attila, too, was for the Germanic tribes “the scourge of God.” The battle-field alone in the plain of Chalons was covered with 162,000 bodies. And how many other battles and distresses are not recorded in the history of that time, by which every thing was done to break the hardness of the German nations, and soften their spirit! How much, for example, had the eastern Goths to suffer in Italy from the Franks! It is said, “Frightful was the distress of many regions; in the country of the Picentians, 50,000 men were starved with hunger; many, who bent forwards to spoil dead bodies, themselves fell down dead, nay even killed one another to obtain food.” The German duke Leuthar, who broke in upon Italy about the middle of the sixth century with a great marauding host, “died of pestilence with the greater part of his men in the Venetian territory; many of them even went mad, and, like the duke himself, gnawed their own flesh.” Revelation 19:13. And he is clothed with a garment dipt in blood, and his name was called[Note: The reading that is by much the best supported is καὶκέκληταιτὸὀ ?́νομααὐτοῦ ?; but Luther followed the reading καλεῖται. The perfect indicates that the name was even now an old one.] THE WORD OF GOD. The garment dipt in blood points to Isaiah 63:1-3, comp. here ch. Revelation 14:20. The blood, according to this passage, which is also alluded to in Revelation 19:15, is that of the enemies of God’s people. The divine hero has already vanquished six phases of the ungodly power of the world, and has thereby given a sure pledge of the destruction of the seventh, against which he now goes forth. Bengel: “All his enemies must fall before him, and contribute to the renown of his might. Thus they still yield some profit.” The name, “the Word of God,”[Note: There can be no doubt that we should render the name so. For λόγοςτοῦθεοῦ ?, whenever it occurs besides in the New Testament, means “the Word of God,” and especially does so in the Apocalypse; comp. ch. 1:2, 9, 6:9, 20:4. a must be used here with reference to the clothing. Otherwise Revelation 19:14 is incomprehensible. The transition from Christ to his army is there made through the medium of the clothing; and the statement respecting his name here cannot interrupt this connection; it can only contain what must serve for an explanation of the clothing. Now a bridge between the clothing and the name is supplied by Hebrews 4:12, “For the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged sword, and pierces even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and joints and marrow;” comp. in regard to the passage on ch. Revelation 1:16. By this the name appears as the interpretation of the apparel. To both the destroying character is common; both announce Christ as the mighty warrior, whom nothing of a created nature is able to oppose. What the Word of God is able to accomplish is shewn by the first chapter of sacred Scripture. By it heaven and earth were called into being (Psalms 33:6). If Christ is the personal Word of God—if everything, which else is called God’s word, is but a single fragment of his nature—how should it ever be imagined that anything created could possibly stand before him? At the terrible sound of this name the ten kings must disperse like light froth. Bengel: “It is not said here, His name is called Jesus; for he manifests himself here, not as the Saviour of his people, but as the destroyer of his enemies. He will, therefore, be called here by that name, which is older than the name Jesus. The name Jesus especially unfolds his grace, and the name, the Word of God, his majesty. How deep must that, which is indicated by this name, lie in the unsearchable Godhead? A man’s word is not only that which he expresses with his lips, and causes to be heard by the ear, but that also which he has within himself in his mind, and produces in his thoughts. If this internal word did not exist, it could not be brought forth into any form of speech or utterance. If even man’s word is thus inward, how profound must be the seat of God’s word, beyond any comprehension of ours, and what emotions should it stir, as often as it is declared, in respect to the creation or to the other works and witnesses of God, God speaks, the Lord testifies, etc. Against him, whose name is the Word of God, all his enemies, and in particular the beast, are but as stubble to the fire. With the spirit or breath of his lips he will slay the wicked, Isaiah 11:4. And no sinner or liar can anywhere stand before him.” We are not, with De Wette, to understand by the Word of God him “who has revealed the Word of God, and indeed first as doctrine, then as prophecy.”For in that case this name would be appropriated to Christ as the most perfect teacher. But it is against the character of this whole section, in which only a polemical name suits one that threatens destruction; also against the connection with what immediately precedes, and against John 1 (Vitringa: Id vero aliennm est ab oratione Johannis, qui τὸνλόγον jam ante condita saecula ait fuisse in sinu patris et apud patrem). By the name of the Word of God Christ appears in the writings of John only here, in John 1 of his Gospel, and in the beginning of his first epistle. The composition of the Apocalypse by St John derives no small support from this, and all attempts have been in vain to set it aside. Some have sought to distinguish between the use of the expression here and in the other writings of John, by alleging that here the Logos or Word of God is spoken of, as if there also the Word could be any thing but the Word of God, and as if here that were not indispensable, which is there supplied by the connection. “The name (writes Kφslin, p. 184) is primarily ascribed to him only in his exalted state, and now indeed first there, and inasmuch as he comes down to the earth in the capacity of an avenging judge.” As if Christ could become the Word of God in the course of time; as if the name itself did not point to a necessity in the divine nature existing even from eternity; as if Christ, because he is the Word of God, and, inasmuch as he is so, must not have been in the beginning with God! Christ is not the Word of God as the one, “who renders the divine will efficient outwardly or upon the earth,” but because he is the Word of God he does this also among other things, he throws down the kings of the earth with that same omnipotence by which he originally called the earth into existence. John, Lόcke conceives, does not call the “historical Christ” simpliciter the Word, as if the name here did not, precisely as the name Michael, in ch. 12, designate Christ in respect to his divine nature, in which alone there was to be found the security for his last victory over an ungodly world. The allegation, besides, that the expression is here “copied, not that originally of John,” has been already disproved, by the consideration that the name of the Word of God here, though used essentially in the same signification as in the Gospel and the first epistle of John, is still employed in a quite peculiar and original respect. It would never have occurred to an imitator to serve himself of such an epithet as a hammer, wherewith to break in pieces the rock of the enemies of God’s kingdom. That this was by no means an obvious thought is evident from the difficulty it has occasioned to expositors.If Christ is the living Word of God, then all particular words of God must be spoken through his mediation, nor can there be any word of God which is not also a testimony of Jesus Christ, nor again a testimony of Christ, which is not a word of God (ch. Revelation 1:9, Revelation 20:4; John 14:24). Revelation 19:14. And the armies, which are in heaven, followed him on white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. The clothing of Christ led St John to take a comparative survey of the clothing also of his attendants; and hence it is that, in the midst of his description of Christ, which is still continued in Revelation 19:15, the army of Christ is at once brought into notice. But by occasion of the regard paid to the clothing, another thing also presents itself to the Seer, which he first makes mention of, because it runs parallel to a feature in the description of Christ, which had already been communicated. As Christ heads the expedition on a white horse, so his attendants also sit on white horses. It is natural to compare here ch. Revelation 17:14, where the called, the chosen, and the believing appear as associates of Christ’s victory. Since, according to the point of view, under which matters are contemplated in the Apocalypse and in Scripture generally, the church, even in its militant state, has its existence in heaven (comp. on ch. Revelation 13:6), it were not impossible in itself that, by the armies in heaven, the multitudes of believers should be denoted. But when we consider that the attendance of believers would not be suitable to the manifestation of Christ here represented, which, analogously to that in ch. Revelation 6:2, is a judicial and destructive one, though issuing at last in salvation; when we consider that we commonly behold the angels in the train of Christ when going forth to judge and punish (Matthew 16:27, Matthew 25:31, Matthew 26:53; Luke 9:26; Mark 8:38; 2 Thessalonians 1:7); when, still farther, we consider that the name of the armies of heaven has been in a manner set apart in the Old Testament, and consecrated to the angels (Luke 2:13), and also compare in this book, ch. Revelation 14:20; we shall not be able to doubt that the train of Christ is composed of angels and not of believers; and that our passage does not cover itself with that of ch. Revelation 17:14, but is to be supplemented by it. Here it is the crushing power with which Christ, as the governor of the world, attended by his angels, beats to the ground all the resistance of his adversaries, through the means which have already been represented in ch. 6; there it is the peaceful mission of the church which scatters the seed of the word in the fields that have been ploughed by the judgments of GodIn the clothing of the angels here, as in ch. Revelation 15:6, where the seven angels that go out of the temple appear clothed with pure white linen, their mission is symbolized, the work they have to accomplish. The glittering white denotes his glory, the purity his righteousness. Revelation 19:15. And out of his mouth goes a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the heathen; and he will tend them with a staff of iron, and he treads the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of God the Almighty. It is here, as it was at ch. Revelation 1:15; after the description given of the leading parties, there follows what presents itself as worthy of remark in the kind of manifestation. First, what proceeds out of the mouth.The eye discerns here nothing but the sharp sword, which goes out of the month; what is said besides in this verse, the tending of the heathen with the staff of iron and the treading of the wine-press, is a mere accompaniment; it serves only to explain that symbol of the all-powerful agency of Christ in judging and destroying. Hence also it is manifest that these two active operations must as to the reality belong only to the future—for the battle does not commence till Revelation 19:20—and the first is even expressly represented as belonging to the future: he will tend. Bengel remarks, “The smiting sword is there to smite or kill the nations; the staff of iron for the compulsory subjection of those who survive.” But according to the fundamental passage, Psalms 2, the iron staff serves for dashing in pieces.The sharp sword is that of the Almighty, who speaks and it is done, and who kills by the breath of his lips (comp. on ch. Revelation 1:16, Revelation 2:12). How Christ slays his enemies with the sword of his mouth, we may learn from a prophetic example in John 18:5, “Now, when Jesus spake to them, I am he, they went backward and fell to the ground” (comp. Acts 9:4-5).The heathen are to be thought of as angry against Christ and his church (comp. ch. Revelation 11:18, Revelation 16:19, and ch. Revelation 17:14, “These shall war with the Lamb.”) This is implied in the name itself of the heathen (comp. on ch. Revelation 7:9).The tending of the heathen with the iron staff has already occurred in ch. Revelation 2:27, Revelation 12:5—see at the latter passage, where it was also shown, how behind the destruction salvation is concealed, behind the judgment grace.The wine-press is that of God’s wrath (comp. on ch. Revelation 14:19). As in the wine-press the grapes are crushed to nothing, so are the heathen by the wrath of God. That Christ treads the wine-press denotes him to be the one who puts in motion the judgments of God against his enemies, brings them into play. The press of the wine is the press which causes wine to be pressed out. The wine, according to ch. Revelation 14:20, is the blood of the enemies. According to ch. Revelation 14:19, where the great wine-press of the wrath of God is spoken of, we must here explain: the wine-press of the fierceness of the wrath of God (comp. on the fierceness of God’s wrath at ch. Revelation 16:19); and the words, “of the fierceness of the wrath of God,” must not be made to depend simply on “the wine.” In ch. Revelation 14:19 the symbol itself is made to express the energy of the divine wrath (the great wine-press); here the explanatory word conveys it: the fierceness of the wrath of God. Revelation 19:16. And has upon his garment and upon his thigh a name written: A King of kings, and a Lord of lords. Upon the garment and the thigh, stands for, upon the garment in the region of the thigh. The thigh is brought into view here as the place where commonly, though not in this case, the sword is to be found. The sword was spoken of in the words immediately before. Precisely because it was not found here, the name is mentioned and takes its place. If the sword had been there, it would have conveyed the same import. The sword of the warrior and the ruler is everywhere the symbol of his personality and of his whole position. In Psalms 45:3-4, “Gird thy sword on thy thigh, O hero, thy glory and thy majesty. And in this thy glory ride prosperously,” &c., not merely is the sword placed in connection with the thigh, but also along with the sword and in it the glory and the majesty. “The sword is, indeed, a proper sword, but the Psalmist, viewing it with the eyes of the Spirit, sees in it a symbol of his glory and majesty, so that he is girded with the sword as if it were these, since they use it, and manifest themselves by it. The sword, spiritually considered, is always as the man is who carries it; and the matter at once presents to the spiritual mind a quite different aspect.” On the expression: a King of kings, and a Lord of lords, comp. ch. Revelation 17:14, where Christ is also denominated thus with respect immediately to the ten kings, 1 Timothy 6:15. In ch. Revelation 17:14 the fundamental passages were given in the inverse order; here they are put right. Revelation 19:17. And I saw an angel stand in the sun, and he cried with a great voice and said, to all the birds that fly in the midst of heaven; Revelation 19:18, Come, assemble to the great supper of God, that ye may eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of the strong, and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them, and the flesh of all that are free and of slaves, and of small and of great. Where such a king goes forth to battle the issue cannot be doubtful. This idea is embodied in the image of the angel who stands in the sun, and even before the slaughter takes place calls upon all the birds under the heavens to a feast on the carcases. Bengel: “When a human being would inflict a slaughter on the world, in spite of the best prospects and efforts the victory may still fall into the opposite hands. But that Christ .should fail in the matter is quite impossible, and therefore the birds are invited before the conflict has even begun.” The fundamental passage is Ezekiel 39:17-20. What is said there in the prophecy against Gog, is here applied to the ten kings, as a proof that what is declared here primarily in regard to the ten kings finds its analogous application to Gog and Magog. The sun, corresponding to the space in the midst of heaven—for the birds, that fly in the midst of heaven, move about in the region where the angel stands—is the most fitting place for a herald standing in, whose voice is intended to be heard by the whole earth (comp. on ch. Revelation 8:13, Revelation 14:6). We should perhaps supply in addition, that the sun, as the natural image of the glory of God and Christ (comp. on ch. Revelation 1:16, Revelation 10:1, Revelation 12:1), is the fittest standing-place for a heavenly messenger who is to announce the victory of God and Christ.The great supper of God forms here the sad contrast to the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19:9. Those who despise the invitation to the supper of the Lamb shall not be able to keep away from this supper. The enumeration: the flesh of kings, &c., is similar to those in ch. Revelation 6:15, Revelation 13:16. We have here four parties, the last again composed of four members, corresponding to the four members of the second and third division.[Note: As the τε elsewhere is not found in the. Apoc. it has probably been shoved in here by copyists who are fond of grammatical niceties, both after ἐλευθέρων and after μικρῶν.] Revelation 19:19. And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth and their armies gathered together to fight with him who sat upon the horse, and with his army. The kings stand under the direction of the beast—comp. on ch. Revelation 17:13, “These have one mind, and give their power and authority to the beast.” The kings of the earth are so named in Revelation 19:11, in contrast to the King of kings, who is of heaven, as worthy associates of the beast (see on ch. Revelation 13:12-13), on account of their earthly disposition.The kings are bound together only by the common feature of their earthly temperament; apart from this there is no tie amongst them; and hence mention is made of armies. On the other hand, Christ has with him only one army. Revelation 19:20. And the beast was seized, and the false prophet with him, who did signs before him, by which he deceived those who received the mark of the beast, and worshipped his image: alive these two were cast into the lake of fire, that burns with brimstone. The beast was seized, which had so often endeavoured to seize Christ in his members, St John, for example—comp. John 7:30, John 7:32, John 7:44, John 10:39. (The verb πιάζω often occurs in John’s Gospel, and in connections, in which elsewhere other expressions are used). Zόllig: “How and by whom it is not said, but without doubt the army of Christ must here be conceived to take part, since otherwise we could not understand for what purpose it had been assembled, what is done afterwards being accomplished by the leader himself.” It is at all events significant, that the action is not expressly attributed to Christ himself here, as it is in respect to Satan in ch. Revelation 20:2. In reference to the false prophet, comp. ch. Revelation 13:11, sq. Bengel: “Who did signs, etc., expresses the reason why the false prophet receives a like punishment with the beast, and at the same time.”[Note: The ὁμετʼ ? αὐτοῦψευδοπροφήτης, is recommended in preference to the reading followed by Luther, μετʼ ? αὐτοῦὁψευδ.,, by ch. 13:12, 14, 15, where the second beast, the false prophet, is represented as only the servant and tool of the first.] The alive, without corporeal death (comp. Revelation 19:21), confirms the view, that the beast and the false prophet arc not human individuals, but purely ideal forms. A human individual cannot proceed alive into hell. Psalms 50:15 does not admit of being compared. For there, what is meant by alive, is in the fulness of life and strength; and in this sense also alone was it, that the rebellious company in the time of Moses went down alive into hell. That vicious realism, which is unable to distinguish between form and essence, vision and reality, must be put to the blush at ch. Revelation 20:14, where death and hell, in like manner purely ideal forms, are cast into the lake of fire.— Fire and brimstone as a description of hell-torments have occurred already at ch. Revelation 14:10-11. A lake (sea) of fire and brimstone is mentioned here for the first time; but occurs again in ch. Revelation 20:10; Revelation 20:14-15, Revelation 21:8. As the fire and brimstone point to the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrha (comp. on ch. Revelation 14:10), so it is very natural to suppose, that allusion is made to the dead sea as the earthly image of hell.[Note: The expression γεένα occurs as little in the Apoc. as in the Gospel of John; all the three first evangelists have it.] Revelation 19:21. And the rest were killed by the sword of him who sat upon the horse, that goes out of his mouth; and all birds were filled of their flesh. The rest, as they have been enumerated in Revelation 19:18. Bengel: “They were killed with the destroying sword of Christ, which is not of steel or iron, but goes out of his mouth, and so is a spiritual weapon of resistless might.” Comp. 2 Thessalonians 2:8. Only as a preliminary punishment does bodily death fall upon them. They shall be sent into hell at the final judgment (comp. ch. Revelation 20:12-15), if they have not meanwhile in the intermediate state attained to salvation (1 Peter 3:20), as those, who have only sinned against the Son of Man, and not against the Holy Spirit. THE SIXTH GROUP THE OF THE THREE ENEMIES OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD (Ch. 17-20) As the fourth group Revelation 12-14) represents the conflict of the three enemies against the Lamb and those who follow him with preliminary indications of their overthrow, so this sixth group, to which the fifth formed a sort of prelude, represents the judgment on the three enemies. In doing this, it does not stand merely at what is altogether general, but goes as far into detail as it could properly do without transgressing the limits which separate prophecy from history. In many respects we have here the most important part of the book before us. The striking clearness and accuracy with which we have here unfolded to us the most important evolutions in the history of the church, during the times which we can now long back upon, strengthens our faith in looking forward with confidence to the one event announced here, which still belongs to the future, ch. Revelation 20:10. Whoever has attained to a right apprehension of the meaning of this group, he will find it a tabernacle into which he can retreat in tempestuous times. It is capable of affording an inexpressible rest and confidence to the soul. The arrangement is as follows. In the representation of the conflict waged by the three enemies against Christ and his church, a descent is made from Satan down to the two beasts; but here, inversely in the representation of Christ’s victory, a rise takes place from the two beasts to Satan. In the first beast, again, it rises from the destruction of the two last heads, which, in St John’s time, were still present and future, the two last phases of the ungodly power of the world, in its heathen state, to the destruction of the beast itself. In the time of the Seer, the beast oppressed the church through the medium of the sixth head, the Roman monarchy; and through the medium of the possessor of this monarchy, the great whore, the Babylon of the then present timeRome. The judgment of the great whore, the destruction of Rome in its property as the heathen mistress of the world, is unfolded in ch. 17. And now the ungodly power of the world must be conducted under the directing hand of God through its seventh and last phase, which, as had already been imaged in ch. 13, by the ten horns on the seventh head, was to possess, not a united, but a divided character, consisting of ten kings or kingdoms. These, as is said in Revelation 17:14, by way of anticipation, were to war with the Lamb, and the Lamb was to overcome them. The overthrow of heathen Rome, which is simply and in some sharp features announced in ch. 17, is vividly portrayed in ch. 18. The prophecy as to its matter makes no advance here. The aim is only to imprint deeply in men’s minds what had already been represented in ch. 17. In ch. Revelation 19:1-4, the whole of this first part, so important and consolatory for those who, in the time of John, were sighing under the persecutions of Rome, and struggling with her seductions, concluded by the Te Deum laudamus of the just made perfect, celebrating God’s righteous judgment upon Rome. This first song of praise of the heavenly church, which magnifies the grace of God contemplated as already past, is immediately followed up in ch. Revelation 19:5-10 by a second, which anticipatively gives thanks for what was still to be done, even to the setting up of the kingdom of Almighty God, and the celebration of the marriage feast of the Lamb; so that it forms the introduction to all that follows. The following portion represents how these anticipations are gradually realized. By means of the two songs of praise the whole of the group is divided into two great halves—the first containing the victory over the enemy, that at the time of the Seer pressed so hard upon the church; the second, the victory over all the other enemies. First, in ch. Revelation 19:12-21, in further enlargement of what was indicated in ch. 17, we have the victory of Christ over the ten kings, the instruments of his judgment on Rome. Along with these, as the last phase of the heathen worldly power, the ten horns on the seventh head of the beast out of the sea, the beast himself also, the heathen state, goes down, and his tool likewise, the beast out of the earth, the false prophet, the God-opposing wisdom of the world. Of the three enemies of the kingdom of God in ch. 13, two now lie prostrate on the ground. Ch. Revelation 20:1-6 represents how the third, Satan, is rendered for a time harmless. He is shut up for a thousand years in hell, and allows to the church, during that thousand years, a secure and unimperilled existence. At the end of the thousand years opportunity is given to Satan anew for seduction; the earth again rises up against heaven; the church on all sides is heavily oppressed; but fire comes down from heaven and consumes her oppressors (“he who reads, let him understand.”) Satan is for ever disarmed of his power, and the final judgment overtakes all, who during the course of time have acted in a hostile manner toward the Lord and his church, ch. Revelation 20:7-15. Now, since all the enemies of the kingdom of God have been brought to desolation, the opening song of praise has found its realization, the Almighty God has taken to himself the kingdom, the joyful time of the marriage of the Lamb has come, and the only thing that remains as an object for the seventh and last group is, the solemnization of this marriage. Ch. 17. This chapter, according to the just remark of Bengel himself, divides itself into three parts, marked by the angel thrice commencing his discourse with the word, he spake, etc. In the first part the judgment of the great whore, that sits upon the beast with the seven heads and ten horns, is shewn. The two others give the signification of the symbol. The first treats, as preparatory to the second, after the introduction in Revelation 17:7, of the beast in Revelation 17:8, of his seven heads in Revelation 17:9-11, of the horns in Revelation 17:12-14. The second treats of the whore and the judgment that is held upon her, Revelation 17:15-18. The Thousand Year’s Reign (Ch. Revelation 20:1-6) Of the three enemies of God’s kingdom, Satan alone now remains. The ground, however, has been taken from under him by the overthrow of the beast and the false prophet. He is bound for a thousand years by the power of Christ, so that he can no farther deceive the nations, Revelation 20:1-3. Thus, therefore, the church of Christ celebrates on earth a glorious triumph; and even the faithful witnesses and confessors, who do not live to see the beginning of the thousand years, so that they cannot reign with Christ upon the earth, do not altogether vanish during the thousand years; they exist in heavenly bliss, and reign in heaven with Christ over the earth, Revelation 20:4-6. With such prospects for the church of Christ in earth and heaven, who would then be afraid any more of the great dragon and his associates? They can neither arrest the victorious career of Christ on earth, nor intercept the enjoyment of the heavenly bliss. Revelation 20:4. And I saw thrones and they sat upon them, and judgment was given to them; and the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and who had not worshipped the beast, nor his image, and had not received his mark on their forehead and on their hand. And they lived and reigned with Christ the[Note: It is of little moment whether the article before χίλια is genuine or not, and in respect to the genuineness we can hardly decide on external grounds. The identity of this period of a thousand years with that of Rev 20:2-3, which was unaccountably denied by Bengel, if it might otherwise be a matter of doubt, and were not determinately fixed by the whole context, at all events it is established by Revelation 20:7, where the thousand years cannot be conceived different from those in Revelation 20:8, and as little from those in the immediately preceding verses, in Revelation 20:4-6. thousand years. Revelation 20:5. The rest of the dead, however, did not again live till the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection.That Revelation 20:4-6 contain an interlude is clear from this alone, that Revelation 20:7 manifestly joins to Revelation 20:3. In ch. Revelation 6:11 there was given to the martyrs at a determinate period for John and the church, what they must have substantially possessed the moment they passed out of this present life. It is much the same also here. In what precedes the church, sighing under the persecution of her oppressors, was pointed onwards to the approaching period of her thousand years’ ascendancy, which she was to enjoy after the overthrow of her enemies. But still this consolation did not suffice for those, who were constantly involved in distress and threatened with death, for whom St John, according to ch. Revelation 1:9, more immediately wrote. The sorrowful question pressed itself on the Seer, But what shall become of us, during that period of a thousand years, who shall not see the blessed time? The answer to this question is received by John, and communicated in a vision, in which at the threshold of the thousand years those, who had departed earlier, whether by martyrdom, or by a common death, if only they died in the Lord, are represented as solemnly inaugurated in their possession of the heavenly inheritance. That this inauguration is placed here at the commencement of the millennial kingdom, arises simply and exclusively from the question that occurred to St John, in respect to the condition of the departed during these very thousand years. That substantially the heavenly glory had been communicated to these departed saints at an earlier period, at their departure, indeed, out of this life, is the uniform doctrine of the Apocalypse (comp. on ch. Revelation 14:13).