Revelation 20

Revelation 20:1

1. τῆςἀβύσσου. See on Revelation 9:1.

ἐπὶτὴνχεῖρα. i.e. hung over it.

Revelation 20:2

2. ὁὄφιςὁἀρχαῖος. Revelation 12:9. No explanation can be given of the nominative here except irregular apposition: it is no help to suppose that the clause represents an indeclinable proper name.

Revelation 20:3

3. καὶἔκλεισενκαὶἐσφράγισενἐπάνωαὐτοῦ. The pit which was opened Revelation 9:2 is now sealed again.

τἀἔθνη. To be taken quite literally, though it probably limits the meaning of the passages which seem to speak of all but the elect worshipping the Beast. These are pressed by St Irenaeus to the uttermost, so that he supposes the Saints to reign over the surviving faithful who rapidly repeople the desolate earth, and fulfil the prophecies of a little one becoming a thousand and rebuilding the old waste places. Possibly we are to suppose that the Angelic warnings of Rev 14:6-11 are not wholly unfruitful.

δεῖαὐτὸνλυθῆναι. It is very remarkable that neither St Irenaeus nor St Justin are known to speak of this.

Revelation 20:4

4. θρόνους Cf. Daniel 7:9, θρόνοιἐτέθησανκαὶπαλαιὸςἡμερῶνἐκάθητο. 26 κριτήριονἐκάθισε. They who sat upon the thrones are identified by Daniel 7:22 as “the Saints of the Most High”—saints plainly in the modern sense as distinguished from angels.

κρίμαἐδόθηαὐτοῖς. In itself this might mean “their cause was judged,” but as τὸκρἱμα Daniel 7:22 seems to be parallel to ἡβασιλείακαὶἡἐξουσίακαὶἡμεγαλωσύνητῶνβασιλέωντῶνὑποκάτωπαντὸςτοῦοὐρανοῦ ib. 27 probably κρίμα in both places means “the right of judging,” as is most likely assumed 1 Corinthians 6:2-3.

καὶτὰςψυχάς. The Seer beholds the fulfilment of the promise in Daniel to the saints of the ancient law, and sharing their glory he sees all martyrs and all confessors of the latter days.

τῶνπεπελεκισμένων. Lit. “struck with an axe,” the old Roman mode of execution by sentence of the supreme magistrate. Capital punishment of citizens had been virtually abolished for the last years of the Republic: and when the emperors assumed the right of executing men for treason, it was done as though by military law (cf. St Mark 6:27) by a soldier, with a sword. But the old constitutional punishment was inflicted on provincials down to the fall of the Republic (Cic. Phil. XIII. xvi. 33); and it is not impossible that it was revived when it was desired that a citizen should be executed in due form of law.

οἵτινες … αὐτῶν. Revelation 13:12; Revelation 13:15-16. The promise extends to all who pass undefiled through the perils of the last time, whether they die a natural death, or “are alive and remain” to the coming of the Lord. οἵτινες probably also marks that their faithfulness is the reason that they share the glory of ancient saints and of earlier martyrs.

ἐβασίλευσανμετὰτοῦΧριστοῦ. 2 Timothy 2:12. This “reign” was foretold in Revelation 5:10. “The nations” of the world continue to exist as usual (Revelation 20:3), so it is no doubt over them that the saints and martyrs reign.

Revelation 20:5

5. οἱλοιποὶ—ἔτη. א syr[760] omit these words (? from homœoteleuton); they interrupt the sense.

[760] Syriac.

τῶννεκρῶν. Aug. reads eorum.

Revelation 20:6

6. μακάριοςκαὶἅγιος. He is sure of eternal blessedness, absolutely and indefeasibly consecrated to God. “Holy” refers to the relation to God into which this brings him, not to the foregoing faithfulness that is implied in his being admitted into it.

ὁδεύτεροςθάνατος. See Revelation 2:11 and Revelation 20:14 (the article is doubled in both). Cf. Romans 6:9-10.

οὐκἔχειἐξουσίαν. The coupling of the second death, which cannot be taken literally as implying annihilation (see Revelation 20:10), with the first resurrection in some degree lessens the difficulty of taking the latter figuratively, though as the body which is raised even to dishonour is spiritual, we cannot say that the first resurrection is spiritual and the general resurrection natural.

ἔσονταιἱερεῖς. Cf. Revelation 1:6, Revelation 5:10.

τοῦθεοῦκαὶτοῦΧριστοῦ. The strongest proof, perhaps, in the Book of the doctrine of Christ’s coequal Deity. If we read these words in the light of St John’s Gospel, or of the Nicene Creed, they suggest no difficulty; but without the doctrine there taught, they make salvation to consist in the deadly sin which the Moslems call “association”—the worshipping the creature by the side of the Creator. Notice, however, that the word “God” in this book always means the Father; and so throughout the N.T., with few exceptions.

