in only nineteen of the sixty-six occurrences in the LXX (2.6). P47 א pc t; Prim Bea read ἀπʼ ἀρθῆς, “from the beginning,” rather than ἀπαρθή.1. Farrer, 161: based on the assumption that “virgins” are simply girls who are “still sexually innocent.”
2. It is worth noting that the NEB, by including v. 12 with vv. 9–11, presents chapter 14 as composed of seven short oracles of the end of the age (Beasley-Murray, 221).
3. Gk. εἶδον καὶ ἰδού also occurs at 4:1; 6:2; 6:5; 6:8; 7:9; 14:14 (cf. 19:11)—all highly dramatic scenes.
4. 2 Esdras has an interesting parallel to our text in which Ezra sees upon Mount Zion a great crowd singing hymns of praise to the Lord. In their midst is a tall young man who places crowns on their heads. Upon inquiry Ezra learns that it is the Son of God whom they acknowledged in mortal life (2 Esdras 2:42–47). According to 2 Esdras 13 the Jews expected the Messiah to appear on Mt. Zion with a great multitude (vv. 35, 39–40); cf. Mic 4:6–8; Joel 2:32; Isa 11:9–12.
5. Sweet points out that while Satan stood on the sand (13:1), the Lamb is standing on the rock (221).
6. For Palestine as a place of refuge, see 2 Bar. 29:2; 71:1.
7. Kiddle calls it “the celestial pattern of the once sacred site of Jerusalem” (263). See Ladd (189–90) for the opposite view. Krodel’s position is that “Mount Zion” is not a geographic location but has become “a symbol of the persevering, conquering church.” It is “wherever the Lamb is with his followers on earth” (261).
8. For example, Walvoord, 213–14. This, however, is not exegesis but forcing the text into a prior interpretive mold.
9. Barclay lists five different things in the ancient world for which a mark could stand (ownership, loyalty, security, dependence, safety), and finds in each some truth concerning the followers of the Lamb (2.102–3).
10. Charles links this clause with the previous one, explaining that the Greek is a literal reproduction of a Hebrew idiom and should read “harpers harping … and singing” (2.7).
11. See, e.g., Kiddle: “In John’s opinion the married Christian is further from the godly ideal than the unmarried” (268), a questionable position to say the least in view of the high esteem in which Scripture holds the family.
12. Gk. παρθένος is occasionally used of men who have not had intercourse with women; in the apocryphal Joseph and Aseneth (3, 8) it is so used of Joseph; also of Abel, Melchizedek, and the apostle John (cf. BAGD, 627, for references).
13. Kiddle would explain John’s exalted view of celibacy as in part a recoil from the lax morality of pagan life, noting that the Seer “would have been almost more than human if his zeal had not taken him to the verge of fanaticism” (269–70). A more common tack is to suggest that this part of the verse was originally a marginal note of some monkish scribe and later copied into the text by mistake. No manuscript evidence supports this conjecture. Charles (2.9–11) holds that the interpolation of this “monkish glosser” runs from ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς (v. 3) through ἠγοράσθησαν (v. 4).
14. Susan Garrett laments the use of women as a metaphor for idolatry and fears that the Apocalypse’s “implicit disparagement of women will keep the book from accomplishing its purpose of encouraging faith” (377–82).
15. Carrington thinks that these verses refer to those who have not entered into sexual rites with temple prostitutes such as those at Ephesus (337–40). Cult prostitution was far more serious than common harlotry (IDB, 3.932).
16. Caird arrives at much the same conclusion, but he finds the source of John’s imagery in the Deuteronomic regulations for holy war (Deut 20; 23:9–11). The ceremonial purity that the soldiers were required to maintain symbolized the moral purity of the redeemed in not going after the great whore of Babylon (179). Cf. Sweet, who maintains that believers, seeing themselves as metaphorically on military and priestly service, in view of the imminent Day of the Lord, “may have lived as celibates where possible … in order to be at the Lord’s disposal without distraction” (222). So also Beasley-Murray, 223.
17. Beckwith places the action in the past tense (he proposes ἦσαν rather than εἰσίν for the missing verb) in order to correspond with the main verbs of the other two clauses and reads, “these were followers of the Lamb in all his ways” (652).
18. Charles notes that ἀπαρθή renders in only nineteen of the sixty-six occurrences in the LXX (2.6). P47 א pc t; Prim Bea read ἀπʼ ἀρθῆς, “from the beginning,” rather than ἀπαρθή.
19. 051 1611 2351 MajTK syh** add ὑπὸ Ἰησοῦ before ἠγοράσθησαν.
20. Swete’s comment is that “after purity truthfulness was perhaps the most distinctive mark of the followers of Christ” (180).
21. MSS that add γάρ after ἄμωμοι (P47 א (051) 1 1006 1611 1841 2329 2351 MajTK a t vgcl syph.h** co Or) imply that the 144,000 do not lie because they are without blemish.
22. Gk. ἄμωμος: Eph 1:4; 5:27; Phil 2:15; Col 1:22; Jude 24. Rev 14:5 is a possible exception. Metzger notes that several MSS followed by TR add ἐνώπιον τοῦ θρόνου τοῦ θεοῦ after εἰσιν (Textual Commentary, 677).
1. Gk. ἄλλον is omitted by P47 א* MajT sa; Or Vic. Bruce notes that ἄλλος in a sequence like this is used for both “one” and “another” (654). It is used six times in vv. 6–17.
2. Gk. ἐπί; not used elsewhere with εὐαγγελίζομαι.
3. A 051 pc a bo; Bea read κατοικοῦντας instead of καθημένους. Charles conjectures that an early scribe may have substituted the more neutral καθημένους because κατοικοῦντας as elsewhere used by our author consistently carries a bad connotation (2.12–13).
4. This would normally call for the article before εὐαγγέλιον. Roloff finds here an ancient Palestinian Jewish-Christian idiom that reaches back behind the Pauline understanding and relates directly to Isa 52:7 in which the εὐαγγέλιον is the message of God’s coming to judgment and salvation (174–75).
5. Ladd takes the eternal gospel to be the announcement of the end itself (193; so also Ford, 236). Jeremias understands it as a special eschatological ministry of angels resulting in a widespread salvation among Gentiles (Jesus’ Promise to the Nations, 22).
6. Translating καί (after τῆς γῆς) as “even.” For the four terms, see comm. on 5:9.
7. Swete notes that the basis of the appeal is pure theism: “It is an appeal to the conscience of untaught heathendom, incapable as yet of comprehending any other” (182).
8. Gk. δεύτερος is omitted by 69 pc vg. For other variations see Metzger, Textual Commentary, 678.
9. In 2 Bar. 11:1; 67:7 and Sib. Or. 5:143, 159, 434 (probably 1 Pet 5:13 as well) Rome is called Babylon.
10. Swete, 183.
11. Schick, 2.36.
12. BAGD, 365. Note, however, that they are somewhat undecided between this and a translation that takes θυμός as anger or wrath.
13. So Hanson, The Wrath of the Lamb, 161ff.
14. Bratcher and Hatton suggest the translation, “She made all the nations drink the wine of her immorality, the wine that brings God’s anger” (212).
15. Robbins writes, “According to a law of life, the object of a man’s devotion transforms him into its character” (170).
16. The present tense (προσκυνεῖ) may mean, “If any person continues to worship the beast” in spite of the call for repentance (in v. 7).
17. Gk. καί introduces the apodosis. Do not read, “He too [as well as Babylon] shall drink …” Ford translates, “That man will drink also …” (231). She comments, “The author probably means that one cannot drink one cup and not the other for both are linked; the consequences of drinking Babylon’s cup is the inescapable necessity to receive the Lord’s” (237).
18. Gk. θυμός; contrast with ὀργή (used in the following clause), which refers more to the settled feeling of righteous indignation. θυμός occurs seven times in the second half of Revelation for the “white heat of God’s anger” (Swete, 185). Cf. William Klassen (“Vengeance in the Apocalypse of John,” CBQ, 28 [1966], 300–311) for a balanced appraisal of the wrath of God in Revelation. He rejects extreme views such as those of W. D. Davies (toward political authorities the Apocalypse discloses “an abortive hatred that can only lead, not to their redemption, but to their destruction” [“Ethics in the New Testament,” IDB, 2.176]) and C. G. Jung (“a veritable orgy of hatred, wrath, vindictiveness, and blind destructive fury” [Answer to Job, 125]), and concludes that “it is doubtful that the Ap views the wrath of God any differently than do the other writers of the NT” (311). Sweet comments that the wrath of God in the NT is “not a feeling of passion in God, but his reaction against sin, and the effects of that reaction” (227).
19. Sulfur burns with an intense heart and produces an unpleasant smell (Bratcher and Hatton, 214).
20. Cf. 1 Enoch 91:9; 100:9; 2 Esdr 7:35; etc. The Qumran community expected the wicked to be judged by fire (1QS 2:2; 4:13; 1QH 17:13).
21. 1 Enoch 27:3 speaks of “the spectacle of righteous judgment in the presence of the righteous for ever,” and 4 Ezra 7:36 describes the day of judgment when “the furnace of Gehenna shall be made manifest, and over against it the Paradise of delight.”
22. A pc bo; Spec omit ἁγίων, while the MajTk adds the definite article τῶν. Beasley-Murray maintains that it is possible for “holy angels” to form a periphrasis for God (226).
23. Note the comparison with the ceaseless worship of the four living creatures in 4:8.
24. Glasson labels as “sub-Christian” and “impossible to reconcile with the teaching of Jesus” the idea that those who had fallen into the sin of emperor worship should be punished day and night forever (86). Barclay follows the same line of thought, but counsels us not to condemn it until we have gone through the same sufferings as did the early Christians (2.113). Boring distinguishes between objectifying and confessional language and says that, taken in the former sense, it would be “cruel beyond imagination” but in the latter sense it is “intended not to describe the fate of outsiders but to encourage insiders to remain faithful” (170–71). See also his reflection on “Universal Salvation and Paradoxical Language” (226–31) in which he attempts to show that some texts in Revelation portray or imply universal salvation—an attempt that, according to Talbert, “must be termed a failure” (119, n. 30). Preston and Hanson reinterpret the scene of torment as a symbolic way of portraying the suffering of people who deliberately turn away from the highest Good. Their torment consists precisely in refusing to be members of the Lamb; it is eternal in the sense that God will never violate the human personality (102–3).
25. Beasley-Murray calls v. 12 the “punch line” for the oracle of judgment in vv. 9–11, the train of thought being, “If such be the fate of the adherents of the beast, Christ’s people must at all costs continue to keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus” (227).
26. Gk. Ἰησοῦ is an objective genitive; cf. τὴν πίστιν μου in 2:13.
27. “Death is not the end,” writes Schick, “but a transition from the temporal to what is final” (2.38).
28. Gk. γράψον is regularly used in the command to write to each of the seven churches (2:1, 8, 12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14). Cf. 19:9; 21:5 and contrast μὴ γράψῃς in 10:4.
29. This prospect of eternal blessedness is, according to Kiddle, a “positive motive for heroic loyalty” (283). Sweet observes, “When the veil of time is removed God must be either man’s supreme joy or his supreme torment” (228).
30. This omission has the support of P47 א* pc. It also makes possible the conjecture of ἀπαρτῖ for ἀπʼ ἄρτι (“Certainly, saith the Spirit, they may rest …”). Cf. Metzger (Textual Commentary, 678) for a discussion of the variants for ναί, λέγει. Farrer, acknowledging the uncertainty of the text, is nevertheless sure that the meaning is “Blessed from the moment of their death” (164).
31. “Throughout history from John’s day to ours oppressive governments have been wary of that Christian commitment which sees no human institution as its absolute and final authority” (Jeske, 97).
32. In Pirqe Abot 6:10 Rabbi Jose ben Kisma is quoted as saying, “In the hour of a man’s death it is not silver or gold or precious stones or pearls which accompany him, but Torah and good works alone.” Cf. 2 Esdr 7:77; 2 Bar. 14:12.
33. Gk. στέφανος θρυσοῦς; worn also by the twenty-four elders in 4:4, 10 (cf. the στέφανοι ὅμοιοι θρυσῷ worn by the demonic locusts in 9:7). The most appropriate headdress of a ruler was the διάδημα (cf. 19:12), but the two ideas of victory and royalty often merge.
34. In any case, this is arbitrary, since there is very little that holds the visions together otherwise.
35. Krodel discusses four different approaches to this vision (272–73) and concludes that “John’s vision presents a preview of salvation (grain harvest) and of judgment (vintage harvest)” (273). Beasley-Murray (228) maintains that this view is difficult to accept because (1) the two visions are rooted in the double parable of judgment in Joel 3:13, and (2) the imagery of the visions is parallel. The two harvests of 2 Esdr 4:28–32 are interesting but not determinative (the first harvest being of the wicked in this age and the second of the righteous in the age to come).
36. Beckwith correctly says, “The figure is comprehensive, including in a word the whole process of the winding up of the ages, and the recompense of both the good and the bad” (662). Collins writes that in Joel 3:13 “the harvest is a metaphor for the final battle of God against the nations. Here, the harvest of the earth has the same meaning” (105). Caird holds the harvest and vintage to be variations on a single theme, but interprets both as portraying the impending martyrdom of the elect (191–94). Montague takes the first as the harvest of the elect and the second as the blood shed by the martyrs. By combining the two John is saying that “the harvest of the elect has been won by the shedding of Martyrs’ blood” (167–68).