— It is not expressly said, who they were, that sat upon the thrones. But the more particular description may be learnt from ch. Revelation 4:4, “And round about the throne four and twenty thrones, and sitting upon the thrones four and twenty elders, clothed with white robes and golden crowns on their heads.” There, the representatives of the church, the four and twenty elders, the twelve patriarchs and the twelve apostles, sit with God in judgment. It appears also from Matthew 19:28, where the twelve apostles are spoken of as sitting on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. In the twelve tribes of Israel John recognizes the whole Christian church (comp. on ch. Revelation 7:4). Finally, it appears from the last fundamental passage, Daniel 7:9-10. There, around the throne of the Ancient of Days, are placed thrones; the judgment, composed of the representatives of the covenant people (comp. at ch. Revelation 4:4) takes possession of them, and the books are opened. From these passages it admits of no doubt, that those, who sit upon the thrones, are the twelve apostles, probably in fellowship with the twelve patriarchs. It is in unison with John’s covert style in his gospel, when speaking thereof himself (comp. John 19:26, John 19:35, John 20:2, ss., John 13:23, etc)., that he should here have failed to mention expressly those, to whose number he himself belonged. He could yield to the inclination to let his own person remain in the background, the more readily here, as also in the fundamental passage of Daniel, those sitting on the thrones are not more exactly defined. It is merely said there, “The judgment.”The judgment being given to those, who sit on the thrones, denotes that they received full judicial power. The object of the judging is here, not the ungodly world, as in Daniel 7:9-10; Revelation 4:4; 1 Corinthians 6:2, but as in Matthew 19:28, the church. The claims of the faithful witnesses of Jesus to the heavenly recompense must be investigated. The judges and the persons to be judged are by the construction united in the closest manner with each other: “And I saw thrones,” etc., “and (I saw) the souls,” etc. The sentence is this, that the faithful witnesses must live and reign with Christ.John sees the souls of the slain. The souls are here, as at ch. Revelation 6:9, the murdered souls—not the souls in the intermediate state, disembodied spirits, which are never so designated. In place of the souls, the blood, or the corpses might also have been put. For, that they are here contemplated as they were in the moment of death, and that they present themselves before the judgment when the thread of their corporeal life was cut, is to shew that their living again follows directly in consequence of the judicial sentence. John sees the souls, because on this holy offering, which the beheaded had presented to God and Christ (comp. on ch. Revelation 6:9, Revelation 16:7), rested their claim to the heavenly recompense.Instead of: the beheaded, it is properly, the killed with the hatchet. The expression has respect to the peculiar form of the Roman executions (Polybius, I. 17, 12, μαστιγώσαντεςἁ ?́πανταςκατὰτὸπαρʼ ? αὐτοῖςἐ ?́θοςἐπελέκισαν), and shews that here we are primarily to think of the martyrs, who sacrificed their lives in the Roman persecutions.In regard to the words, “for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God,” comp. on ch. Revelation 5:9, Revelation 1:9. Because Jesus is the personal Word of God, there can be no testimony of Jesus, which is not also the word of God, and no word of God, which is not the testimony of Jesus (see on ch. Revelation 19:13).The description, “who had not worshipped the beast,” &c., adds to the martyrs all those, who in the conflict that then raged so fiercely between Christ and the beast, had remained stedfast on the side of the former; as also in ch. Revelation 14:13, blessedness is ascribed to all those who die in the Lord. We must only explain: those, who—not of those; for it is merely in respect to the slain, that the souls can be made the subject of discourse.The expression, “and they lived,” is as much as, and I saw how they lived, or they attained to life before ray eyes. John sees them not merely in the state of the living; but he also sees how they came to this state (comp. Ezekiel 37:7). It is not merely the souls, that we are to take for the subject in the expression” they lived,” but the beheaded and those who had not worshipped. Life is here not bare life, but blessed life— the life, which is analogous to that of the risen Christ, in which with the resurrection there is also coupled glorification (ch. Revelation 2:8)—the life, to which the promise in ch. Revelation 2:10 refers, “Be thou faithful unto death, and I will give thee the crown of life,” from which in Revelation 20:12 of this chapter the book of life derives its name, and of which Jesus says in John’s gospel, John 14:19, “I live and ye shall live also” (comp. John 5:25-26, and in regard to the notion of life in John, at John 7:17). To the life here corresponds in ch. Revelation 6:11, the white garment. Life in the passage before us cannot be understood of bare life, for this also ceases at death, which cannot be annihilation for man, who is made in the image of God. If the life denoted not an earlier nor an extinct stage of being, if it had referred to the simple restoration of life, the word would doubtless have been of living anew; and so indeed several manuscripts would have it (ἀνέζησαν). De Wette explains thus: “they returned again to full life, received a body again.”But with what propriety could the mere word, “they lived,” be used of those who already enjoyed blessedness, into which, as the Revelation uniformly teaches, believers pass immediately after their departure out of this life!In regard to the reigning or ruling with Christ, see at ch. Revelation 1:6; Revelation 1:9, Revelation 2:21; Revelation 2:26-28, Revelation 5:10. Christ reigns from the beginning of the thousand years to their end. For, his enemies who contended with him for the dominion, the beast, the false prophet, and the dragon, have now become his footstool. His members take part in this dominion. They can look down with holy pride upon the earth, whereon the church, to which they devoted their services and their lives in times of danger and tribulation, has now become the reigning power; so that matters proceed upon earth only in accordance with their will, resting on the will of Christ. The rest of the dead in Revelation 20:5 are the godless dead. For the word in Revelation 20:4, “they lived,” holds not merely in respect to the martyrs, but to all the true members of Christ. And in Revelation 20:12-13, the judgment is held only on the ungodly. Such being the case, we are not to conclude from the words, “they lived not till the thousand years were finished,” that they lived at the end of the thousand years. The godless are here rather declared to be destitute of the glorious privilege which is enjoyed by believers during the thousand years’ reign. How it is to fare with the ungodly at the end of the thousand years is written in Revelation 20:12-13. Believers lived during the thousand years; at the end they go into perfect bliss. The ungodly, on the other hand, did not live during the thousand years; but they were in hades and in torment; and at the end of the thousand years they pass out of their provisional state of misery into the final one, and shall be cast into the lake of fire.This is the first resurrection. The Apocalypse invariably points to a double stage of blessedness—the one awaiting believers immediately after their departure out of this life; the other, what they are to receive when they enter the new Jerusalem—comp. ch. Revelation 6:11, where the two are placed beside each other. The most precise expression for the former we have in ch. Revelation 14:13, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from henceforth;” and for the second in ch. Revelation 19:9, “Blessed are those who are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb.” Ch. Revelation 7:9-17 joins closely to ch. Revelation 14:13, as do also ch. Revelation 14:1-5, Revelation 15:2-4; and ch. Revelation 19:9 is expanded in ch. Revelation 21:22 (comp. Revelation 3:12). Very often the two stages are combined together on account of the oneness of life or blessedness belonging to them—for example, ch. Revelation 2:7; Revelation 2:10; Revelation 2:17, Revelation 3:5. In the doctrine of a double stage of blessedness the Saviour himself took the lead. He refers to the first in what he says to the penitent thief, “To-day shalt thou be with me in paradise;” also in John 14:2-3, John 13:36, John 17:24. The latter is referred to in Matthew 19:28, John 5:25, John 5:28-29, John 6:39-40. There can be no doubt, that by the first resurrection we are here primarily to understand that first stage of blessedness. In so understanding it, we abide in unison with the Apocalypse and the whole of the other books of the New Testament. On the other hand, if we understand by the first resurrection a resurrection in the literal sense—if, accordingly, we suppose that the first resurrection has respect to one part of men, the second to another—we then arrive at a doctrine which in no other part of Scripture finds a ground of support, which, on the contrary, is everywhere explicitly opposed. Now, the only thing which can raise any doubt regarding the most natural and obvious view, is that the resurrection is here spoken of. This expression appears only to suit the heavenly state of blessedness. But when John denotes the two stages by the same name in order to make them known as the component parts of the same salvation, and only distinguishes them, the one as the first, the other as the second resurrection, there must of necessity in the one case attach to the term a certain want of literality. This want is all but expressly indicated by the phrase “first resurrection.” Two resurrections, in the proper sense, are not conceivable—if we would not abandon the ground of Scripture, which nowhere knows of anything but a general resurrection. That the design simply of drawing a parallel between the two stages has given rise to the expression is plain from this consideration, that in what precedes, where this design has still not entered, it is not the resurrection, but the life that is mentioned. We cannot think of the life as existing first, and then the resurrection, but inversely. With the resurrection in the proper sense the chief point is not the local rising out of the grave, but the transition to a new and glorious state. This general element is what alone is taken into account here, in order that the two degrees of bliss might be denoted by the same word. And such a view is the less liable to objection, as the figurative use of the resurrection is also of frequent occurrence in Scripture; as by it changes from misery to bliss, from a depressed to an elevated condition are denoted, which are by no means so nearly connected with the literal resurrection.[Note: Mark: Noc dubium est, quin cum hanc vitam altera totius hominis novissimo die sequatur, qua per corporis restitutionem homo totus ex perditione eripietur, prima merito dicatur haec resurrectio, priaeludium et pignus certum secundae illius.] The resurrection of the dead forms in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 37, the point of transition to the Lord’s people from the state of deep humiliation to one of exaltation. In Hebrews 11:35, the resuscitation of those who were brought to life again by Elijah and Elisha is described as a resurrection. What is meant cannot be a resurrection in the proper sense. Even in the purely spiritual territory the ideas of revivication and resurrection are employed; comp. Ephesians 2:6, Ephesians 2:14; Colossians 3:1. Revelation 20:6. Blessed is he and holy, who has part in the first resurrection: over such the second death has no power; but they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years. The holy denotes here not the moral quality, but the glory of the state (comp. at Psalms 16:2, and Revelation 4:8; Revelation 11:18; Revelation 14:10, where the holy angels are mentioned). Believers are holy even in this life; they are found in the glorious state of the children of God; they are separated from a profane world, behind the show and glitter of which there lie concealed the deepest humiliation and the greatest misery. But the complete manifestation of holiness belongs to the future world. The glory is more distinctly unfolded in the words that follow, “they shall be priests,” etc. “In a similar manner are glory and blessedness united together,” says Bengel, “in 2 Timothy 2:10; he is blessed, with whom it is quite well; holy indicates something still higher.”On the second death, see at ch. Revelation 2:11. Parallel to the expression, “Over such the second death has no power,” is John 11:26, “he that believeth upon me shall never die.” In regard to the expression, “they shall be priests,” comp. at ch. Revelation 1:6, Revelation 5:10. Bengel: “Saints are also priests of Christ, therefore is Christ true God, see Acts 14:13.” The whole verse possesses a hortatory character. It calls upon us to regard the troubles and sufferings of this present life as nothing, if we may but attain to the glorious good of the first resurrection. It seems proper, to introduce here the article that appeared some time ago in the Evang. K. Zeitung on the thousand years’ reign, which tonches-on many points, that have been passed over in the exposition. In doing so, we shall make both some omissions and some additions, yet so as not to destroy the colour it assumed from the period of its origin (March 1848), nor to be greatly solicitous about saying nothing the second time, which may have been substantially said already. “Blessed is he who reads and they who hear the words of this prophecy, and keep what is written therein”—so speaks St John at the beginning of the Apocalypse. And at its close we read, “But I testify to all, who hear the words of the prophecy of this book: If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.” If we consider the solemn earnestness there is in these words, we shall find it impossible to remain in a state of indifference toward this book. If we diligently apply ourselves to the consideration and understanding of its contents, even though this endeavour should at first be attended with little fruit, we should still not suffer the longing desire for a proper understanding of it to die in our souls; we should hold ourselves ready to receive benefit by all attempts that may be made to open to us its meaning. Nor shall our spirit also fail to have itself quickened and profitably exercised by what is said of the high importance of the book, if it does not suffer itself to be carried away by senseless objections, even though they should be uttered by pretended apostles and prophets. The book, however, has a quite peculiar value for the present time. We learn its historical starting-point from ch. Revelation 1:9, “I John, your brother and companion in the tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle, that is called Patmos, for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ.” Accordingly, the book was written by one, who himself had to suffer persecution for the sake of Christ, and languished in banishment: and at a time when all, who confessed Christ, were made to partake in the tribulation of Jesus Christ; according to the church tradition under Domitian, the author of the first general persecution of Christians, while that under Nero was confined merely to Rome. When we look farther into the book, we are presented with the spectacle of a conflict of life and death waged by Satan against Christ, that had even then begun to burst forth. To delineate the course of this conflict and its glorious issue, seems to be the great object of the book. How should we, then, not listen eagerly to every word of such a book at a time, when Satan begins to make war on Christ and Christianity, on a scale that has never been attempted before! How should not we strive, through the help of this book, to be companions of the patience of Jesus Christ, and thereby attain also to his kingdom! Especially since from that kingdom (ch. Revelation 21:8) the fearful are excluded, as well as the unbelieving and abominable and whoremongers, and murderers and sorcerers and idolaters; an express warning to us, who are so ready to regard failure in the patience of Jesus Christ as a light and venial fault—so ready, in our distrust of God, to think little of forgetting the word, Lift up your heads, for your redemption draweth nigh. That the Christian may remain stedfast and fearless where he is, even though it should be in the midst of a falling world, this book is fitted to render for such a purpose a most important service. We are not the first who have to make proof of it; it has already manifested its power to many thousands in all times of distress and persecution, who have constantly applied it to their hearts, while in more quiet times it has been less attended to and has even often been shamefully neglected. It has thus proved a blessing even to many, who but very imperfectly understood it. For it is wonderful, how the edifying power that resides in the book, forces its way even through the most imperfect understanding of its contents, if only the soul that applies to it is hungry and thirsty, weary and heavy laden, if it only stands in living faith on the divinity of Scripture and on the glorious consummation of the kingdom of Christ. Bengel’s example may render this quite manifest. In nearly all the leading points he has failed in obtaining the right view; and yet what rich nourishment has he derived from this book for his own inner man and for many thousands besides! One of the first questions in regard to the Revelation, which presses itself on us in an age of important movements like ours, is, where do we now stand? What have we behind, and what before us? The answer is, that we now have the thousand years’ reign behind us, and stand at the loosing of Satan out of his prison at the end of the thousand years, and his going forth to deceive the heathen in the four quarters of the earth, and gather them together to battle (ch. Revelation 21:7-9). This answer, which was given sometime ago in an article on the beast of the Apocalypse, has, as we foresaw, because opposed to the traditional and current view, found but little response, has estranged many, and given serious offence to some. This imposes on the author, who is convinced of the soundness of the answer, the obligation of going now more fully into the defence and vindication of it. The surprise occasioned by the view we have set forth would certainly have been much less, if people had remembered, that the now current exposition, which is commonly regarded as the properly ecclesiastical one, and by which the millennium is held to be still future, was first rendered current by Bengel, and was adopted by the Pietists. Schröekh in his biographies of distinguished men of learning, Th. III., p. 98, says, “Since Bengel’s time the disinclination toward Chiliasm, which previously was a mark of sound faith in our church, has disappeared with many.” Bengel himself admits in a great number of places, that he had the prevailing sentiment in the church against him (Chiliasm, or the doctrine of the thousand years’ reign as still future is well known to have been repudiated by the 17th Art. of the Augsburg Confession). So in his Erklärten Offenbarung. p. 672, he says,” The still future years were held for suspicious (in the Evangelical church), and the greater part fell in with those, who bound themselves to no particular confession. These took the matter up the more zealously, and thereby made themselves the more hateful.”[Note: What is remarked above, however, has respect in its full compass only to the Lutheran church. In the reformed church, the opinion of a thousand years’ reign still to arise in the future, had many adherents before the time of the Pietists. Wolf in his Curae says, Mille annoa jam praeteriisae, nostratium theologorum communis est sententia.Secundam sententiam (holding the period to the future) ex nostratibus nonuulli, in primis vero illi, qui a fanaticis sententiis parum sibi caverunt, nominatim, J. G. Petersenius, ex Reformatis vero multi exornandam susceperunt.] The lively conviction, that Satan’s authority and power to deceive were broken from the time of Christ’s appearance, gave rise to the opinion, which certainly had nothing in the connection to justify it, that the thousand years were to be reckoned from the birth of Christ. Cassiodorus, in support of this view, which through the authority of Augustine was the prevailing one during the whole of the middle ages, appeals to the unanimous consent of the fathers (qui tamen consensu patrum a nativitate domini computantur ne credituras gentes libera potestate confunderet.[Note: What Cassiodoras says here of the consent of the fathers certainly needs limitation. During the times, that a Christian theology was only in process of formation, very few references are to bo found to the millennium—see Münscher, Die Lebre vom tansendjährigen Reiche in den drei eraten Jahrh. in Henke’s Magazin Bd. VI. The belief was very common, that there should be a resurrection of the righteous before the general resurrection, that there should be an intermingling of these risen ones with those who had not yet died, an external restoration of Jerusalem, with a mixing up together of that which is said in the Apocalypse of the thousand years’ reign, and what is said of the New Jerusalem, reversing the order of Scripture, which ascribes the first stage of blessedness to heaven, the second to the earth. Thus Tertullian says, adv. Marci. L. 3, c. 25, “We confess, that a kingdom is promised us on earth, before we get to heaven, namely the thousand years’ reign after the resurrection, in the city of Jerusalem, made by God, which comes down from heaven.” Compare what Eusebius says in B. III. c. 28, of Cerinthus,. Justin in his Dial, with Trypho. c. 80, Irenaens B. V., c. 33. But this interpretation of the Apoc. never was unanimously received. Justin says, there were many, even among those, who held the pure doctrine, who did not share in this faith—see on this statement of Justin, Semisch’s Justin Martyr, vol. II. p. 469. “It is well known, that there is not a single trace to be found of the Chihastic views, neither in the epistles of the Roman Clement, of Ignatius and Polycarp, nor in the apologetical writings of Tatian, Athenagoros, and Theophilus of Antioch.” The vagaries of the Montanists who espoused these views, which already existed in the church, strengthened the disinclination to receive them. As theology grew into a more regular form, their untenableness became more clearly manifest. They were also repressed by the consideration, that the church, even under the ordinary human relations of life, might yet attain to the ascendancy. Lactantius is the last defender of Chiliasm of any name. The reaction against it in the ancient church was a sound one, though from the imperfection of exegetical resources, an ill choice was often made in the weapons employed by its opponents.]) On the ground of this exposition, people were, about the year 1000, in the most anxious expectancy regarding the things that were going to happen. "Churches and monasteries were allowed to fall into ruin, many princes and nobles went on pilgrimage to Rome, built hospitals for the poor and for pilgrims, as also abbeys, whither some constantly repaired to wait in daily expectation.” It is not quite accidental, that sects have constantly had a predilection for Chiliasm, while the church has been disinclined to adopt it. In the very nature of the sects there lies a practical denial of the confession, I believe in one holy, Catholic church. They are always disposed to confine within the circle of their own party what is good, what is Christian, what properly marks the operations of the Spirit—as, for example, in the programme of the Irvingite party it is declared without any circumlocution, There is Babylon, here is Zion. Being able to discern the divine only in some particular form, and incapable of discovering it even through the strange garb and disguises, which it often assumes, they must on this account alone be inclined to transfer the thousand years to the future, because they think they apprehend in them an essential advance; a state of the church much more satisfactory in the main than what has ever existed in the past; a state in which the power of Satan shall be broken, and the power of Christ shall be triumphant. Another reason for the circumstance may also be assigned. Chiliasm rests generally, even in its more spiritual forms, on an intermixture of things incompatible—of elements, which belong to time and to eternity. Bengel, for example, saw the untenable character of the common chiliastic views, according to which the corporeally risen saints should be members of the millennial kingdom on earth; since thus the resurrection would be separated from the regeneration of the earth, with which it is most closely connected, and makes the risen and glorified church be attacked by mortal men at the close of the thousand years. Bengel, therefore, conceives, that the risen saints shall be withdrawn to heaven, and from thence shall exercise the government along with Christ. But he still destroys the connection between the resurrection and the regeneration of the earth, and transfers to heaven what, according to Scripture, and the natural view belongs to the earth. Then, Bengel maintains on the one side the continuance of sin in the millennial period—and how, indeed, could he do otherwise, since the great apostacy at the end of it admits of explanation, only if the scarlet thread of sin goes through the entire period?  “Among the children of the kingdom, says he, “there shall be to the very end of the world children of the wicked one; the conflict with sin in the flesh shall not be taken away, nor death itself be swallowed up in victory. There will, however, be new, high, and hitherto unknown trials and temptations, agreeing with the rich bestowal of the gifts of grace, in place of Satanic assaults and outward persecutions.” But, on the other side, Bengel denies any continuance of the efficacy of Satan during the period in question, and thus involves himself in a quite unscriptural view of Satan’s relation to sin: for as sin entered into the world through Satan; so is he always actively engaged in connection with it; he takes the word from the hearts of those, who hear it, that they may not believe and find salvation (Luke 7:12); he has his work not merely in the children of unbelief, but believers also are sifted by him (Luke 22:31); they must constantly pray, that the Lord may deliver them from the wicked one, who would lead them into temptation; not Judas merely is exposed to his assaults, but Peter also escapes from them no otherwise than through the intercession of the Lord. Now, the unsound state of sectaries accords with such interminglings of heterogeneous things, while the sound mind of the church has a decided aversion to them. We must guard ourselves, however, against the appearance of supposing the honoured Bengel to be a party-man. What led him to adopt the chiliastic views, was above all his exegetical conscience. He believed he could not do otherwise, and contented himself with whatever was abnormal in the matter. He held with the church of his day, that the beast was the papacy. Chiliasm is the necessary consequence of this view. For, the thousand years’ reign, according to ch. Revelation 19:20, only begins with the destruction of the beast. Since, therefore, the destruction of the papacy has still not taken place, the thousand years must necessarily be transferred to the future. The common theology of the church had rescued itself from this consequence, with true ecclesiastical tact, but only by violently tearing the twentieth chapter from its connection. Bengel was too good an expositor to concur in such a procedure.[Note: He says with perfect justice, “Caeterum ne passum quidem simul cum temporibus bestiae currunt hi mille anni, neque ex toto illa hi praecedunt, sed ex toto sequntur.] And the theology of the church was unable to oppose him; this could only have become possible, if any one had had the courage to abandon the false view of the beast, which had in a certain measure obtained the sanction of the church. Against those who stood fast by this interpretation, Bengel’s reasoning was irresistible; and hence it came to pass, that after a feeble resistance from the orthodox, chiliasm obtained an almost universal diffusion through the church. Strange truly is the prejudice against the view we have propounded of the thousand years’ reign, as if it took from us somewhat of our consolation! as if it were fitted to overthrow our hope! a prejudice, which has been greatly strengthened by the too great support obtained by Bengel for the opinion advocated by him. On the contrary, it is very consolatory for us to know, that we have the thousand years already behind us; therefore, before us not the mere glimmering, but the clear day—not the preliminary victory, which is again to be succeeded by a heavy reverse, but the final conquest. If the old earth is always to get more corrupt and full of wickedness, it is a great consolation, that we have got so far over the pilgrimage to the new earth, on which righteousness dwells. We come now to a closer examination of the subject. The positive proof for our view is contained in the connection, in which the thousand years’ reign is mentioned. Nor have we any need to go far back in investigating this. It is a fundamental error in the exposition of Bengel, and of many modern expositors, that they regard the Revelation as a progressive whole, proceeding in regular order from beginning to end. The right view is, that it is composed of a number of independent groups, each complete in itself, and each bringing prominently out some particular points, thus supplementing one another. For the establishment of this view it will be enough to point here to the one consideration, that undeniable references to the last end occur even in the beginning and the middle of the book. Thus, at ch. Revelation 6:12-14, we are brought into the territory of Mat 24:29, “Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of the heavens shall be shaken;” consequently into the time immediately before the coming of the Son of man (comp. Matthew 24:30). After the episode in ch. 7, which represents the fate of the elect during the judgments disclosed in the preceding portion, as going to alight upon the world, we have that coming itself referred to in ch. Revelation 8:1, “And when the seventh angel sounded, there was silence in heaven for the space of half an hour;” for the silence is that of the creature frightened at the presence of its Creator and Lord, when appearing in the awful majesty of the judge. So, also, we stand at the final end, the detailed representation of which is given by the Seer only in the last group, in ch. Revelation 11:15, as is placed beyond doubt by comparing Revelation 11:18, “Thy wrath is come, and the time for judging the dead.” The end is also unquestionably referred to in ch. Revelation 14:14-16; and in ch. Revelation 16:17-21, comp. with Revelation 15:1. How few solid objections can be raised against this proof is clear alone from the constrained and violent interpretations, which the advocates of the regular progression have been obliged to adopt at the places referred to.Now, the independent groups are altogether seven, in accordance with the great importance, which after the example of the Old Testament is everywhere attached in this book to the number seven; as follows:      1. The seven epistles to the churches.       