Revelation 20:7

7. λυθήσεται. As we heard in Revelation 20:3. We cannot with any certainty identify the μικρὸνχρόνον there with the ὀλίγονκαιρὸν of Revelation 12:12; still the two passages to a certain extent illustrate each other.

Revelation 20:8

8. τὰἔθνητὰἐνταῖςτέσσαρσινγωνίαιςτῆςγῆς. It almost seems as though the kingdom of Christ and of His Saints had not been world-wide, but had been, like the Roman empire of St John’s day, or the Christendom of our own, a wide but limited region of light in the midst of a barbarous world. It is not therefore certain that the coming of the kingdom must be postponed till Christianity has gained its victory over the compact mass of nations which, from China to Guinea, still hold out against it: and we ought to remember the possibility, that they may prove as dangerous to the fabric of modern civilisation as the barbarians of Scythia, Germany, and Arabia proved to the ancient. But it is possible that this prediction refers, not to an incursion from outlying heathens, but to an apostacy of outlying Christians. If so, this may be illustrated by the way that the remoter provinces of Christendom fell into heresy in the fifth and following centuries, and were, in great measure as a consequence, absorbed in Islam afterwards. We may also think of the many wild and unchristian sects rising in our own time in America and in Russia—the countries of Christendom remotest from its centres of intellectual life.

τὸνΓὼγκαὶ [τὸν] Μαγώγ. See Ezekiel 38, 39—a prophecy which may, for aught we know, have had some nearly contemporary fulfilment, but which the Jewish traditions interpret of a war in the days of the Messiah, nearly as here. Magog is given in Genesis 10:2 as the name of a son of Japhet, the eponymus, there is no doubt, of one of the nations lying near the Black Sea, and called by Europeans Scythian in the wide sense. Gog appears in Ezek. l. c. to be not a national name, but the name, whether personal or dynastic, of the king of Magog and the neighbouring or kindred tribes of Rosh, Meshech, and Tubal. The resemblance of two of these names to the modern Russia and Muscovy is merely accidental: but it would be rash to deny the possibility, that the geographical or ethnological suggestion is to be taken literally, and that St John does foretell an invasion, something like that of the Huns, or Tartars, and falling on Christendom from the same quarter.

συναγαγεῖν. Nearly a repetition of Rev 16:14, Revelation 17:12; Revelation 17:14, Revelation 19:19. Yet it can hardly describe the same event: it seems plain that, whatever be the meaning of the first resurrection and the thousand years’ reign, they intervene between that war and this. Moreover, the former war was on the part of the rulers of the civilised world, this on the part of the outer barbarians.

Revelation 20:9

9. καὶἀνέβησαν. The Seer does not pass easily over the immense space of time during which the world is too happy to have a history. He sees the establishment of the earthly kingdom of Christ, and foretells its end: it is only gradually that he comes to see the end also brought before his view as present.

ἐπὶτὸπλάτοςτῆςγῆς. The breadth of the land. They overspread the whole land of Israel, against which, as we see from the next clause, their attack is directed.

τὴνπαρεμβολὴντῶνἁγίων. Possibly “the army,” as in Hebrews 11:34; here all English translators have “the camp” with A. V[784]

[784] Authorised Version.

τὴνπόλιντὴνἠγαπημένην, i.e. Jerusalem, which, it appears from this place only, will be the seat and capital of the millennial kingdom. It appears that in the popular millennial anticipations, which discredited the literal interpretation of this prophecy, this localisation of the kingdom was much insisted on, and it was even thought that the Jewish law and the sacrificial worship would be revived. This of course is utterly incredible to an orthodox Christian: but there is no difficulty in supposing that the Kingdom of God may literally have an earthly centre in the Holy City and the Holy Land. Even if the literal view be not taken, the prophecy can hardly imply less than a future purity of the Church far exceeding the present; and it may be that this purified Church will recognise a better Papacy at Jerusalem, one not too proud to learn either from the excellences or from the faults of the Roman.

καὶκατέβηπῦρ. Cf. 2 Kings 1:10, and ch. Revelation 11:5, and even Revelation 13:13. This does not agree with the description of Gog’s overthrow in Ezekiel 39, where the army lie slain till they are buried, and their weapons are broken up for firewood.

Remarkable as it is that St Irenaeus appears to say nothing of the loosing of Satan, it is still more remarkable that St Hippolytus is known (Hermathena Vol. VI. p. 404) to have laid down in his work against Caius that the destruction of Gog and Magog was to precede that of Antichrist.