37. The fact that he was seated indicates that he is a judge with the authority to hear and decide cases (Roloff, 173).
38. The δρέπανον was a curved blade used both for cutting grain and for pruning and cutting clusters from the vine.
39. Charles removes any apparent confusion that could arise from so many angels in these verses by removing vv. 15–17 as an interpolation suggested by the poetic parallelism of Joel 3:13 (2.18–19, 21). Such textual surgery is unnecessary.
40. Gk. ξηραίνω (v. 15) means to dry out or wither. ἀκμάζω (v. 18) means to be at the prime; the idiom ἐπὶ ξυροῦ ἀκμῆς (on the razor’s edge) meant “at the critical moment” (LSJ, 51).
41. Swete (190) writes of the “delicate beauty” in assigning the work of death to a minister of justice, while Jesus the Savior appears “unto salvation” (Heb 9:28).
42. Gk. τὸν μέγαν stands in apposition to τὴν ληνόν. The change in gender is explained by Beckwith as due to the fact that John had in mind that which it symbolized, ὁ θυμὸς τοῦ θεοῦ (664). In Gen 30:38, 41 ληνός is masculine. Sinaiticus (also 1006 1841 1854 2053 al gig syph.hmg) reads τὴν μεγάλην to correct the gender, and P47 1611 pc syh have τοῦ μεγάλου, which may be translated, “the winepress of the great wrath of God/of the wrath of the great God.” Other MSS (181 424 468 al) omit the adjective altogether.
43. Walvoord holds that a flow of blood this deep is impossible and takes it to mean a liberal splattering of blood (223). This, of course, fails to grasp the hyperbolic nature of the metaphor.
44. 2036 reads θιλίων ἑξακοσίων ἕξ; א* pc syph read θιλίων διακοσίων (1200), “probably because this numeral lends itself better to symbolic interpretation” (Metzger, Textual Commentary, 679).
45. In the Itinerarium of Antonius, Palestine was said to be 1664 stadia from Tyre to El-Arish (on the borders of Egypt).
46. 1,600 has also been taken as representing the whole earth or as the square of forty, the traditional number for punishment (cf. Num 14:33; Deut 25:3).
1. Moffatt, 449. On p. 442 he refers to the entire vision of judgment as a “poetic expansion of Lev 26:21” (“If you remain hostile toward me and refuse to listen to me, I will multiply your afflictions seven times over, as your sins deserve”).
2. The seven bowls of judgment may well be the third Woe announced in 11:14.
1. Montague’s understanding of the wrath of God as “the inevitable effects of sin” (173) is hardly enough to account for the intensity and finality of the seven last plagues.
2. “Great” means “incredible, important,” and “marvelous” means “impressive, amazing, astonishing” (Bratcher and Hatton, 223).
3. Gk. ἐν αὐταῖς ἐτελέσθη ὁ θυμὸς τοῦ θεοῦ does not mean that the plagues exhaust or bring to an end the wrath of God. The devil, the beast, the false prophet, and all whose names are not found in the book of life are yet to be thrown into the lake of fire (Rev 19:20; 20:10, 15).
4. Caird mentions “the plagues, the crossing of the sea, the engulfing of the pursuers, the song of Moses, the giving of the law amid the smoke of Sinai, and the erection of the Tent of Testimony” (197).
5. Kiddle understands a “heavenly Red Sea” through which the martyrs have come and which is about to submerge their enemies (300–301). Others take the reference to fire as a symbol of judgment.
6. Gk. ἐπί could be “by” (as in 3:20), but taking the sea to be a solid surface allows the more customary translation “on” (cf. 10:5, 8; 12:18).
7. Gk. νικῶντας ἐκ is an unusual construction and seems to connote deliverance from (or out of) the great ordeal prompted by emperor worship. Bruce suggests that it imitates a Hebrew construction that is translated “prevailed over” in 1 Sam 17:50 (655).
8. 051 MajTA add ἐκ τοῦ θαράγματος αὐτοῦ καί before ἐκ τοῦ ἀριθμοῦ.
9. So Beckwith, 676–78.
10. Moses is designated the servant of God in Exod 14:31; Josh 14:7; 1 Chron 6:49; Dan 9:11.
11. Note the use of ὅτι three times.
12. In the NA27 only ὅτι μόνος ὅσιος, ὅτι and the final clause (ὅτι τὰ δικαιώματά σου ἐφανερώθησαν) are not italicized.
13. The NIV (cf. ASV, REB, AT) translates αἰώνων (found in P47 א*.2 C 1006 1611 1841 pc vg samss). NA27 and UBS4 read ἐθνῶν (א1 A 051 MajT gig (h) syhmg bo; Prim). At issue is whether John wrote “King of the ages,” which later scribes conformed to Jer 10:7, or “King of the nations,” which later scribes conformed to 1 Tim 1:17. The UBS committee chose ἐθνῶν on the grounds that (1) αἰώνων could have been introduced by a copyist recollecting 1 Tim 1:17, and (2) ἐθνῶν is more in accord with the context. The reading of the TR (ἁγίων) has very slender support and arose from a confusion in Latin (Metzger, Textual Commentary, 680).
14. The three parallel ὅτι clauses that follow the rhetorical question in v. 4 provide three reasons why God is to be feared and glory brought to his name. By not translating the second ὅτι the NIV ill-advisedly turns the second clause into a declarative statement for which the final ὅτι clause supplies the reason.
15. Beckwith (675) notes that the holiness of God refers not to his sinlessness, but to his unapproachable majesty and power (cf. Ps 99:3, 5, 9). Accordingly, Barclay refers to the entire song as “a lyric outburst on the greatness of God” (2.120).
16. Some interpreters take δικαιώματα as judicial sentences (Charles, 2.36; Morris, 184), but it is the victorious activity of God that here results in universal praise.
17. Krodel says that here as in 11:13 John “took up the Old Testament promise of the pilgrimage of Gentiles to Mount Zion,” and that not all Gentiles will perish in the apocalyptic upheavals but their future “worship” shows that they will become part of the one people of God after general judgment (279). Rist, however, reminds us that the line, “All nations will come and worship before you,” is thoroughly out of harmony with the idea expressed elsewhere in Revelation that the nations stubbornly refuse to repent. He offers as solutions: (1) John used a Christian hymn without changing the line on the final repentance and conversion of the heathen, (2) worship did not involve conversion but only acknowledgment of his power and might, and (3) John is not consistent here (479). If in fact a problem were to exist, Rist’s second solution would be preferable.
18. Beckwith writes that “the sanctuary meant here is defined by the following appositional gen.” (678). The complete expression would be, “the temple, that is, the tent of witness.”
19. Gk. ἐκ τοῦ ναοῦ is omitted, however, by the Byzantine text.
20. The variant λίθον (“stone”; A C 2053 2062 pc vgst syhmg) is accepted by some scholars, perhaps on such grounds as (1) Ezek 28:13; (2) the fact that it is the more difficult reading; (3) it is a possible reference to the breastplate of the high priest. Charles suggests a mistranslation of 
as λίθος instead of βύσσινος (Gen 41:42; Exod 28:39) and points to Rev 19:8, 14 for support (2.38–39). Although λίνουν (read by P [א] 046 pc a gig [h]) rather than λίνον is the normal designation for a garment made of flax, the latter is occasionally used (cf. BAGD, 475, for examples).
21. The φιάλη was a wide, shallow bowl rather than a narrow-necked vial as the AV translation suggests. Its contents were quickly and easily poured out.
22. Cf. Josephus, Ant. 3.143.
1. The boils of the first plague are still active at the time of the fifth plague (v. 11).
2. Krodel is correct in his conclusion that the second and third series “recapitulate, not pedantically, but artistically, prophetically, from different perspectives and with greater intensity the day of wrath, which was present already in the sixth seal” (280–81).
3. Dale Davis suggests a plan in which each series is primarily sequential (the fifth seal overlaps the trumpets), but all three series end simultaneously (“The Relationship between the Seals, Trumpets, and Bowls in the Book of Revelation,” JETS, 16 [1973], 149–58).
4. Boring stresses that throughout this section the wrath of God is to be understood forensically, not emotionally (175).
5. Farrer makes the interesting suggestion that since God is named in the third person, the voice is not a personal utterance of God but a sort of thunder that expresses his mind (175).
6. Gk. μεγάλης φωνῆς; elsewhere in the chapter we find the normal Johannine order: καῦμα μέγα (v. 9), τὸν ποταμὸν τὸν μέγαν (v. 12); also in vv. 14, 17, 18, 19, and 21.
7. 42 a*; Bea read ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ (apparently because ναοῦ was taken as a contraction of οὐρανοῦ; cf. Metzger, Textual Commentary, 680). ἐκ τοῦ ναοῦ is omitted by MajTK, perhaps because it seemed inappropriate for such a stern command to come “out of the temple.”
8. Krodel (277) notes that the sequence of the three angelic announcements of judgment in chapter 14 are now reversed: judgment on the worshipers of the beast (16:1–21 with 14:9–10), judgment on Babylon (17:1–19:10 with 14:8), and general judgment (20:11–15 or 19:11–20:15 with 14:6–7).
9. Lilje, 214.
10. Gk. ἕλκος; the same word is found in Rev 16:2 as in Exod 9:9–11 (LXX). Deut 28:27 (LXX) speaks of God smiting the disobedient with the boil (ἕλκει) of Egypt in the seat (εἰς τὴν ἕδραν)—a case of hemorrhoids! See also Deut 28:35.
11. Gk. ἀπῆλθεν occurs only with the first angel but is assumed with the other six.
12. Gk. ψυθὴ ζωῆς (A C 1006 1611 1841 pc syh) has occasioned several scribal alterations: P47 א 046 051 1854 2053 2062 2344 MajTA lat syph co read ζῶσα; 2329 reads ζώων. The AV follows the reading of P47 א MajT latt syph co, which omits the article τά and states that “every living soul died in the sea”—a rather different (and unacceptable) idea.
13. The first Egyptian plague (Exod 7:19ff.) is distributed into two bowl plagues (second and third).
14. “In contemporary thought,” writes Sweet, “spiritual powers represented and controlled earthly realities” (244).
15. There is some (but not much) merit in the suggestion that the “angel in charge of the waters” is simply the angel of the previous verse who poured out his bowl upon the waters (Lenski, 469).
16. The righteous acts of God speak of his saving activity. Since redemption and justice are two sides of a similar reality, these two songs echo each other.
17. Peter Staples argues against H. D. Betz that the world of Jewish-Hellenistic syncretism is not the most plausible background for Rev 16:4–6 (“Rev. XVI 4–6 and its Vindication Formula,” NovT, 14 [1972], 280–93). Betz’s article is translated in “Apocalypticism,” JTC, 6 (1969), 134–56.
18. The AV incorrectly reads “and shalt be,” perhaps mistaking ὅσιος for the future participle ἐσόμενος (Bruce, 656). ὁ ὅσιος is taken as vocative in nearly all recent translations. P47 2329 pc read καί instead of ὁ, taking ὅσιος as an adjective parallel to δίκαιος.
19. At issue is the question of the ὅτι (in v. 6) that introduces a dependent clause. But what is it dependent on? It could explain the last line of v. 5 (as the NIV apparently has it), or offer a second, parallel reason to that line in response to God’s righteousness. In that both the first and the last clause of v. 5 speak of God’s judgments, both alternatives tend to communicate the same message.
20. Some take the two ὅτι clauses as parallel or the second as an explanation of the first. The alternative tentatively accepted above understands καί in the sense of “even.”
21. There is a “grim appropriateness in this plague: those who shed Christian blood must now drink blood” (Glasson, 92).
22. Gk. δέδωκας (A C 1611 2329 pc). P47 א 051 MajT read ἒδωκας.
23. For ἄξιος in a somewhat ironic sense see Luke 12:48 (“worthy of stripes”) and Rom 1:32 (“worthy of death”).
24. This use of καί to identify a particular person or class within a larger group is clearly seen in passages such as Mark 16:7 and Acts 1:14.
26. 15:3 speaks of ὁδοί rather than κρίσεις and has ἀληθιναί and δίκαιαι in reverse order. Rev 19:2 corresponds to 16:7.
27. Gk. κρίσις tends to express action, while κρίμα refers more often to a judicial verdict.
28. Somewhat curiously the first three angels pour out their bowls into (εἰς, 9:2, 3, 4), and the following four upon (ἐπί, 9:8, 10, 12, 17). Lenski suggests that John would have us divide the plagues into groups of three and four rather than the customary four and three (471), but that is to make too much out of prepositions.
29. “The sun, which is such a blessing, becomes a curse” (Roloff, 186).
30. Taking ἥλιον rather than ὁ τέταρτος as the antecedent of αὐτῷ.
31. Cognate accusative; ἐκαυματίσθησαν … καῦμα μέγα; cf. Matt 2:10; Luke 11:46. Cf. Lactantius, Div. Inst. 7.26, where it is warned that God will stop the sun for three days and the wicked will be punished by excessive heat.
32. Kiddle, 320.
33. Just as the striking of the Nile was distributed by John into the second and third bowl judgments, so the Egyptian plague of darkness (Exod 10:22ff.) is the background for both the fourth and fifth bowl judgments.
34. Cf. Satan’s θρόνος in 2:13 and the θρόνος that the dragon gave to the beast along with his power and great authority (13:2).
35. Taking the fifth bowl as in some sense an abbreviation of the first Woe, Charles (2.44–45) conjectures that the kingdom of the beast is made dark by the smoke from the pit (9:2). Holding the darkness to be “wholly insufficient to explain the agony experienced by the adherents of the Beast,” he infers that “after ἐσκοτωμένη several clauses have been lost,” which would explain both the darkness and the sufferings of humankind (2.45). Again, this is a totally unnecessary expedient.