2. The seven seals.       3. The seven trumpets, Revelation 8:2 to Revelation 11:19.      4. The three enemies of the kingdom of GodSatan, the beast, and the false prophet, and their war upon it, Revelation 12-14.      5. The seven vials, Revelation 15, 16.       6. The judgment on the three enemies, beginning with the beast and the false prophet, and rising from them to Satan, Revelation 17-20.       7. The New Jerusalem. If, therefore, we would ascertain from the connection the time to which the thousand years’ reign belongs, we need not go farther back than ch. 17, where we have an entirely new beginning, though forms certainly meet us which are pre-supposed to be known from what has gone before. Now, the result is not difficult to find here; it lies on the very surface. The thousand years’ reign follows immediately on the destruction of the beast and the false prophet. If by these we are to understand (as we have already proved) the ungodly heathen power and wisdom, then the thousand years’ reign cannot be future. For, in the regions which are everywhere kept mainly in view throughout this book, the lands of the Roman world, heathenism has for many centuries ceased to exist. Farther, as the last phase of the heathenish power of the world, with the overthrow of which the commencement of the thousand years’ reign is immediately connected, the ten kings or peoples, who overthrew the Roman empire, appear in the preceding verse. If by these we are to understand the Germanic tribes, whose conversion to Christianity is represented in ch. 19 under the image of their conquest by Christ in a great battle, then the commencement of the millennium must be coincident with the Christianization of the Germanic tribes. Of this E. M. Arndt says,  “We (Germans), and those races that are most nearly related to us, and whatever of our ancestors mingled with the wretched remains of the old world, have raised and carried forward in the most vigorous and beautiful manner the new European Christian life.” This glory is now certainly gone, though only at the close of the thousand years, and we may well lament with the poet, German people, once in glory so transcendant, your oaks remain, you are yourselves fallen. The beginning of the thousand years’ reign is, accordingly, somewhat uncertain, and so also must be its end. In the main, however, it must coincide with the thousand years’ continuance of the German ascendancy. How the period was tending to its close in the time of Bengel—how even then significant tokens discovered themselves of the approaching release of Satan from his prison, may be gathered from what he says at p. 588 of Erläuterten Offenbarung, “The filth of the despisers of God is now so incredibly great, that one may well doubt whether the devil himself could carry matters farther. Yet it is not to be imagined that they have brought matters to the highest pitch, or can do so immediately. They are but the beginners, the real master-raillers are still unborn.” We may now say, that we have long dwelt, as in Meshech and Kedar, among these “master-raillers;” and any one that previously was not aware of it, must now during these last four weeks have known, that Satan has been completely loosed from his prison, and has gone forth to deceive the heathen in the four quarters of the earth, and gather them together to the battle. If we see in the past a visible proof of the faithfulness of God’s word, in the overthrow of Rome, in the conversion of the Germanic world to Christ, and the great falling away at the end of the thousand years, so in regard to the remaining point, to the falling of fire from heaven and consuming them, which we should revolve day and night in our hearts, that we may not be afraid of their threatenings, it will be easy for us to look with confidence for the fulfilment. Let us now examine the objections which are brought against our view of the thousand years’ reign. It is alleged, first of all, that the contents of Rev 20:1-3 in ch. 20 cannot be proved to have had their fulfilment in the past, and must hence belong to the future. The deceiving of the heathen runs through the whole of the history that is already past, and its cessation, which is here given as the characteristic mark of the thousand years, must be looked for in the coming future. But the subject of discourse here, as the connection shews, is not Satan’s deceiving in the general, but his deceiving with the view of stirring them up to an open attack on the kingdom of Christ, for the purpose of destroying it, and so as even to threaten its destruction. (Similarly even August, de 104: dei XX. 7: Nec enim dictum est, ut non seduceret aliquem, sed ut non seduceret, inquit, jam gentes). This more exact limitation of the meaning arises, on the one side, from the respect borne to what precedes, where such a conflict is spoken of, so great, public, and decisive, that the very existence of the kingdom of God was brought into question by it (comp. especially ch. Revelation 19:19-20). The same result, on the other side, is obtained from what follows, Revelation 20:7-9. Thus the deceiving of the heathen is more definitely explained, more narrowly bounded; and such a bounding, indeed, is demanded alone by the consideration, that at the end of the thousand years such a fearful assault is to be made, as is entirely inexplicable, on the supposition that the agency of Satan, and, what is closely connected therewith, sin, had altogether ceased during the thousand years.[Note: The following remark of Bengel is certainly not in accordance with the scriptural mode of representation: “The notions shall still be so constituted, that they could be deceived, if the devil were not in prison.” We must not take the prison in so grossly external a manner. It is a mere figure, and simply denotes the restraining of his influence, the pre-requisite of which is, that the hearts and peoples sincerely given to Christ continue steadfast in their adherence to him.] But such being the case, there is no reason for denying the cessation of this deceiving of Satan according to the view we advocate. With all its corruptions, and in part also severe conflicts and losses in the case of individuals, it still was on the whole the period of Christ’s undisputed sway. That a great change began at the end of it, must now at least, within the few last weeks, have become manifest even to those, who would drive too far the in many respects just, and by Scripture itself approved, dislike (Ecclesiastes 7:11) of extolling too highly past times.[Note: Vitringa would now certainly no longer ask: Haeocine acta fuerunt et gesta Satana legato et detruso in abyssum? Quid igitur tandem fiet Satano solute? And yet Satan has but begun his work.] During the period of the thousand years there are to be found no conflicts, which even remotely resemble those that precede, and come after it. Mahommedanism belongs only in part to it, and it left untouched the original ground of Christendom; it never brought matters to such a point as to raise the question, whether there should be or should not be a kingdom of Christ on the earth. The papacy can only be regarded, after an unhistorical mode of viewing it, against which Luther himself protested, when he was not carried away by the spirit of controversy, as standing on a level with ancient and modern heathenism. It is this very mode of viewing it, unhappily wide-spread and deeply rooted in former times, which has especially led to the abandoning of the historical ground. in determining the position of the thousand years, and flying off to the future. The thought has also had much influence, which is expressed by Bengel at p. 581, “Those make far too little of the matter, who understand the thousand years of something that is past, and consequently something quite insignificant.” He who looks thus upon the past in the Christian church, at the same time cuts up, without perceiving it, the root of a living and reasonable hope for the future. If the word, “Lo I am with you always, even to the end of the world,” has been kept so badly in the past, it will be foolish to expect, that it should suddenly begin in the future to receive a glorious fulfilment. It is so also with the individual believer; his hope respecting the future is a living hope, exactly in the same degree, that he can discern the blessing of God, which is concealed under the cross, the grace that lies hid behind sin; which he only can do, who can say from the heart, What I know not, teach thou me. That view of the papacy (whose dominion, besides, comprehends only a part of the thousand years, while, again, this period embraces the Reformation, and the whole spring-time of the evangelical churches[Note: The natural exposition of the Apocalypse runs as directly counter to the extravagancies of Catholic controversialists, as it does to those of the Evangelical party. The prevailing view of the Reformation in the Catholic church cannot be the right one, if the spring-season of the Evangelical church falls within the thousand years. The Satanic territory must, therefore, lie in another direction than that, which separates the Evangelical from the Catholic church.]), is a reproach on our own origin. The Reformation pre-supposes the existence of glorious powers of life, though in a slumbering state. Now that we have about us the Gog and Magog of unbelief, and no longer stand within the thousand years, we should feel our impotence, and call on the Lord to strengthen our weakness. Another objection against our view of the thousand years’ reign is taken from Revelation 20:4-6. According to what is written there the resurrection of the righteous must take place at the beginning of the thousand years, and these must continue on the earth during the whole millennial period. As nothing of this sort is to be perceived in the past, it is, men think, clear as day, that the thousand years still belong to the future. But it should be quite sufficient to shew the fallacy of such an argument, that it leads to a perfectly monstrous combination of things incapable of union: the church consisting of a mixture of members, partly living in mortal flesh, and partly risen and glorified—the latter abiding on the unrenewed earth, though as such only fit for the dwelling of mortal men; the risen and glorified at the end of the thousand years, entangled anew in the- troubles of earth, in war and conflict, which belong only to a present existence, and driven out of that rest from their labours which was promised them. Let us now first present our view of the verses under consideration, and then advance what favours it and opposes the view we reject. The whole book is designed to stimulate to patience, to stedfastness, to unmoved fidelity, and hearty joyfulness, those who are endangered by the pressure of the world against the kingdom of Christ. The chief means employed to accomplish this design, is a representation of the victory of Christ on earth, which takes place at every great conflict. This, however, is not altogether sufficient to inspire courage. Those who fall in this warfare, who depart in times of trouble and distress, who do not live to see the periods of triumph and peace, need some further consolation. The holy Seer directs their eye to the heavenly glory, amid which they are kept till the time, that the New Jerusalem comes down from heaven. Thus in ch. Revelation 7:1-8 it is represented how God, in the midst of the great tribulations which befal the earth, keeps his own people; then in Revelation 20:9-15 the view opens on the heavenly glory, which causes all the tribulations of earth to be forgotten. So also in ch. Revelation 14:1-5, after a delineation has been given of the cruel procedure of the beast on earth, and how those are kept in safety who would not worship his image, suddenly the curtain is lilted, and we see the Lamb standing on the heavenly Zion, and with him the whole multitude of the elect, who, with one voice, like that of many waters and of loud thunder, sing the new song of the Lamb, the earth with its temptations to apostacy lying wholly under their feet. This same multitude meets us again in ch. Revelation 15:2-4. They appear there standing on a sea of glass mingled with fire, on the ground of Psa 36:7, “Thy judgments are a great flood,” the symbol of the divine acts of righteousness and judgment, and sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb. The section before us is entirely similar in its structure. It contains nothing which belongs to the earth, and on the fulfilment of which history could give us its report. It rather leads us from the earth, and from the triumph which has been granted on earth to the cause and the servants of Christ to heaven, that we may see there the glory of those who had departed before the beginning of the thousand years, who were slain for the word of God and the testimony which they had, and loved not their lives to the death. The resurrection is ascribed to these persons only in a figurative sense, that, namely, of a transition into a new and glorious existence; as is indicated by the expression, “this is the first resurrection,” employed for the purpose of distinguishing it from the second resurrection, which is that more commonly meant by the term.[Note: The first resurrection corresponds to the second death. In respect to both alike the Seer distinguishes the figurative from the proper use of the term by an additional word. Those who boast of holding by the latter, who think that the subject of discourse here must plainly be the resurrection in the literal sense, have in reality the letter against them. In the expression: the first resurrection, there is contained a distinct reference to the diversity. To understand the first merely of priority of time is forbidden by the analogy of the second death, which differs materially from the first.] Now this view is first confirmed by the expression: they lived, or were again living. From this it is clear, that before the first resurrection the persons who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and who had not worshipped the beast, had enjoyed no life worthy of this name. Now, if the bodiless existence of the departed righteous were a mere life of shadows, we might certainly conclude that nothing would be said of it, as is the case in respect to those who have not died in the faith. But the contrary is found to be the case. The Apocalypse points in the most attractive colours to the blessedness which the redeemed enjoy, even before the resurrection; they stand before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes and palms in their hands, and praise God and the Lamb, and serve him day and night in his temple (comp. ch. Revelation 14:1-5, Revelation 7:9-17). Such a blessed state cannot be ignored, it cannot be put on a footing with non-existence, and so nothing remains but to understand it as meant by the first resurrection. Further, if we suppose here that a literal resurrection is meant, it must appear very singular that nowhere else in Scripture is any mention made of such a resurrection of the righteous before the general resurrection. For it does not at all follow from the passages, 1 Corinthians 15:22-23; Luke 14:14-15; 1 Thessalonians 4:16 what Ewald would still draw from them, that the righteous shall be raised at the last day before the wicked; they do not speak of a before and an after, but treat simply of the resurrection of the righteous. Such a resurrection, however, as is now supposed, is not merely ignored; it is also expressly denied. Thus in 1 Corinthians 15:22-23, “For as by one man came death, so also by one man comes the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. But every one in his own order; Christ the first-fruits, afterwards they that are Christ’s at his coming.” By this passage the resurrection only takes place at the period of Christ’s coming. This, however, is not connected with the thousand years’ reign, but with the time of the New Jerusalem, of which it is said in ch. Revelation 21:3, “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell-with them;” and in ch. Revelation 21:22, “And I saw no temple therein; for the Lord, the Almighty God, is its temple, and the Lamb.” Such a resurrection is also disproved by 1 Thessalonians 4:16, “For the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, and the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first.”[Note: Quite fruitless is the attempt of Flatt, in his adnotationes ad locum 1 Thessalonians 4:16, etc. coll. cum Apoc. opusc. 409, etc. to bring these passages into unison with ours, on the ground that the latter treats of the literal resurrection. He thinks that those should be excepted from “the dead in Christ,” to whom the first resurrection is accorded in the Revelation. But this first resurrection of the Revelation belongs to all the dead in Christ; not merely to the martyrs, but also to all those, “who bad not worshipped the beast, nor his image, and bad not received his mark on their forehead and on their baud.” The “rest of the dead,” who do not live during the course of the thousand years, are the ungodly (for Revelation 20:11, sq. shew how it went with them after the thousand years, bow positive punishment succeeds to the loss of an interest in the previously mentioned good). The books are only the books of guilt; and the book of life is merely opened to shew, that their names were not there. They are all appointed to the second death.] By this passage, too, the view of Bengel, which holds the resurrection to be corporeal, indeed, but holds heaven, and not the earth, to be the habitation of the risen saints, is excluded. It must then have been Christ’s descending from heaven along with the saints, who had risen before and gone to heaven with their glorified bodies, that was spoken of—not Christ’s raising them up, but his coming down with them. This is also to be taken into account, that the change on the living is coupled by Paul with the resurrection of the saints that are asleep. But such a change can only take place in connection with the general regeneration (Matthew 19:28), with the new heavens and the new earth. John 5:28-29 also, “The hour cometh, in which all that are in their graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, but they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation,” hardly admits of the thought of a wide separation between the resurrection of life and that of condemnation. Finally, after the example of our Lord himself in Luke 18:8, “When the Son of man comes, shall he find faith on the earth?” and in Matthew 24, especially Matthew 24:10, sq. Matthew 24:37, sq., Scripture generally testifies, that in the last times apostacy shall be very widely spread, and that even among the faithful the fire of their love and zeal shall be sadly cooled. Such descriptions, however, will not suit a church, which consists to a large extent of the risen saints; nor even a church, which has just passed out of the thousand years, on the hypothesis of Bengel. They require, that we must not attribute more to the Christian church than she has possessed in the past. If, then, it is to be finally maintained, that Revelation 20:4-6 refer to those who are concealed from our view, that for what was to happen on this earthly stage we have but one mark given, in the continuance of the dominion of Christ during a period of a thousand years,—for the just made perfect reign with Christ during the thousand years—and that the other features of the thousand years’ reign are to be derived only from Revelation 20:1-3, then we shall certainly find no other reason why we should seek it in the future instead of in the past; since there would then be the great impropriety, that the church’s thousand years of a settled state would be passed over with perfect silence in the Revelation. What is said of the thousand years, is but a brief and simple notice, and is never in the remotest manner to be compared with the glory of the new Jerusalem, to which St John hastens forward with longing desire and with rapid step—a clear proof, that in the thousand years we are to seek no heaven upon earth.[Note: Ewald: Vates breviter tantum et festinanter regnum hoc milliare tangit, beantorumque praemia in regnum mundi novi coeleste sedulo cumulate omnia, 20:1-22. 25; tardarique paratam jam piis salutem sumnam in regno coelesti ex ch. 19:7, coll. 21:2 concludas.] Gog and Magog Ch. Revelation 20:7-10. It was intimated at Revelation 20:3, that at the end of the thousand years there should be a great change in the relation of Satan to the earth. To that intimation reference is here made. After the thousand years are finished, Satan is loosed from his confinement, and deceives Gog and Magog, that is, the heathen over the whole earth, to come and fight against Christ and his church. The project succeeds well at first, so that the adversaries lay siege to the camp of the saints and the beloved city. But after a brief triumph they are overtaken by the vengeance of heaven. Fire comes down from heaven and consumes them. Satan is cast into the lake of fire. So that, what was designed to overthrow the begun supremacy of Christ, serves only to complete it. With the final discomfiture of Satan the last of the three enemies of Christ and of his church has forever vanished from the field. Vitringa says, “The church appears to have reached the end of her conflicts and labours with the execution of judgment on the beast. Christ reigns with his saints, and the kingdoms of the world yield obedience to him and the church. Whence then these new enemies at the close of the thousand years?” To this question we reply: the reason of Satan’s being loosed must stand in close connection with the reason of his being bound. The earth watched and prayed during the thousand years; therefore, Satan could accomplish nothing against it. But if the earth should cease to watch and pray, it must necessarily fall into temptation. Where God is no longer present, there Satan is sure to come with his evil spirits. The passage, Matthew 12:43-45, “When the unclean Spirit,” etc. deserves here the most attentive consideration. Satan works only in the children of disobedience; and he works wherever the children of disobedience are to be found, (Ephesians 2:2). If at any time he is to be seen actually among those, who have already belonged to Christ, this implies, according to the whole teaching of Scripture, a backsliding on the part of these; and the more extensive and successful his work of deception is, the greater always must the preceding guilt have been. Vitringa was in great perplexity to know whence these new heathen were to come. Mede expected them from America. But Bengel, with his profound discernment, perceived even in his day the beginnings of the germinating heathenism. “At present,” says he, “there is such security, and along therewith such mockery amongst high and low, appearing in a shameless profligacy and a covert unbelief, that one is apt to think, Satan himself could not conduct matters in a more indecent and scandalous manner; but what has yet been done is no more than child’s play. People are still but apprentices in respect to the last dreadful times, when the spirit of carnal security and profane mockery shall rise to the complete mastery.” It is said also in the Berleb. Bible, “Enough still secretly remains, which can be productive of mischief. And the lees shall yet be stirred up for a great final effort, as Pharaoh gave the last violent kick when he pursued after the Israelites.” There are two prophecies of the Old Testament which are closely connected with the one before us. In the prophecy of Daniel respecting the monarchies of the world the little horn corresponds which threw down three of the great. The characteristic features there are, the difference between this new worldly power and the earlier ones,[Note: This difference forms the reason why John has separated this last enemy of the church from the earlier ones, while in Daniel there were reasons for rather bringing into view the elements that belonged to this in common with the others. Wherein the difference consisted, we learn more definitely from John than we can do in Daniel.] the hatred, manifested against God and his church, the undertaking to change times and laws (i.e., to abolish all holy and profane, divine and human institutions and laws), its prosperity and success, as appearing in the overthrow of three of the earlier kingdoms, and getting even the church into its power, and, lastly, the coincidence of the end of the world with its overthrow. The other passage is the prophecy of Ezekiel against Gog the king of Magog, the chief prince[Note: His original kingdom is Magog, but along with this he acquires the mastery over Meshech and Tubal. In vain have some tried, latterly Knobel, to change the chief prince into a prince of Russia. The prince of Rosse (an appellation not known in Scripture) Meshech and Tubal, Gog could not be called without some farther explanation, as Meshech and Tubal are represented in Scripture as independent kingdoms, which were not directly subject to the king of Magog. This person could become a head to them only us a “king of kings.”] of Mesech and Tubal, in Ezekiel 38-39. The case is different in respect to this prophecy, from what it is with Daniel’s regarding the little horn. While the latter goes upon a particular fact in the future history of the world, the prophecy of Ezekiel possesses a thoroughly ideal, composite character. Gog and Magog represent generally all the future enemies of the kingdom of God, and there is here combined into one grand delineation, what was to be realized in a long series of events; so that the interpretations, which would understand it of the Syrian kings, of the Goths and Vandals, or of the Turks, are all at once true, and at the same time false, on account of their exclusiveness. Ezekiel had been prophecying immediately before of Israel’s return from exile, and his redemption from the oppression of the enemy, who then was permitted to bear sway. And the disquieting thought, that it was not enough to have achieved one victory, the fear, which takes such deep hold of the diseased, that some new trouble may come after they have recovered from that, under which they at present labour, this is met by the prophet with the announcement, that whatever the earth might still raise up of evil against the kingdom of God, even if it should bring up all that is terrible from its furthest corners, powers that were hitherto scarcely known, to war against the kingdom, this should still at last gain the victory. For a strong rock is our God. Every one who yields to the native impression this prophecy is fitted to produce, must at once feel, that there is something utopian about it; that it is essentially different from such prophecies, for example, as refer to the overthrow of the Assyrians or the Chaldeans. Its composite character discovers itself with peculiar clearness in Ezekiel 38:5-6, where along with Gog and Magog peoples from the most diverse regions of the world are mentioned as taking part in the expedition, who had no natural connection with them, or with one another. “Ezekiel here names and brings together only such tribes and races as were far distant, some more and others less known.” That an exposition, which seeks for a literal fulfilment in some historical event, is against the real meaning of the prophet, is manifest also from the freedom with which he forms a king, Gog, out of the name of the land Magog, which alone is mentioned in Genesis 10:2. So is it, again, from Genesis 10:17, according to which the earlier prophets had prophesied of Gog. These had only spoken in general of the enemies of God’s kingdom. But that John did not view the prophecy otherwise than is now represented, is plain from this, that according to ch. Revelation 19:17 he even sees in the subjugation of the ten kings through Christ one fulfilment of it. It is plain also from the consideration, that with the utmost freedom, he changes the king Gog in Ezekiel into a people Gog, together with Magog. Finally, it appears from his entirely removing the local and national limitation, which in Ezekiel still attaches to Gog and Magog, and considering Gog and Magog as simply identical with the heathen in the four corners of the earth. Revelation 20:8. And he will go forth to deceive the heathen in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the war,[Note: If we read εἰςτὸνπόλεμον, the article must be taken generically, and in substance the other reading, without it, conveys the same meaning. The war stands opposed to other possible objects of the gathering together.] the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. In what manner Satan goes forth, and accomplishes the deception, we learn from ch. Revelation 16:13. He does it by means of the unclean spirit that goes out of him.According to the current view we are to understand by the heathen in the four corners of the earth the nations, that occupy the most distant regions of the earth.[Note: So already Vitringa: Designatur gentes, quae non habiarent in media et praestantissima terrarium orbis parte, quipped quae occupata esset ab ecclesia, sed in extremis terrae.] But this interpretation is against the biblical usage. In Judges 20:2, the expression, “the corners of the whole people,” is used for, the whole people from the beginning to the end, “all the tribes of Israel,” as is immediately added by way of explanation; or “from Dan to Beersheba” as it is in Revelation 20:1. The explanation: the foremost of the whole people, is there against the connection. In 1 Samuel 14:38, Saul says, “Draw ye near hither all corners of the people.” That the whole body of the people is meant, is clear from 1 Samuel 14:40, In Isaiah 19:13 it is said, “They have deceived Egypt, the corners of his tribes,”for, his tribes even to their furthest corners. (In Genesis 19:4, λμδςνξχφδ corresponds). In these passages the corners possessed whatever lay within them, and was bounded by them: all the corners of the people, is as much as, all the peopleeven to its furthest corners; as in this book also at ch. Revelation 7:1, the corners are brought into consideration as the points, which rule the whole earth. So is it also in respect to the four borders of the earth in Isaiah 11:12; q.d., of the whole earth, as far as it stretches. Comp. Ezekiel 7:2, “The end comes on the four borders of the earth,” Job 37:3. Accordingly, here also the four corners of the earth are not the points, where the people to be deceived alone or even chiefly dwell, but the corners are regarded as commanding the whole region that lies within them; so that the four corners of the earth, is all one with, on the whole earth even to its four corners. The deceptive influence exercised by Satan is represented as one, that is not to be confined to some one particular land or people, but one that was to possess an entirely oecumenical character; precisely as we see at present to be the case. To the four corners of the earth correspond the breadth of the earth in Revelation 20:9. The territory on which the cause operates here, is the same as that on which the operation appears there. This view is confirmed by the fundamental prophecy in Ezekiel. There along with Gog, who comes from the north, other nations also are mentioned as taking part in the expedition, who dwell in the middle regions.Gog and Magog form the epexegesis to the nations in the four corners of the earth. Ezekiel represents Gog as the centre of the whole movement (Ezekiel 38:5-6). But here the ground of Gen 10:2, is entirely abandoned, and Gog and Magog are simply identified with all heathen. Gog, Magog, and Demagog, were first put together by Brentano. It is such a conjunction as that of Napoleon and Apollyon.In the war, Bengel, “Then all evil will raise itself up against all good, and hazard the last blow, but shall be worsted by the better part.”As the sand of the sea, as were also the host of the Canaanites, Joshua 11:4, the camels of the Midianites, Judges 7:12, and the Philistines, 1 Samuel 13:5. Revelation 20:9. And they went up on the breadth of the earth, and encompassed the camp of the saints and the beloved city. And fire came down out of heaven from God, and consumed them. The going up is used of any warlike expedition, because the object of it appears a height to be ascended and taken.