14. The second woe--that under the sixth trumpet ([Re 9:12-21]), including also the prophecy, [Re 11:1-13]: Woe to the world, joy to the faithful, as their redemption draweth nigh.
the third woe cometh quickly--It is not mentioned in detail for the present, until first there is given a sketch of the history of the origination, suffering, and faithfulness of the Church in a time of apostasy and persecution. Instead of the third woe being detailed, the grand consummation is summarily noticed, the thanksgiving of the twenty-four elders in heaven for the establishment of Christ's kingdom on earth, attended with the destruction of the destroyers of the earth.
15. sounded--with his trumpet. Evidently "the LAST trumpet." Six is close to seven, but does not reach it. The world judgments are complete in six, but by the fulfilment of seven the world kingdoms become Christ's. Six is the number of the world given over to judgment. It is half of twelve, the Church's number, as three and a half is half of seven, the divine number for completeness. Bengel thinks the angel here to have been Gabriel, which name is compounded of El, God, and Geber, MIGHTY MAN ([Re 10:1]). Gabriel therefore appropriately announced to Mary the advent of the mighty God-man: compare the account of the man-child's birth which follows ([Re 12:1-6]), to which this forms the transition though the seventh trumpet in time is subsequent, being the consummation of the historical episode, the twelfth and thirteen chapters. The seventh trumpet, like the seventh seal and seventh vial, being the consummation, is accompanied differently from the preceding six: not the consequences which follow on earth, but those IN HEAVEN, are set before us, the great voices and thanksgiving of the twenty-four elders in heaven, as the half-hour's silence in heaven at the seventh seal, and the voice out of the temple in heaven, "It is done," at the seventh vial. This is parallel to [Da 2:44], "The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom, which shall never be destroyed: and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it shall break to pieces all these kingdoms, and it shall stand for ever." It is the setting up of Heaven's sovereignty over the earth visibly, which, when invisibly exercised, was rejected by the earthly rulers heretofore. The distinction of worldly and spiritual shall then cease. There will be no beast in opposition to the woman. Poetry, art, science, and social life will be at once worldly and Christian.
kingdoms--A, B, C, and Vulgate read the singular, "The kingdom (sovereignty) of (over) the world is our Lord's and His Christ's." There is no good authority for English Version reading. The kingdoms of the world give way to the kingdom of (over) the world exercised by Christ. The earth-kingdoms are many: His shall be one. The appellation "Christ," the Anointed, is here, where His kingdom is mentioned appropriately for the first time used in Revelation. For it is equivalent to King. Though priests and prophets also were anointed, yet this term is peculiarly applied to Him as King, insomuch that "the Lord's anointed" is His title as King, in places where He is distinguished from the priests. The glorified Son of man shall rule mankind by His transfigured Church in heaven, and by His people Israel on earth: Israel shall be the priestly mediator of blessings to the whole world, realizing them first.
he--not emphatic in the Greek.
shall reign for ever and ever--Greek, "unto the ages of the ages." Here begins the millennial reign, the consummation of "the mystery of God" ([Re 10:7]).
16. before God--B and Syriac read, "before the throne of God." But A, C, Vulgate, and Coptic read as English Version.
seats--Greek, "thrones."
17. thanks--for the answer to our prayers ([Re 6:10], ) in destroying them which destroy the earth ([Re 11:18]), thereby preparing the way for setting up the kingdom of Thyself and Thy saints.
and art to come--omitted in A, B, C, Vulgate, Syriac, Cyprian, and Andreas. The consummation having actually come, they do not address Him as they did when it was still future, "Thou that art to come." Compare [Re 11:18], "is come." From the sounding of the seventh trumpet He is to His people Jah, the ever present Lord, WHO IS, more peculiarly than Jehovah "who is, was, and is to come."
taken to thee thy great power--"to Thee" is not in the Greek. Christ takes to Him the kingdom as His own of right.
18. the nations were angry--alluding to [Psa 99:1], Septuagint, "The Lord is become King: let the peoples become angry." Their anger is combined with alarm ([Ex 15:14]; [2Ki 19:28], "thy rage against Me is come up into Mine ears, I will put My hook in thy nose," &c.). Translate, as the Greek is the same. "The nations were angered, and Thy anger is come." How petty man's impotent anger, standing here side by side with that of the omnipotent God!
dead ... be judged--proving that this seventh trumpet is at the end of all things, when the judgment on Christ's foes and the reward of His saints, long prayed for by His saints, shall take place.
the prophets--as, for instance, the two prophesying witnesses ([Re 11:3]), and those who have showed them kindness for Christ's sake. Jesus shall come to effect by His presence that which we have looked for long, but vainly, in His absence, and by other means.
destroy them which destroy the earth--Retribution in kind (compare [Re 16:6]; [Lu 19:27]). See on [Da 7:14-18].
