Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 12:11

This sentence, like Revelation 12:7, suggests that earth's history is the reflex and outcome of transactions in heaven, on the common principle of Jalkut Rub. (on Exodus 14:7): “there was war above in heaven) and war below (on earth), and sore was the war in heaven”. Satan's dislodgment from heaven is another (cf. on Revelation 11:19) sign of messiah's approaching victory (cf. Yasna xxx. 8). What Jesus had already seen in his own victory over daemons (Matthew 12:24 f.; cf. J. Weiss, Predigt Jesu, 28 f., 89 f.), John hails from another standpoint, as inaugurating the messianic age. Vexilla regis prodeunt. How readily the mythological trait could be moralised is evident from a passage like Romans 8:33 f., of which Revelation 12:11 is a realistic variant. In the background lie conceptions like that of En. xl. 7 where the fourth angel of the Presence is heard “fending all the Satans and forbidding them to appear before the Lord of Spirits to accuse men” Revelation 12:11 chronologically follows Revelation 12:17, but the author, by a characteristic and dramatic prolepsis, anticipates the triumph of the martyrs and confessors, who refute Satan's calumnies and resist his wiles. In opposition to the contemporary Jewish tradition (Ap. Bar. ii. 2, xiv. 12; 4 Esd. 7:77, etc.), it is not reliance on works but the consciousness of redemption which enables them to bear witness and to bear the consequences of their witness. This victory on earth depends on Christ's previous defeat of evil in the upper world (Colossians 2:15; cf. above on Revelation 2:10, also Revelation 21:8) which formed its headquarters.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 12:11

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