[Note: Somewhat differently Gesenius in his Thes. on òìä: Quoniam urbes castraque expugnanda in loco edito extructa sunt.] By the breadth of the earth the whole compass of it is denoted. In Habakkuk 1:6, the Chaldeans march “through the breadth of the earth,” that is, they go through it after its whole extent and compass, comp. Isaiah 8:8; Genesis 13:17; Job 38:18. Those deceived by Satan are, according to Revelation 20:8, scattered over the entire breadth of the earth; but others also dwell with them, who do not yield to the seduction. Against these they now go forth; they would possess the whole compass of the earth, and verify the opposite of the statement, “the meek shall inherit the earth.” And it appeared as if they were going to succeed, not less than of old when Assyria marched against Jerusalem.One can suppose that the church is here denoted by two distinct and independent images, that of the camp and that of the city. But we may also suppose that the camp of the saints is placed in the beloved city, as in Acts 21:34 the fortified camp of the Romans in the city of Jerusalem is spoken of, comp. Acts 21:37, Acts 22:24, Acts 23:10, Acts 23:16, Acts 23:32. Any how, the prefixing of the expression: the camp of the saints, indicates the warlike and armed condition, which is an essential characteristic of the saints, whose spiritual armoury is described in Ephesians 6:10, sq., comp. 1 John 2:14, 1 John 5:4. In the times of Moses and Joshua the church even externally presented the form of a military camp, (comp. Hebrews 13:11), imaging what in substance was to be continued through all times.The beloved city is Jerusalem, but Jerusalem is in the Apocalypse always used as a symbol of the church (comp. vol. i., p. 425). Prosperous events, times in which the contest should assume a milder character, are not excluded by their being said to encompass the camp. As little are they excluded by the enemies being represented as pressing into the outworks of the holy city—comp. ch. Revelation 11:2. Our Lord said of the literal Jerusalem, in Luke 19:43, “Days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side.” The same state of things shall here also take place, and indeed for the same reason, as a deserved punishment; for if the church had done her duty, Satan would never have been able by his deceptions to make such way against her. But nothing shall now happen like what is said in Luke 19:44, “And they shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee, and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another.” For, this Jerusalem, with all its failings, still is the beloved city of God; and the word can never hold respecting it, which was spoken of ancient Jerusalem, “My house is an house of prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.”By faith the walls of Jericho of old fell when they had been compassed for seven days (Hebrews 11:30). By faith also shall the walls of the beloved city be preserved. The fervent prayer of the faithful calls down fire from heaven (comp. at ch. Revelation 8:3-5).— After Satan has made those ripe for judgment, who through their guilt have been led away by him, the divine judgment falls upon the deceiver and the deceived. First upon the latter. The words, “And fire came down out of heaven from God,” refer to Genesis 19:24, “And the Lord rained upon Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven;” to which also, as the image of all future judgments of God on the wicked, allusion is made in Ezekiel 38:22, Ezekiel 39:6. Here, this allusion, especially after the peculiar combination of the expressions, “out of heaven,” and “from God,” cannot be doubtful. The “from God” appeared a superfluous addition to some copyists, who did not perceive the reference to the fundamental passage. That it is not, however, to be regarded as a simple repetition from that passage, is plain from the order being the reverse of that there. It is there, from the Lord out of heaven; here, out of heaven from the Lord. The heaven forms here the contrast to the earth, God to Satan. From the allusion to Genesis 19, it is clear, that nothing is here indicated respecting the form of the judgment. What appears to refer to it, belongs to the ancient type. So much, however, may be regarded as certain, that here an unexpected, quick, frightful, overwhelming execution of divine vengeance is represented. Revelation 20:10. And the devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where also[Note: The also is wanting in the text, which Luther followed.] are the beast and the false prophet, and shall be tormented day and night for ever and ever. The everlasting fire, is, according to the word of our Lord in Matthew 25:41, prepared first of all for Satan and his angels. The cursed from among men are to be sent there as companions to them.We have here the third and last station of Satan. In ch. Revelation 12:9, he is cast down from heaven on the earth; in ch. Revelation 20:3, into the abyss, hell; here, at last, into the lake of fire and brimstone, the deeper hell (comp. at ch. Revelation 19:20). On the words, “they shall be tormented,” etc., see at ch. Revelation 14:11. The End of the World(Ch. Revelation 20:11-15) The three enemies of God’s kingdom have disappeared. There must now still follow the final and ultimate decision respecting the fate of those, who submitted to their influence; and all, top, of the irrational creation, which had been pressed by them into the service of sin, must be put out of the way. The latter in Revelation 20:11, the first in Revelation 20:12-15. This being done, all is then prepared for the new earth, on which righteousness dwells, for the new Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God; and, therefore, for the beginning of the seventh and last vision. Revelation 20:12. And I saw the dead, the small and the great, stand before the throne, and books were opened, and another book was opened, which is(the book) of life. And the dead were judged according to that which was written in the books, according to their works.[Note: Luther omits the article before small and great in this verse, and also follows the reading which has “before God,” after the throne.] The dead can only be the ungodly dead. It must alone appear singular, that here the dead are still spoken of, although they must have been raised up, before they could stand before the throne. If only the ungodly dead are meant, then there is nothing strange in the matter. For their life after the resurrection is but a life in semblance, as it was also before in Hades. Even in their bodily life they were still dead, as is intimated in the word of Christ, “Let the dead bury their dead.” But it is still of much greater moment in this respect, that John had seen in  Revelation 20:4, how those that slept in Jesus before the beginning of the thousand years then lived and reigned with Christ. It was impossible that he should have seen these, and such as stood with them in like circumstances, such as died in the Lord during the thousand years and in the war of Gog and Magog, as mixed up with the dead here, and should have included them all under that name. An unseasonable comparison of Mat 25:31, sq., where we find the righteous and the wicked united in one scene of judgment, and where the due distinction was not made between the substance and the dramatic form, has here been productive of much confusion, and has led to the dead being generally viewed,[Note: Cocceius, however, took the right view: intelligi homines mortuos iu lapsibus et in praeputio carnis, qui hactenus non revixerant, coll. 5:5. as all the dead without exception. Here also, where only the ungodly dead are the object of judgment, where the internally different are regarded as also externally distinct, we must distinguish between form and substance. The scene of judgment is of no farther importance than as forming part of the representation. In substance they have been judged already; they have been already cast into Hades (Revelation 20:13), and this pours out its whole contents into the lake of fire. Besides, to confine death only to the wicked is in perfect accordance with the style of John; comp. John 5:24, “He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death to life;” John 8:51, “Verily, verily I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;” 1 John 3:14. It is quite characteristic of John, that he delights to take death and life in their profoundest meaning. In ch. Revelation 11:18 also of this book, the dead are the lost dead. Because the judgment here has respect only to the ungodly dead, God in Christ appears alone as judge, and not, as in the judgment that respects the righteous, surrounded by the heavenly council of the church, (comp. Revelation 20:4; Matthew 19:28).In regard to the small and the great, comp. on ch. Revelation 11:18, Revelation 13:16. How does the splendour of the great (who are here to be pronounced with emphasis) now become pale! How completely does all the fear they awakened vanish away!— The words, “and the books were opened,” is from Daniel 7:10, although there another judgment is spoken of. From the contrast with the other book, which is the book of life, the books can only be those of guilt, of condemnation, of death, as they are also in the fundamental passage. But that this should be presupposed, as a thing to be understood of itself, arises simply from the contents of the books having their character more exactly determined by the condition of the persons to whom they relate. Bengel remarks: “This will be a complete, true, impartial, universal history.”Why the book of life (comp. at ch. Revelation 3:5, Revelation 13:8, Revelation 17:8), should be opened, may be learned from Revelation 20:15; it was to shew, that they had not been written there. The positive use of this book is given in Revelation 20:4. A name cannot be both written in the books and in the book of the Lamb. For, he whose name is in the book of life, is one whose guilt has been purged away by the blood of the Lamb (comp. 1 John 1:9, here at ch. Revelation 13:8); but the books contain the record only of unforgiven sins. Bengel: “Every one is either righteous or unrighteous; he cannot be half righteous, half unrighteous. The unrighteous often do things that have a good name; but these are not on that account fruits of righteousness. The righteous, on the other hand, have their sins; but they have also their sufferings for these, and obtain through supplication the pardon of their guilt.”—“The single book of life opened is opposed to the many books of works, that are also opened.” The difference as to the many and the one is either to be explained on the consideration, that but few are saved, or because the book of life contains simply the names, while the books of the dead contain the long array of their evil deeds. The judgment is here, as in ch. Revelation 11:18, and the parallel passages quoted there from the Gospel of John, which declare believers to be free from the judgment (for ex. John 3:18, John 5:24) a condemnatory one. Revelation 20:13. And the sea gave the dead, that were therein, and death and hell gave the dead, that were therein; and they were judged every one according to their works. This verse does not advance, but supplies and completes. The words, agreeing with the close of Rev 20:12, “and they were judged according to their works,” which sounds so alarmingly for the dead, whose works can only be bad, shews that we are here again at the point, to which we had already come there. The expression of the resurrection, used also in the Gospel in regard to the ungodly, (comp. John 5:29) is here studiously shunned. After the heavenly blessedness of believers had been described in Revelation 20:6 as the first resurrection, the representation of salvation was closely connected with the resurrection. The elevation, too, of the prophetical stand-point, of itself admits of nothing, which has the character of semblance merely, or is but half. And according to the style of the Revelation the righteous partake of a double resurrection, but the wicked of none at all. This emphatic use of the resurrection, by which it is represented as the privilege of believers, is found also in the Gospel (comp. John 6:39-40, John 6:44, John 6:54), and occurs even in Luke, ch. Luke 14:14, Luke 20:35. The sea is here, as commonly in the Apocalypse, the sea of the peoples, the wicked restless world. The dead, whom the sea conceals, are those who were slain in the bloody conflict of selfishnesss against selfishness, in which they killed one another in the Cainite spirit of brotherly hatred—not Cain against Abel, but Cain against Cain, (ch. Revelation 6:4). The dead in the sea are related to those of death and hell, as in Revelation 20:4, those, who were beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, to those who had not worshipped the beast. They also belong to death and hell, but in these there are great numbers besides, who in the way of nature have died without salvation. The sea in the literal sense does not suit here. For, the number of dead persons concealed by this, is extremely small, as compared with the rest, and the mention of it would possess a sentimental aspect entirely foreign to the character of the Apocalypse. From the juxtaposition with death and hell the sea can here be referred to only as the receptacle of the lost dead. But the natural sea engulphs alike the righteous and the wicked. That the sea stands here in the figurative sense, appears also from ch. Revelation 21:1, according to which the sea cannot belong to the original constitution of things in nature, but must be a product of sin. That the symbol of the sea comes out with such unusual prominence in the Apocalypse, admits of explanation from the circumstance, that being in the island of Patmos, John was constantly within sight of the sea. Death is here not natural death merely, but what alone deserves the name, an unblessed death, the legitimate continuation, and, at the same time, the punishment of spiritual death. This is shewn by the connection of death with hell, which is found also in ch. Revelation 1:18, and Revelation 6:8; and by Revelation 20:14, which is inexplicable, if we understand by death what is commonly understood and expressed by that in the world.Hell, Hades, is everywhere in the New Testament the place of torment for the ungodly (comp. on ch. Revelation 1:18, Revelation 6:8). Revelation 20:14. And death and hell were east into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.[Note: The like of fire is wanting in the text followed by Luther.] Death can only mean here the death of perdition. For such only can be cast into the lake of fire. The idea is this, that in place of provisional, there now enters final, perdition. For believers, according to the mode of representation in John, there is no death. What is commonly called such, is in his view but the transition to a state of heavenly bliss, which begins the moment one passes out of this life, and which is one day to be succeeded by a participation in the marriage feast of the Lamb. Here all is but a life of vanity[Note: How one must be tormented and tossed about, if death is here understood in the common acceptation, may be seen from the words of Vitringa: Sensus est, mortem temporalem, quae hactenus imperium in hominess exeruerat, plane esse abolendam et reproborum respect convertendam in mortem aeternam. So also the remark of Wolf: Quae non amplius locum sit habitura in homines, quandoquidem alli eorum, nempe quorum nomina in libro vitae consignata fuerint, vitae aeternae, alli vero morti secundae sive aeternae sint vinicandi.] But so long as this death reigns over unbelievers, and has not given way to the second death, believers must also be subject to death in its common acceptation. To the second death for the wicked corresponds for the righteous the second (blessed) resurrection.In regard to the second death, comp. on ch. Revelation 2:11, Revelation 20:6. Berleb. Bible, “The first death is nothing else but the miserable and painful state of man, lying under the dominion of sin and so under the wrath of God as to body and soul; and that state as preliminary to the other death. This first death has, as it were, two lands, over which its dominion stretches: 1. One in time, before the separation of soul and body, Luke 15:32; 1 John 3:14. For, those who allow sin to reign over them in this life, are also even here subject to the power of death. 2. When such persons depart out of this life, they must still remain in death; they go into the common receptacle of departed, impure souls. But the other death is that state which follows the first, altogether wretched and undone, into which they fall, who have not been softened by the judgment of the first death; since they are cut off through a frightfully long and dark eternity from all the grace and mercy of God, and remain like impure dogs excluded from the land and light of the living.”In regard to the lake of fire, see on ch. Revelation 19:20, Revelation 20:10. The oven of fire, in Matthew 13:42, Matthew 13:50, corresponds. Revelation 20:15. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life, was cast into the lake of fire. Bengel remarks that “with great emphasis the discourse in Revelation 20:14-15 is thrice closed with the words, the lake of fire.” In Revelation 20:14 the final hell is, as it were, erected, here it receives its wretched inhabitants. There is a parallel in John 15:6, “He that abides not in me, is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.” “O Jesus, help now, for the sake of thy wounds, that I may be found written in the book of life!” THE SEVENTH GROUP, THE NEW (Ch. Revelation 21:1-22, Revelation 22:1-5) The sixth group, in Revelation 17-20 represented the judgment upon the three enemies of God, of the Lamb, and the church. It closes with the completion of their overthrow in the destruction of the chief enemy, Satan; with the last judgment on their servants, and the removal of all that has pressed in upon the creation through sin. Everything is now prepared for the entrance of the last phase of the kingdom of God, for the foundation of the new earth, on which righteousness dwells, for the erection on it of the kingdom of glory, for the solemnization of the marriage of the Lamb, to the threshold of which we were brought by the song of praise in ch. Revelation 19:6-8, that anticipated the contents of Rev 19:11 to Revelation 20:15. This sacred closing history is the subject of the present group. A church, which has such hope, can never faint under the tribulations, which it may have to endure for the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. She beholds the end and is comforted. She rejoices in her Lord, who reserves the good wine till the last. That the hope may become truly living, the object of it is vividly delineated by John to the church, and set, as it were, before her eyes. A body is prepared for it by him, that she might take up more successfully the conflict with the visible, which is apt to induce despair, as was done in former times by the prophets of the Old Testament, or rather by the Holy Spirit, who spake through them, that the minds of believers might have the glory of the future exhibited to their view in such vividness of colouring, as would be sufficient to free them from care, anxiety, and grief. So, for example, Ezekiel in Ezekiel 40-48, and Isaiah in Isaiah 9. There is an unmistakeable reference to these Old Testament representations in the description given here of the new Jerusalem. By this reference, it is intimated, that we must seek only for the beginning of their fulfilment in the first appearance of Christ, and that Christian hope is still always justified in repairing to them for strength and refreshment. Revelation 21:3. And I heard a great voice from heaven, which said: Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them as their God. Instead of: from heaven, Luther has: from the throne. The external testimonies for the two readings are pretty nearly equal. But this reading ought to be rejected on internal grounds. The voice from the throne could only be the voice of God. But God is spoken of in the third person, otherwise than in Revelation 21:5 and Leviticus 26:11-12. Since the voice from heaven cannot be an indefinite one, the more exact determination of it is to be derived from Revelation 21:2. It must proceed from amongst the citizens of the new Jerusalem, who are coming down from heaven: “And I heard a great voice from heaven.” We might, then, think of some particular one of the perfectly righteous, or more specially of one of the elders (comp. on ch. Revelation 14:13, Revelation 7:13-14). But it is best to derive the precise limitation from ch. Revelation 19:1, where the great voice is described to be that of a multitudinous host in heaven. That the great voice belongs to the entire multitude of the just made perfect, is also confirmed by the analogy of ch. Revelation 11:15, Revelation 12:10, Revelation 14:2, Revelation 15:2-4, Revelation 19:1; Revelation 19:6. Instead of, Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, Luther has improperly a tabernacle. We are not to explain: Behold this new Jerusalem is the tabernacle; for a city cannot properly be called a tabernacle; but the tabernacle is the kernel and centre of the city (comp. the expression in Revelation 21:11, “which had the glory of God”). Therefore: behold, here it is. Instead of the whole, here only the most excellent part is taken into account. The gracious presence of God among his people had in ancient times manifested itself in the symbolical form of a tabernacle, or of a tent, in which he dwelt in the midst of his people. What is there used as a symbol occurs here as an image (Mark: Dei mansio gratiosa et gloriosa, qualis olim erat tabernaculum). For, that an external sanctuary cannot here be spoken of is evident from Revelation 21:22. Revelation 21:11 corresponds as to substance, where it is noted as the most distinguished feature of the new Jerusalem, that it has the glory of God, that God is present there in the fulness of his glory.There is nothing absolutely new that is promised here: if it had no foundation in the past, it could have no reality. But even in Exodus 29:45 it is said, “And I dwell in the midst of the children of Israel, and shall be their God;” and in Leviticus 26:11-12, “And I give my dwelling in your midst, and my soul shall not reject you. And I walk in your midst, and shall be your God, and ye shall be my people.” And when Ezekiel, in Isaiah 37:27-28, promises, “And my dwelling shall be over you, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and the heathen shall know that I the Lord sanctify Israel, when my sanctuary in your midst is perpetual,” he certainly did not mean thereby the new Jerusalem merely of the Revelation; a prelude of the fulfilment is to be sought in the manifestations of divine grace, which were given at the return from the captivity, and still more in the personal appearance of Christ (comp. John 1:14). The word: Behold the tabernacle of God is with men, according to ch. Revelation 7:15, has been already verified for believers in the heavenly glory; nay, according to ch. Revelation 12:12, Revelation 13:6, believers even now dwell with God in his heavenly tent, though they are still in the militant church. How could it well be otherwise, since he who has the fulness of the Godhead dwelling bodily in him, has promised to be with them always to the end of the world. But in the new Jerusalem the presence of God among his people shews itself in so glorious a manner, that all earlier manifestations shall thereby be thrown into the shade. Bengel: “God had formerly a dwelling with the people of Israel, when Moses erected the tabernacle, and afterwards when Solomon built the temple. But as if neither the one nor the other had existed, it is said here as of a matter altogether new. Behold the tabernacle of God is with men; because God will there manifest himself in a much more intimate, gracious, and peculiar manner.”There is a reference in the expression of God’s dwelling among them to John 1:14, where it is said of the Word, “he dwelt among us.” This latter is the sure foundation of the former.On the following part of the verse Bengel remarks: “It was anciently the sum of God’s covenant with his people: I will be your God, and ye shall be my people; and that covenant will attain to its highest fulfilment.” In place of: God himself—no other than he, the supreme Jehovah—will be your God, as we might expect from the fundamental passages of the books of Moses, it is said: he will be with them, or among them as their God, introducing a slight allusion to the name Immanuel in Isaiah 7:14, comp. Matthew 1:23. Berleb. Bible: “Then, after so many things Christ’s name Immanuel will find its full realization.” Revelation 21:4. And he will wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain; for the first things are passed away. The words, “he will wipe away all tears from their eyes,” have already occurred in ch. Revelation 7:17. There it referred to the heavenly section of the church. Now at length the flow of her tears is completely and for ever stayedAfter the tears death is mentioned, as that which in this vale of tears calls forth the bitterest weeping. As it had come into the world through sin (Genesis 2:17; Romans 5:12), it must again cease through the complete victory over sin (1 Corinthians 15:54).As tears precede death (that they stand connected with it, appears from the fundamental passage Isaiah 25:8, where the destruction of death precedes, and the ceasing of death follows), so it is again succeeded by mourning, which is also connected with death in ch. Revelation 18:8.— The crying is not that of persons fighting, but of those oppressed, overpowered, despairing, Isaiah 65:19. On the expression “no more,” Bengel says, “therefore till now it had not wholly ceased.” A memorial for those who would ascribe more to the thousand years’ reign, than what may be found in the period already past! It belongs to the first department of things, which through manifold stages still remains the same in all that is essential; respecting which in every stage it may still be said, “This world is aye a vale of tears, Full of pain, distress, and tears,” and “Poor worms we are upon the earth, Struggling with guilt and woe and death.” Revelation 21:5. And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold I make all things new. And he says:[Note: The to me, which Luther adds, ought to be deleted, according to the best authorities.] Write, for these words are certain and true. He that sat upon the throne, is God in the undistinguished unity of his being (comp. on ch. Revelation 20:11). On the words: “Behold I make all things new,” Bengel remarks, “This renewal comprises much more in it than that which is described in 2 Corinthians 5:7, though this also is glorious, and indeed is the ground of that.” Berleb. Bible, “This is a great word, which should lead us to nurse our strength, that we may become fresh and vigorous, and may not sell our birthright, like Esau, committing fornication with the world, and seeking all good there.”And he says, etc. The change of tense—he says between the double said—and the similarity of the matter to ch. Revelation 19:9 (in both passages, the command to write, and the assurance of truth and credibility) shew, that here, as well as there, the angel is the speaker.In regard to the call to write, which points to the high importance of the word spoken, see at ch. Revelation 14:13. The declaration, “Behold I make all things new,” is indeed a great word, and hard to be believed. Where really all must be made new, there it will be difficult for the natural mind to understand, how a change should take place, especially difficult for one on whom the old order of things lies with an oppressive load like a huge mountain, as was the case with the church at the time, when John saw the Revelation. Therefore, the angel adds to the call to write the reason, for these words are certain and true. What is not so, does not deserve to be written, however fine it may sound. The ground of confidence here lies in the fact, that these are the words of God, (comp. ch. Revelation 19:9). The angel cannot by his authority lend support to the words of God; he can only point to the circumstance, that as God’s words they deserve the fullest confidence, since he is not a man that he should lie, nor the son of man that he should repent, whose authority alone is sufficient to render the most incredible things true and worthy of confidence.[Note: Bengel expounds differently, “Write, was said to John in respect to what follows, namely, these words are certain and true.” Comp. the ï̔ ?̀ ?