19. A similar solemn conclusion to that of the seventh seal, [Re 8:5], and to that of the seventh vial, [Re 16:18]. Thus, it appears, the seven seals, the seven trumpets, and the seven vials, are not consecutive, but parallel, and ending in the same consummation. They present the unfolding of God's plans for bringing about the grand end under three different aspects, mutually complementing each other.
the temple--the sanctuary or Holy place (Greek, "naos"), not the whole temple (Greek, "hieron").
opened in heaven--A and C read the article, "the temple of God "which is" in heaven, was opened."
the ark of his testament--or "... His covenant." As in the first verse the earthly sanctuary was measured, so here its heavenly antitype is laid open, and the antitype above to the ark of the covenant in the Holiest Place below is seen, the pledge of God's faithfulness to His covenant in saving His people and punishing their and His enemies. Thus this forms a fit close to the series of trumpet judgments and an introduction to the episode (the twelfth and thirteen chapters) as to His faithfulness to His Church. Here first His secret place, the heavenly sanctuary, is opened for the assurance of His people; and thence proceed His judgments in their behalf ([Re 14:15], ; ; ), which the great company in heaven laud as "true and righteous." This then is parallel to the scene at the heavenly altar, at the close of the seals and opening of the trumpets ([Re 8:3]), and at the close of the episode (the twelfth through fifteenth chapters) and opening of the vials ([Re 15:7], ). See on [Re 12:1], note at the opening of the chapter.
Chapter 12
Re 12:1-17. Vision of the Woman, Her Child, and the Persecuting Dragon
1. This episode (Re 12:[1-15:8]) describes in detail the persecution of Israel and the elect Church by the beast, which had been summarily noticed, [Re 11:7-10], and the triumph of the faithful, and torment of the unfaithful. So also the sixteenth through twentieth chapters are the description in detail of the judgment on the beast, &c., summarily noticed in [Re 11:13], . The beast in [Re 12:3], &c., is shown not to be alone, but to be the instrument in the hand of a greater power of darkness, Satan. That this is so, appears from the time of the eleventh chapter being the period also in which the events of the twelfth and thirteenth chapters take place, namely, 1260 days ([Re 12:6], ; [Re 13:5]; compare [Re 11:2], ).
great--in size and significance.
wonder--Greek, "sign": significant of momentous truths.
in heaven--not merely the sky, but the heaven beyond just mentioned, [Re 11:19]; compare [Re 12:7-9].
woman clothed with the sun ... moon under her feet--the Church, Israel first, and then the Gentile Church; clothed with Christ, "the Sun of righteousness." "Fair as the moon, clear as the sun." Clothed with the Sun, the Church is the bearer of divine supernatural light in the world. So the seven churches (that is, the Church universal, the woman) are represented as light-bearing candlesticks ([Re 1:12], ). On the other hand, the moon, though standing above the sea and earth, is altogether connected with them and is an earthly light: sea, earth, and moon represent the worldly element, in opposition to the kingdom of God--heaven, the sun. The moon cannot disperse the darkness and change it into-day: thus she represents the world religion (heathenism) in relation to the supernatural world. The Church has the moon, therefore, under her feet; but the stars, as heavenly lights, on her head. The devil directs his efforts against the stars, the angels of the churches, about hereafter to shine for ever. The twelve stars, the crown around her head, are the twelve tribes of Israel [Auberlen]. The allusions to Israel before accord with this: compare [Re 11:19], "the temple of God"; "the ark of His testament." The ark lost at the Babylonian captivity, and never since found, is seen in the "temple of God opened in heaven," signifying that God now enters again into covenant with His ancient people. The woman cannot mean, literally, the virgin mother of Jesus, for she did not flee into the wilderness and stay there for 1260 days, while the dragon persecuted the remnant of her seed ([Re 12:13-17]) [De Burgh]. The sun, moon, and twelve stars, are emblematical of Jacob, Leah, or else Rachel, and the twelve patriarchs, that is, the Jewish Church: secondarily, the Church universal, having under her feet, in due subordination, the ever changing moon, which shines with a borrowed light, emblem of the Jewish dispensation, which is now in a position of inferiority, though supporting the woman, and also of the changeful things of this world, and having on her head the crown of twelve stars, the twelve apostles, who, however, are related closely to Israel's twelve tribes. The Church, in passing over into the Gentile world, is (1) persecuted; (2) then seduced, as heathenism begins to react on her. This is the key to the meaning of the symbolic woman, beast, harlot, and false prophet. Woman and beast form the same contrast as the Son of man and the beasts in Daniel. As the Son of man comes from heaven, so the woman is seen in heaven ([Re 12:1]). The two beasts arise respectively out of the sea (compare [Da 7:3]) and the earth ([Re 13:1], ): their origin is not of heaven, but of earth earthy. Daniel beholds the heavenly Bridegroom coming visibly to reign. John sees the woman, the Bride, whose