36. Kiddle interprets the darkness as “the darkness of civil strife” (321), while Caird understands it as “the total eclipse of the monster’s imperial power” (204). He goes on to call the last three plagues a “triad of political disaster”—internal anarchy, invasion, and irreparable collapse (204). As the first four plagues fell on the elements of nature, the last three are “directed against the forces of deception and persecution” (Sweet, 246).
37. Gk. μασάομαι, “to bite or chew”; Job 30:3 speaks of people who “gnaw dry roots” (GNB) in search of food.
38. Wilcock writes that “the plagues poured out of the Bowls are total, because the opportunity for repentance has gone” (144).
39. The closest literary parallel is Isa 11:15–16, where the River (Euphrates) is broken up into seven streams so that people may cross dryshod and a highway leads from Assyria to Israel for the returning remnant (cf. Jer 51:36; Zech 10:11; 2 Esdr 13:47).
40. Hist. 1.191.
41. Walvoord, 236.
42. The relationship between “Armageddon” and the Gog and Magog conflict at the close of the millennial period will be treated in the commentary at 20:7–10.
43. From this point on the second beast is called the false prophet. “This defines his role as the spokesman of the first beast, with the task of misleading people with his message” (Bratcher and Hatton, 35).
44. Swete identifies the beast as “the brute force of the World-power represented by the Roman Empire,” and the false prophet as the “false spiritual power which made common cause with the temporal power in doing Satan’s work” (206).
45. Lev 11:10 classifies the frog (“anything in the seas or the rivers that has not fins and scales”) as an unclean animal. “In the religion of the Persians who dwelt east of the Euphrates [“the kings of the east”] frogs were considered to be the instrument of Ahriman, the god of darkness” (Schick 2.51).
46. Beckwith favors the construction that translates, “For there exist spirits of demons which work miracles,” and takes the clause as explaining the power of the spirits (684).
47. Charles rejects as “wholly unsatisfactory” ὃ ἐκπορεύεται and concludes that it was changed from ἐκπορευόμενα when the marginal gloss ὡς βάτραθοι … σημεῖα was incorporated into the text (2.48). P47 א* 051 1006 1841 MajTA read ἐκπορεύεσθαι.
48. Gk. ἡ οἰκουμένη ὅλη is universal in scope.
49. Swete writes, “There have been times when nations have been seized by a passion for war which the historian can but imperfectly explain. It is such an epoch that the Seer foresees, but one which, unlike any that has come before it, will involve the whole world in war” (208).
50. 051 MajT sy sharpen the reference by adding ἐκείνης after ἡμέρας.
51. Charles, holding that the faithful have already been removed from the earth, judges v. 15 to be an intrusion that originally belonged between 3:3a and 3b (2.49). Caird objects to this kind of surgery and views it as an admission that the evidence does not support the theory (208). Sweet agrees—“Arguments … for displacement from 3:3 miss the point” (249).
52. א* pc syph; Prim Bea put the warning in the third person (ἒρθεται).
53. “According to the Mishnah, the captain of the temple in Jerusalem went his rounds of the precincts by night, and if a member of the temple police was caught asleep at his post, his clothes were taken off and burned, and he was sent away naked in disgrace” (Bruce, 657). In the context of v. 15 ἀσθημοσύνη is probably a euphemism for “private parts” (as in Exod 20:26 and Deut 23:14; cf. BAGD, 119).
55. NA27 reads Ἁρμαγεδών, which is found in א A E and about 95 minuscules (Metzger, Textual Commentary, 681).
56. Farrer, 178. See W. H. Shea, “The Location and Significance of Armageddon in Rev 16:16,” AUSS, 18 (1980), 157–62, for the position that the “mountain of Megiddo (n)” in Rev 16:16 is Mt. Carmel. Several years later in the same journal R. E. Loasby argues that the underlying Hebrew was har mo˒eḏ and that the reference is to Mount Zion (“ ‘Har-Magedon’ according to the Hebrew in the Setting of the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation 16,” AUSS, 27 [1989], 129–32).
57. Beckwith, 685.
58. This conjecture takes 
(transliterated Ἅρ) as the equivalent of 
(“city”); cf. Charles’ reference, 2.50. Metzger notes that the usual English spelling, “Armageddon,” is based on one form of the late Byzantine text; but most manuscripts give no information about the breathing (Textual Commentary, 681). An alternate form that drops the first syllable is Μαγεδών or Μαγεδδών (1611 2053 2062 MajTK vgmss syph.hmg bomss). Cf. Metzger for other orthographic variations.
59. Boring (calling attention to Rissi, Time and History, 84–85 and Eller, 150–51) asserts that this solution fits the context (177), but Sweet holds that it “is philologically dubious” (250).
60. Caird, 207; cf. Kiddle, 329–31.
61. Jeremias has a good summary in “Har Magedon (Apc. 16:16),” ZNW, 31 (1932), 73–77.
62. Robbins says that the term is used symbolically much as we use the expression “Waterloo” today. While that is true as far as it goes, his assertion that “it will occur at no particular time; it is occurring all the time” (191) discounts the fact that Armageddon, while always in process in one sense, will culminate in one great and final conflict between God and the evil forces of Antichrist. Even Waterloo took place at a decisive point in history!
63. There is probably no intended reference here to the air as the abode of demons (cf. Eph 2:2).
64. Some manuscripts read οὐρανοῦ for ναοῦ (051* 1854 MajTK gig); others have the longer substitution ναοῦ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ (051c MajTK). Sinaiticus replaces ἀπὸ τοῦ θρόνου with τοῦ θεοῦ, while 2027 pc add τοῦ θεοῦ after θρόνου. Apparently the scribes found some awkwardness with the concept.
66. A free rendering of Dan 12:1?
67. Some have taken “the great city” to be Jerusalem on the basis that later in the verse Babylon the Great (Rome) appears to be mentioned separately (cf. 11:8). Morris removes the city from any geographical setting, identifying it as “civilized man … ordering his affairs apart from God” (201; cf. Kiddle, 332, and Bruce, 657, for similar interpretations).
68. Gk. καί may be understood “and so” (cf. Matt 23:32; 2 Cor 11:9).
69. BAGD, 365. Cf. 19:15 (“the winepress of the fierce anger of God”) and comm. on 14:8, 10. Commenting on 16:19, Lenski says that the wine is “the wrath that is hot with anger” (485).
70. For example, Caird, 209.
71. For example, Kiddle, 335.
72. John, by means of his impressionistic pictures of the last things, “depicts the unspeakable grandeur of the awe-fulness of the revelation of God’s judgments and deliverances at the end of history” (Beasley-Murray, 247).
73. The τάλαντον varied in weight among different peoples and at various times. The range seems to be from about sixty pounds to something over a hundred. Alford notes that Diodorus Siculus (19.45) speaks of hailstones of a mina each in weight as enormous, and the talent contained sixty minae (4.704).
74. Gk. σφόδρα; only here in Revelation.
1. Note the similarities between the two passages: καὶ ἦλθεν εἷς ἐκ τῶν ἑπτὰ ἀγγέλων τῶν ἐθόντων τὰς ἑπτὰ φιάλας … καὶ ἐλάλησεν μετʼ ἐμοῦ λέγων, Δεῦρο, δείξω σοι (17:1 and 21:9); ἀπήνεγκέν με … ἐν πνεύματι (17:3 and 21:10).
2. Caird, 212–13. J. E. Bruns holds that Valeria Messalina (wife of the emperor Claudius) was in the Seer’s mind when he described the great harlot (“The Contrasted Women of Apoc 12 and 17,” CBQ, 26 [1964], 459–63). “There can be no doubt that at this period the Roman world recognized in one woman [Messalina] the epitome of all that was rotten and corrupt in the empire” (461; cf. the following page for quotations from Juvenal and Tacitus in support of this position).
3. Rist argues that the harlot is not only Rome and the empire, but Dea Roma (the personification of the divine state) herself, who along with the emperors and the seven-headed beast is accorded divine worship (488–89 and throughout the exegesis of chap. 17). Ford tries to build a case for Jerusalem rather than Rome as the harlot of Rev 17 (283–86), but without much success.
4. Gk. ἐπί with the genitive may mean “by” or “near”; John 21:1; Acts 5:23 (BAGD, 286).
5. Taking the ὧν clause in v. 8 as appositional.
6. Cf. the same imagery in Rev 14:8 and 18:3.
7. This judgment is carried out in v. 16 and then portrayed using other figures and in greater detail in the following chapter.
8. Gk. ἐν πνεύματι refers to the Seer’s ecstatic state rather than the instrumentality by which he was carried away (in which case the reference would be to the Holy Spirit).
9. Sweet writes, “The wilderness has many associations … It is the place of demons and temptation and of spiritual perception and preservation” (254).
10. Boer says that it is clear that the beast on which the prostitute sits is identical with the prostitute (Rome), yet it is equally clear that the beast represents far more than the city of Rome. He concludes that “the harlot is a temporary manifestation of the beast as a constant reality” (118–19).
11. Charles, 2.64.
12. In Rev 13:1 the names were on his seven heads. The masculine participles γέμοντα and ἒθων (though some MSS use the neuter γέμον; cf. א2 051 MajT) reflect an understanding of the beast as an intelligent being.
13. Gk. κεθρυσωμένη θρυσίῳ does not necessarily mean that she gilded her body (Swete, 216). The καὶ λίθῳ τιμίῳ that follows argues for the meaning “to adorn.” Cf. 1 Tim 2:9, where adornment with gold, pearls, and costly attire is frowned upon, and Ezek 28:13, where the king of Tyre is adorned with precious stones set in gold.
14. Gk. καί may be taken epexegetically, in which case τὰ ἀκάθαρτα describes further the meaning of βδελυγμάτων. The accusative (τὰ ἀκάθαρτα) is to be accounted for as the object of ἒθουσα or perhaps similar to γέμοντα ὀνόματα of v. 3.
15. 1611 1854 2030 2053 2062 2329 MajTK gig; Hipp (Cyp Prim) read πορνείας τῆς γῆς (א syh** [co] have αὐτῆς καὶ τῆς γῆς), probably due to the influence of v. 2, where those who dwell on τὴν γῆν are intoxicated with the wine of the harlot’s πορνεία.
16. Gk. βδέλυγμα is used in the LXX of the moral and ceremonial impurity connected with idolatrous practices. The expression βδέλυγμα τῆς ἐρημώσεως in Mark 13:14 comes from Dan 12:11, where it denotes the desecration of the Jewish temple by an image or altar of Zeus (TDNT, 1.600).
17. Seneca, Controv. 1.2; Juvenal, Sat. 6.123. Ford, however, doubts that there is sufficient evidence to support this claim (279).
18. “In the biblical and Pauline tradition in which John stands, ‘mystery’ does not mean ‘puzzle’ but insight revealed through God’s prophets” (Boring, 180). Or, as Wilcock writes, “The ‘mysteries’ of the New Testament are open secrets to every Christian” (153).
19. T. R. Edgar stresses that the prostitute Babylon is not so much a political or religious power as she is an economic force (“Babylon: Ecclesiastical, Political, or What?” JETS, 25 [1982], 333–41). Thomas, on the other hand, asserts that the only viable identification is that Babylon is “Babylon on the Euphrates.” His argument is based on the view that “the OT prophecies of Babylon’s destruction in Isaiah 13 and Jeremiah 51 are yet unfulfilled and are awaiting the future Day of the Lord for that fulfillment” (2.307). Wall identifies Babylon as “the ‘global village’ of godless power, which determines daily life for every person at any time in human history” (202).
20. Tacitus, Ann. 15.44. Seneca calls Rome “a filthy sewer” (cf. Barclay, 2.145). Seebass suggests that the title “mother of harlots” may reflect Cybele, the Magna Mater, worshiped in Rome with her orgiastic cult since 204 B.C. (DNTT, 1.142).
21. Juvenal, Sat. 6.114.32.
22. In 1 Enoch 62:12 it is the sword of the Lord that is drunk with the blood of oppressors. Cf. Isa 34:5; 51:21.
23. Suetonius, Tiber. 59; Pliny, Hist. Nat. 14.28; Josephus, Bell. 5.8.2.
24. Barclay comments that she “took a fiendish delight in hounding Christians to death” (2.189).
25. Tacitus tells of Nero’s infamy in placing the blame for the fire upon the Christians and subjecting them to “the most exquisite tortures.” They were “covered with the skins of beasts … torn by dogs … nailed to crosses … burned to serve as a nightly illumination” (Ann. 15.44).
26. A designation for God’s eschatological people based on Dan 7:18 (“saints of the Most High”). Some critics discover here an earlier Jewish document referring to martyrs in the war of A.D. 66–70 that a Christian redactor reapplies by adding the second clause—an unlikely conjecture.
27. For a somewhat similar dialogue see 7:13–14.
28. The comparison is “between the beast as a falsification of the divine image, and the Lamb as a true offprint of it” (Farrer, 184).
29. Note the present tense (ἀναβαῖνον) in 11:7 as well as in the present verse (ἀναβαίνειν). Coming up from the Abyss is an essential characteristic of the beast.
30. Gk. παρέσται, παρουσία.
31. Charles translates, “Here is needed the intelligence which is wisdom” (2.68).
32. Moffatt renders the statement, “Now for the interpretation of the discerning mind!” (The NT: A New Translation).
33. Virgil, Aen. 6.782; Martial 4.64; Cicero, Att. 6.5; and many others.
34. Seiss, The Apocalypse, 391–94; Ladd, 227–29.
35. According to Kiddle, the number is “suggestive of the world-wide domination exercised by the Roman order of things … The Beast’s power is universal, stretching as far as Roman institutions” (348–49).