ôé recitativum in ch. 3:17. But the call to write in the Revelation elsewhere has respect to the revealed truths themselves; (comp. ch. 1:11, 14:13, 10:4), and does not occur in respect to asservations of truthfulness. Accordingly, we must expound, Write what thou hearest (comp. the, Write what thou seest in ch. 1:11), or, Write the words, Behold I make all things new.] Revelation 21:6. And he said to me, It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. After the interruption by the angel the discourse is again resumed of him, who sits on the throne. He said to me. What was said by him that sat on the throne in Revelation 21:5, was also spoken for John. The express addition of the to me here is explained by the hortatory character of the termination of the discourse in Revelation 21:7-8. In John the church is addressed.Bengel: “Twice it is said in this book, It is done. First at the completion of the wrath of God in ch. Revelation 16:17, and here again at the making of all things new.” The more exact import is here, as in ch. Revelation 16:17, furnished by the connection, which shows that the subject here discussed has respect to the world’s regeneration, according to which nothing more remains to be wished for by believers, and which is the completion of the whole work of God. What as to the reality was still future is spoken of as already done in respect to the vision, which addresses itself to the spiritual eye, and in which the future appears as immediately present. The new heaven and the new earth are spoken of as already come at Revelation 21:1, and in Revelation 21:2, Jerusalem is seen coming down. The Alpha and the Omega indicate, that in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth, as in ch. Revelation 14:7, also, reference is made to the creation. The Omega and the end are to be accented, as being what is chiefly respected here, (comp. at ch. Revelation 1:8). Not merely so as, but also because God is the Alpha and the beginning, he is also the Omega and the end; and that he really is so, is made manifest by this corresponding renewal of creation. It is done (it was so), was the word uttered in the beginning after every creative act; and the same, It is done, is repeated now at the end, in regard to the work of renewal. Daring the intermediate space it often appears, as if God’s purpose were frustrated, as if he had departed from it. But the end reverts to the beginning. And this being the case, the servants of God must not faint. The middle should not vex those, who are sure in respect to the end. God is himself called the beginning and the end, because, as the beginning, so also the end yields him unconditional obedience, his decrees are assuredly carried into effect, on all the seal of his nature is impressed, all bears witness to his glory. There is a corresponding passage in 1 Corinthians 15:28, where, with like meaning, it is said, God will at last be all in all. Vitringa gives the meaning wrong, thus: God will in the end glorionsly fulfil the promises which he gave to his church at the beginning. In that case, God himself could not be called the beginning and the end. The words, “I will give to him that is athirst,” etc., find their explanation in what has been remarked on ch. Revelation 7:17, comp. also Revelation 22:17. The thirsting are those who are in need of salvation; the water of life denotes salvation. The freely, without his own doing and labouring, is from Isaiah 55:1, where it is said, in reference to the Messiah’s salvation, the final accomplishment of which is brought in here, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy and eat; yea come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Jesus himself alludes to that passage of Isaiah in the Gospel of John, John 7:37, “If any man thirst, let him come to me and drink,” a declaration which, as already remarked by Vitringa, shall find its most glorious fulfilment at the time here referred to. All that is here said to ennoble the period, when God makes all things new, is at the same time an evidence of poverty in respect to the thousand years’ reign, which belongs to the old world. In it still the thirsty did not drink to satisfaction from the fountain of the water of life. Sadness and longing continue even in it to be the inseparable accompaniments of the state of believers. Revelation 21:7. He that overcomes shall inherit these things (Luther, all things); and I will be his God, and he shall be my son. The practical aim of this whole group, of the representation of the “regeneration,” and of the new Jerusalem, quite plainly meets us in this verse. It is this, to impart strength to the church groaning under the cross, so that from regard to the coming glory she may stand fast amid temptations. The quintessence is contained in Romans 8:18, “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us.” Strong emphasis is to be laid on the he that overcomes (comp. at ch. Revelation 2:7). Victory must be wrung from all opponents, who are many. The contrast to the persons overcoming is formed by all who are mentioned in Revelation 21:8. But that at the time of the Seer the chief enemy that then plied hardest against Christianity was fear for the persecuting world, appears from this consideration, that there the fearful are the first to be named. The fundamental passage is Matthew 19:29, Every one that hath forsaken houses, or brethren, etc., for my name’s sake, shall receive an hundred fold, and shall inherit everlasting life.” Every one that overcomes shall inherit the whole of the promise. Berleb. Bible, “When people go to take a walk together, each one has the whole sun for his enjoyment; one cannot say, I have this here, and thou hast that other there.”The fundamental passage for what follows Isaiah 2 Samuel 7:14, “I shall be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a son.” The words in 2 Samuel 7:15, “My favour will I not take from him,” serve as an explanation (see the remarks on the sonship of God, at Psalms 2:7). In place of Father there, God is put here; comp. 2 Samuel 7:24, “And thou, Lord, art God to them.” Revelation 21:8. But the fearful and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake, that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 is to be compared. The characters named form four pairs—the four, the signature of the earth, to which belong these different tendencies of those, who live in the world (Colossians 2:20).The series commences with the fearful, the faint-hearted, who shrank from the danger and the cross, which is sure to meet those, who abide in the truth and remain stedfast to Christ. We are thus given to understand, that we have nothing to be so much afraid of as fear—comp. the Old Testament warning given respecting it in Deuteronomy 20:1-8, “When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, and a people more than thou, he not afraid of them; for the Lord thy God is with thee, who brought thee up out of the land of Egypt,” &c. Allusion, it would seem, is made to Matthew 8:26, where our Lord said to the disciples, who called upon him to save them, as the ship was covered with the waves, “Why are ye fearful, O ye of little faith?” comp. Mark 4:40, “Why are ye so fearful? how is it that ye have not faith?” The word δειλός occurs only in these three passages. We may the more readily suppose an allusion, as there also the fearful stands connected with a little faith or none; and also because that earlier occurrence has manifestly a symbolical meaning. The word of our Lord on the occasion itself points back to Deuteronomy 20, comp. John 14:27. With fearfulness unbelief is united into a pair, as its inseparable companion. Where there is no faith there is no courage, for the foundation of courage is confidence in God’s help; and where no courage is, there is no faith; for faith must necessarily manifest itself in a spirit of invincible strength. Bengel: “Unbelievers are not precisely (rather, not alone) those, who have heard or understood nothing whatever of the Gospel; but also such as have not proved faithful unto death, and in their hearts have apostatised from the living God. Commonly it is not considered, that timidity has so much evil in it, if there be but a good inclination, as they say; yet here the fearful, who allow their courage to sink, and the unbelieving, are declared to be characters that the Lord has no pleasure in.” The transition from the first class to the second is not so abrupt, as might at first sight appear. When the light of faith is extinguished, a frightful darkness arises, in which all sins have their being. Berleb. Bible, “People, who withdraw from the conflict, are capable of becoming abominable characters, murderers, whoremongers,” etc. The abominable are those, who give themselves to actions of an abominable kind, comp. at ch. Revelation 17:4-5. Murder is a particular species of abominable conduct. Murderers stand related to the abominable much as idolaters do to liars. Several understand by the abominable those who abuse themselves with mankind, referring to Leviticus 18:22, where the practices of such persons are expressly called abominations. But the notion of what is abominable is of a much more comprehensive nature in the law, (comp. Leviticus 18:26-27), and if this crime were meant, it would certainly have been more specifically described. Besides, according to 1 John 3:15, brotherly hatred even is of the same nature with murder, as being this in its germ and root.Whoremongers and sorcerers have this in common, that their attempts on the well-being of a neighbour, unlike those of the murderer, are made covertly. Sorcery appears also in ch. Revelation 9:21, as the means of hurting one’s neighbour thus, and especially in regard to his life (comp. also ch. Revelation 18:23). Fornication is in the law presented under the aspect of injury done to a neighbour, and so also here in ch. Revelation 9:21. In the last pair the idolaters are the species, liars the genus: and generally all liars. Idolaters are liars, since they change God’s truth into a lie, and have given glory and worship to the creature along with the Creator, who is blessed for ever (Romans 1:25; and on the idea of a lie, see on ch. Revelation 14:5). In respect to the idolaters it is indifferent, whether they worship what are more commonly called idols, or mammon and their belly (Ephesians 5:5; Colossians 3:5; Philippians 3:19). Revelation 21:9 to Revelation 22:5. After the introduction we have now the main theme of the group, the lengthened description of the new Jerusalem. The consolation for weary pilgrims will be the more complete, the more vividly it is portrayed before their eyes. After St John had, in Revelation 21:9-10, been transferred to the immediate neighbourhood of the new Jerusalem, he begins his description, in Revelation 21:11, with its highest ornament, the glory of God, which illuminates it. On this follows its greatness and lofty walls, its twelve gates, and the twelve foundations of the gates, in Revelation 21:12-14. In Revelation 21:15-17, he gives us the measurement of the city and of the walls. In Revelation 21:18-21 the grandeur and glory of the city, as appearing in its material, in the walls, in the buildings, in the foundations of the walls, in the gates, and finally in the streets. In Revelation 21:22-27 we have an account of the glory of the city in regard to its inhabitants; first of all, the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb, Revelation 21:22-23; then, coming down to the human inhabitants, the elect portion of the heathen world with its kings, Revelation 21:24-26; finally, in Revelation 21:27, the negative element, the exclusion of all those, whose presence would darken its bright splendour. In ch. Revelation 22:1-5, the Seer unfolds the blessedness of the inhabitants of the new Jerusalem, and the glorious privileges they enjoy—the water of life, and the tree of life, their glorious and never interrupted fellowship with the Lord, their reigning for ever and ever. Revelation 21:9. And there came one of the seven angels, who have the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and spake with me and said, Come, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife. The reason why the function of shewing should be given to one of the angels, who had the seven vials, may be seen at ch. Revelation 17:1. The prefixed epithet, “the bride,” serves to determine more exactly what follows, “the Lamb’s wife;” it shews, that we are to understand thereby the betrothed (comp. at ch. Revelation 19:7). That the bride of the Lamb is here spoken of (in allusion to the Song, comp. ch. Revelation 3:20[Note: Vitringa: Phrasis haec est cantici Solomonis, ch. 4:8 9, 5:1, qua teneritudo amoris Christi erga ecclesiam depingitur.]), shews that the glory of the church is here beheld in its becoming and beginning; and corresponds to the circumstance of the prophet seeing, in Revelation 21:10, as in Revelation 21:2, the new Jerusalem coming down. The coming down is in a manner the bridal procession. Revelation 21:10. And he brought me in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and shelved me the city[Note: Luther: The great city, according to the rending πόλιντὴνμεγάλην.] the holy Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. That the mountain great and high is destined for the site of the new Jerusalem that comes down from heaven, which was denied in their perplexity by those who would transfer the new Jerusalem to heaven (by such the mountain was considered only as a watch-tower, like the Pisgah from which Moses beheld the land of Canaan), appears first from the consideration advanced by Bengel, “In the wilderness, whither John himself had been carried, was the whore herself, therefore, also on the great and high mountain, to which he is now borne, is the city itself. Being there it stands in the view of all the nations, Revelation 21:16, Matthew 5:14.” The same thing is further manifest from the Old Testament fundamental passages. Ezekiel, according to Ezekiel 40:2, after the overthrow of the city and temple, was led in the visions of God into the land of Israel, and placed there upon a very high mountain, “whereon there was like the building of a city toward the south.” He was brought there, that he might be quite near the city, and get a close view of it. In Ezekiel 17:22-23 also a high and lofty mountain is spoken of in respect to the future glorification of the kingdom of God: The Zion, which even in the times of the Old Testament, when viewed with the eyes of the Spirit, appeared very high (comp. Psalms 148:3-4, “Beautiful through its height, the joy of the whole earth, is Mount Zion in the extreme north, the city of the great king,” Psalms 68:16), grows in the future to a measureless elevation (comp. Ezekiel 20:40). The last fundamental passage is Micah 4:1 (comp. Isaiah 2:2), where the future surpassing glory of the church is represented under the symbol of Zion’s elevation above all mountains.The old Jerusalem is so little thought of in respect to the new, that the latter is here simply called Jerusalem.Bengel remarks, “The angel said, he would shew John the bride; and now he shews him a city; even as before he had said, he would shew him the great whore, and shewed him the city Babylon. It is, therefore, pre-eminently the inhabitants of Babylon and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, that are respectively meant.” Ch. Revelation 19:7-8, plainly shews, that by the bride is primarily intended the church in respect to its members. In the city also the inhabitants hold the most important place. But the body, the outward state, in which the soul resides, comes also into consideration, as well as the soul itself. The bride and the city would be but imperfectly seen, if the persons alone, apart from the accompanying circumstances, were presented to view. Revelation 21:11. Which had the glory of God: her light like to the most precious stone, like a chrystal-clear jasper stone. The description of the city begins with the most glorious element belonging to it, the presence of God. “The name of the city henceforth is: Jehovah therein”—he is present in it in the entire fulness of his glory, protection, and favour; such was the statement with which Ezekiel had concluded his whole delineation of the new temple and the new Jerusalem. What he ended with is here made the beginning. God is present—this was the noblest ornament even of the church of the Old Testament, its most glorious privilege, its fundamental distinction from the heathen world. The rendering of this presence efficient was the highest privilege of the church of the New Testament during the present life. But in the new Jerusalem the presence of God shall manifest itself in a way hitherto unknown. Of the glory of God and Christ John speaks in the Gospel and the Apocalypse with great frequency (comp. at ch. Revelation 18:1). The glory of the Lord is always only there, where the Lord himself is; it is the Lord in his glory. It is said here, in Revelation 21:22, “the Lord God the Almighty is its temple;” in ch. Revelation 22:5, “God the Lord will shine upon them.” These passages stand related to the one before us, as Isaiah 9:19, “And the Lord will be to it for an eternal light,” to Isaiah 9:1, “the glory of the Lord rises over thee.” In John 12:41 it is said, “This spake Isaiah, when he saw his glory.” According to Isaiah 6:1 Isaiah had seen the Lord sitting upon his throne high and lifted up. Cocceius already remarks correctly on our verse, “God was there present with all his riches, and with all splendour.”What the city had in respect to the glory of God, is denoted in the words: her light, etc. There can be no doubt that the light is not diverse from the glory of the Lord; and the meaning is, that this glory is its light. That such is the case is plain from the circumstance that the glory can only be seen as light; and also from Revelation 21:23, “the glory of the Lord enlightened it,” where John comes back upon the glory; finally from ch. Revelation 4:3, where the Lord himself, on account of his glory, is compared to the jasper-stone. In the designation of the glory of the Lord as light, allusion is not made to the lamps of the temple, but to the great lights of heaven. This appears from the language itself, in which the word employed is the one specially appropriated to the lights of heaven,[Note: Comp. Genesis 1:14 in the LXX.: ΚαὶεἶπενὁθεόςΓενηθήτωσανφωστῆρεςἐντῷστερεώματιτοῦοὐρανοῦεἰςφαῦσιντῆςγῆς; ver.16; Wisdom, ch. 13:2, φωστῆραςοὐρανοῦ; Sir. ch. 43:7, where φωστὴρ is used of the moon; Philippians 2:15, where it is applied to Christians as the lights of the world, analogous to those natural lights. See also what is said of Christ in John 9:5. and also from the manifest allusion of the parallel passage, Revelation 21:23, to Genesis 1:14, sq. Several expositors put splendour in place of light: And her splendour, that of the new Jerusalem, was, in consequence of her illumination by the glory of the Lord, like, etc. But this explanation is against Revelation 21:23, and the signification is arbitrarily put on the word. It never properly means splendour; in the Hellenistic and New Testament usage it always bears the sense of light. This latter fact is also against Bengel’s supposition, according to which the word here must denote window: “The glory of God is itself the splendour, which makes the holy city light, and this splendour, which fills the city from within, shines forth through the clear window.” Add to this, that the window, if it might otherwise be thought of, cannot ut any rate be referred to here; that the illuminating property of the glory of the Lord is not mentioned, nor is it said that the supposed window owes its lighting property to the glory of the Lord; finally, that a city of 12,000 stadia in length and breadth cannot have a single window.[Note: Quite correctly was the meaning of the verse given by Vitringa: Urbem hanc observatam Johanni magno splendore et clariate illustratam quipped cujus φωστὴρ, luminare, quod Jaspidem referret, esset deus ipse, auae gloriae radii seam illumnaus.]With St John the jasper is the noblest of precious stones; as is evident from ch. Revelation 4:3, and of this chapter Revelation 21:18-19. It is possible that he had idealized it, in particular lent it the character of transparency and of bright splendour; possible, too, that afterwards the usage had changed. Dioscorides and Psellus also speak of a chrystal kind of jasper. Revelation 21:12. It had a wall great and high, it had twelve gates, and upon the gates twelve angels, and names written thereupon, which are the twelve tribes of the children of Israel. The chief object of walls around a city is every where to give security to the city. A wall is therefore often employed in the Old Testament as an image of protection and safety—comp., for example, 1 Samuel 25:16; Proverbs 18:11; Ezekiel 22:30; Zechariah 2:5, “I will be a wall of fire to her round about,” Isaiah 26:1. This being the one grand object of city walls, no other view of them can be brought into notice here. If any other had been contemplated, it would certainly have been indicated as one, not naturally presenting itself. The predicates great and high strengthen this view; the former referring to the length, thickness, and height, and the latter, the height, being besides specially noticed, as a point that was peculiarly prominent in them. Viewed in respect to their protecting quality, walls are of importance chiefly on account of their greatness and height. So that by the walls here great and high is represented the security of the new Jerusalem, against all hostile assaults, with which the old Jerusalem, the militant church, was so sorely beset in the latter days (comp ch. Revelation 20:9); or the idea is exhibited of the divine protection, on which the church’s security rests. The old Jerusalem had wanted walls great and high—comp. Ezekiel 38:11, where Gog and Magog come up against those “who dwell without walls, and have neither bars nor gates.” The dangers, besides, against which the walls great and high protect, could be no real, but only conceivable and possible ones. For, no enemies any longer exist by whom the city could be assailed. These have all been cast for ever into the lake of fire.According to Revelation 21:17, the height of the walls is immensely less than that of the city. But the height of the walls is to be viewed in respect to their design. A wall 144 cubits high is as high as a wall generally can be from its design: any further height would be altogether superfluous.The walls around the temple of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 40:5, are not to be compared. These had another design, as we learn from Ezekiel 42:20, in conformity with which they were not, like these, great and high.The walls great and high embody the promise given in Isaiah 54:14, “Thou shalt be far from oppression, for thou shalt not fear; and from terror, for it shall not come near thee.”The signification of the gates is plain from ch. Revelation 22:14. They serve for an entrance to the citizens into the new Jerusalem. Bengel: “The number twelve occurs in this verse thrice, and frequently afterwards, Revelation 21:14; Revelation 21:16; Revelation 21:21, Revelation 22:2.”As the employment of the angels on the gates is not distinctly stated, they could only be brought into notice here with reference to their main business, the protection of the righteous (comp. Psalms 91:11; Matthew 18:10; Luke 16:22; Hebrews 1:14). This is strengthened by the manifest parallelism of the angels on the gates with the walls great and high. The gates stand constantly open, according to Revelation 21:25. Twelve points are given in them, where the protection of the walls great and high ceases, and where protection of another kind must enter, so that nothing of a hostile nature might pass into the city. The angels, accordingly, like the walls, are a symbol of the divine protection against all enemies, such namely as the fancy, filled with terrors originating in the militant state of the church, might figure to itself: for real enemies are no longer to be found in the new Jerusalem.Isaiah 62:6 cannot be compared. For there the watchmen, whom the prophet represents as placed on the walls of Jerusalem, are not angels, but the ideal representatives of believers, with whom he associates himself in prayer for their salvation.According to Ezekiel 48:31-34, the new Jerusalem has twelve gates, according to the names of the children of Israel, three on each side. The same object, which is served in Ezekiel by the correspondence between the gates and the tribes, is served here by the names of the twelve tribes on the gates of the city. It indicates, that the new Jerusalem is “a great unity having its root in God,” the last form of the holy catholic church, the union of the head with all his true members; and therefore meets the narrow-mindedness which now in the militant church would single out some particular part and set it forth as the true church of Christ, reproves the envy of Ephraim against Judah, and the hatred of Judah against Ephraim (Isaiah 11:13). That this thought should be expressed here in the particular form it bears, that the church in all its parts should be denoted by the twelve tribes of the children of Israel, who are naturally spoken of, not in a Jewish, but in an Israelitish-Christian sense, points to the venerable continuity of the church, and is a decisive proof against the modern idea of the antagonism between Judaism and Christianity. Bengel: “The names of the twelve tribes were formerly engraven on the precious stones worn on the high-priests’ breast; but here the names of the apostles are upon the precious stones or foundations of the city, and the names of the twelve tribes upon the gates themselves, Ezekiel 48:31.” The names of the twelve apostles guard against the misapprehension of the twelve tribes of Israel, and shew that these are spoken of not in the Jewish, but in the Israelitish-Christian sense. For, the apostles were Christ’s ambassadors to all nations, Matthew 28:19. Revelation 21:13. On the east three gates, on the north three gates, on the south three gates, and on the west three gates. The gates serve as avenues through which the chosen go into the city; comp. on Revelation 21:12 and Revelation 21:25, according to which they constantly stand open for this purpose. Their being directed to all the quarters of heaven, points to the oecumenical character of the new Jerusalem.[Note: Vitringa: Fore ut populis, qui ex omnibus terrae oris, secundum coeli climata et plagas divisis accessuri se aggregare vellent civitati huic coelesti, ubique commoda obtingat ejus adeundae occasio.] That the east should be first in order (while in Ezekiel, Ezekiel 48:31, sq., it is the north) and the west last, is to be explained by means of a reference to the word of the Lord in Matthew 8:11, “But I say unto yon, that many shall come from the east and from the west; and shall sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven.” Also in the word in Isaiah 43:5-6, “I will bring thy seed from the east and gather them from the west. I will say to the north, give up; and to the south, keep not back; bring my sons from far and my daughters from the ends of the earth,” to which the Lord alludes, the east forms the beginning, and the north precedes the south; comp. Luke 13:29.[Note: Properly as here: from the risings and from the settings. The fundamental passage shews, that the rending ἀνατολῶν (see on the plural at ch. 16:12), is here the correct form, and that ἀνατολῆς is to be rejected. In ch. 16:12 also an attempt boa been made to supplant ἀνατολῶν.] Revelation 21:14. And the walls of the city had twelve foundations, and upon them twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The relation of the foundations to the walls is made out in the most probable way with De Wette, thus: “Every twelfth part of the walls between the several gates had a foundation-stone stretching along the whole length, which was exposed to view.”The first point is, that the walls generally have foundations. This marks their immoveable stedfastness, according to Hebrews 11:10, “For, he looked for a city, which has foundations.” The second is, that upon the foundations stand the names of the twelve apostles. This indicates, that the twelve apostles by their immoveable stedfastness hold the foremost place, that they are the noblest bulwark of the church, the main channel through which she derives the protecting grace of God. If still in the new Jerusalem they are the foundation, upon which the security of the church rests as to all conceivable dangers, they must also be through every age of the militant church the bulwark, by which all real assaults are driven back. Berleb. Bible, “This, then, should make the apostolic word acceptable to us.” It lets us know, whither we should turn ourselves, if we have not yet come to know it. This passage, and Matthew 19:28, where the twelve apostles appear as the heads of the church in the regeneration, which is all one with the new Jerusalem, alone suffice against those, who maintain that the apostleship was to be a perpetual office, and who expect the deliverance of the church by her submission to the pretended new apostles. The Lord himself, and the disciple whom he loved, knew only of twelve apostles. The twelve apostles for ever, this is the solution with which we meet them on the basis of these passages. The fundamental passage here is Ephesians 2:20, “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone.[Note: We can with the less reason deny a reference to the fundamental passages in Paul, since the figure of the foundation-stone is one of which he is particularly fond; θεμέλιος occurs elsewhere in the New Testament only in his writings; θεμέλιον is found only in Luke and Paul.] In this passage the apostles themselves are distinctly called the foundation stones of the church, proving that their names here also stand on the foundations only because on them in a quite peculiar manner rests the security and stedfastness of the church. The prophets being named along with the apostles, is only an apparent deviation. For, that by the prophets are meant, not those of the Old, but those of the New Testament, that they are personally identical with the apostles, is evident from the parallel passages, ch. Revelation 3:5, Revelation 4:11, and from the considerations formerly advanced on ch. Revelation 1:1[Note: See also Stier’s investigations in his Comm. on Ephesians 2:20.. That the apostles in Ephesians 2:20 are no other than the twelve apostles, might have been established from the passage before us, if it had not been otherwise certain. The fundamental passage in Ephesians again points back to Matthew 16:18. It has been thought, that as only twelve apostles are here spoken of, Paul must have been left out, and efforts have been made to account for this omission. But that the author of the Revelation reckoned Matthias, and not Paul among the apostles, can be imagined by no one, who has perceived the relation in which the Revelation stands to St Paul—comp. at ch. Revelation 1:4, Revelation 1:5, Revelation 3:14, Revelation 17:14, and many other passages, and the remarks made in vol. i., p. 42. This passage, however, itself rests on a Pauline foundation. The appointment of Matthias was indeed made according to the will of God, but it was only a provisional one, as is clear alone from the way in which it took place, and likewise from the external qualifications, which, according to Acts 1:21-22, were alone taken into account, while the internal conditions were uniformly held to be indispensable toward an ultimate appointment. It is clear, too, from the object in view, as declared in Acts 1:22, The more John elevates the prophetical side of the apostolical calling, the farther must it have been from him to regard that appointment as a final one. It stood in force only till the Lord himself should be pleased, by his own immediate choice, to fill up the vacant ground. Matthias is never mentioned again in the history. That what is here attributed to the apostles, does not trench too closely on the honour of Christ, is plain from the simple consideration, that they are designated apostles, messengers, of the Lamb—so Christ is here called on account of the atonement by blood, through which he founded his church (ch. Revelation 19:7). In this way the honour, which is bestowed on them, reverts unconditionally to him; precisely as in Matthew 16:18 the word addressed to Peter as the representative of the apostles, “on this rock will I build my church,” was said on the ground of his confession to Christ as the Son of the living God; and as Paul, in Ephesians 2:20, still expressly points to Christ as the proper corner-stone.Ewald maintains, that every one who is not destitute of all sense of what is proper and becoming, must admit, that the contents of this verse do not consist with “apostolical discretion,” and hence that the Apocalypse could not be written by the apostle John. But this objection is sufficiently disposed of by the reference alone to the fundamental passage in the epistle to the Ephesians, and it is not worth while to adduce any farther proof of the point, that the apostles everywhere discover themselves to have been deeply penetrated by a consciousness of the dignity of their office, and that in the Gospel of John also they appear as the spiritual foundation of the whole Christian community (John 17). Such adverse judgments could only be arrived at by men transferring their own doubts regarding the truly divine mission of the apostles to these apostles themselves. Revelation 21:15. And he that spake with me had as a measure a golden reed, that he might measure the city, and its gates and its walls. Bengel: “The angel continues to show the city by measuring it.” Allusion is made to the angel with the measuring-rod in his hand, in Ezekiel 40:3. The reed is of gold on account of the glory of what was to be measured. The measure of the gates is not expressly given afterwards. They must be understood to be of the same height with the walls. Revelation 21:16. And the city lies foursquare, and its length is as great as its breadth. And he measured the city with the reed, twelve thousand stadia. The length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. The purpose to measure the city forms the kernel of this verse, according to the connection with the preceding verse: there, that he might measure; here, he measured. But it is first announced, that the city is foursquare, and that its length is as great as its breadth. Bengel: “This is not mentioned in vain, for it might have been foursquare (four-cornered), and yet have been more in length than in breadth.” Being a complete square, the whole circuit was ascertained, whenever one side was measured. But because the height also was of importance, it is added, that the dimensions here were equal to those already given concerning the length and breadth.A square of a similar kind is formed also by the new city of Ezekiel, Ezekiel 48:16, Ezekiel 48:20. The square was regarded among the ancients as the symbol of the complete, the perfect.