calling is heavenly, in the world, before the Lord's coming again. The characteristic of woman, in contradistinction to man, is her being subject, the surrendering of herself, her being receptive. This similarly is man's relation to God, to be subject to, and receive from, God. All autonomy of the human spirit reverses man's relation to God. Woman-like receptivity towards God constitutes faith. By it the individual becomes a child of God; the children collectively are viewed as "the woman." Humanity, in so far as it belongs to God, is the woman. Christ, the Son of the woman, is in [Re 12:5] emphatically called "the MAN-child" (Greek, "huios arrheen," "male-child"). Though born of a woman, and under the law for man's sake, He is also the Son of God, and so the HUSBAND of the Church. As Son of the woman, He is "'Son of man"; as male-child, He is Son of God, and Husband of the Church. All who imagine to have life in themselves are severed from Him, the Source of life, and, standing in their own strength, sink to the level of senseless beasts. Thus, the woman designates universally the kingdom of God; the beast, the kingdom of the world. The woman of whom Jesus was born represents the Old Testament congregation of God. The woman's travail-pains ([Re 12:2]) represent the Old Testament believers' ardent longings for the promised Redeemer. Compare the joy at His birth ([Is 9:6]). As new Jerusalem (called also "the woman," or "wife," [Re 21:2], ), with its twelve gates, is the exalted and transfigured Church, so the woman with the twelve stars is the Church militant.
2. pained--Greek, "tormented" (basanizomene). De Burgh explains this of the bringing in of the first-begotten into the world AGAIN, when Israel shall at last welcome Him, and when "the man-child shall rule all nations with the rod of iron." But there is a plain contrast between the painful travailing of the woman here, and Christ's second coming to the Jewish Church, the believing remnant of Israel, "Before she travailed she brought forth ... a MAN-CHILD," that is, almost without travail-pangs, she receives (at His second advent), as if born to her, Messiah and a numerous seed.
3. appeared--"was seen."
wonder--Greek, "semeion," "sign."
red--So A and Vulgate read. But B, C, and Coptic read, "of fire." In either case, the color of the dragon implies his fiery rage as a murderer from the beginning. His representative, the beast, corresponds, having seven heads and ten horns (the number of horns on the fourth beast of [Da 7:7]; [Re 13:1]). But there, ten crowns are on the ten horns (for before the end, the fourth empire is divided into ten kingdoms); here, seven crowns (rather, "diadems," Greek, "diademata," not stephanoi, "wreaths") are upon his seven heads. In [Da 7:4-7] the Antichristian powers up to Christ's second coming are represented by four beasts, which have among them seven heads, that is, the first, second, and fourth beasts having one head each, the third, four heads. His universal dominion as prince of this fallen world is implied by the seven diadems (contrast the "many diadems on Christ's head," [Re 19:12], when coming to destroy him and his), the caricature of the seven Spirits of God. His worldly instruments of power are marked by the ten horns, ten being the number of the world. It marks his self-contradictions that he and the beast bear both the number seven (the divine number) and ten (the world number).
4. drew--Greek, present tense, "draweth," "drags down." His dragging down the stars with his tail (lashed back and forward in his fury) implies his persuading to apostatize, like himself, and to become earthy, those angels and also once eminent human teachers who had formerly been heavenly (compare [Re 12:1]; 1:20; [Is 14:12]).
stood--"stands" [Alford]: perfect tense, Greek, "hesteken."
ready to be delivered--"about to bring forth."
for to devour, &c.--"that when she brought forth, he might devour her child." So the dragon, represented by his agent Pharaoh (a name common to all the Egyptian kings, and meaning, according to some, crocodile, a reptile like the dragon, and made an Egyptian idol), was ready to devour Israel's males at the birth of the nation. Antitypically the true Israel, Jesus, when born, was sought for destruction by Herod, who slew all the males in and around Bethlehem.
5. man-child--Greek, "a son, a male." On the deep significance of this term, see on [Re 12:1], .
rule--Greek, "poimainein," "tend as a shepherd"; (see on [Re 2:27]).
rod of iron--A rod is for long-continued obstinacy until they submit themselves to obedience [Bengel]: [Re 2:27]; [Psa 2:9], which passages prove the Lord Jesus to be meant. Any interpretation which ignores this must be wrong. The male son's birth cannot be the origin of the Christian state (Christianity triumphing over heathenism under Constantine), which was not a divine child of the woman, but had many impure worldly elements. In a secondary sense, the ascending of the witnesses up to heaven answers to Christ's own ascension, "caught up unto God, and unto His throne": as also His ruling the nations with a rod of iron is to be shared in by believers ([Re 2:27]). What took place primarily in the case of the divine Son of the woman, shall take place also in the case of those who are one with Him, the sealed of Israel ([Re 7:1-8]), and the elect of all nations, about to be translated and to reign with Him over the earth at His appearing.