Revelation 20:10

10. ὁπλανῶναὐτούς. The sense is general, as if we were to say “their deceiver.”

εἰςτὴνλίμνην. Revelation 19:20.

ὃπουκαὶ … If we are to try to fill up the ellipse, which no reader of the original would feel necessary, ἐβλήθησαν would be better than εἰσίν. That they are there still, not consumed by their more than thousand years of torment, is not stated in this clause, but is in the next.

καὶβασανισθήσονται. The subject is all three.

εἰςτοὺςαἰῶναςτῶναἰώνων. Lit. “to the ages of the ages,” as strong an expression for absolute endlessness as Biblical language affords. The expression “ἡμέραςκαὶνυκτὸς” seems hardly consistent with the view often expressed, that the eternity here spoken of is unaccompanied with a sense of duration like that which we call time.

St Thomas Aquinas who inferred from Revelation 10:6 that time (measured by the motion of heavenly bodies) will end with the resurrection, and from Isaiah 60:20 that the sun and moon of the new heavens will never set, also inferred from Job 24:19 “ad nimium calorem transeat ab aquis nivium” that the lost would have a change of torments, and that this decides the sense of Psa 80:16 (Psalms 81:15), “Inimici Domini mentiti sunt ei, et erit tempus eorum in saecula,” so that the lost live in everlasting time, while the blessed who see God are partakers of His eternity which is whole at every instant, Summa, Pars Prima, Quaestio x. Artic. 3, 6. Not that this eternal blessedness excludes a succession of subordinate delights. St Augustin half hoped, De Trin. xv. [xvi.] 26, that in the saints the endless round of changing thought would be still at last, St Thomas (ubi sup.) answers that it would not affect their changeless vision of the changeless Word. So too the glorified body will range at will through space to behold all the beautiful things God has made without leaving His presence. Sup. 3, Tertiae Partis Quaest. lxxxiv.

Artic. 2. Respect for St Thomas’ view may have led the translators of the Bible and the “Athanasian Creed” to introduce what has struck many as an arbitrary distinction between everlasting punishment and life eternal.

Revelation 20:11

11. θρόνονμέγανλευκόν. Probably not absolutely the same as that of Rev 4:2 &c.: the King is to sit now not as Lawgiver or Administrator but as Judge. Possibly it is called “great” as compared with the thrones of Rev 20:4; “white,” of course, as symbolical of the holiness and purity of the judgement to be administered.

τὸνκαθήμενονἐπʼ αὐτοῦ. This has throughout, from Revelation 4:2 onwards, been universally the title of God the Father. Moreover, the description of the Great Assize here is substantially the same as that of Dan 7:9-10: and there the Ancient of Days, Who sits on the throne, is plainly distinguished from the Son of Man. Therefore we are no doubt to understand the presence of the Father here, in spite of St John 5:22; John 5:27. There is no contradiction, if we take a duly high view of the relation between the Father and the Son. St Paul’s doctrine, Acts 17:31; Romans 2:16 (allowing that Titus 2:13 is ambiguous), shews the accurate relation between the two sides of the truth: and ch. Revelation 3:21, compared with our Lord’s own words in St Matthew 16:27 and parallels, shews the propriety of this image.

οὗἀπὸτοῦπροσώπου. The passing away of earth and heaven is spoken of in Isaiah 51:6, St Matthew 24:35 and parallels; but the strong expression of their fleeing before God’s presence is peculiar to this place: Psalms 104:32, however, is something of a precedent. That the destruction will be by fire is not stated here, or anywhere but in 2 Peter 3:10; 2 Peter 3:12, and perhaps 2 Thessalonians 1:7-8. In St Peter l. c. we have this destruction of the world by fire compared with the destruction by the Flood, and this parallel seems to have been recognised in popular Jewish belief. Popular Christian belief continued the series, by interpolating between the two a purely mythical “flood of wind” (which may be a reminiscence or expansion of the legend how the winds cast down the tower which Nebuchadnezzar says none of his predecessors could complete); the same idea is found, curiously enough, in the Mexican mythology, which completed the elemental series with a destruction by earthquakes. The lesson of all this seems to be, that the Deluge is a matter of universal tradition, and that the destructibility of the world is recognised by a universal instinct: but that the manner of its destruction is not so revealed, that it can safely be conceived by us in picturesque detail.

The destruction of our globe, perhaps of the whole solar system, by fire is quite within the bounds of possibility, even according to the known laws of nature; but those laws more naturally suggest the world literally “waxing old like a garment, and them that dwell therein dying like a moth,” and the elements rather congealing with cold than “melting with fervent heat.” On the other hand, passages like Acts 10:42; 1 Thessalonians 4:15; 2 Timothy 4:1; 1 Peter 4:5 seem plainly to prove that the human race will not be extinct when that Day comes, but that there will be “the quick” as well as “the dead” ready to undergo the Judgement. But the judgement of the dead only is described here. St John had learnt, as St Paul had not, that the dead would be the larger class of the two: whether he learnt it from his own longer life, or from the length of time implied in this vision.