[Note: Comp. Heyne, Opuso. I. p. 161: Pythagoraei divinam naturam omninoque omnem perfectionem et absolutionem quadrate adumbant. Simonides, with Plato in the Patagoras, calls the perfect man χερσίτεκαὶποσὶκαὶνόῳτετράγωνον, and explains this by ἁ ?́νενψύγουτετυγμένον; comp. besides Arist. Eth. I. 10; Rhet. III. 11. It has respect also to the oecumenical character of the new Jerusalem, indicating that an equal right to it was presented to all the four quarters of the earth.The length of each side was 12,000 stadia: the twelve, the signature of the church, here multiplied by a thousand, in Revelation 21:17 by itself (see at ch. Revelation 7:4). As the immense extent of the new Jerusalem—300 geographical miles—points to the vast multitude of members belonging to the triumphant church, rendering “many mansions” absolutely necessary, so does the enormous height point to its glory.People have often been at a loss to comprehend the reason for such vast dimensions—12,000 stadia in length, breadth, and height—and hence have gone about to lessen the measurements. Thus it has been supposed, that the 12,000 stadia announced belong to the circumference of the whole city, and that each side is only to be regarded as extending to 3000 stadia. But it is against this view, that in Ezekiel 48:16, the sides of the city were each measured. Some, again, would understand the height, not of the houses, but of the mountain—of which, however, no mention is made in this connection. Others, still again, would refer what is said of the height to the circumstance, that all the buildings were equally high. But the height is manifestly made equal to the length and the breadth, and the relation of the houses one to another is not the subject of discourse. Then, according to this view, the height of the city would be left indeterminate. Yet we naturally expect a determination respecting this point, as the height of the walls is announced in the next verse. That with the height of the walls that of the city also is announced, is a groundless supposition. Nor can we understand, how in a description, which everywhere rises above the common, any one should think of constraining the particular parts into ordinary bounds. Revelation 21:17. And he measured its walls an hundred and four and forty cubits, man’s measure, which is angel’s measure. Several conceive, that here the thickness of the wall is what is measured. But Bengel has justly remarked against that idea, “In all descriptions of cities we are wont to remark much more upon the height and length of the walls, which also strike the eye more readily, than upon their thickness, Deuteronomy 3:5, Deuteronomy 28:52. The height is often mentioned without the thickness, but the thickness never without the height.” It also confirms this view, that in the words immediately preceding it was precisely the height of the city that was spoken of.The expression, “man’s measure, which is angel’s measure,” may be explained from what has already been remarked at ch. Revelation 13:8. When an angel measures, we might suppose that he would do so after some measurement unknown to us. The remark is intended to meet this idea. Because angels, when they measure, do it only for men, man’s measure is at the same time angel’s measure, and the 144 cubits are common cubits. We must not expound: according to man’s measure, which is here, in this case, angel’s measure. Revelation 21:18. And the building of its wall was jasper, and the city was pure gold like to pure glass. The subject of Rev 21:18-21 is, the glory and splendour of the new Jerusalem. First here, the wall and city as the two great objects which attract the eye, the city projecting high above the walls; then, as the eye glances downwards, the foundations of the walls and gates; lastly, the streets of the city. The fundamental passage for Revelation 21:18-21 is Isaiah 54:11-12, where the glory of the Jerusalem that was to be is thus described, “Behold I lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I make thy battlements of rubies, and thy gates of precious stones, and all thy borders of select stones”The building here forms the contrast to the foundation, in Revelation 21:19, and denotes what is built on it.[Note: The word, ἐνδόμησις, properly in-building, occurs only here, it seems, and in Josephus, Ant. XV. 9, 6, where it is used of a mole in a harbor. The building on, in respect to its firm and close connection with the foundation, might be called an in-building.] The building consists only of one material. The most glorious among stones is chosen, the jasper (see at Revelation 21:11). A great variety, however, is found, in respect to the foundations. There the jasper takes the first place. It may seem strange, that the jasper, to which the glory of God is compared in Revelation 21:11, should appear here as material for building. But if the author, out of respect to Revelation 21:11, had chosen an inferior stone, another wall of a more glorious description might then have been conceived of. But this must be regarded as the most glorious imaginable.The city, as distinguished from the wall here, and the street in Revelation 21:21, can only denote its mass of houses. These, however, are not believers themselves, but their places of abode.The gold (Bengel: “the white jasper-colour and the yellow gold suit admirably together”) comes into consideration here, as in ch. Revelation 17:4, in respect to its splendour. From the connection it denotes, not “the purity and excellence of faith in the elect,” but the glory, with which they shall be crowned by God in reward of their fidelity. The point of comparison between the gold and the glass is expressly intimated; it stands simply in the purity; the transparency, which is noticed in Revelation 21:21, of the glass, not of the gold, is taken into account merely as a symbol of purity. The gold by the predicate of purity is distinguished from other gold, which is not pure; in the glass, on the other hand, the predicate of purity serves to distinguish it from other objects, which are not pure. Glass, considered generally, is pure, and on this account, what is pure only exceptionally is compared with it. The subject here is not transparent gold. Not its splendour, not its transparency, but its absolute purity and homogeneity are the qualities regarded.[Note: Mill.: Est enim aurum, cui comparatur haec civitas, simile vilrn, non omnifariam ac quoad διαφανίς ac τὸὁμογενές partium.] Revelation 21:19.[Note: The and, which is prefixed by Luther, is wanting in the best authorities.] The foundations of the wall of the city are adorned with all precious stones. The first foundation a jasper, the second a sapphire, the third a chalcedony, the fourth an emerald. Revelation 21:20. The fifth a sardonyx, the sixth a sardius, the seventh a chrysolite, the eighth a beryll, the ninth a topaz, the tenth a chrysopras, the eleventh a hyacinth, the twelth an amethyst. Bengel: “Not only did each precious stone form an ornament in the foundation, but it constituted the foundation itself.” It could not otherwise be said, the first foundation was a jasper, etc. That the precious stones here are taken into account merely as precious stones, appears from the expression, “with all precious stones,” which distinctly brings out the point that is here to be kept in view; the entire contents of Rev 21:18-21, the subject of which throughout is the glory of the new Jerusalem; the comparison of ch. Revelation 17:4, where the gold, the precious stones and the pearls, with which Babylon was adorned, precisely as here the Jerusalem of the future, which is to inherit the glory of the world, serves to indicate its splendour; so also the comparison of Eze 28:13, where precious stones are employed along with gold to adorn the king of Tyre; finally, the comparison of the passages, presently to be referred to, in the books of Moses. For, that the precious stones in these, on which the names of the tribes of the children of Israel were engraved, were intended merely to symbolize the glory of the people of God, is evident from the single consideration, that this is the most natural meaning that is attached to precious stones (comp. 1 Kings 10:2, 1 Kings 10:10-11; Tob. 13:20; Isaiah 54:11-12); any other can only be taken into account, if it is expressly mentioned. There can scarcely be a doubt, that the precious stones, which form the foundations, have respect to the apostles. This is implied in Revelation 21:14, according to which the names of the twelve apostles are engraved on the foundations. It may also be inferred from the analogy of the precious stones in the books of Moses, on every one of which was engraved the name of one of the tribes of Israel. But it has, without any proper warrant, been supposed, that a precious stone has here been assigned to every individual apostle, whose peculiar gifts were imaged by the distinctive properties of the stone; and hence pains have been taken to point out the correspondence between the precious stones mentioned and the different apostles. In that case, the order of the apostles would have required to be a quite settled one, which it by no means is, (see the survey taken of the variations in Bengel’s Gnomon on the verse). So, too, the symbolical meaning of the different precious stones would require to be distinctly marked, and by other passages of Scripture firmly established. We are never in this book thrown on an uncertain conjecture. Then, it is opposed by the analogy of the twelve precious stones on the breastplate of the high-priest. That the order of the tribes was neither directly nor indirectly determined by these,[Note: Bδhr has found such an indirect determination in the analogy of the two precious stones, through which the ephod was bound together above on the shoulders. As upon this, so also on the breast-plate are the names to he regarded as written according to the respective ages. But the supposition, that the order of age was followed in the inscriptions on those two precious stones, rests on a wrong exposition of ϊεμγεϊν in Exodus 28:10, which was certainly rendered by the Vulgate: Juxta ordinem nativitatis eorum, and to the same effect also by Jonathan. Grammatically it can only mean: according to their generations; and what it indicates is, that the children of Israel come into consideration here, not as individuals, but in regard to the tribes sprung from them; comp. Genesis 49:28; Genesis 25:13. shews, that no importance was attached to the matter, that the glory denoted by the precious stones belonged to the individuals, not as such, but only as parts of the whole; precisely as also in the blessings pronounced by Jacob and Moses that, speaking generally, is only individually applied to the particular tribes, which belongs to the whole. So that we must here rest in the conclusion, that by the variety in the precious stones is symbolized the richness of the glorious gifts of God, which unfolded themselves in the apostles.[Note: So already Mark: Praestantissimos lapides collegit, ut insigne et vere incomprehensibile coelestia civitatis decus, uno aliquot emblemate nentiquam exprimendum, vivide magis repraesentaret.] In the first stone alone, the jasper, one might perhaps suppose a special allusion to Peter, as not only did he uniformly take the first place among the apostles, but also in Matthew 10:2, he is expressly and emphatically marked as the first. In so far as the foundations represent the apostles, the precious stones denoted not so much the glorious gifts, with which they were even in this life endowed by God, (as Bengel remarks: “Whatever is beautiful in the natural colours, is to be found united in the twelve precious stones, and among the twelve apostles each one has a distinctive spiritual character, so that together they exhibit much more fully, than each one could do alone, the glorious image of Christ”), as rather the glory which they enjoy in the new Jerusalem. Daniel 12:3 is therefore to be compared, “The teachers shall shine as the brightness of heaven, and they, who turn many to righteousness, as stars for ever and ever.” So also Isaiah 1 Corinthians 15:41. The expression itself seems to indicate as much: the already existing foundations are now adorned. And the entire contents of Rev 21:18-21, point in the same direction, since throughout it the new glory of the new Jerusalem is described as what the militant church had in prospect. In Isaiah 54:11-12, also, the splendour of the precious stones is promised to the church in her misery as a consolation, while the heavy storms of life were passing over her. But the variety of precious gifts, with which the apostles were endowed in this life, certainly forms the basis of the diversified glory with which they shall shine forth in the new Jerusalem. We remarked already, that the passage of Isaiah just referred to, is the general fundamental passage for Revelation 21:18-21. But the special fundamental passage here is Exodus 28:17-20 (comp. the repetition in Exodus 39:10-13), according to which the breastplate of the high-priest was composed of twelve precious stones set in gold, with the names engraved on them of the twelve tribes of Israel. In support of the reference to this, there is not only the similarity of the number twelve, but also the circumstance, that the stones, so far as we can with certainty determine them, are the same. Bellerman, in his work on the Urim and Thummim, p. 91, remarks in this respect: “In the Revelation of St John, ch. Revelation 21:19, where the twelve stones are introduced, they have all a different position. Otherwise, with one exception, they are the same, as given in the LXX., and Ezekiel, Josephus, Epiphanius, the Italic. The chrysopras alone is new here, which was formerly placed on the vacant part of the anthrax, although anthrax and chrysopras are different. There is, however, a red chrysopras, which approaches in colour to the anthrax.” Add to this the agreement as to matter. The glory of the people of God, symbolized by the Mosaic precious stones, finds in the precious stones of the Revelation its last and fullest realization. The latter primarily, indeed, symbolize the glory of the apostles. But the distinction is very nearly removed by the circumstance, that the apostles are the heads of the church, and in them this is honoured and glorified.That St John in his enumeration of the precious stones intentionally departs from the order of Moses, is plain from the fact, that he sets the jasper in the very first place, which there holds the last—a thing that can scarcely be accidental. The simplest reason that can be given is, that he would thereby teach us to seek for no mystery in the arrangement, and to regard it as in Moses also a matter of indifference (see similar indications in ch. Revelation 13:18, and here Revelation 21:17). Those, who assign other reasons, involve themselves in artificial hypotheses, which must be quite far-fetched in an exposition of the Apocalypse. The one most generally received is that given in the Berleb. Bible: “The last on the breastplate of Aaron and the first here is one, and unites together the Alpha and the Omega, ends the Old and begins the New.” But this is refuted by the consideration, that the jasper cannot have a reason assigned for it separate and apart from the other changes introduced into the arrangement.Bengel remarks: “Because the names of the twelve tribes of Israel are upon the twelve gates, it is to be supposed, that each particular gate and each foundation was connected separately with some one tribe and some one apostle. It may, therefore, be asked, how we are to combine and associate them with each other?” But that there is no solid foundation for such a combination, is evident from the necessity of drawing on one’s imagination to make it out.Along with this reference to the precious stones of the tribes of Israel, a polemical connection is found to have place in respect to the precious stones, whereby in Ezekiel 28:13, in allusion to Exodus 28,[Note: That we must not press the reference into particulars is evident from three of the precious stones being left out of the middle. In place of the number twelve, ten is put, while gold is added.] the proud splendour of the king of Tyre is denoted, which seemed to be a matter-of-fact irony on the promises imparted to Israel; and a reference also to ch. Revelation 17:4 of this book, where the woman appears as bespangled with gold and precious stones and pearls, the same number three that occurs here in Revelation 21:18-21. The world may possibly for a time carry itself proudly, it may have a transient glory granted to it; but the church can look on with a quiet and composed spirit, for she knows that it must soon come to an end. Revelation 21:21. And the twelve gates were twelve pearls, every several gate was of one pearl. And the street of the city was pure gold, like transparent glass. That the description of the new Jerusalem is not to be taken in a realistic sense, that its glory is only represented under images derived from what is most glorious on the earth as it now is, is evident especially from the expression: each of one pearl, with which prosaic expositors, like J. D. Michaelis, have found themselves so much embarrassed. The street, in contrast to the city in Revelation 21:18, stands here, as in ch. Revelation 11:8, Revelation 22:2, for the streets. The whole of the streets are thrown together into one ideal street. It is not to be conceived, that a city of such compass should have only one street. Had such been the case, it would have been expressly said. The transparency of glass is mentioned as a sign of its purity, and it is the purity of gold, which alone is taken into account, (comp. at Revelation 21:18). Revelation 21:22. And I saw no temple therein. For, the Lord God, the Almighty, is its temple, and the Lamb. The temple is contemplated here entirely after its specific Old Testament character. The temple was the brightest ornament of the typical Jerusalem, comp. Psalms 122:1; Jeremiah 7:4. To dwell spiritually in it, was deemed by godly persons the greatest boon they could enjoy in life, their highest privilege—comp. Psalms 23:6, “I dwell in the house of the Lord for ever,” Psalms 27:4; “One thing sought I of the Lord, that do I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to meditate thereon in his sanctuary,” Psalms 84:3. The foundation of this view of the temple lies in this, that in it God had given a pledge to his people of his gracious fellowship with them. Whoever sought him under the old covenant, could find him only in the temple, in which God confirmed his word spoken in Exodus 25:8, “They shall make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in the midst of them,” comp. Exodus 29:40, Exodus 29:46, “and I dwell in the midst of the children of Israel.” The name itself of the temple in its first form, Ohel Moed, the tent of meeting, characterizes it as the place where God was to meet with his people, entered into communion with them, (comp. my Beitr. Th. III. p. 628, sq). But what was the highest privilege of the Old Covenant, that was not the highest, which God could, and was designed, to give to his people. Union with God, the eternal good and source of all good, as it was represented by the temple, was only a provisional, an imperfect one. The privilege of the Old Testament was at the same time its defect. How imperfectly the fellowship of God with his people was represented by the temple, appears from the longing eye directed toward the future by those who enjoyed it, especially the liveliness of their hope toward the Messiah. All Messianic hope was a proof of poverty in respect to the temple. But because in the kingdom of God the imperfect is a prophecy of the perfect, the temple pointed forwards to a real union between God and his people. This took place in Christ. If the union of God with his people formed the kernel of the sanctuary, the manifestation of Christ must stand related to it as the body to the shadow. By means of it God truly dwelt among his people. He took from them and among them flesh and blood. To this typical relationship, in which the tabernacle and temple stand to the manifestation of Christ, John alludes in John 1:14. In John 2:19, also, Christ appears as the antitype to the temple, A similar indication is found also in Colossians 2:9, “In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” where Christ is referred to as the true tabernacle—comp. besides Colossians 1:19. With the personal manifestation of God in Christ, however, we must combine his dwelling among his people by his Holy Spirit, which stands related to the former as a stream to its source, (comp. Matthew 28:20, and especially 1 Timothy 3:15; 2 Corinthians 6:16). Because in the militant church the presence of God is still not perfectly realized, from the bodily presence of the Lord having been soon withdrawn from it again (comp. ch. Revelation 12:5), and from the agency of his Spirit being subjected to manifold restraints, it is only the triumphant church that is to be regarded as the full antitype of the Old Testament type. There only the words, “Behold the tabernacle of God is with men,” and “I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God the Almighty is its temple and the Lamb,” however they may be verified even during the period of the church’s warfare, will find their complete and perfect realization. We have an Old Testament parallel passage in Jeremiah 3:16-17, “It will then no more be said, The ark of the covenant of the Lord! neither shall it come to mind, neither shall they remember it; neither shall they miss it, nor shall another be made. At that time they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord, and all the heathen shall be gathered to it, because the name of the Lord is at Jerusalem.” The ark of the covenant was the heart of the temple, the kernel and centre of the Old Covenant, “How infinitely great must be the compensation that was to be given for it, if this were to make the desire after it to cease, and itself to be forgotten, as belonging to the beggarly elements, to the image and shadow. We have here the announcement of an entire annihilation of the earlier form of God’s kingdom, but of such an annihilation of the form, as is, at the same time, the highest perfectionment of the substance, a dissolution like that of the seed-corn, which dies only that it may bring forth much fruit, or of the body, which is sown in corruption, that it may be raised up in incorruption.” In so far as the temple generally was the symbol of the church, it cannot be wanting in the new Jerusalem; it must be there as certainly as the church also is in heaven, (comp. ch. Revelation 7:15, Revelation 11:19, Revelation 14:15). That the temple once existed, is a pledge of its everlasting continuance. No truly divine institution can be of a merely temporal nature, (Matthew 5:17). That the temple is only in a certain sense wanting in the new Jerusalem, is evident even from the assertion here. For, the temple is not simply denied to it; it is accorded as well as denied. The designation of God: The Lord God the Almighty, points to the glory of the compensation. Where he is in the whole glory of his being, with the whole fulness of his gifts, there the loss of the poor temple with its imperfect manifestation of God’s presence is to be considered real gain. Along with the Almighty God the Lamb is named. Bengel: “Thus are the same glorious properties ascribed to God and the Lamb, Revelation 21:23, ch. Revelation 22:1; Revelation 22:3, Revelation 7:10.” Comp. Revelation 5:13, Revelation 6:16, Revelation 7:10. It is precisely through the Lamb, that the Almighty God has become for the church the reality of the temple. Till John knew the Lamb the temple was to him his one and all. From the entire cast of his mind we may be sure he clung to it with the most profound regard. That the Lamb still did not exist, was the cause of the old temple’s poverty, of the imperfect manner in which it displayed God’s presence. Immanuel! so was it proclaimed at the moment of Christ’s appearance in the flesh; so still more loudly was it proclaimed when he finished the atonement; and so yet again, most gloriously of all, will it be proclaimed in the new Jerusalem. Revelation 21:23. And the city needs not the sun and the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it, and its light is the Lamb. In the preceding verse it was represented how the glory of God, streaming forth from the Lamb, threw into the shade the earthly temple; here it is represented how that glory darkens the natural light. The fundamental passage is Isaiah 60:19-20, “The sun shall no more shine to thee by day, and the brightness of the moon shall not give light to thee; but the Lord will be thy eternal light, and thy God thy ornament. Thy sun shall no more go down, nor thy moon lose her shining; for the Lord will be thy eternal light, and the days of thy mourning are at an end.” We may compare besides Isaiah 24:23, “And the moon is ashamed, and the sun is confounded, for the Lord of Hosts reigns on Mount Zion, and at Jerusalem, and before his elders is honour.” The sun and moon are ashamed there, because they are outshone by the uncreated light. We have no reason to suppose, that the illuminating glory of the Lord specially corresponds to the sun, and the Lamb serving as a light specially to the moon; the less so, as in the history of the work of creation the sun not less than the moon is denoted a light. In the fundamental passage of Isaiah the Lord forms the contrast to both the sun and moon. So are we here also to explain; for instead of the sun and the moon the glory of the Lord enlightens it, and instead of the sun and moon the Lamb is its light. The glory of God and the Lamb are most intimately connected together. The city has the glory of God only because, and in so far as it has the Lamb. That the moon receives her light from the sun, is never taken into account in Scripture, but very often the smallness of her light and its inferior lustre as compared with the sun’s. If we, then, should connect the glory of God with the sun, and regard the Lamb as specially corresponding with the moon, the Lamb, who is here represented as “in the midst of the throne,” (ch. Revelation 7:17), who “has a name written that no one knows but himself,” (ch. Revelation 19:12), “whose name is called the Word of God,”(ch. Revelation 19:13), would be presented in a lower attitude than accords with the main representations of the Apocalypse and of St John generally, and in one also that might well prove a stumbling- block to a Christian mind. It would be good Arianism, but bad doctrine according to John and the church. Bengel: “Whoever has the hope of entering into this holy city, may peacefully shut his eyes at the end of his pilgrimage, and withdraw himself from the delights of a present world.” Revelation 21:24. And the heathen shall walk through its light,[Note: Luther’s translation, “and the heathen, that are saved, walk in the light of it,” follows the less supported reading, καὶτὰἐ ?́θνητῶνσωζουμένων, ἐντῳ ?͂φωτὶαὐτῆςπεριπατήσουσι.] and the kings of the earth bring their glory into it. The fundamental passage is Isaiah 9:3, “And the heathen walk in thy light (not: to thy light), and kings in the brightness which goes forth on thee.” And the preceding verse: “The Lord goes forth over thee, and his honour appears upon thee.” The light here, as in Isaiah, is the glory of the Lord manifesting itself in the church, which is to shine forth in the new Jerusalem with the fullest and most cloudless splendour. The light irradiates the way so much for the heathen, that they walk, as it were, through it; though the through is substantially the same as by.—Ἐ ?