36. Boring lists three problems that immediately emerge: (1) With which emperor should we start counting? (2) Which emperors should we count? and (3) Did John intend the number “seven” to be taken literally? (182–83).
37. Suetonius, Vesp. 1; Josephus, Ant. 18.2.2; Sib. Or. 5:12 (in cryptic form). It is commonly pointed out that other writers consider the empire to have begun with Augustus (e.g., Tacitus, Ann. 1.1; Hist. 1.1). In any case, the evidence is divided and provides no firm basis for omitting Caesar.
38. Galba assumed power in June of A.D. 68 but was murdered seven months later. Otho, who followed, committed suicide in April of 69, and Vitellius was killed before the end of the same year.
39. Suetonius, Vesp. 1.
40. Josephus, Bell. 9.9.2.
41. Charles, 2.69.
42. By starting with Caligula, who first provoked a crisis over emperor worship and by ignoring the three short reigns, it is possible to arrive at Domitian as the sixth ruler (see Krodel, 297). J. H. Ulrichsen (who begins his count of heads with Caligula) notes that the ten horns also represent Roman emperors and that, beginning with Caligula and including Galba, Otho and Vitellius, one once again arrives at Domitian, in whose reign Revelation was written (“Die sieben Haupter und die zehn Horner. Zur Datierung der Offenbarung des Johannes,” ST, 39 [1985], 1–20). By counting only those emperors who had been apotheosized by the senate, Rist also arrives at Domitian as the ruling emperor (495).
43. Alford, 4.710–11. Thomas, following Walvoord, lists the same secular Gentile kingdoms but understands the seventh to be “the future kingdom of the beast” (2.297).
44. Hendriksen, 204; see also Ladd, 229.
45. It is βασιλεύς, not βασιλεία. The argument for kingdoms is usually built upon Dan 7:17, where the four beasts are said to be four kings although they do in fact stand for four kingdoms. Note, however, that the LXX and Theodotion have βασιλεῖαι for 
.
46. For an excellent excursus leading to this conclusion, see Beckwith, 704–8.
47. Cf. 2 Baruch 56–74 for the interpretation of the vision of the black and bright waters that symbolize the span of time between Adam and the coming of the Messiah.
48. Caird writes, “The one point John wishes to emphasize is that the imperial line has only a short time to run before the emergence of a new monstrous Nero, an eighth who is one of the seven” (219).
49. This would normally call for εἷς ἐκ τῶν ἑπτά.
50. Krodel writes of Nero that “as a historical emperor he was one of the seven, but as Antichrist he will appear as an eighth” (296).
51. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.20; Tertullian, Apol. 5; Juvenal 4.37–38; Martial 11.33.
52. Suggested by Zahn and followed more recently by Ladd (228–31).
53. Cf. Luke 19:12 for this use of βασιλεία.
54. Beckwith, 700.
55. Sweet says that “one hour” (v. 12) is “an Aramaism better translated ‘for a moment.’ ” The judgment of Babylon comes in “one hour” (Rev 18:10, 17, 19).
56. Swete interprets this to mean that the beast can count not only on the actual military power of the kings, but on the moral force that belongs to their position as well (223).
57. Cf. 1 Enoch 63:4; 84:2; 1 Tim 6:15; Rev 1:5; 19:16.
58. Moffatt (454) notes that success depends not only upon their divine election but also upon their corresponding loyalty (Rev 13:8; 12:11).
59. See comm. on 5:9. It is used both of the church (5:9; 7:9) and the heathen world (10:11; 11:9; 13:7; 14:6; 17:15: the alteration of one member in 10:11 and 17:15 is inconsequential).
60. Invasions by foreign powers are spoken of under the figure of floods (Isa 8:7; Jer 47:2) but are not the point here. Nor is any “impious parody” of the Lord who “sits enthroned over the flood” (Ps 29:10) intended (as suggested by Alford, 4.712).
61. Kiddle brings up a small difficulty by noting that John did not tell us that in his vision he saw any waters. He suggests that to “see” a vision is to arrive at an inspired conviction, which may then be clothed in familiar apocalyptic terms (356–57). It is perhaps simpler to assume that John’s account of the experience is less complete than the actual vision. It is our view that John received his revelation through visions (Rev 1:11, 18) rather than prophetic insight that he then translated into apocalyptic narrative.
62. Lilje, 229. Hughes quotes Oscar Wilde as saying that “all men hate the thing they love” (188).
63. Morris, 206. The concept of internecine warfare as God’s method of destroying his enemies is seen in such OT passages as Ezek 38:21; Hag 2:22; Zech 14:13.
64. The plural σάρκας refers to portions of flesh.
65. Cf. Jer 10:25; Mic 3:3; Zeph 3:3 for similar uses of the figures.
66. Farrer ties together the three clauses that describe their punishment by commenting that as a prostitute she is exposed, as a victim of the lion-jawed beast her flesh is devoured, and as a city she is burned down (186–87).
67. Charles brackets καὶ ποιῆσαι μίαν γνώμην as an early gloss from v. 13 (2.73), but there is no reason why their common agreement cannot be understood as part of his will. God’s will is their unanimous decision to give their kingdom to the beast.
68. Note the recurring ὃ/ὃ/ἣν εἶδες in vv. 8, 12, 15, and 18.
69. Schick’s words on symbol and history are worth repeating. “As almost always in Revelation the symbol reaches beyond the unique historical situation and becomes a criterion valid for all ages. History does not repeat itself. It is precisely the nature of history that it deals with a unique occurrence in unique circumstances. But despite all concrete uniqueness, on another more fundamental level, something similar can occur every time. There runs parallel with the process of history—so revelation sees it and it is essential to its concept of history—a reality which is present in each transitory manifestation; it harbors within it the real event behind any event. This process in depth is however not immediately discernible, it can only be grasped and represented by way of symbols” (2.58).
1. Moffatt, e.g., conjectures a Jewish Vespasianic source that “breathed the indignant spirit of a Jewish apocalyptist against the proud empire which had won a temporary triumph over the city and people of God” and was taken over by John for the purpose of making Rome responsible for the persecution of Christians (455).
2. See the summary of criticism of chap. 18 in Beckwith, 722–25.
3. Such as that by Charles, who finds a Vespasianic source written soon after the destruction of the temple, apparently in Hebrew but found by John in Greek translation; 2.87–95!
4. The funeral dirge in Semitic culture was primarily a lamentation for the dead. It could be a brief cry, such as David’s lament for his son (“O my son Absalom! O Absalom, my son!” 2 Sam 19:45), or more commonly an extended expression of sorrow (such as Nahum’s woe to Nineveh [3:1–19] or the book of Lamentations). Prophets regularly used dirges in connection with the calamities that fell on Israel as well as other nations.
5. Cf. 7:2; 8:3; 10:1; 14:6, 8 (where the angel proclaims the same basic message as in vv. 2–3 of the present chapter), 9, 15, 17, 18; 18:1.
6. “So recently has [the angel] come from the Presence that in passing he flings a broad belt of light across the dark Earth” (Swete, 226).
7. Gk. ἐξουσία is used in the sense of capability in Rev 9:3, 10, and 19 as well. Note reference to his “mighty voice” in v. 2.
8. Gk. ἒπεσεν is a proleptic or futuristic aorist (as in Rom 8:30). The LXX of Isa 21:9 uses the perfect (πέπτωκε, “has fallen”).
9. The same creatures are found in the judgment pronounced upon Edom in Isa 34, with the night hag (perhaps a reference to the Assyrian female storm god Lilitu; Heb. 
), hawk, porcupine, owl, and raven added. Deut 14:12–18 identifies the raven, ostrich, hawk, and owl as unclean birds.
10. The AV, NIV, and RSV (among others), following the witnesses א C 051 MajT a vg syph bo; Bea, omit καὶ φυλακὴ παντὸς θηρίου ἀκαθάρτου. UBS4 and NA27 include it in brackets (following A 1611 2329 al gig syh [sa]; [Prim]) since each of the three elements involves an allusion to Isa 13:21; 34:11 and probably belonged to the original text of Revelation (Metzger, Textual Commentary, 683). The inclusion may be further argued on the basis that (1) it is difficult to imagine someone creating a third line, and (2) John sets out much of the material in this section in triplets.
11. The primary meaning of φυλακή is “prison,” although Swete points out that in Hab 2:1 (cf. Bar 3:34) it may designate a watchtower (227). The picture would be one of evil spirits perched in a tower like vultures waiting for their prey.
12. Reading πεπότικεν (2042 pc), the form that occurs without variants in the parallel passage, 14:8. πέπωκαν (1006c 2329 pc latt syh) would say that Babylon has fallen because the nations have drunk the wine of her adulteries. πεπτωκα(νσι) (א A C 1006* 1611 1841 2030 MajTK) makes Babylon fall because the nations have fallen.
13. See comm. on 14:8 for this phrase. The five alternatives listed in NA27 indicate how difficult the phrase was for early copyists. Cf. Jer 25:15–17, 27 for a similar mingling of the two ideas of drunkenness and divine judgment. Cf. also Jer 51:7; Rev 17:2.
14. Gk. στρῆνος occurs only here in the NT. Beckwith notes that, along with the verb form στρηνιάω (Rev 18:7, 9 only), it contains the idea of “excessive luxury and self-indulgence with accompanying arrogance and wanton exercise of strength” (713).
15. Cf. also Isa 48:20; Jer 50:8; 51:6, 9. Cf. 2 Bar. 2:1.
16. “Come out of her” is “a figure for moral separation, as at 2 Cor. 6:17,” writes Sweet. “Moral co-existence and toleration of the Nicolaitans can only lead to complicity in sin, which is about to recoil upon the sinners” (268).
17. Kiddle, 364.
18. Gk. κολλάω in this context suggests the joining of sins one to another until the pile reaches to heaven. Holtzmann conjectures the gluing together of leaves in a scroll upon which the sins of Rome are recorded. If unrolled, it would reach to heaven (cited in Moffatt, 457).
19. 051 MajTA gig vgcl add ὑμῖν after ἀπέδωκεν, which would make those addressed in vv. 6 and 7 the people of God to whom the previous verses (4 and 5) were directed.
20. Preston and Hanson write, “Zeal for the vindication of God’s righteousness and O.T. prophecy have run away with John here” (117).
21. Beckwith, 715 (cf. Jer 16:18; 17:18).
22. See Morris, 211.
23. The verb form ὑβρίζω, when used of overfed horses, meant “to neigh, snort, or prance” (LSJ, 1841).
24. The RSV is probably right to put a full stop after v. 7a and begin a new sentence with “Since in her heart she says,” carrying it on through to the end of v. 8. διὰ τοῦτο, with which v. 8 begins, is stylistic and refers back to all that follows ὅτι in the preceding verse. The NIV divides vv. 7 and 8 into four sentences.
25. Caird (223) remarks of the proud city that “her fault is not mere arrogance, but an unquestioning faith in her own inexhaustible resources, unaccompanied by any sense of a deeper lack (cf. 3:17).”
26. Gk. ἐν μιᾷ ἡμέρᾳ does not designate a span of time, but like μιᾷ ὥρᾳ in vv. 10, 16, and 19 it is a symbolic term for suddenness. Some MSS (69 pc syhmg; Cyp Spec Prim) have ὥρα in 18:8. Cf. Isa 47:9.
27. Charles rearranges the plagues and corrects a conjectured corruption in the Semitic original. He finds an allusion to the approach of the Parthians under Nero that would cut off food supplies (famine), lead to pestilence (death), and prepare for destruction (mourning) by fire. It is much more the style of the Seer to join together words and phrases for their rhetorical impact than to introduce some carefully designed schema that organizes the future.
28. Gk. κύριος is omitted by A 1006 1841 2053com pc a vg, perhaps because of the preceding ἰσθυρός. Cf. Metzger (Textual Commentary, 1st ed., 760) for other variants.
29. “[As] in an ancient tragedy, they give expression to their shock in three choirs” (Schick, 2.70).
30. Lilje, 235.
31. Gk. στρηνιάω may mean to live sensually (cf. BAGD, 771).
32. Gk. κλαίω is used of any loud expression of pain or sorrow; hence, “to sob openly” (cf. the less vivid δακρύω, “to shed tears”). In the middle voice, κόπτω (“to cut”) is used of beating one’s breast as an act of mourning. In vv. 11, 15, and 19 πενθέω replaces κόπτομαι.
33. Caird observes that “the one hour of persecution [17:12–14] is balanced by the one hour of retribution” (226).
34. In terms that sound quite contemporary, Krodel identifies the merchants as “the big international import-export wholesale merchants whose profits rose through Rome’s exploitation of the provinces” (304).
35. Pliny, Hist. Nat. 6.26; Aristides, In Rom. 200.
36. See Barclay (2.158) for a discussion on the excessive luxury of Rome.
37. Qidd. 49.
38. Beckwith makes seven groups by adding the choice fruits of v. 14 (716). Ladd arrives at seven by placing slaves in a separate group (240). The number of items in each group seems to be determined to a large extent by rhetorical considerations.
39. Josephus, Bell. 7.5.4.
40. Martial, 14.85; Pliny, Hist. Nat. 13.96.
41. Thyine wood was from the tree that in Latin was called citrinus. The change in the Greek text from genitives to accusatives is stylistic. After eight genitives modifying γόμον the text turns to accusatives until it arrives at ἵππων in v. 13. The last item, ψυθάς, is once again accusative.
