Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 14:10

κεκερασμένου here as in Revelation 18:6 by oxymoron = “poured out,” the original meaning of “mixed” (with water) being dropped. The torture (depicted from Isaiah 34:9-10) is inflicted before the holy angels (who evidently sit as assessors at the judgment, En. Isaiah 48:9), ἁγίων being either an epitheton ornans or an allusion to Revelation 12:8-9. Normally the prophet refrains from introducing such spectators of doom (Revelation 19:20; Revelation 20:10-14). “Fire is the divine cruelty of the Semitic religions” (Doughty), but the torment which Judaism designed for fallen angels and apostates is assigned here to the worshippers of the Cæsars. The Apocalypse is silent upon agents of torture; they are not the angels, much less the devil (who is himself punished, Revelation 20:10). But, like 4 Ezra 7 [ver. 36] (“the furnace of Gehenna shall be disclosed and over against it the paradise of delight”), John locates the place of torment over against the place of rest. For such grim popular fancies Enoch (xxvii. 2, 3, xlviii. 9, xc. 26, 27) is mainly responsible; there (as in Clem. Hom, xvii.) the tortures proceed under the eyes of the righteous, though (especially in the later fragments, as in John's Apoc.) the moralisation of the idea has advanced, until Gehenna vanishes from the scene of bliss. “It is impossible for us to understand how such a sight could be compatible with heavenly happiness” (Stanton, Jewish and Christian Messiah, p. 344; cf. Lecky's European Morals, ii. 225 f.), but the psychological basis of the ghastly expectation can be verified in the cruder types of primitive and modern religion. Most critics delete καὶ ἐνώπιον τοῦ ἀρνίου as another gloss (cf. on Revelation 14:4); the position of Jesus after the angels is not unexampled (cf. Revelation 1:4-5), even if before the holy angels were not taken (Bs., Baljon) as a periphrasis for the divine presence (Luke 12:8-9; Luke 15:10).

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 14:10

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