́θνη in the usage of the Revelation are not nations generally, but always heathen nations, in their natural or christianized state; comp. at ch. Revelation 20:3. That we are to think here only of converted heathen, is clear as day. No room for conversion can be found on the further side of ch. Revelation 20:15; for every one, who had not been found written in the book of life, has already been cast into the lake of fire. But the designation was the more natural, as at the time when John saw the Apocalypse, they still actually were heathens. The heathen, besides, are not to be conceived of as without the city; but being within the city they shall be illuminated by its light, according to the representation in the immediately following verse, and in the whole of Isaiah 9. The situations of the several parties here are altogether of an absolute kind. All are either in the new Jerusalem, or in the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). There is no third position.The kings of the earth bring their glory into the new Jerusalem. The bringing belongs only to the symbolical style of the delineation. He sees them as it were coming in procession; as also in ch. Revelation 22:14, mention is made of the entrance of all true citizens into the gates of the city. The expression is merely an embodiment of the thought, that the kings with their glory shall participate in it. This implies, that they had formerly brought their glory into the kingdom of grace (comp. ch. Revelation 15:4, Revelation 17:14). Then, it is quite manifest, that the glory can be brought into the new Jerusalem only in so far as it is capable of being glorified; that all false glitter and earthly pomp must disappear. But in the kingdom of glory there reigns no levelling equality. It would otherwise stand below the kingdom of grace, and be like the land of shadows, “where there is no order,” Job 10:22. As among the angels there are distinctions of rank and order (comp. at ch. Revelation 8:2), so shall there be among glorified men. If all were ruled according to a bare democratic uniformity, the teachers could not have the position that is assigned them in Daniel, nor the apostles the position indicated respecting them in Revelation 21:14; Revelation 21:19. It is contrary to all sound feeling, that a David, that a Charles the great should there be lost without distinction among the general mass. Bengel remarks, “when the heathen in the world yield themselves to Christ, their earthly glory will elevate them, and will be changed into a heavenly glory, so that they shall be brought with it into the holy Jerusalem. So is it with other natural and worldly distinctions, such as wisdom, skill, strength, accomplishments, ability, and the like. Whosoever consecrates what he has in these to God and Christ, instead of desecrating it, like others, by the love of self and the world, will thereby be ennobled in the holy city. It does not mean, that all kings of the earth with their earthly glory shall come into the holy city. Very many fail in respect to it. But what is really glorious among the kings of the earth, and is sanctified through faith in Jesus Christ, that will be regarded as an acceptable present, and as a becoming addition to the fulness of the holy city. As it is in respect to kings, so is it also proportionately in respect to their subjects.” Mark also says, “As the most glorious kings here have a share in grace, so shall they ultimately have in glory, and this will be a source of glory to the heavenly commonwealth; as cities are wont to be held in highest estimation, which have the most illustrious inhabitants.” The heathen and kings are brought into view here as an ornament of the new Jerusalem. The kingdom of God should, according to its idea, be universal in its dominion. But this idea was very imperfectly realized during the Old Testament; and still also in the militant church much is wanting for its realization; indeed, in St John’s time it had scarcely so much as begun. The worldly power stood then in all its pomp and glory looking with indifference on the kingdom of God, or even manifesting hostility towards it. This contrast between the idea and the reality must, if it were to be regarded as a permanent one, shake faith. St John meets here the ground of offence thence arising. In the new world the bearers of the worldly power shall either have become impotent, and have been consigned to eternal misery, or they shall have entered with their peoples into the kingdom of God. From this investigation, also, it becomes obvious, why it is that only the heathen with their kings are mentioned among the citizens of the new Jerusalem, and not also the elect portion of the Jews. The latter did not require any special mention. Revelation 21:25. And its gates shall not be shut by day; for there shall be no night there. Revelation 21:26. And they shall bring the glory and the honour of the nations into it. The words, for there shall be no night there,” intimate the reason why the day merely is spoken of, since commonly the gates of a city are to be shut during night. The words, “and they shall bring,” &c. give the reason why the gates stand continually open, that the glory and honour of the heathen may find entrance into the new Jerusalem, which in St John’s time was so hard a matter for faith. The fundamental passage is Isaiah 9:11, “And thy gates stand open continually, day and night they shall not be shut, to bring to thee the riches of the heathen, and their kings shall be led.” Neither here, nor in the passage before us, is any respect had to rest and security, as the reason for the gates standing open. Day and night in Isaiah is as much as continually. The night, in the sense in which it is here said to have ceased, is there also brought to an end, Revelation 21:20. The difference between the two passages is merely in the letter. Revelation 21:7 is to be supplied from Revelation 21:20. There will be no night there, namely, because the glory of the Lord shall constantly enlighten it—comp. Revelation 21:11; Revelation 21:23, Revelation 22:5, where we learn that the reason of there being no night in it, arises from the constant shining of the Lord on it. Night denotes a state destitute of blessing, such as always enters when the gracious presence of the Lord is withheld. The militant church is in this respect subjected to a continual alternation. The sad word, “and it was night,” John 13:30, is often quite overlooked both in regard to the church as a whole, and to individual believers. Allusion is made to Isaiah 9:10, “Thy sun shall no more go down, and thy moon shall not withdraw herself, for the Lord will be to thee for an everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be ended.” Revelation 21:27. And there shall not enter into thee any thing whatever common, and which does abomination and lies; but only those that are written in the Lamb’s book of life. Instead of “anything whatever common,” it is properly, “all general.” By Adam’s fall human nature has become wholly corrupt. So that the general has at the same time become the common, the unclean. Separation is needed, if one would not live with the world, and be judged with the world (2 Corinthians 6:17). The Pharisees derived their name from this separation. What they sought after in the flesh, must be sought after by Christians in the Spirit. Bengel: “By right holiness should be the common thing, but the great apostacy has unfortunately intervened, and hence that cannot be common which properly belongs to God.”Abomination, which is similarly mentioned in ch. Revelation 21:8, Revelation 22:15, comp. also at ch. Revelation 17:4-5. In regard to the notion of lie as meant by John, see at ch. Revelation 14:5, Revelation 21:8. In regard to the Lamb’s book of life, see at ch. Revelation 13:8. It is implied that all who are not written in the Lamb’s book of life, have been addicted to the previously mentioned sins; while such as have been atoned for by the blood of the Lamb, and have accordingly been written in his book of life, are free from them. Ch. Revelation 22:1. And he shewed me a[Note: Luther has a pure river.” But the καθαρόν is not sufficiently authenticated. Bengel has remarked that καθαρόν and λαμπρόν are sometimes in Revelation found together, in respect to garments, but in nothing else. In ch. 15:6, 19:8, 14, the two together make good enough sense; but here καθαρόν would hardly suit, as the quality of purity is not of moment.] river of the water of life, shining like chrystal; which went from the throne of God and of the Lamb. That we are not to explain with Luther: living water, appears alone from a comparison of ch. Revelation 7:17. It appears likewise from ch. Revelation 21:27, where the book of life is spoken of (the last words of which verse form the connecting link with ours), and Revelation 22:2 here, where we read of the tree of life. If this then is certain, there can be no doubt in regard to the signification of the water, and explanations like that of Bengel, “the power of the Holy Spirit which makes all fresh and fruitful,” of themselves fall to the ground. The water signifies, according to the express declaration of the author himself, life, that is, salvation, blessedness (comp. on the notion of life in John at ch. Revelation 7:17). The great fulness of life, which belongs to the glorified church, is represented here under the image of its pouring itself forth as a river. In Ezekiel, Ezekiel 47, a pictorial delineation is given of the greatness of this river. The glorious nature of the life is represented by the “shining like chrystal.”St John was deeply penetrated by the conviction, that man, so soon as he believes in the Son of God, is thereby raised from death to life. But we still are not warranted to say with Koestlin, p. 238, “John is too sure of life, and is always too deeply conscious of its power and blessedness, to think of representing hope in respect to the possession of life as the peculiar mental characteristic of the Christian.” The tone of depression that pervades his Gospel is a proof of the contrary, as also the entire description of the Christian state in the last discourses of Christ: The world hates you, you shall have tribulation in the world, you need the Comforter to support you under all your distress and sorrow, you need to have your eye directed to the eternal blessedness and glory, that your heart may not be appalled (John 14:2-3, John 17:24, comp. 1 John 2:25, 1 John 2:28, 1 John 3:2). Were it otherwise, St John would have been an idealistic visionary, which God forbid! There are not two lives, but only one life, which begins the moment we attain to faith in Christ, and continues through all eternity—though this life, during all the period of our sojourn in the world, is still interwoven with manifold troubles and interruptions, both of an inward (1 John 1:8) and an outward kind. In the future state of being alone will the germ of life fully develop itself. Life in the present state of being is as plainly recognized in the Revelation as it is in the Gospel. To be living and not dead is set forth in it as the Christian state (Revelation 3:1). That in the Revelation the future phase of the divine life should be more prominently brought out, the present in the Gospel arises simply from the circumstance that the Gospel must represent, what we have already received through Christ, the Revelation what he will yet give to his servants. Add to this, that the Revelation was seen at a time when dark shadows had settled down on the life of Christians.The type of the river here is the river that at first watered paradise. That allusion is made to that admits of less doubt, as here, precisely as in Genesis 2:9-10, the river and the tree are placed in immediate connection with each other. In Psalms 36:8, “And thou shalt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures,” David sees in this river the type of those streams of delight, which God’s love even now pours down to refresh his people. Here the true antitype is transferred to eternity. Then, we ought to compare Joe 3:18. “A fountain goes out of the house of the Lord, and waters the valley of Shittim;” also Ezekiel 47, where a stream flows out of the sanctuary, and, after vivifying and fertilizing the desert, empties itself into the Dead Sea; finally, Zechariah 14:8, “And it comes to pass in that day, that living waters shall go forth out of Jerusalem, their half toward the east sea, and their half toward the west sea, in summer and in winter shall it be.” The fountain is the fountain of blessing, of salvation, of life. The waters quicken the dry and thirsty desert of man’s necessities (see Christol. II. p. 367). These Old Testament promises find here their last and most glorious fulfilment. The most horrible manifestation of death is being morally dead; the most frightful side of human misery is enmity or indifference toward God. This side of death and misery, which Ezekiel takes quite peculiarly into account, who, as Joel had done before and Zechariah after him, still contemplates the salvation of Christ as one whole, and so comprises in it the life, the bestowal of which has already been celebrated by John in the Gospel—that side has here been already done away. The river of life here pours itself forth only for those, who have died in the Lord, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.That the river here is for quenching the thirst, or satisfying the desire of blessedness, appears from ch. Revelation 21:6, Revelation 22:17. “The poor and needy seek for water, and there is none, their tongue faints for thirst,” this is too often verified in the parched wilderness of the present life.The river goes from the throne of God and of the Lamb, in accordance with the declaration, “All that the Father hath is mine.” Bengel: “Here, and in Revelation 22:3, the glory of Christ is described in the most glorious manner, the Father’s throne being also spoken of as his throne.” Comp. at ch. Revelation 7:17, according to which the Lamb is in the midst of the throne. God is thus set forth as in Christ the dispenser of life or blessing. Christ is called the Lamb, because through his labours and blood he has won for us this crown of all his gifts.It is a small idea, to suppose that John here alludes to a natural spring under the temple in the Old Jerusalem. This is the less to be imagined, as there really did not exist a proper spring under the temple. Water was merely conveyed to it through a conduit. Revelation 22:2. In the midst of the street of it, and on both sides[Note: The expression ἐνταῦθανκαὶἐντεῦθεν occurs in the whole of the New Testament only here and in John 19:18, and by that parallel alone is strongly confirmed in opposition to the other certainly well supported reading ἐντεῦθενκαιἐκεῖθεν. In regard to the origin of the latter, Bengel says briefly and well: Ex opinione elegantiae Hebraismo praeferendae. The ἐντεῦθενκαιἐντεῦθεν does not occur in Greek authors, but frequently in the LXX., comp. Numbers 22:24; Daniel 12:5. We can entertain the less doubt of its originality, since it corresponds exactly to ξεδεξεδ of the fundamental passage in Ezekiel. From that passage also there can be no doubt that we must render: and on both sides of the river.] of the river, the tree of life, which bore twelve fruits, and brought forth its fruit every month; and the leaves of the tree for the healing of the heathen. Besides thirst the Lord’s people are in this life also liable to hunger (comp. Matthew 5:6; Revelation 7:16). Hence life or salvation is here represented as the fruit of a tree, as in the preceding verse it had been imaged by water. That the tree should be called the tree of life, because the participation of its fruit imparts life, appears from a comparison of Gen 3:22, “And now, lest he should stretch forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever.” There can be no doubt that allusion is here made to this paradisiacal tree of life from ch. Revelation 2:7, “He that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, that is in the paradise of my God.”  Bengel: “A sure way is laid open in the holy city to that tree of life, which Adam was debarred from touching.” It is also referred to in Ezekiel 47:7, “When I turned back, behold on the border of the river there was wood very much, on both sides;” and Ezekiel 47:12, “And by the river on its banks at either side grew every kind of tree of eatable fruit; its leaf withers not, and its fruit ceases not; all months does it ripen; for its waters come out of the sanctuary. And its fruit serves for food, and its leaf for healing.” By an unseasonable comparison of Psa 1:3, Jeremiah 17:8, several have there wished to understand by the trees the righteous; in which also there lies at bottom the erroneous supposition, that by the waters are denoted the outpouring of the Spirit, which can only come into view as a part in the whole of life or salvation, certainly for Ezekiel a very important part, since his prospect still comprehended the militant church, in which healing grace is of peculiar moment. If we fail to perceive that the tree in Ezekiel is the tree of life, we violently tear his prophecy from its connection with Genesis 2:9, Genesis 3:22, on the one hand, and with the passage before us on the other.The variety of the trees in Ezekiel and here on both sides of the river seems to present an important deviation from the representation given in Genesis, where only one tree of life is spoken of. But this latter point admits of some doubt. It is said “the tree of life which is in the midst of the garden;” and at any rate it had conjoined with it as a type “every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food,” which the Lord is said, in the immediately preceding context, to have made to spring out of the earth, and which we can suppose, according to Genesis 2:10, to have grown on the banks of the river. We must still think of these trees as trees of life in the more general sense, the tree of life only as such in the highest degree. Farther, in Ezekiel the tree of life stands only on both sides of the river; here it stands also in the middle of the street. But from the connection in which the tree of life stands with the water of life, we can scarcely think that by this is meant a second quite separate position. We are rather to suppose that the river flows through the street, and that the tree of life stands on both sides of the stream.The tree yielding new fruits every month simply indicates, that in the new Jerusalem the enjoyment of life shall be without interruption; otherwise than in the present world, where death is constantly breaking in anew with violence upon life. We are not to think of different kinds of fruits. Luther has put improperly twelve sorts for twelve.It is not said that the leaves of the tree shall serve for the healing of the heathen; but the power is only attributed to them generally, of producing healing, without intimating whether this was to take place first in the new Jerusalem, or should have begun to do so here. We must understand this latter to be the case. It is only in respect to the present state of things that it could be said, “he healed them who had need of healing,” (Luke 9:11). Healing implies disease. But this belongs only to the present life. They alone enter into the glory of heaven, who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. But the new Jerusalem comes down from heaven, ch. Revelation 21:2. Into its gates they only enter who have made themselves ready, who are arrayed in pure and white clothing (ch. Revelation 19:7-8, comp. Revelation 21:2). Nor beyond the confines of the new Jerusalem is there any other resting place but the lake of fire; so that the remark of Bengel, “This might throw some light on the question, how it shall fare in eternity with the heathen, who have not received the gospel,” is to be entirely rejected. No intermediate state is to be thought of as possible, whore all the circumstances are of a fixed character, and no room is left for change. We can the less conceive of a dwelling of the heathen outside Jerusalem, since it is within this that the tree of life stands. To bring the enjoyment of the leaves within this present life is also the more natural, since in ch. Revelation 2:7, which points to the future world, it is only the eating of the fruit that is spoken of. One point only comes into consideration in respect to the leaves, that they are inferior to the fruit, and regard is not had to the power of healing corporeal disease, which resides in many natural leaves. The fruit is nobler than the leaves; if, then, the leaves are so sanatory, how efficacious must be the fruit! The powers of life, which descend from the Jerusalem above on this poor earth for the healing of wretched sinners, are a foretaste of the surpassing blessedness, which may be expected in the new Jerusalem by the just made perfect. Revelation 22:3. And there shall be no more curse; and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it, and his servants shall serve him. The first words are taken from Zechariah 14:11, “And they dwell in it, and there shall be no more curse in it, and Jerusalem is securely enthroned.” On that passage it was remarked in the Christology, “The words, There shall be no more curse, represent the whole church of God as consisting, after this catastrophe, of the purely righteous and holy, and therefore no longer, as in former times, to be purified by sifting theocratical judgments. In the new Jerusalem the penal justice of God will no more find an object; so that his whole procedure toward her will be an uninterrupted manifestation of his love and righteousness.” In regard to the meaning of the curse, see my Christology on Malachi 4:6. Among other things, it was there said, “The idea of cursing is always that of the forced consecration to God of those who had obstinately refused to consecrate themselves voluntarily to him—of the manifestation of the divine glory in the destruction of those, who during their life-time would not reflect it, and therefore would not realize the general destination of man, the design of all creation. God sanctifies himself upon all those, in whom he is not sanctified. The destruction of every thing on earth, which will not serve him, proclaims his praise.” God constantly declares anew to his militant church what he said of old to Joshua, Joshua 7:12, “The children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed; for they have even taken of the accursed thing; neither will I be with you any more except ye destroy the accursed from among you.” Times of revival are constantly followed again by times of decay; times, in which the true city becomes an harlot, in which iniquity rises to the ascendant; and then, where the carcase is, there the eagles gather themselves together; God proves himself to be the jealous God, who visits the iniquities of the fathers on the children.— The clause, “and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it,” is very closely connected with that, which declares, “there shall be no more curse.” Because there is no more curse, that is, no more an object of cursing, the gracious presence of God and of Christ shall no longer be liable to such a withdrawal as of old, when it was said to the Jews, as the curse began to alight on them, “Behold your house is left unto you desolate; ye shall not henceforth see me, till ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord” (Matthew 23:38-39); and so does he virtually speak from time to time to his church. The more the time happens to be one of cursing, so much the more refreshing and consolatory for the true members of the church should be this word of Christ, “And there shall be no more curse, and the throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it.”In regard to the serving as connected with high grace and reward, see on ch. Revelation 7:15. It is said, “His servants shall serve him,” not, their servants shall serve them; according to the word, “I and my Father are one.”[Note: Bengel, “Where mention is made both of God and of the Lamb, the relative following, αὐτοῦ ?, is to be referred either to the Lamb (ch. 6:17, also 1:1, 20:6), because in such passages wrath, revelation, kingdom, is ascribed to the Lamb; or to God, as here, because the throne is more frequently spoken of in connection with God; whence also the verb βασιλεύσει is to be referred to the Lord. It is not said there, they will reign, nor is the plural αὐτῶν, of them, ever used respecting them, on account of the essential unity. When the Lamb is mentioned God also is indicated, as is the Lamb when God is mentioned.”]The fut. in Revelation 22:3-5, serve to shew, as Bengel has justly remarked, that “there shall be an everlasting continuance in the glorious things here described.” Up to this the Seer wrote what he had seen; here writing in such a manner could no longer suffice, and the description must take the form of prophecy. Revelation 22:4. And they shall see his face, and his name shall be on their foreheads. To see God’s face means to enjoy God’s favour (see my Come. on Psalms 17:15, also Matthew 5:8).In ch. Revelation 14:1, the chosen bear the name of God on their foreheads as a mark of their proved fidelity. But here it is written on their foreheads as a reward—a pledge of their right to participate in all the benefits of the kingdom of glory. Revelation 22:5. And there shall be no night there, and they need no lamp, nor the light of the sun; for God the Lord will shine upon them;[Note: Bengel: Å̓ ?ð’ is omitted in some copies, which are defended by Wolf, who chiefly compares ch. 21:23. But the passages differ: the glory of God illuminates the city: upon citizens the Lord God pours down light. So it is said in Genesis 1:15, “to give light upon the earth.” The genuineness of å̓ ?ðé̀ ? is defended by the most ancient codices. Allusion is specially made to Genesis 1:1. and they shall reign for ever and ever. It was said also in Revelation 22:25 of the preceding chapter, that there should be no night there; the night there denoting, as was mentioned, the absence of blessing, which is always experienced when the gracious presence of the Lord is withdrawn, as it too often is in the militant church on account of the prevalence of iniquity. Here once again this thought returns at the close, being very consolatory for those who find themselves enveloped in the shades of night, and are obliged constantly to cry out, Watchman, is the night near gone? There is here a remarkable point of contact with the Gospel of John. In three passages of that Gospel, which mutually throw light on each other, and the import of which would not be so commonly misapprehended, if they were not viewed apart, but in connection with each other, and with the passages in the Revelation, by the day is denoted the time of grace and salvation, by the night the time of perdition, as it enters when grace is withdrawn. He who has lived with wakeful eye through the year 48, will be able to understand this distinction in John between day and night. Jesus says in John 9:4, when he was going to heal the man that had been born blind, “I must work the works of Him who sent me, while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work.” In John 11 Jesus asks his disciples again to march with him into Judea. “The disciples say unto him, Master, the Jews of late sought to stone thee, and goest thou thither again?” Jesus answered in John 11:9-10, that it was still day, and no danger was to be feared, this arises only when the night comes, in which the light of the world appears not. Luke 22:35-36 is to be compared, as the Lord there points out to his disciples the difference between the time when God imparts his grace and when he withdraws it. Finally, in John 13:30, it is said, “But it was night when he went out.” There can be no doubt that these words have something of an enigmatical character about them; that the natural night was regarded by John here only as the symbol of the spiritual night, when the light of grace shines not, and along with that the power of darkness begins (Luke 22:53); when the hour has arrived for a desperate attack on the kingdom of God. The consolatory word, “and there shall be no night there,” also pre-supposes that the alternation of night and day in the spiritual life of the church shall have finally ceased in the new Jerusalem. So long as this still continues, the church must be exercised by the cross, as must also individual believers. If at present the night were to cease, spiritual darkness would soon acquire unconditional sway over the church, according to the word spoken of old to Israel, “When Israel waxed fat, he kicked,” &c. Now, therefore, we must let the night fall upon us, though the longing of our heart must be toward the time, when it shall be perpetual day. We could not, besides, properly enjoy the day as yet, because we are constantly apprehensive of the night coming, which often breaks so suddenly in upon us.In regard to the reigning of believers, see on ch. Revelation 1:6, Revelation 5:10, Revelation 20:6. Here, when the meek shall possess the earth, the kingdom of the elect shall reach its highest elevation. If till then it has reigned, with its divine head, in the midst of its enemies, thenceforth its enemies shall be for ever completely subdued, and there shall be nothing more to withstand the full establishment of its dominion. Bengel asks: “If the inhabitants of the city shall be all regents, where then shall be the subjects?” The answer, which he himself gives to this question, “outside the city upon the new earth,” rests upon the quite untenable supposition, that there shall be in the future world, beside the new Jerusalem and the lake of fire, some intermediate place. A hint for the right answer is furnished by Psalms 49:14, where it is said of the wicked, “As sheep they are laid in hell, death feeds on them, and the righteous reign over them in the morning.” There the wicked, notwithstanding their destruction, are the object of that ruling, which is to be exercised by the righteous. So also here. The ungodly world, which even by that parallel passage must necessarily be subject to a higher sway, is reigned over by the righteous in their earlier possession, in the arrangements which arc made in behalf of them in their provisional heritage of good. We close the exposition of this section in the words of Bengel: “Thus far of the holy city Jerusalem! Would that we may enter therein! Would that we even were therein! Now it is in our power to attain to a happy portion, if we will but turn our back on a lost world, and renounce the service of the prince of the world. There is need for a good, instant resolution to act, under the impulse of grace. But whoever has set his face stedfastly to go toward this Jerusalem, shall abide in it, and shall never err from the way of life.” The Conclusion (Ch. Revelation 22:6-21) The conclusion of the book, in correspondence with its introduction, expressly points to its high importance, and at the same time applies its consolatory and refreshing fundamental truth of the coming of the Lord once more to the hearts of all saints. Revelation 22:7. And behold I come quickly. Blessed is he, who keeps the words of the prophecy of this book. Revelation 22:3 of the Introduction corresponds. There the person who reads is pronounced blessed, “for the time is near.” Here the order is reversed: I come quickly, therefore, etc. That the declaration, “Behold I come quickly,” is spoken from the person of Christ, is clear as day (comp Revelation 22:20). But there is no proper change of person; the person sent only speaks from the person of the sender, as in Genesis 19:21-22. The angel, as he is, and because he is the angel of God, so also the angel of Christ (comp. Revelation 22:16). There was no reason given for bounding off the sphere of God in respect to that of Christ. In the fundamental passage also of Malachi the Lord comes in the covenant-angel.The threefold, “Behold I come quickly,” here and in Revelation 22:12; Revelation 22:20 (comp. Revelation 3:11, Revelation 2:5; Revelation 2:16), refers to the Old Testament classical passage respecting the coming of the Lord, Malachi 3:1, “The Lord whom ye seek, will suddenly come to his temple, and the covenant-angel, whom ye desire, behold he comes, saith the Lord of Hosts.” In no other passage of the Old Testament is the idea of coming so prominently brought out; first, he will come suddenly; and then again at the end, with solemn emphasis, Behold he comes. It contains all the three words of the clause before us: the behold, the coming, and the quickly (suddenly). That the passage here has a close connection with that of Malachi is evident from what was remarked in the Christology regarding the import of the latter: “On the complaint of the people, that appearances belied the idea of a righteous God, the prophet answers, that God will soon remove this apparent contrariety between appearance and idea. He, who now seems to be absent, will soon appear in the person of his heavenly messenger. That this announcement received its final fulfilment in the appearance of Christ, in whom the angel of the Lord, the Logos, became flesh, scarcely needs to be remarked. It is equally evident, that we are not to seek this final fulfilment, either in the state of humiliation, or in the state of exaltation alone, but are rather to combine the two together as an inseparable whole. The appearance of Christ in humiliation contained in the germ every thing as to blessing and cursing which in his state of exaltation he has either already brought, or will yet bring into accomplishment.” The thought in Malachi is that of the irrepressible energy and desire for outward manifestation on the part of the Logos, according to which he is always, from the time of the prophet onwards to the end of the world, carrying forward a plan, in which, as circumstances perpetually require his interposition, so he is ever ready to interfere either for salvation or for judgment. John also points to the same prophecy of Malachi, in John 1:9, John 1:15, John 1:27 of his Gospel, where he speaks of the manifestation of Christ in the flesh, and in ch. Revelation 21:22, the expression, I come, is found there with a reference to Malachi, precisely as here, of the future coming of the Lord.It hardly needs to be remarked, that the word, “Behold I come quickly,” does not refer to a single act; that it rather denotes the gladsome character of Christ’s appearing in regard to the fulfilment of all the promises and threatening of this entire book. Bengel: “This word  I come admonishes us of the whole subject-matter of the book, and on this account should everything in us be raised and elevated, that the whole Apocalyptic heaven may, in a manner, turn round, before our eyes.In ch. Revelation 1:3 the words of the prophecy alone are mentioned. But here there is added: of this book. This addition shews, that the completion of the book kept pace with the receiving of the Revelation. The book, which is also repeatedly mentioned in the following verses, must already be completed as to its main part.