42. A 1006 1841 pc a vg read λίθου (“stone”) for ξύλου (“wood”).
43. Gk. ἄμωμον; omitted by א2 1006 1841 2030 2053 2062 MajTK vgcl syph; Prim. 046 (1611) 2030 pc omit οἶνον (“wine”).
44. In Luke 10:34 the Good Samaritan places the wounded man on his own κτῆνος to take him to the inn. Paul rides from Jerusalem to Caesarea on a κτῆνος (Acts 23:24).
45. Gk. ῥέδη, only here in the NT. The word entered Greek by way of Latin authors (cf. BAGD, 734).
46. Gk. σώματα. A slave merchant was called σωματέμπορος. In Gen 36:6 Esau left Canaan with his wives, sons, daughters, and all the σώματα τοῦ οἴκου αὐτοῦ—his slaves (cf. Tob 10:10; Bel 32; 2 Macc 8:11). Sweet notes that slaves came early in Ezekiel’s list (27:13), but “here they come at the end of a list which is in descending order of value” (272). Or the placement could be for rhetorical effect. For a good discussion on the list of cargoes see Bauckham, 350–71. Earlier he notes that it is no accident that the list comprises twenty-eight items because 4 (the number of the world) times 7 (the number of completeness) equals 28, making the list “representative of all the products of the whole world” (31). He also holds that the final clause, being in an emphatic position, is a comment on the entire list of cargoes. “It suggests the inhuman brutality, the contempt for human life, on which the whole of Rome’s prosperity and luxury rests” (370–71).
47. Gk. 
; Ezek 27:13; Num 31:35; 1 Chron 5:21 (Swete, 235). Harrington adds that “ ‘human livestock’ would refer to slaves destined for the amphitheatre or for prostitution” (180).
48. Metzger, 86
49. Bauckham translates, “slaves, that is, human persons,” and adds that John is “pointing out that slaves are not mere animal carcasses to be bought and sold as property but are human beings” (The Climax of Prophecy, 370). Bengel suggests that the bodies are slaves used for carrying goods and the souls of men are slaves considered as merchandise (2.916), which has the advantage of linking σωμάτων with the genitives that precede it and allowing the awkward shift to the accusative ψυθάς.
50. Charles removes v. 14 to a place after v. 21, holding that it forms the opening stanza of the Seer’s dirge over Rome (2.108), but it is hardly necessary to carry out such relocations since the fruits that Rome lusted after are certainly those that have just been listed in detail in the two previous verses.
51. Gk. λαμπρά (“glistening things,” EDNT, 2.339).
52. Note the poetic quality of πάντα τὰ λιπαρὰ καὶ τὰ λαμπρά.
53. Gk. κυβερνήτης rather than ναύκληρος; cf. Acts 27:11, where both words are used. Cf. the Latin gubernare, “to guide.”
54. Gk. ναῦται; cf. Acts 27:27, 30. Ezek 27:27–29 designates the πρωρεύς (the lookout man who stood at the ship’s head to give signals to the pilot), the ἐπιβάτης (the soldier on board), and the κωπηλάτης (the rower).
55. One conjecture substitutes “upon the sea” for “to a place,” but that is a bit repetitive (“on the sea traveling by sea”). 2073 pc; Prim read πόντον for τόπον. Metzger (Textual Commentary, 684) lists five additional readings. The UBS text reads ὁ ἐπὶ τόπον πλέων, “he who sails for [any] part,” and evaluates the reading as “B” (almost certain).
56. Lenski, 527.
57. Beckwith, 718.
58. There is no necessity of careful delineation between the three groups. Some texts (C 051 2329 MajTA a gig vgcl), by omitting the second καὶ οἱ, read οἱ ἅγιοι ἀπόστολοι (“holy apostles”). Note also that all three may be vocative as well as nominative.
59. Caird, 228–30.
60. The double negative οὐ μή with the aorist subjunctive expresses emphatic denial for the future (see Moule, Idiom Book, 156). The addition of ἒτι in each case strengthens the negative affirmation.
61. Caird joins these three references and suggests that the appearance of a third marks the consummation of the contents of both scrolls (230–31).
62. Blaney, 498.
63. The μύλινος μέγας is to be compared with the μύλος ὀνικός (the donkey millstone, i.e., the one turned by donkey power) of Mark 9:42. Sinaiticus reads λίθον (a second time) instead of μύλινον (an understandable reading in view of the similarity of λίθον and [μύ]λινον and the fact that λίθον ὡς λίθον μέγαν makes reasonably good sense. 051 MajT gig; Prim read μύλον.
64. Bratcher and Hatton note that the Greek word translated “violence” means “with an impulsive rush” (269).
65. Gk. μουσικός means skilled in music. In the present context the noun form refers either to instrumentalists or vocalists (Swete, 239). Charles translates “singers” (2.109–10).
66. Juvenal 6.249.
67. Without the grinding of grain there would be little to sustain normal life in antiquity.
68. Both clauses begin with ὅτι although the first ὅτι is omitted by 2030 MajTk co. Swete favors taking the second ὅτι clause as explaining the first (240–41), while Beckwith holds them to be coordinate (719).
69. Gk. ἒμπορος is from πόρος, a journey; thus οἱ ἒμποροι may well be those merchants who dealt in foreign imports and exports.
70. Gk. οἱ μεγιστᾶνες. The ἒμποροι of Tyre were called ἒνδοξοι ἄρθοντες τῆς γῆς (Isa 23:8).
71. Cf. Sib. Or. 5:165.
72. Caird, 231.
73. “This harlot of anti-God secular power is guilty of all the bloodshed that has disgraced and defiled the history of mankind, starting with the blood of Abel shed by his brother Cain” (Hughes, 195–96).
74. In Rev 16:6 the order is reversed. Cf. 17:6 and 19:2.
1. Continuity with the preceding paragraph is stressed by those MSS that add καί as the first word in v. 1 (051 2344 MajTA syph bo).
2. The angels in 5:12 and 7:12 sing of power, riches (thanksgiving in 7:12 replaces riches in 5:12), wisdom, might, honor, glory, and blessing, but not of salvation. Blaney (499) interprets the great multitude more inclusively as “the accumulated celestial personnel of 7:9–12.” In 4:11 the twenty-four elders sing a similar song, but there the praise is based on God’s creative activity rather than his role as judge.
3. Swete observes that the transliteration into Greek must have been used by Hellenistic Jews prior to the Christian era and was taken over from the Hellenistic synagogue by the apostolic church (242). Note the occurrence of “Hallelujah” in Tob 13:18 (usually dated about 200 B.C.).
4. Roloff writes that it originally was a call to praise God but gradually developed in Judaism into an independent formula of praise (210–11).
5. The second ὅτι clause does not justify the first ὅτι clause—the righteousness of divine judgment needs no justification or human approval—but is parallel to it and supplies a specific example of the more general truth.
6. The Gk. ἐκ θειρὸς αὐτῆς (lit., “from her hand”) here means “upon her.” Cf. the parallel in the LXX of 4 Kgs 9:7, which Moffatt says represents the Hebrew idiom meaning “to exact punishment from a murderer” (462).
7. Robertson, Word Pictures, 6.447–48. He also notes that εἴρηκαν is not aoristic perfect for “they say” but a dramatic perfect (as in 5:7) that describes a fact in an unusually vivid manner (cf. Dana and Mantey, Grammar, 204).
8. So Charles, 2.120.
9. Sweet calls this “a ghastly contrast with the incense of heaven (5:8; 8:4)” (278). On the basis that the earth on which Rome is situated is soon to disappear (cf. 20:11; 21:1), Rist warns that the prediction about smoke rising forever and ever “should not be taken too literally” (506).
10. Prostrating oneself before God is more often connected with the twenty-four elders than with the four living creatures (4:10; 5:14; 11:16: both may take part along with the angels in 7:11)—a good example of employing literalism when convenient.
11. If καί is read before οἱ φοβούμενοι (as in א 051 0229 MajT latt sy bo), it should be translated as “even.” The servants are those who fear God; καί is omitted by א C P pc sa boms. See Metzger, Textual Commentary, 684–85.
12. Krodel, 211.
1. For similar phrases see Ezek 1:24; 43:2; Dan 10:6; Rev 1:15.
2. Gk. ἐβασίλευσεν is an inceptive aorist, “has taken up his reign.” Against most commentators Lenski takes the aorist as historical and constative, looking back over all past history and seeing how the Lord God has ever reigned (540).
3. Suetonius, Dom. 13.
4. Some manuscripts (A 1006 1841 pc t samss bo; Cyp) omit ἡμῶν, perhaps because it is not found in the other instances of κύριος ὁ θεὸς ὁ παντοκράτωρ in Revelation (1:8; 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:7; 21:22). It may have been felt inappropriate with the title as well (Metzger, Textual Commentary, 685).
5. The following clause (“and give him glory”) reflects the human race’s appropriate response to God (cf. Rom 1:21; 4:20). According to the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the chief end of every person is to “glorify God, and enjoy him forever.”
6. Four women are mentioned in Revelation: Jezebel (2:20), the radiant woman of chapter 12, the infamous prostitute of chapters 17–18, and the bride of Christ (chaps. 19–20). Talbert notes that two are faithful and two unfaithful (86–87).
7. Note ἡ γυνὴ αὐτοῦ; cf. Matt 1:18–20.
8. Hughes writes that the righteous acts in question are “performed by those who are already redeemed and justified in Christ. They are evidence of the bride’s sanctification” (200). Roloff, however, says that although Christians receive the garment of salvation as a gift, “everything depends on their keeping it white and pure, that is, on their remaining obedient and not relinquishing the salvation they received” (213).
9. Swete writes, “Corporately the whole Church is seen to be attired in the dazzling whiteness of their collective purity” (247).
10. If οἱ is added before ἀληθινοί (as in A pc), the clause would read, “These true words are of God.”
11. So Boring, 194.
12. Gk. ὅρα μή understands a following ποιήσῃς.
13. Cf. Josh 5:14; Judg 13:20; Asc. Isa. 7:21–8:5.
14. In keeping with her thesis that Revelation 12–22 was probably written by a disciple of John the Baptist (3, 28–37), “fellow servant” is said by Ford to suggest a circle of prophets around the Baptist (312).
15. Erdman, 148.
16. Morris, 228.
17. Beasley-Murray, 276. Ford writes that “Rev 19:10d is a succinct reference to the return of prophecy as a sign of the New Covenant with Jesus as Lord” (“ ‘For the Testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Prophecy’ [Rev 19:10],” ITQ, 42 [1975], 291).
18. As suggested by Beckwith, 730, 742.
1. It is difficult to understand how a statement this clear can be taken to mean that the seer “had insights which were beyond earthly reasoning, events, and circumstances” (as Robbins writes, 216). In apocalyptic language symbols were used to portray real events that happened in the vision, not to place in metaphorical language truth that otherwise could not be grasped. Granted, symbols present a golden opportunity for assigning meaning, but that by no means validates such a subjective approach.
2. Peterson quotes Bishop Aulén, who writes that “no form of Christian teaching has any future before it except such as can keep steadily in view the reality of evil that is in the world and go to meet the evil with a battle song of triumph” (163; from Christus Victor by Gustav Aulén, 176). A page earlier he quotes Doris Lessing, who observes that people have the habit of dismissing large parts of the Bible because “Jehovah does not think or behave like a social worker” (162).
3. Beckwith, 730–31.
4. It reads in part, “With a rod of iron he shall break in pieces all their substance. He shall destroy the godless nations with the word of his mouth.” Cf. T. Dan 5:13; Sib. Or. 5:108–10; 2 Bar. 39:7–40:4.
5. Schlatter, The Church in the NT Period, 283.
6. The placement of καλούμενος after πιστός (א), before πιστός ([1006] 1611 1841 1854 2030 2053 2062 MajTK vgcl sy; Irlat Or), or its omission (A 051 MajTA; Hipp), makes little difference unless one assumes that its inclusion suggests that the rider was merely called “Faithful and True,” highly improbable in a context such as this! Metzger holds that the reading of Sinaiticus best explains the others, although the UBS text follows the Byzantine text, placing καλούμενος between brackets to indicate some uncertainty (Textual Commentary, 685–86).
7. Moffatt holds that the two words are a description of the Messiah’s character and function, rather than a title (467). He translates, “His rider is faithful and true” (The NT: A New Translation).
8. Ladd, 253. In Jer 10:10 the “God of truth” is the God who can be trusted to keep his covenant.
9. A 1006 1841 al latt sy samss bo; Irlat Or read ὡς before φλόξ, undoubtedly due to the influence of 1:14 and 2:18. The UBS text places it in brackets.
10. The two crowns that Ptolemy wore symbolized his kingship over Egypt and Asia (1 Macc 11:13).
11. Farrer thinks that the name is mentioned after reference to the diadems because the high priests wore the tetragrammaton on a gold plate upon the forehead (198).
12. Rist tentatively concludes that the secret name is “Jesus” and discerns martyrological overtones (513).
13. Lilje, 244.
14. Gk. βεβαμμένον has stronger manuscript support (A 051 MajT) and can account for the variants better than any of the six forms of ῥαίνω or ῥαντίζω listed in the UBS apparatus.
15. Krodel, however, is of the opinion that “the blood is his own, the Messiah’s blood … the blood that either redeems (1:5–6; 9:9–10) or condemns” (323).
16. Schick concludes that “if Christ brings the bloody robe with him from heaven before he has held judgment, then the blood on the robe can only be his own” (2.81). Charles maintains the blood is that of the Parthian kings already destroyed (2.133), while Caird takes it as “the indelible traces of the death of his followers” (243).
17. Roloff correctly holds that “The blood is not the actual blood of Jesus which he poured out for sinners, but rather the blood of God’s enemies” (218).