καὶτόποςοὐχεὑρέθηαὐτοῖς. The phrase is a reminiscence of Dan 2:35; we had a similar one in Revelation 12:8.

Revelation 20:12

12. τοὺςμεγάλουςκαὶτοὺςμικρούς. The sense, as in Revelation 19:5, is probably to indicate the nothingness of human distinctions before God. Those who are “great in the Kingdom of Heaven” have been raised already, Revelation 20:4-5.

ἐνώπιοντοῦθρόνου. “The throne” in this Book without addition is always the throne of God: so the gloss which has superseded the text in T. R. is correct. It may have arisen from the question discussed under τὸνκαθήμενον sup.

βιβλία, simply books: see Daniel 7:13, where also the article (or equivalent form) is wanting. In the Testament of Abraham pp. 91, 93 there are two angels at the right and left of the judgement seat of Abel, one always writing down good deeds and the other evil. The book, six cubits thick and ten cubits broad, which lies on a table before the judge, seems to contain the history of every soul, for when it is opened for a certain woman who comes into judgement it is found a that her good deeds and her sins are equal. In another text, ib. 114, 115, Enoch the Scribe of Righteousness seems to make up the account of each soul from two books carried by cherubim (forgiven sins being blotted out of the book that Enoch keeps). This is doubtless implied in the curious Latin gloss (see crit. note) on τῆςζωῆς. In the Coptic Apocalypse of Zephaniah there are two angels at heaven’s gate who write the good deeds of the righteous and they are carried up to the Lord that He may write their names in the Book of the Living.

Probably the books opened here are records like those kept by the angels in the Apocryphal apocalypses, but they bear a different relation to the Book of Life, where it is plain from Revelation 17:8 and probable from Revelation 13:8, the elect are written before they have done good or evil. The record of their righteous acts proves that they have been enabled to walk worthy of their calling. In this sense Alford is right in calling the books in this clause ‘vouchers for the Book of Life.’

ὅἐστιντῆςζωῆς. See Revelation 3:5, Revelation 13:8, Revelation 21:27: also note on Revelation 5:1. The image is used exactly in this sense in Daniel 12:1, though the phrase “Book of Life “is not used. We have a near approach to that in Psalms 69:28, but there and in Exodus 32:32-33 it is not equally certain that eternal life is meant. Words and meaning are exactly the same as in this book in Philippians 4:3.

ἐκρίθησαν. We see then that “the books “contained the record of “their works.” Thus this passage justifies, in some measure, the modern popular myth of “the recording Angel.”

κατὰτὰἔργααὐτῶν. St Matthew 16:27; Romans 2:6.

Revelation 20:13

13. ὁθάνατοςκαὶὁᾅδης. See Revelation 6:8. Sheol, the Hebrew equivalent of Hades, seems not quite determined in meaning between the receptacle of the bodies of the dead and of their souls, but is sometimes translateable as “the grave.” Here it seems implied that those who died in the sea are not in Hades, as those who were buried are: but all, whether buried or unburied, are raised and judged.

Revelation 20:14

14. ὁθάνατοςκαὶὁᾅδηςἐβλήθησαν. They are enemies of God, 1 Corinthians 15:26, and to be destroyed at Christ’s triumph, ib. 54. But though no doubt presented to St John as individual demon figures (see Revelation 6:8), we are not to understand that they are real persons, like the Devil and those represented by the Beast and the False Prophet: and hence we are not told that, like them, they continue to exist in torment in the lake of fire.

οὗτος … πυρός. We have learnt already, that temporal death does not hinder eternal life, nay, may secure a better and an earlier resurrection thereto. We now learn the opposite doctrine, that there is a resurrection not to life, but to a death far more terrible than that which ends this life. Cf. St John 5:29. It is quite true, however, that both in popular Jewish belief, and in the language of the N.T., when the Resurrection is spoken of, it is ordinarily conceived as one to life. This does not prevent the more terrible side of the doctrine from being also taught in the Gospel, but it does indicate which side is the healthier, as well as the pleasanter, for our thoughts to dwell on.

Revelation 20:15

15. καὶεἴτις.… May either be a parallel to Galatians 2:16 or a reference to ch. Revelation 14:10-11 implying that ordinary sinners will be punished with the Devil, the False Prophet, the Beast and his worshippers. Cf. St Matthew 25:41 sqq.