6. woman fled--Mary's flight with Jesus into Egypt is a type of this.
where she hath--So C reads. But A and B add "there."
a place--that portion of the heathen world which has received Christianity professedly, namely, mainly the fourth kingdom, having its seat in the modern Babylon, Rome, implying that all the heathen world would not be Christianized in the present order of things.
prepared of God--literally, "from God." Not by human caprice or fear, but by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, the woman, the Church, fled into the wilderness.
they should feed her--Greek, "nourish her." Indefinite for, "she should be fed." The heathen world, the wilderness, could not nourish the Church, but only afford her an outward shelter. Here, as in [Da 4:26], and elsewhere, the third person plural refers to the heavenly powers who minister from God nourishment to the Church. As Israel had its time of first bridal love, on its first going out of Egypt into the wilderness, so the Christian Church's wilderness-time of first love was the apostolic age, when it was separate from the Egypt of this world, having no city here, but seeking one to come; having only a place in the wilderness prepared of God ([Re 12:6], ). The harlot takes the world city as her own, even as Cain was the first builder of a city, whereas the believing patriarchs lived in tents. Then apostate Israel was the harlot and the young Christian Church the woman; but soon spiritual fornication crept in, and the Church in the seventeenth chapter is no longer the woman, but the harlot, the great Babylon, which, however, has in it hidden the true people of God ([Re 18:4]). The deeper the Church penetrated into heathendom, the more she herself became heathenish. Instead of overcoming, she was overcome by the world [Auberlen]. Thus, the woman is "the one inseparable Church of the Old and New Testament" [Hengstenberg], the stock of the Christian Church being Israel (Christ and His apostles being Jews), on which the Gentile believers have been grafted, and into which Israel, on her conversion, shall be grafted, as into her own olive tree. During the whole Church-historic period, or "times of the Gentiles," wherein "Jerusalem is trodden down of the Gentiles," there is no believing Jewish Church, and therefore, only the Christian Church can be "the woman." At the same time there is meant, secondarily, the preservation of the Jews during this Church-historic period, in order that Israel, who was once "the woman," and of whom the man-child was born, may become so again at the close of the Gentile times, and stand at the head of the two elections, literal Israel, and spiritual Israel, the Church elected from Jews and Gentiles without distinction. [Eze 20:35], , "I will bring you into the wilderness of the people (Hebrew, 'peoples'), and there will I plead with you ... like as I pleaded with your fathers in the wilderness of Egypt" (compare Notes, see on [Eze 20:35], ): not a wilderness literally and locally, but spiritually a state of discipline and trial among the Gentile "peoples," during the long Gentile times, and one finally consummated in the last time of unparalleled trouble under Antichrist, in which the sealed remnant ([Re 7:1-8]) who constitute "the woman," are nevertheless preserved "from the face of the serpent" ([Re 12:14]).
thousand two hundred and threescore days--anticipatory of [Re 12:14], where the persecution which caused her to flee is mentioned in its place: [Re 13:11-18] gives the details of the persecution. It is most unlikely that the transition should be made from the birth of Christ to the last Antichrist, without notice of the long intervening Church-historical period. Probably the 1260 days, or periods, representing this long interval, are RECAPITULATED on a shorter scale analogically during the last Antichrist's short reign. They are equivalent to three and a half years, which, as half of the divine number seven, symbolize the seeming victory of the world over the Church. As they include the whole Gentile times of Jerusalem's being trodden of the Gentiles, they must be much longer than 1260 years; for, above several centuries more than 1260 years have elapsed since Jerusalem fell.
7. In Job 1:6-11; 2:1-6, Satan appears among the sons of God, presenting himself before God in heaven, as the accuser of the saints: again in [Zec 3:1], . But at Christ's coming as our Redeemer, he fell from heaven, especially when Christ suffered, rose again, and ascended to heaven. When Christ appeared before God as our Advocate, Satan, the accusing adversary, could no longer appear before God against us, but was cast out judicially ([Ro 8:33], ). He and his angels henceforth range through the air and the earth, after a time (namely, the interval between the ascension and the second advent) about to be cast hence also, and bound in hell. That "heaven" here does not mean merely the air, but the abode of angels, appears from [Re 12:9], 10, 12; [1Ki 22:19-22].
there was--Greek, "there came to pass," or "arose."