18. A few writers take the Word as the preaching of the gospel (e.g., Harrington, 197).
19. Beasley-Murray calls the armies “angelic attendants” who do not engage in mortal combat but accompany the Lord in his parousia to witness their Commander exercise authority in judgment (281).
20. The δίστομος of 1:16 and 2:12 is added here by 1006 1841 1854 2030 2329 MajTK vgclsyh**; Ambr Prim.
21. Swete says that the figure represents the smiting of nations “not by judgements only, but by the forces which reduce them to obedience of faith”—hence the expansion of Christianity and ultimately the conversion of the world still being worked out in our time (254). Yet the war is eschatological and results in massive slaughter (v. 21). Ladd’s counsel is apropos, “The radical spiritualization of this concept which sees a conflict of human ideologies in human history and the triumph of Christianity does not accord with the nature of apocalyptic thought” (256).
22. Gk. ποιμαίνω in Rev 7:17 has the sense of gentle care, but elsewhere in Revelation (2:27; 12:5; 19:15) it connotes punishment.
23. Gk. θυμός, ὀργή; see note on 14:10. Hahn notes that “this thought of the future wrath of God is unfolded on a massive scale in Rev.” (DNTT, 1.111).
24. “The doubling of the name ‘King of kings’ was a practice of the Persians and Parthians to emphasize the supremacy of their royalties” (Thomas, drawing on Moffatt, 2.391). Patrick Skehan computes the dual name to add up to 777 when placed into Aramaic (“King of Kings, Lord of Lords (Apoc. 19:16),” CBQ, 10 [1948], 398), an interesting yet speculative possibility
25. Taking καί exegetically, a common interpretation.
26. Charles lists several instances of names and inscriptions on the thighs of statues (2.137). Bruce (661) refers to a conjecture that (assuming a Semitic original) regel (leg) has replaced an original degel (banner).
27. Barclay, 2.184. In the same vein Sweet calls it a “ghastly parody of the marriage supper of the Lamb” (285), and Roloff judges it to be an “exceedingly crass image” (220).
1. Beasley-Murray correctly observes that “all men” here indicates “all kinds of men” (283).
2. The armies of the kings of the earth are in fact the armies of the beast. A pc sa have αὐτοῦ for αὐτῶν after στρατεύματος.
3. Schick holds that there is no trace of combat because the battle was fought at the death of Jesus and decided in victory through his resurrection (2.84). While it is true that the crucial victory took place at the time of Christ, Armageddon is still an eschatological battle that draws human history to a close.
4. Gk. πιάζω rather regularly means “to lay hold of with hostile intent”; cf. John 7:30, 32; Acts 12:4; Ecclus. 23:21.
5. Cf. 2 Esdr 7:36; 1 Enoch 27:2; 48:9; 90:26–27; 103:8; As. Mos. 10:10; 2 Bar. 59:10.
6. The NT distinguishes sharply between ᾅδης (the temporary abode of the ungodly in the period between death and resurrection) and γέεννα (the place of eternal punishment following the last judgment). See Jeremias, “γέεννα,” TDNT, 1.657–58.
1. Because elsewhere in Revelation there is no indication of an intermediate reign, Schnackenburg thinks that 20:1–6 may be an interpretive doublet of 19:11–21 (God’s Rule and Kingdom, 339–47).
2. Gk. ἄβυσσος was originally an adjective meaning “bottomless” or “unfathomed.” Franzmann refers to the Abyss as “that dark abode of impotence” (130).
3. In 1 Enoch 88:1 a fallen angel is bound hand and foot and cast into an Abyss that is “narrow and deep, and horrible and dark.”
4. Probably to bind the hands: ἅλυσις in Mark 5:4 is coupled with πέδη, “fetter” (cognate with πούς, ποδός, foot), and in Acts 12:7 the ἁλύσεις fall off Peter’s hands. Perhaps some sort of handcuffs is intended.
5. Gk. καὶ εἶδον; 32 times in Revelation. Bratcher and Hatton note, “As with the first sentence of many of the chapters in Revelation, the writer indicates that the events that he is seeing in the present chapter follow immediately after events in the previous chapter” (285).
6. Gk. κρατέω (from κράτος, “strength,” “power”) has the basic idea of exercise of power. In Matt 26:50 it means “to take into custody.” ἐκράτησεν is translated “overcame” in the NJB.
7. Representative of this position is the very readable commentary by Hendriksen; see 226.
8. Walvoord is perhaps the best exponent of this position; see 291.
9. Krodel says the point where he disagrees most with modern interpretation is on the subject of John’s millennium. For John the millennium is first of all the devil’s millennium, “between his temporary residence beneath the deep blue sea … and his permanent abode in the frying pan.” Second, it is the saints’ “reward and precedence over against ‘the rest of the dead.’ ” And third, “it is the beginning of their eternal reign with Christ.” He concludes, “In short, the millennial reign depicts in the form of a vision what is stated in the tradition: ‘the dead in Christ will rise first’ ” (70).
10. Ostella argues that discontinuance of deception in Rev 20:3 is a critically decisive exegetical point and “ultimately demands the conclusion that the millennium involves an extension of redemptive history subsequent to the parousia” (“The Significance of Deception in Revelation 20:3,” WTJ, 37 [1974–75], 236–38).
11. Summers maintains the number does not represent a period of time at all but should be understood as a way of saying that the devil will be completely restrained (204). Harrington notes that the thousand years “has no chronological value but serves to symbolize the blessedness of the victors and the helplessness of Satan in their regard (199). According to Love, Satan is bound whenever believers surrender their lives to Christ, and the end of the thousand years is the sphere outside the utterly surrendered life (116). Robbins has the novel idea that during the thousand-year period Satan is bound in regard to the redeemed but loosed in regard to the unredeemed. He concludes that “the binding and the loosing describe two events that occur contemporaneously” (224). For Franzmann the thousand years represents a period of time when Satan “lost the aura of invincibility that was his before the Messianic child was born” (130). In spite of these varying opinions Thomas is sure that “the only exegetically sound answer to the issue is to understand the thousand years literally” (2.409), an incredible way to treat numbers in apocalyptic!
12. So Moffatt, who holds that the reference to nations in 20:3 is probably to those outlying nations on the fringe of the empire who had not shared in the campaign of the Antichrist, 471.
1. Bratcher and Hatton comment that often in the Bible “judgment” means “rule” and “as the end of the verse makes clear, they were given the right to rule with Christ for a thousand years” (287). While BAGD shows no such meaning for κρίμα (450–51), the underlying OT term (mishpāṯ) carries the double sense “to rule” and “to judge.” “God’s mišpāṭ is part of his rule” (TDNT abr., 469, 471). After discussing judgment scenes in the Bible and extrabiblical literature T. F. Glasson arrives at a highly symbolic understanding of the “last judgment” as a pictorial representation of transcendent reality (“The Last Judgment—in Rev 20 and Related Writings,” NTS, 28 [1982], 528–39).
2. The Aramaic text reads 
(LXX, ἁγίοις), which could mean “to the saints” (cf. 
in Dan 7:14 and 
in Dan 7:27, where ל indicates the indirect object rather than signifying “on behalf of”).
3. Charles holds that the one way to “restore sanity to the text” is to connect the opening words, “and I saw,” with “souls of them that had been beheaded” and move the intervening words to a position after “upon their hand” (2.182–83). (supply καὶ εἶδον before θρόνους). His view is that John died after finishing 1:1–20:3 and the remainder of the book was put together from documents he left by a faithful but unintelligent disciple (2.147). Gaechter studies the thesis with care and concludes that the editor did not grasp the original sequence because John gave him no written documents and he had to rely wholly upon his memory (“The Original Sequence of Apocalypse 20–22,” TS, 10 [1949], 485–521).
4. Taking τὴν μαρτυρίαν Ἰησοῦ as a subjective genitive (as in 1:2, 9; 12:17; 19:10).
5. “The main point is that the souls under the altar (6:9–11) at last have their reward” (Sweet, 288).
6. The verb πελεκίζω occurs only here in the NT. It is derived from πέλεκυς, a double-edged ax, which was the instrument of execution in republican Rome (Diodorus Siculus xix.101; Josephus, Ant. 14.7.4).
7. Barclay, 2.192. Swete calls the second group confessors and those who remained faithful in persecution (262).
8. Gk. ὅστις often introduces a relative clause that emphasizes a characteristic quality of its antecedent; cf. Matt 7:15, προσέθετε ἀπὸ τῶν φευδοπροφητῶν οἵτινες ἒρθονται πρὸς ὑμᾶς ἐν ἐνδύμασι προβάτων; Rom 1:25; Acts 10:47. In this case καί would serve as an explicative (“namely”); cf. Matt 8:33; 1 Cor 15:38.
9. Jeske concludes, “So the millennium is not for everyone, not even for every Christian. It is a special time for Christ and his martyrs” (114).
10. Note that ἀνίστημι (used quite regularly in the Gospels for bodily resurrection; Matt 20:19; Mark 12:25; Luke 12:46; etc.) can also mean “to erect, cause to be born, stand up, appear, get ready” (BAGD, 70). ἐγείρω may mean “to wake, lift up, restore, bring into being, appear” as well as “to raise from the dead” (BAGD, 214–15). ἀναζάω is found only twice in the NT (and not at all in the postapostolic fathers or the Apologists): in Luke 15:24 of the return of the prodigal son, and in Rom 7:9 of sin springing to life at the coming of the commandment. ζάω, on the other hand, is found more than 140 times in the NT scattered through a wide range of contexts, each of which determines its specific meaning in that instance.
11. Alford, 4.732. Krodel writes that “coming to life can only refer to their ‘bodily’ resurrection from the dead, not to some spiritual immortal life of souls” (335)
12. The attempt to attribute to Paul a belief in the millennium on the basis of 1 Cor 15:20–28 is unconvincing. See Beckwith (98–100) for an excellent treatment of this claim. He concludes that although millenniums may be conceived to intervene between steps in the progress of the kingdom toward completion, in Paul’s view what lies ahead is simply the absolute triumph of the kingdom and the inheritance that awaits the Christian.
13. See Beckwith, 735. Ford says that “in earlier writings Israel contemplated a new historical and national era, but eventually developed a more transcendental hope which included the concept of new heavens and a new earth … It was, perhaps, in order to harmonize these divergent views that the belief in an interim messianic period arose” (352). See the excellent treatment of this development in Roloff’s excursus, “The Thousand-Year Kingdom” (223–26). See also Talbert’s discussion of the attempt to synthesize two very different eschatologies in ancient Judaism (93–94).
14. Charles, 2.142. But Krodel notes that “Charles, like many before and after him, failed to see that John’s millennium is not a preliminary messianic interim but the beginning of the eternal kingdom of God and of his Messiah” (327). His hypothesis is that “John was aware of messianic interim kingdom speculations and that he modified them by undercutting them in his millennium vision” (332). Krodel’s view is that the millennium is not a preliminary kingdom to be followed by an eternal kingdom but is “the beginning of the consummated kingdom of God and his Messiah” (330). It is “nothing other than the special resurrection of Christians that precedes the general resurrection of the dead” (336).
15. For a summary of rabbinic views on the duration of the messianic age see Str-B, 3.823–27.
16. See Beasley-Murray (288–89) for further references illustrating the wide variation of belief concerning the ultimate future that existed in contemporary Jewish and Christian literature; also Ford, 352–54.
17. Justin, Dial. 80.
18. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5.32.
19. See Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. 5.33.3; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.39. The quotation is given in Barclay, 2.189 as well. It is paralleled in 2 Bar. 29:5–8 and in the rabbinical tradition.
20. Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.38.
21. Hist. Eccl. 7.24.
22. Origen, De Princ. 2.11.2–3.
23. Augustine, De Civ. Dei 20:7ff.
24. Lilje notes that “the modern rejection of chiliasm is usually based on dogmatic considerations, not on biblical exegesis” (252).
25. Beckwith, 738. For a convenient summary of the two millennial interpretations (literal and allegorical), see Erdman, 154–62.
26. While acknowledging that the question of why Satan will be released remains unanswered, Roloff stresses that the central concern of the scene is to show that “the entire world in all its regions [will be] free of resistance to God” (228).
27. V. S. Poythress discusses four levels at which Rev 20:1–6 may be read and concludes that the most sensible interpretation is that the passage refers to a heavenly vindication of martyrs (“Genre and Hermeneutics in Rev 20:1–6,” JETS, 36 [1993], 41–54).
28. Beckwith, 736–38; for the underlying argument see the earlier section entitled “Permanent and Transitory Elements in the Apocalypse Distinguished,” 291–310.
29. Beckwith states his confident belief in the final realization of the divine ideal revealed, but he does not look for anything like a literal fulfillment of the predictions shaped by the conditions of a transient period of history (301).
30. Only if the martyrs of the first resurrection are taken as symbolic of the church universal would the second resurrection be limited to the ungodly.
31. It is omitted by א 2030 2053 2962 2377 MajTK syph; Vic Bea.
32. Ford suggests that it is probably best to understand “first resurrection” in the sense of “the first group to enjoy resurrection” (350). Meredith Kline argues from the use of πρῶτος that the first resurrection is the death of the Christian (“The First Resurrection,” WTJ, 37 [1974–75], 366–75). Norman Shepherd takes the first resurrection as the resurrection of Christ (“The Resurrections of Revelation 20,” WTJ, 37 [1974–75], 34–43); see also Philip Hughes (“the true bodily resurrection of the incarnate Son”; 213–14). James Hughes claims that there is no mention in Rev 20:4–6 of a bodily resurrection, let alone two bodily resurrections (“Revelation 20:4–6 and the Question of the Millennium,” WTJ, 35 [1972–73], 281–302).