[Note: So also toward the end of the Pentateuch, in Deuteronomy, where its speedy conclusion comes in view, Moses speaks of it as a book; first Deuteronomy 17:18; Deuteronomy 17:10, then ch. 28:58, 29:19, 20, 26. See the Beitr. III. p. 168. Revelation 22:8. And I John am he, who heard and saw these things. And when I heard and saw, I fell down to worship at the feet of the angel, who showed me these things. Revelation 22:9. And he said to me, See thou do it not; I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and of those who keep the words of this book. Worship God. These two verses also have respect to the high importance of the book, and press it on the hearts of the readers, that they take up the right position in regard to it. A trustworthy man, a tried organ of divine communications, JOHN, whom Jesus loved, expressly assures us, that he has not spoken of his own, but only what he has heard and received. And this same John, carried away by the lofty theme of the Revelation, throws himself down before the angel, who had conveyed to him such a wonderful message. With what profound reverence, then, should not the church regard a book, which unfolds such things to her view! How should she tremble before the word of God, which is there presented to her!In regard to the expression: I John, see at ch. Revelation 1:1; Revelation 1:4; Revelation 1:9. “But who,” says Vitringa, “could he be, excepting John the apostle; known by this name to the churches, the venerable elder of the Asiatic churches?” Bengel also says, “John had placed his name in the title of his book, in the superscription to the seven churches, and at the beginning of his narrative. And now at the close he names himself still again, so that we might perfectly know, that he, namely the apostle John, bad written this credible testimony of the future coming of Jesus Christ. A learned man who otherwise possessed much good, has said concerning it, that John affixes his name so frequently, that it seems as if he had wished to write an obligation. The words are almost ludicrous; but we may turn them to good account. For as people set their names to important original documents, to prevent all error and uncertainty respecting them, so John does substantially the same here.” In his Gospel also, John 21:24, John points to his person as a security for the truth of what is reported by him. Often, too, in the Gospel does he mention his name (John 13:23; John 19:26; John 21:20), only he does it there covertly, in accordance with the objective character of all biblical history, which everywhere allows the I to fall back; while here, according to the custom. of the prophets (see on ch. Revelation 1:1), he comes quite boldly forward, with his I John. It is, further, common to the Revelation and the Gospel, not only that there should be an emphatic assurance of the truth and trustworthiness of the matters reported (comp. Revelation 22:6 here, and the parallel passages, with John 19:35, John 21:14), but also that there should be a special reference to the seeing and hearing (John 1:14, John 19:35; 1 John 1:1-2, 1 John 4:14). We must here lay the emphasis on the name John, and on the heard and saw. In ch. Revelation 19:10 the offered worship had respect to the joyful message concerning the universal dominion of God, which was certainly at hand, the marriage of the Lamb, and the preparation of the bride: here, on the other hand, it is done in respect to the whole subject-matter of the book. The only other difference is, that here, in addition to the prophets, those also are mentioned who keep the words of this book. Bengel: “Much stress must indeed be laid upon the discourses of this book, and on the keeping of it; because those who keep it stand in such a blessed society and brotherhood.” The angels are servants of God, in respect to their office, and so also are the prophets. Those, therefore, who keep the words of this book, could not be regarded in any other light than as servants of God in his vineyard. The keeping of the words of this book manifests itself in those, to whom it belongs, especially by their not appearing faint and lifeless in the testimony of Jesus (comp. at ch. Revelation 14:12); and to have the testimony of Jesus is a calling in the church (comp. at ch. Revelation 6:9, Revelation 12:17). Or, we are to regard those, who keep the words of this book, as annexed to the prophets, so that the angel is only in so far their fellow-servant, as they are comprehended under the prophets as their heads. Even if we should ascribe to them a separate and independent place, they must still not be loosed from their connection with the prophets. The parallel passages shew, that the pre-eminent dignity of this class is what properly calls forth the declinature. Revelation 22:10-12. The book is of great importance. For, its threatenings and promises are drawing near to their fulfilment. He who does not consider it, shall certainly loose salvation, and be unexpectedly overtaken by the threatened plagues. Revelation 22:10. And he says to me: Seal not the words of the prophecy of this book, for the time is near. The words, “And he says to me,” shews that the discourse of the angel here takes a new beginning.Seal not. It was intimated to Daniel that his prophecy was then, and for a long time to come, to be regarded as a shut and sealed book; and only the church of the future should be able to make a right use of it (comp. at ch. Revelation 10:4). It is otherwise with our prophecy; and the circumstance is well fitted to bring clearly to view its high importance. Its contents are of a kind generally more accessible; for it is occupied with matters which had in the circumstances of the time what was essential to their existence, and which were to have light thrown upon them by their immediately beginning fulfilment. The expression, the time is near, holds not merely in respect to the first readers and hearers of the Revelation, but for all time. A large proportion of what is announced in the Revelation is of a kind which has its fulfilment continually repeated anew, and reaches through all history. So, especially, the vision of the seven seals, and the vision of the seven trumpets. But in particular the word, “The time is near,” holds in respect to the times, in which the special catastrophes announced in the Revelation are ready to break forth. It holds quite peculiarly in respect to our own times, in which the last and the greatest special pre-intimations are proceeding with giant strides toward their accomplishment. So that the declaration of the time being near should be felt by us as a strong recommendation of the Apocalypse to our regard. Revelation 22:11. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still; and he that is filthy, let him be filthy still; and he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still; and he that is holy, let him be holy still. This verse stands in the middle, between the declaration that the time is near, and the announcement, “Behold I come quickly; and its meaning is to be determined by its position.Both the two, that the wicked should continue to be wicked, and the righteous to be righteous, is alike agreeable to the will of God. If the second is no mere permission, but a manifestation of will on the part of God, so must it be also in respect to the first. If they will have it so, let it be so; if it is right in their view, so is it also in God’s. He will take care that they do not escape from him. If they will not sanctify him, he will sanctify himself upon them; and that not merely in the future world, but also soon in this. For, where the carcase is, there are the eagles gathered together. There is a similar announcement in Ezekiel 3:27,”He that hears, let him hear, and he that forbears, let him forbear.”The righteous stand opposed to those that do injustice, and the holy to the filthy.[Note: The noun ῤυπαπία occurs in Joshua 1:21, us denoting filth in a moral sense. From that John has formed the verb ῤυπαρεύω, which is found nowhere else.] The nature of sanctification consists in the separation, whereby one keeps one’s self undefiled from the world. To do righteousness[Note: The reading δικαιωθήτω has been formed merely in imitation of the following word ἀγιασθήτω.] for exercising it, is an expression peculiar to St John (comp. 1 John 2:29. 1 John 3:7, Gospel John 3:21, where he speaks of doing the truth). The fundamental passage is Genesis 18:19, where doing righteousness appears as the mark of a true descendant of Abraham, and a condition necessary for obtaining the divine blessing (comp. Isaiah 56:1, Isaiah 58:2; Psalms 106:3). Revelation 22:12. Behold[Note: Luther has: and behold.] I come quickly, and my reward is with me, to give to every one as his work shall be. On the word, I come quickly, comp. Revelation 22:7. The declaration, My reward is with me, is taken from Isaiah 40:10, Isaiah 62:11, where Jehovah is the speaker. Hence we can apply from 2 John 2 John 1:8, the admonition, “See that we lose not what we have wrought, but that we receive a full reward.” The reward, as we learn from what follows, comprehends here also the recompense of the wicked. On the words, “to give to every one,” Here the work simply is mentioned; on which Bengel remarks:” The whole doing of a good or bad man is a single work and business, Matthew 16:27.” Revelation 22:12 lays the foundation for the two declarations in Revelation 22:13-14. As the beginning belongs to God in Christ, so also does the end; blessed then they who do his commandments, Revelation 22:13, but woe to sinners, Revelation 22:14.— Revelation 22:13. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the ending. The Omega and the ending are here to be accented (comp. at ch. Revelation 21:6, Revelation 1:8). We must take heed that we stand well with him, to whom the end belongs. It is a piece of folly to attach one’s self to those, who expatiate only for a time in the middle. Here also some have sought to decide in regard to the person who speaks what is not decided by John. The speaker here, as in ch. Revelation 1:8, is simply God in the undistinguished unity of his being, or God in Christ. That Christ is also the Alpha, the beginning, the first, and consequently the Omega, the end, the last, is evident alone from the fact, that he is the Word of God (comp. on ch. Revelation 19:13), the beginning of the creation of God (ch. Revelation 3:14). But the angel cannot, without some specific intimation, be regarded as speaking now from the person of the Father, and again from the person of the Son; and where he does not speak in his own person, or the speaker is not more definitely described, as at Revelation 22:16, there it can only be God in Christ. Revelation 22:14. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that their power may be to the tree of life, and to enter by the gates into the city. The meaning is, blessed therefore are they; for the benediction rests on the circumstance, that God in Christ is the Alpha and the Omega. Were it otherwise, they would be the most miserable of men (1 Corinthians 15:19). To keep or to do God’s commandments, or his will, his law, is a mode of speech peculiarly frequent with St John (ch. Revelation 12:17, Revelation 14:12; John 7:19, John 4:34, John 6:38, John 7:17, John 9:31). Among these commands faith in Jesus is the foremost (comp. at ch. Revelation 14:12). A similar benediction pronounced on doing is found in John 13:17, “If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” The his shows that the angel is speaking here in his own person. Bengel’s remark, “His is ornately put for mine; his, of him who is the Alpha and the Omega,” would only be warrantable, if the other supposition were not so natural.In the words, “that their power may be,” &c., the manner in which the blessedness is to be realized is more accurately determined (comp. on ch. Revelation 14:13). Bengel: “When Adam broke the command the way to the tree of life was barred; but they who do the commandments shall have power over the tree of life.”No other entrance can be found into the new Jerusalem, but through the gates. Their being so expressly mentioned here, therefore, can only be intended to add vividness to the description. He who travels toward a city in the first instance directs his eye to the gates; and the glory of the gates here referred to, described in ch. Revelation 21:21, here again comes especially into view. Allusion is, perhaps, made to Psalms 122:1-2. Revelation 22:15. Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and all who love and do a lie. In ch. Revelation 21:8, those whose part is to be in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, form four pairs—the four being the signature of the earth—the fearful and unbelieving, the abominable and murderers, whoremongers and sorcerers, idolaters and all liars. In ch. Revelation 21:27 the enumeration of those, who are excluded from the kingdom of God, is comprised in the number three. Here the excluded are seven, and the seven is divided by the four and the three; as quite similarly in Isaiah 1:4 there are to be found seven designations of sinful and corrupt ways, divided into four and three.Bengel: “The series is headed by the dogs, that is the unholy and impure, who by their rough behaviour show that they are quite unlike the Lamb. In the language of the world the rabble are called by way of contempt, canaille, that is, dog. They who familiarly use such words should take heed that they are not themselves reckoned to be such by Christ.” The dog is in Scripture “the symbol of the disgustingly impure, the shameless, those who are altogether deserving of contempt.”It was in a manner consecrated to this use by the Mosaic law. The chief quality that here comes into view is impurity; comp. Proverbs 26:11, “as a dog that returns to his vomit,” 2 Peter 2:22; Matthew 7:6. Still we must not stand simply at that. The base dog-like spirit (comp. Philippians 3:2) manifests itself also in another manner; for example, in wrath and biting (comp. Psalms 22:16; Matthew 7:6). That the latter is here also taken into account, appears to be indicated by the juxtaposition of sorcerers with dogs, who, according to the parallel passages, are brought here into notice as persons who seek to hurt their neighbour secretly. Otherwise, we might seek the point of comparison in the disgusting character of their dispositions. Several have wished to understand by the dogs “the effeminate, and abusers of themselves with mankind,” of 1 Corinthians 6:9. But however certainly these occupy one of the first places among the dogs, we still cannot think of their being specially and exclusively meant. They would require to have been more specifically described. In Deuteronomy 23:18 also, to which reference is sometimes made, the dog by itself is only a designation of base and disgusting filthiness; it is the genus for the species of abominations mentioned in Revelation 22:17. It is this latter verse alone that supplies the more definite meaning.Whoremongers are here associated with murderers as adulterers are in the law of Moses. In ch. Revelation 21:8 whoremongery is considered under the aspect of an injury done to a neighbour. Bengel: “Whoremongery is now almost less thought of in Christendom than it was among the heathen; but here whoremongers stand between sorcerers and murderers; so that they may easily understand what their recompense shall be.”Idolaters here also are the kind, liars the species—comp. at ch. Revelation 22:8. The doing a lie stands opposed to doing the truth in John 3:21. Bossuet, “I am not sure if any portion of Scripture can be found in which terrors and consolations are better intermingled together, than they are in these last chapters. There is everything to attract in this most blessed city; all in it is rich and glorious; but every thing also is fitted to inspire one with dread; for we perceive still more there of purity than of grandeur.” Revelation 22:16. I Jesus have sent my angel to testify these things to you upon[Note: The ἐπὶ ? was a source of perplexity to those who did not rightly understand the ἡμῶν. They hence either dropt it out, or substituted ἐν in its place.] the churches. I am the root and the race of David, the bright morning-star. Behind John, the poor instrument, stands a greater than he, whose shoes he is not worthy to loose. The subject-matter of the book ascends through the medium of the angel to Jesus. Whosoever apprehends his glory (I am the root, &c)., cannot doubt the truth of its contents; he will expect with firm confidence the fulfilment of its promises. The these things refer to the whole contents of the book. To you, my servants, who are represented by John, the prophets (comp. on ch. Revelation 22:6; Revelation 22:9, Revelation 1:1). To testify, not that he, but that I may testify, comp. Revelation 1:2. Upon the churches (the ἐπὶ ?as in ch. Revelation 10:11; John 12:16), the churches being regarded as the object of the testimony. The whole book is occupied with the future affairs of the church. The churches are the Christian churches generally, not merely the seven of Asia; for to these only the seven epistles specially belonged (comp. i. p. 57). Even in these epistles the promises do not respect alone the seven churches, but the churches generally. The book closes in Revelation 22:21 with the words, “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all saints.”The root of David, as in ch. Revelation 5:5, is the product of the root, the sprout from the root, that in which the family of David, that had sunk into the lowest depression, again bloomed forth. Because Jesus is the root, he is also the race of David. In him alone is the race preserved; while otherwise it would have vanished without a trace. The race of David is more than his offspring; it indicates that the race of David should, save for Christ, have ceased to exist. The race of David is here brought into view in respect to the unconquerable strength and everlasting dominion promised it by God, (comp. Luke 1:32-33). What he testifies, in whom the glorious race of David culminates, will assuredly go into fulfilment.Jesus is called the bright morning-star in allusion to Isaiah 14:12, on account of his glorious dominion; comp. on ch. Revelation 2:28. The practical result of the verse is this: You must, therefore, firmly believe what in this book is said of my coming, of the water of life, etc. For, the saying, “whatever he has promised, he holds sacred,” stands good with respect to me; I shall not feed my people with empty hopes. Revelation 22:17. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come! And he that hears, let him say, Come! And he that is athirst let him come; he that wills, let him take the water of life freely. What the book contains of the coming of the Lord, etc. is certain, Revelation 22:16. And, therefore, the joyful echo of the Spirit responds here to the word of Christ: Come! And this, again, is immediately followed by the call of the Spirit to every one, who hears the come, to accord with it, and by the invitation to the thirsty to participate in the enjoyment of the promised salvation.The Spirit is not the Spirit that dwells in all believers (Romans 8:26), but the Spirit of prophecy (ch. Revelation 19:10), the Spirit of the prophets (ch. Revelation 22:6), in which John was on the Lord’s day (ch. Revelation 1:10, Revelation 4:2), which also speaks through John in ch. Revelation 14:13, and which utters the promises in the seven epistles. The bride, i.e. the church (comp. Revelation 19:7, Revelation 21:2; Revelation 21:9), stands related here to the church, as elsewhere the saints to the prophets—comp. at ch. Revelation 18:20, “The saints are the genus, the apostles and prophets, who are personally identical, are the most distinguished species of these,” ch. Revelation 11:18, Revelation 16:6, Revelation 17:6, Revelation 18:24. There is no change of person here as to the Come uttered by the Spirit, and the Come uttered by the bride, but the Spirit himself, and John his organ, proclaims the Come as the bride’s representative. This Come uttered by the organ of the church in her name is a fact—she speaks—and on it follows the call to all the members of the church, to accord with this Come.He that hears—not generally the words of the prophecy of this book, by comparing Revelation 22:18 and Revelation 1:3, for had this been the thing to be heard, it would have required to be more specially described—but the Come of the Spirit and the bride. Bengel: “He that has so much joy as to be able to say, Come, let him say it. And he that still cannot, let him learn to do so. The power of the whole gospel concentrates itself in this, that one should be able to respond to this Come, and repeat it from the heart.” On the words, “And he that is athirst let him come,” comp. John 8:37, “If any one thirsts, let him come to me and drink,” and the remarks made at ch. Revelation 21:6. If the contents of this book really belong to the true and faithful witness, the thirsty need but to come; such simply as have the will, may receive the water of life. For now all is ready. Revelation 22:18. I testify to every one, who hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If any one adds thereto. God will add to him the plagues which are written in this book. Revelation 22:19. And if any one take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God will take away his part from the tree of life, and from the holy city, which are written in this book.The natural man must, as in Scripture generally, so especially in the Revelation, not find much that he would find, and, again, find much that he would not. This simply arises from its being a testimony of the Spirit of God. Hence comes the disposition to make additions and omissions. Such adders and omitters are here meant, as those who said, “Where is the promise of his coming?” (2 Peter 3:4); or, “Let him make speed and hasten his work, that we may see it” (Isaiah 5:19); or those who maintained, that it was unprofitable to remain faithful unto death (ch. Revelation 2:10), or, that people should freely eat of things sacrificed to idols, and commit fornication (ch. Revelation 2:10). That such additions and omissions are here referred to, as belong to the proper kernel of the book, such as would substitute for the narrow way presented in it a broad one, or would in some respect extinguish the light of hope, that shines in it for Christians, as was done by Hymeneus and Philetus, who said that the resurrection was past already (2 Timothy 2:17); this will not be for a moment doubted by any one, who has discerned the spirit of this book. It is also confirmed by the parallel passages of the Old Testament. It is said in Deuteronomy 4:2, “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God, which I command you;” and an example is given in Deuteronomy 4:16-19, where they are warned against a seduction to the worship of images and the host of heaven. Deuteronomy 12:32, “Whatsoever thing I command you, observe to do it; thou shalt not add thereto nor diminish from it,” stands connected with a warning against total apostacy, against a participation in the idolatry of the Canaanites, and mixing it up with the service of Jehovah. In Proverbs 30:5-6, “Every word of God is purified, he is a shield to those who trust in him. (But) add not thou to his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar,” such additions to the promises of God (for these are more especially referred to) are meant, as when, after the manner of Satan in Matthew 4:6, the protection, which God has promised to his people, so long as they walk in his way, is applied to those, who would strike out a way of their own—additions, therefore, which are based on a moral perversion. That there were persons in the Christian church disposed to make additions and omissions of the kind referred to, even at the time when the Revelation was seen, is abundantly clear from the seven epistles. Balaam and Jezebel had then revived again. The smuggling of heathenism into the church of God was pressed with great zeal, and in part also with prosperous success (see at ch. Revelation 2:6). In times of persecution and oppression, such as that in which the Apocalypse was written, there is a peculiar temptation to such additions and omissions. Whoever surrendered himself unconditionally to the truths set forth in this book, put himself in direct opposition to heathenism, and drew upon himself its persecuting violence. And any one that wanted the spirit of martyrdom, must add or take away. There was therefore sufficient reason for such an earnest threatening as is here uttered. The fear of man which always evokes the latitudinarian spirit, could only be expelled by the fear of God. Even still the dominion of the world carries along with it a powerful incentive to the adding and taking away. One plies every effort to take off the edge from the word of God, and to strike a shameful agreement with the world. Proofs enough of this are not wanting unfortunately even in the province of “a theology of faith.” Nor would the opposition that is raised against the composition of the Apocalypse by St John have been so resolute, if a horror had not been felt for the solemn earnest that appears in its witness-bearing, and had it not been perceived, that to yield one’s self unconditionally to it requires one to break unconditionally with the world. The offence which Luther took at these words, and expressed in his preface to the Revelation, proceeded only from a misunderstanding of the proper import. When they are correctly understood, none can take offence at them but those who regard the title, Revelation of Jesus Christ, as a mere assumption. The idea contained in them is simply this: As men deal with the word of God, so does God deal with them, and justly so, ch. Revelation 3:10. Quite similar is Galatians 1:8-9, which passage may serve as a commentary. It is not accidental, that the warning occurs toward the close of the first, and toward the close of the last book of the canon, whose author clearly perceived that it was given him to shut up the canon; as little as it is accidental that paradise meets us at the beginning of Scripture, and at the end the new Jerusalem. The warning uttered in the first and the last book substantially applies to all, that lies between the two.In the word, “God will add,” the divine recompense is brought clearly to view by the similarity of the expression: “He that adds, shall have plagues added to him, he that takes away, from him shall blessings be taken away.” The two go inseparably together—on the one side the experience of the plagues and the loss of salvation, and on the other, deliverance from the plagues and the inheritance of salvation. The plagues, which are written in this book, are such as were to befal the ungodly world; and he who is to have these laid on him as a burden, must have previously made himself chargeable with the world’s guilt. By his profane rashness in adding, the offspring of his carnal state of mind, he shews that he has belonged to the world, and not to the church; and hence must be at last condemned with the world, and not preserved with the  church.By the word part the destiny and inheritance are denoted (comp. John 13:8). This was hitherto beside the tree of life, and in the holy city. But now it shall be taken away from both, and he receives instead his part in the lake of fire, which burns with fire and brimstone (ch. Revelation 21:8). In regard to the tree of life and the holy city, Bengel remarks: “These two are mentioned also at Revelation 22:14, and in these two stands the sum of the blessedness written at the beginning and at the close of the book, ch. Revelation 2:7, Revelation 3:12, Revelation 21:2, Revelation 22:2.” The words, “who are written in this book,” refer to the tree of life and the holy city, as also the plagues standing over against them are described as being written in this book. In Revelation 22:20 we have the parting words of Jesus and John. In Revelation 22:21 the latter dismisses his hearers. Revelation 22:20. He who testifies these things says: Yea, I come quickly. Amen, come Lord Jesus. He who testifies these things is Christ (comp. at ch. Revelation 1:2; Revelation 1:5). The “Amen, come Lord Jesus,” is spoken by the Spirit through Jesus, or by John in the Spirit. The “I come quickly,” is the sum of the prophetic announcements of the book. That the church with full confidence may say the Amen, come Lord Jesus, is the great practical design of this book. Where this design is accomplished, there all tribulation, anxiety, and pain are overcome, and there fidelity shall be found to be invincible. Bengel, “The expression these things refers to the whole book, Revelation 22:6; Revelation 22:18; John 21:24, ‘This is the disciple who testifies of these things.’” Revelation 22:21. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with all saints. The variations in the text have arisen from a comparison of the forms of salutation used by Paul at the close of his epistles; which was the more natural, as John himself undoubtedly had respect to these Pauline salutations (comp. at ch. Revelation 1:4). The reading followed by Luther: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all,” agrees literally with the conclusion of the epistle to the Romans. The “with all,” which Tischendorf has admitted into the text, suits as little as the “with you all.” The circle of readers was not definitely enough marked by it. It must at the close be once more distinctly expressed, that the book is the property of the whole Christian church on earth, that all who belong to the number of saints are warranted and bound to seek in it their edification, and must give an account how they have used the means of salvation it provided. When it shall be said, Give an account of thy stewardship, the word here “with all saints” will also come to be mentioned.