Revelation 14:20

The heathen are stamped and crushed till their blood gushes out of the wine-press to the height of a horse's bridle and to the extent of about two hundred miles. This ghastly hyperbole, borrowed partly from Egyptian (wine = the blood of those who fought against the gods) and partly from Jewish eschatology (En. c. 3: “and the horses will walk up to the breast in the blood of sinners, and the chariot will be submerged to its height”), happens to be used later by the Talmud in connexion with the carnage at Bether (cf. Schlatter's Die Tage Trajans, p. 37; also Sib. iii. 633 f.; 4 Esd. 15:35; Sil. Ital. iii. 704). The place is to be a veritable Senlac (sang lac). ἀπό κ. τ. λ., probably a round number (see crit. note) compounded out 4 and its multiples (like 144,000 out of 12), to denote completeness (Vict. = per omnes mundi quattuor partes). After the fall of Rome (Revelation 14:8 f.), the rest of the world (ex hypothesi impenitent, Revelation 14:6-8) is ripe for the traditional (Daniel 9:26) judgment. The same sequence is reproduced roughly and on a larger scale in 17 18. (fall of Rome) and 19 20. (doom of other nations). This parallelism and the sense of the Joel passage militate against the attractive idea that Revelation 14:14-16 is the ingathering of the saints (so Alford, Milligan, Bruston, Briggs, Titius, Gilbert, and Swete). ἔξωθεν κ. τ. λ. This fearful vengeance is located by Jewish tradition in some valley (of Jehoshaphat = Yah judges?) near Jerusalem (Joel), on the mount of Olives (Zechariah 14:4), or in Palestine generally (Daniel 11:45; cf. below on Revelation 16:16), i.e., as a rule in close proximity to the sacred capital, where the messiah was to set up his kingdom.