33. Farrer, 206.
34. One Latin word for priest is pontifex, “bridge builder.” The role of the priest is to establish a bridge between God and humankind.
1. See also Daniel 11; Zechariah 14; Isaiah 66:15–23; 2 Esdr 13:5ff.
2. Glasson, 112.
3. Gk. τελέω. Note that the Byzantine text reads μετά for ὅταν τελεσθῇ, which tends to present the θίλια ἒτη as a more definite period of time.
4. MSS that add καί before συναγαγεῖν (א 051 MajTA sy) understand a parallel syntax.
5. Meshech and Tubal are not the original forms of Moscow and Tobolsk! (They are the Hebrew names of the East Anatolian groups known to classical historians as the Moschi and the Tibareni.)
6. “By John’s time, Jewish tradition had long since transformed ‘Gog of Magog’ into ‘Gog and Magog’ and made them into the ultimate enemies of God’s people to be destroyed in the eschatological battle” (Boring, 209).
8. Josephus identifies Magog with the Scythians (Ant. 1.6.1).
9. Caird, 257.
10. Morris says that the expression signifies people who have willingly placed themselves under the dominion of God (233). Bruce maintains that the “city [God] loves” is not a walled city but “a community of the true Israel” (662).
11. The UBS text lists five variant readings for ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ involving changes in the preposition and/or addition of (or change to) θεοῦ. The reading of A 2053com vgms copbo mss eth Augustine2/3 Primasius is chosen and labeled “A” (certain).
12. Harrington finds it difficult to take this passage as anything other than “a symbol of annihilation” (198)—“the absolute end of anything, or anyone, not fit to be present in the New Jerusalem” (205). While it may be difficult, it is nevertheless crucial that we take the text as it is rather than as what we might like it to be. To impose contemporary sensitivities on an ancient text does not produce good history.
13. Ladd, 270–71.
1. Gk. λευκός may mean “bright, gleaming” (see Matt 17:2). 1 Enoch 18:8 says that a certain mountain “reached to heaven like the throne of God, of alabaster” (a fine-textured stone, white and translucent).
2. 2 Esdras expresses the traditional view of Judaism that God alone will bring about the consummation (6:1–10; 7:33ff.).
3. Beasley-Murray asserts that the language here (and in 6:1ff.—which is parallel if one subscribes to a view of recapitulation) does not imply the destruction of the physical universe but belongs to the traditional language of cosmic signs, and is here employed to identify the parousia and expose the terror of messianic judgments (300–301).
4. Hough notes that literature treats fully the motif of character becoming destiny and cites Dante’s Divine Comedy in which “men are seen permanently fastened to the central meaning which they have given to their lives” (IB, 4.525).
5. In Dan 7:10 the judgment of the court apparently rests upon the evidence of books that were opened. 1 Enoch 90:20; 2 Bar. 24:1; and 2 Esdr 6:20 all speak of books in which the deeds of people are recorded for judgment.
6. Krodel writes that John did not “relieve the tension between personal accountability and divine election but depicted it by juxtaposing two kinds of books … Divine election and human responsibility may not be balanced on the same ledger” (340).
7. Farrer, 210.
8. For other references in apocalyptic literature to the “giving up of the dead” see Bauckham, Climax of Prophecy, 56–61.
9. 1 Enoch 61:5 speaks of the elect “who have been devoured by the fish of the sea.”
10. Charles holds that an original τὰ ταμεῖα was deliberately changed into ἡ θάλασσα in order to introduce the idea of a physical resurrection. The earlier text taught a resurrection of persons, not dead bodies (2.196). Kiddle calls this emendation “both arbitrary and illogical” (407).
12. Beasley-Murray argues that the lake of fire does not signify annihilation, but “torturous existence in the society of evil in opposition to life in the society of God” (304). Although this statement would seem to indicate a concurrence with the conviction of some exegetes (such as Rissi, Time and History, 123ff., and The Future of the World, 36ff., 67ff.) that John anticipated that those who had rejected the role of God would ultimately make it into the New Jerusalem, he adds, “Candour compels us to state that John has given no clear indication of any such teaching” (304).
14. Bratcher and Hatton define the second death as “the final, eternal death of the wicked, as opposed to the temporal death of all living beings” (295).
15. Alford writes, “As there is a second and higher life, so there is also a second and deeper death. And as after that life there is no more death (ch. 21:4), so after that death there is no more life” (735–36).
1. Ladd, 275; cf. Glasson, 115.
2. Mention should be made of Charles’s rather extensive rearrangement of the text of chapters 20–22. In a section entitled “XX.4-XXII. The Text Incoherent and Self-Contradictory as it Stands” (2.144–54), Charles conjectures that John died when he had completed his text up through 20:3. The remaining materials were for the most part ready in a series of independent documents that a faithful but unintelligent disciple placed in the order he thought to be correct. In reality the material contains two distinct and separate visions of two different heavenly cities. The first is the millennial capital of the Messiah’s kingdom (21:9–22:2, 14–15, 17), which should have followed immediately after 20:3. The second (21:1–4c; 22:3–5) is an eternal city. Few commentators have followed Charles’s reconstruction. Sweet writes, “It is better if possible to listen to what the text is saying than to rearrange it according to our canons of consistency” (297). Preston and Hanson, however, hold that “some such theory becomes almost essential” (129). They argue that the millennial city is a picture of the church militant as she should be, and the eternal city is a picture of the church as she will be when time and space are no more (129–33).
1. Scholars often discuss whether the new order of things is to be a renovation of the old or a distinctly new creation. Neither the language employed nor rabbinic commentary on relevant passages such as Isa 65:17ff. will supply a definite answer. Beasley-Murray writes, “We cannot be sure how he viewed the new heaven and new earth, but the context of this statement suggests that his real concern is not with physical geography, but to describe a context of life for God’s people which accords with the great and glorious purpose God has in mind for them” (308).
2. Swete notes that here καινός, as the opposite of παλαιός, “suggests fresh life rising from the decay and wreck of the old world” (275). This is the παλιγγενεσία, the new world, of which Jesus speaks in Matt 19:28.
3. Egyptians apparently regarded the sea, not as a part of nature, but as alien and hostile (see Plutarch, De Isid. 7–8, 32).
4. Swete, 275.
5. In the Sibylline Oracles (5:158–59) a great star falls from heaven and burns up the deep sea. Elsewhere in apocalyptic literature the waters dry up at the judgment (T. Levi 4:1; cf. Sib. Or. 5:447).
6. Boring is insistent that though John had visionary experiences, his portrayal of the new Jerusalem is not a description of what he “actually saw” but “is his literary composition as the means of expressing, in symbolic terms, the meaning of his revelation of the nature of God’s goal for this world” (215). It has been the position of this commentary that in each of the 32 instances of καὶ εἶδον in Revelation John does in fact report what he “actually saw.”
7. Roloff writes that prophetic faith spoke of a fundamental eschatological renewal of Jerusalem and that “beyond that, apocalyptic developed the idea … according to which the new Jerusalem was preexistent in heaven in order to come from there to earth at the end time” (235).
8. Cf. 2 Bar. 4:2–6; 2 Esdr 13:36; 1 Enoch 90:28–29.
9. For example, Walvoord, 313. Ladd makes it the dwelling place of departed saints between death and resurrection, which in the consummation descends from heaven to settle permanently in the new earth (276).
10. For example, Lilje (259), who takes it as the church universal, the biblical counterpart of the political unity of the Roman Empire.
11. Kiddle writes that the heart of the symbol is a community of men: “It is a city which is a family. The ideal of perfect community, unrealizable on earth because of the curse of sin which vitiated the first creation, is now embodied in the redeemed from all nations” (415–16). Hunter says that “the consummation of the Christian hope is supremely social. It is no ‘flight of the alone to the Alone’ but life in the redeemed community of heaven” (Probing the New Testament, 156).
12. Note: it is ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ and ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ.
13. Or, as Bratcher and Hatton suggest, “the man she is going to marry” (297).
14. “Revelation as a whole may be characterized as A Tale of Two Cities, with the sub-title, The Harlot and the Bride” (Beasley-Murray, 315).
15. A number of MSS (051s MajT gig sy co; Ambr Prim) read οὐρανοῦ, an assimilation to ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ of v. 2.
16. Although they belong to unrelated linguistic families, the consonants are the same, and σκηνή often translates the Hebrew 
in the LXX.
17. Metzger confesses that it is extremely difficult to decide between λαοί and λαός. Chiefly on the basis of slightly superior manuscript evidence (א A 046 2030 2050 2053 2062txt 2329 MajTA a; Irlat), the committee preferred λαοί (Textual Commentary, 688).
18. The NIV follows those MSS that add θεὸς αὐτῶν (051s [1854] MajTA) or αὐτῶν θεός (A 2030 2050 2053[txt 2062] 2329 al vg; Irlat) and translates, “and be their God.” The UBS text follows A (αὐτῶν θεός) but encloses the words within square brackets and indicates that the Committee had difficulty deciding which variant to place in the text. Farrer prefers, “And God-with-Them himself shall be their God,” which he understands as an allusion to the name Emmanuel (212; cf. Bratcher and Hatton, 298).
19. Walvoord, 315.
20. For the contemporary view of Jewish apocalypticism about the coming destruction of death see 2 Enoch 65:10; 2 Esdr 8:53; 2 Bar. 21:23.
21. Gk. τὰ πρῶτα. Metzger calls attention to the absurd reading of the original version of Sinaiticus (τὰ πρόβατα) as “an example of what nonsense scribes can produce” (Textual Commentary, 689, n. 1). The final clause of v. 4 is made causal by the MSS that read ὅτι before τὰ πρῶτα. The evidence for omission is strong (A 051 1006 1611 1841 2030 2053 2062 2329 2377 MajTA), but both NA27and the UBS4 text include it.
22. Cf. Isa 42:9; 2 Cor 5:17 for changes that prefigure this final and glorious transformation.
23. God had spoken in 1:8 and probably in 16:1, 17 as well. Farrer holds that 21:5 is not an utterance by God that John actually heard, but a report of what God had formerly said (212–13).
24. Boring observes that “God does not make ‘all new things,’ but ‘all things new’ ” and reasons that “the advent of the heavenly city does not abolish all human efforts to build a decent earthly civilization but fulfills them” (220).
25. Gk. ὅτι does not introduce the following clause (as direct discourse) but supplies the reason why John is to write as directed.
26. Hence the perfect, γέγοναν: “they have come to pass.”
27. Caird writes that before John “attempts to summon up the full resources of language to depict what is beyond language and thought, he leaves us with the first indelible impression that heaven is belonging to the family of God” (267).
28. Roloff notes that it is striking that the list does not begin with the traditional vices of paganism but mentions first cowardice and faithlessness. He reasons that “aim is taken at the conduct of those Christians who become weak in the midst of persecution and hardship and retract obedience to their Lord” (238). The “cowardly” are those who “fear the threats of the beast more than they trust the love of Christ” (Beasley-Murray, 314). Krodel notes that the cowardly are not those who fear persecution but those “who choose personal well-being over faithfulness to the testimony of Jesus” (351).
29. Bratcher and Hatton, 301.
30. “To swerve into disloyalty through cowardice or lack of trust was … to align oneself for ever with the enemies of God” (Kiddle, 422).
32. In earlier writers πόρνος designated a male prostitute (BAGD cites Aristophanes and Xenophon, both fourth century B.C.; 693), but the word had developed a more general meaning by NT times.
33. Sweet writes that “pseudes means more than ‘liar’: one who has no standing in the truth, and hates it” (300).
1. Gk. δεῦρο is an adverb commonly used as an imperative (cf. Matt 19:21; John 11:43; Acts 7:3).
2. See Gundry’s article, “The New Jerusalem: People as Place, not Place for People,” NovT, 29 (1987), 254–64.
3. The only difference in the first twenty words is the insertion of an explanatory clause in 21:9 (τῶν γεμόντων … ἐσθάτων). The antecedent of γεμόντων is probably φιάλας (1 1006 1611 1841 1854 2030 2377 MajTK latt sy read γεμούσας) rather than ἀγγέλων, although this appears to be a grammatical error. According to Beckwith, the error results from the prominence of τῶν ἑπτὰ … ἐθόντων (756).
4. For a convenient presentation of the parallels and contrasts between Babylon (17:1–19:10) and the City of God (19:11–21:8) see Krodel, 352–54.
5. So Barclay, 2.208.
6. See the critical apparatus in Nestle for variations in the dual designation.
7. For that matter, γυνή may refer to any adult female (Matt 9:20; 1 Tim 2:11), and in some contexts it may mean bride (Gen 29:21, LXX; Matt 1:20).
8. Swete, 284.
9. Bratcher and Hatton state that “holy” both here and in v. 2 has the basic meaning of “belonging to God” (303).
10. Gk. φωστήρ properly means “a light-giving body,” but it may also indicate “splendor or radiance.” In the NT it is found elsewhere only in Phil 2:15.
11. BAGD ask if perhaps the older meaning of κρύσταλλος, “ice,” is not to be preferred. A precious stone would shimmer like a sheet of ice (454).
12. Gk. πυλών properly denotes a gateway and should be distinguished from the actual gate (ἡ πυλή) (Jeremias in TDNT, 6.921). Since names cannot be inscribed upon an opening, the designation here refers either to the gate itself or the tower that rises above the city wall over the gateway. City gates in antiquity were places of “communication, deliberation, and administration” (Roloff, 242).
13. For the wall as a metaphor of security see Isa 26:1; Zech 2:5.
14. Levi is assigned a gate, and Ephraim and Manasseh are combined in Joseph.
15. In the directions for encampment the order is east, south, west, north (Num 2). John’s order follows that of the measuring of the temple area in Ezek 42:16–20.
16. Caird, 272. A pc vgms sa change the order of νότου and δυσμῶν, which would reverse the entire direction of the zodiac (E N W S).
17. In 1 Cor 15:5 the resurrected Jesus appeared to “the Twelve” although Judas had already committed suicide. Numerically there were only eleven disciples at that time. Cf. John 20:24.
18. Cf. the golden crowns of 4:4, the golden incense bowls of 5:8, the golden altar of 9:13, etc.
19. It is not immediately apparent why 051s 1854 2377 MajTk omit καὶ τὸ τεῖθος αὐτῆς, especially since the wall is in fact measured in v. 17.
20. Like Babylon (Herodotus 1.178), Nineveh (Diodorus Siculus 1.3), Nicea (Strabo 12.4.7), and other ancient cities; note that 2329 vgmss omit ὕψος.
21. Cf. BAGD, τετράγωνος, 813.
22. William Hoste, The Visions of John the Divine, 178; Lilje, 267.
23. A στάδιον is about 607 English feet; thus the city would be about 1,400 miles in each direction.
24. TCNT translates “as men measure, that is, as the angel measured.”
25. Farrer notes that a cube has twelve edges, so that when the city is measured 12,000 furlongs along each edge, the sum would be 144,000, the sacred number of God’s Israel (217).
26. Cf. Charles, 2.164; Swete, 289.
27. Beckwith, 760.
28. M. Topham emends “stades” to “cubits” and takes 12,000 as the total perimeter of the city, which then turns out to be about 3½ miles (“The Dimensions of the New Jerusalem,” ExpTim, 100 [1989], 417–19).
29. Gk. ἐνδώμησις means “interior structure” or “substructure” (EDNT, 1.452).
30. Josephus, Bell. 5.5.6.
31. Walvoord writes that “the constant mention of transparency indicates that the city is designed to transmit the glory of God in the form of light without hindrance” (325).
32. John’s list omits four included in the LXX (Exod 28:17–20)—ἄνθραξ, λιγύριον, ἀθάτης, and ὀνύθιον—and includes four additional stones—θαλκηδών, σαρδόνυξ, θρυσόπρασος, and ὑάκινθος. Part of this difference may be accounted for by the uncertainties of translation. The order in the two lists is totally distinct.
33. In an extended discussion Charles suggests that when the stones are placed around a square in the order given in 21:13 (E N S W) and compared with the twelve signs of the zodiac, it will be seen that the order will be the exact reverse of the actual path of the sun through the signs (2.165–69). He concludes that the author was familiar with current astrological thought, and that by reversing the order he intended to stress that the holy city has nothing to do with ethnic speculations regarding the city of the gods (2.168). In essential agreement with Charles, Roloff writes that it is “hardly accidental” that “the sequence of the jewels named in vv. 19–20 appears to correspond in reverse order to the signs of the zodiac” (244). In the first edition of his commentary Morris followed Charles’s suggestion that by reversing the order John “expresses the thought that in the end God reverses human judgments” (252). But in the second edition he follows Glasson’s lead in concluding that Charles’s view is untenable and concludes, “we should probably say no more than that the stones point to the high priest’s breastplate” (245).
The identification of the stones with the signs of the zodiac on Egyptian and Arabian monuments is furnished by Kircher, Oedipus Aegyptiacus 2.2.177ff. Both Philo and Josephus interpret the stones on the high priest’s breastplate in this way (Vit. Mos. 2.124; Ant. 3.7.7). W. W. Reader says that the stones have theophanic, ecclesiological, protological, and eschatological significance (“The Twelve Jews of Revelation 21:19–20: Tradition History and Modern Interpretations,” JBL, 100 [1981], 433–57). But Glasson notes that he has been in touch with several Egyptologists and no one is aware of any zodiac/jewel scheme such as Kircher set forth (“The Order of Jewels in Revelation XXI.19–20: A Theory Eliminated,” JTS, n.s. 26 [1975], 95–100). His own position is that if Revelation was written in exile, then the gems and their order would have been based on the Seer’s memory (100).
34. From ἀ-μεθύω. For further material on all these stones see Marshall’s article in NBD, 631–34; see also Una Jart, “The Precious Stones in the Revelation of St. John xxi.18–21,” ST, 24 (1970), 150–81.
35. Baba Batra 75a; Sanh. 100a.
36. Gk. πλατεῖα is an adjective and understands ὁδός. It probably refers to the one broad street characteristic of Oriental cities. Since the entire city was pure gold (21:18), all the streets would be of gold. There is no necessity of taking the singular, πλατεῖα, as generic.
37. This title is used liturgically in 4:8 by the living creatures, in 11:17 by the twenty-four elders, in 15:3 by the martyrs, in 16:7 by the altar, and in 19:6 by the great multitude.
38. See Beckwith, 769; also 51ff.
39. Lenski calls them the glorified saints mentioned in 5:9 and 7:9 (644), and Kiddle says that they are the redeemed who belong spiritually but not racially to the twelve tribes (439). Walvoord finds here references to a body of saved Gentiles distinct from the church (327). Note that the NKJ (following TR) has without any substantial support (variants are not even suggested in Kilpatrick, NA27, or UBS4) added “of them which are saved” after “nations.”
40. After gathering together a sizeable list of prophetic promises that all nations shall come to God, Barclay concludes that John was “foretelling the consummation of a hope which was always in the hearts of the greatest of his countrymen” (2.216–19). Caird agrees. He writes, “Nowhere in the New Testament do we find a more eloquent statement than this of the all-embracing scope of Christ’s redemptive work” (280).
Rist holds that in Jewish messianism and apocalypticism it was often held that in time Gentiles would convert to Judaism. There existed, however, an opposing concept more characteristic of apocalyptic literature, that the wicked would be punished forever. Rist accounts for this “glaring inconsistency” by conjecturing that John, in using Isa 60:3, 11, “failed to modify them to suit his own severe and unrelenting views concerning the fate of the nations” (539–40).
41. See Beckwith, 769–70.
42. For the Lamb’s book of life, see comm. at 13:8. Note also Exod 32:32–33; Ps 69:28; Dan 12:1; Phil 4:3.
1. Cf. Zech 14:8 for somewhat the same idea; also Joel 3:18, where a fountain in the house of the Lord is to water the valley of Shittim.
2. Swete, 298.
3. Ladd, 286.
4. Barclay, 2.221.
5. NIV, NRSV, NEB (“down the middle of the city’s street”). The TR separates vv. 1 and 2, with a full stop after Ἀρνίου.
6. Cf. Caird, 280; Walvoord, 329–30; Lenski, 650; Beasley-Murray mentions (without necessarily approving) a tree in the middle of the street situated at a point where the river diverged into two branches (331). It is possible to take ξύλον as a collective term and read “the trees of life,” in which case the apparent problem disappears (cf. Beckwith, 765; Metzger, 102)
7. Most commentators mention that apocalyptic thought tends to unite the end of history with its beginning. Rist observes that we are not surprised to find predictions of a reconstituted Garden of Eden in apocalyptic speculation: “Apocalypticism in positing a new age frequently taught that it would reproduce the newly created beginnings of the first” (541).
8. Hughes comments, “This is the height and summation of all blessedness, not only to be in God’s presence but actually to see his face” (233).
9. Some have suggested as a background for the metaphor Exod 28:36–38, which says that Aaron wore upon his forehead a golden plate inscribed with the phrase “HOLY TO THE LORD.” In this case the thrust of the metaphor would be “entire consecration to the service of God” (Swete, 301).
10. Charles, 2.211.
1. Kiddle, 447.
2. Schick writes that “the main concern of the epilogue is to testify to the absolute trustworthiness of the revelation contained in the book” (2.115). Roloff insists that the epilogue is “by no means an inconsequential appendage” and lists four important functions it serves (249).
3. See Beckwith, 771–72, for a further development of this point of view; see also Krodel, 368–69.
4. Swete, 303.
5. Bratcher and Hatton note that the phrase in question is related to 19:10 and means that “Christian prophets are inspired, or controlled, by the Holy Spirit as they proclaim their messages” (316–17).
6. Gk. καί requires some continuity with what precedes, in this case an angelic announcement. Perhaps the words of Christ come through the mouth of the angel. The RSV connects v. 7a with v. 6 and then opens a new paragraph.
7. Gk. ταθύ used as an adverb may mean “quickly” in the sense of “at a rapid rate,” although this usage does not fit the context of the five occurrences of ἒρθομαι ταθύ in Revelation (2:16; 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20). Cf. BAGD, 807.
8. Sweet writes that “John’s falling to worship the angel expresses his overwhelming conviction of the divine authority of his message, and the angel’s rebuke emphasizes the personal insignificance of any vehicle of revelation” (315). Cf. the response of Cornelius to Peter, the messenger of God in Acts 10:25–26.
9. MajTA; Prim omit καί after προφητῶν, which further identifies the prophets as those who obey the revelation. 2020 a vgcl; (Tyc) add προφητείας after λόγους.
10. Charles cites a number of passages in support of this (2.224–25).
11. Cf. also Justin, Apol. 1:6.
12. Cf. 1 Enoch 1:2, in which the knowledge revealed by God was not for his generation but “for a remote one which is to come”; also 2 Enoch 33:9–11.
13. Schick makes the interesting observation that while the historian finds in the past clues that help him understand the present, “the prophet explains the present with the aid of the future by taking into account the final goal of the historical process” (2.117).
14. “In the Christian doctrine of the Last Things, however, the imminence of the end is moral rather than chronological” (Bruce, 665).
15. Walvoord, 334.
16. Ladd, 291–92.
17. Gk. ῥυπαρός literally means “filthy,” but it is used here in the sense of morally defiled.
18. Hendriksen refers to the “let of withdrawal” rather than the “let of positive exhortation” (251–52), but this nomenclature could hardly be applied to the two final clauses, which use the same imperative with reference to those who do right and those who are holy.
19. Erdman writes that “the deliberate choice of each man has fixed his unalterable fate” (178).
20. Cf. also Prov 24:12; Isa 59:18; 2 Cor 11:15; 2 Tim 4:14; Rev 2:23; 18:6; 20:13.
21. Charles notes that the last of the three phrases is an abbreviated form of an ancient Orphic saying first recorded in Plato (Leg. 4.7) and well known in the first-century Palestinian world (2.220).
22. Gk. ἒπλυναν, 7:14; πλύνοντες, 22:14. MajT gig sy bo; (Tert) read ποιοῦντες τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ, an understandable variant but undoubtedly a scribal emendation (Metzger, Textual Commentary, 690). The author uses τηρεῖν with ἐντολή in its two occurrences, 12:17; 14:12.
23. Caird writes that “those who wash their robes” are “those who face martyrdom in the confidence that the Cross is the sign of God’s victory over evil without and evil within” (285).
24. Cf. the kinds of people who will not inherit the kingdom of God according to 1 Cor 6:9–10, and the shorter, more general list in Rev 21:27 of those to be excluded.
25. Moffatt supplies an imperative and translates, “Begone, you dogs …” (Kiddle, 453).
26. Charles says that according to an inscription in the temple of Astarte at Larnaka “dog” was the technical term for a 
or male prostitute (2.178).
27. In 1:1 the revelation is διὰ τοῦ ἀγγέλου αὐτοῦ, and in 22:16 Jesus calls the angel τὸν ἀγγελόν μου.
28. D. E. Aune writes that the ὑμεῖς of 22:16 probably refers to the prophets of 22:9 (“The Prophetic Circle of John of Patmos and the Exegesis of Revelation 22:16,” JSNT, 37 [1989], 103–16).
29. “Root” is here used in the sense of that which comes from the root—a shoot (Bratcher and Hatton, 322).
30. For an astral interpretation of Jesus as the brilliant morning star see Malina, On the Genre and Message of Revelation: Star Visions and Sky Journeys, 249–51.
31. Bruce notes that “in the Qumran texts Num 24:17 is a recurring testimonium of the messianic warrior of the endtime” (666).
32. Kiddle, however, takes the spirit as a collective reference to the prophets, personifying the gift that distinguishes them from their fellows (456).
33. Aune notes that “John had not been unopposed in the past (Rev. 2:14–15, 29–30), and it is presumably for the purpose of overcoming any reluctance to accept and act on his message that he so carefully articulates the divine authority which stands behind his message” (Prophecy in Early Christianity, 208).
34. Letter of Aristeas, 310–11. Cf. 1 Enoch 104:10; Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 5.20.2.
36. Charles takes vv. 18b–19 as a later interpolation on the basis that (1) the passage presupposes a considerable lapse of time before the second advent, (2) the style is not John’s, and (3) the penalty is temporal rather than eternal (2.222–23). None of these arguments is convincing. The message could easily have been altered (in theory) by the first person to hear the book.
37. See Ladd, 295–96; Walvoord, 338.
38. Only in Matt 28:8 does ταθύ mean “quickly” in the sense of “at a rapid rate” (and even there it may indicate that the departure was immediate rather than calling attention to the rate). Elsewhere it means “at once” or “in a short time” (Mark 5:25; Luke 15:22; and the five Revelation passages in which it is used of the coming of Christ: 2:16; 3:11; 22:7, 12, 20).
39. Cf. Did. 10:6, μαρὰν ἀθά.
40. “Christianity is not a faith which bids us look for a gradual upward march of man till he reaches an ideal state of civilisation” (Preston and Hanson, 145).
41. It is included in א 051s MajT vgcl co but omitted in A 1006 1841 pc a gig vgst (difficult to explain if present originally, Metzger, Textual Commentary, 691).