Revelation 19:20

This marks the culmination of many previous oracles: the messiah meets and defeats (Revelation 16:13 f.) the beast (i.e., Nero-antichrist, Revelation 11:7; Revelation 13:1 f.) and the false prophet (i.e., the Imperial priesthood = second beast of Revelation 13:11 f.) and their allies (the kings of the earth, cf. Revelation 11:9; Revelation 11:18; Revelation 14:8; Revelation 16:14; Revelation 17:12 f.), according to a more specific form of the tradition reflected in Revelation 14:14-20. Possibly the ghastly repast of Revelation 19:21 is a dramatic foil to that of Revelation 19:9. At any rate there is a slight confusion in the sketch, due to the presence of heterogeneous conceptions; whilst one tradition made messiah at his coming vanquish all the surviving inhabitants of the earth, who were ex hypothesi opponents of God's people (cf. Revelation 2:26-27; Revelation 11:9 f., Revelation 12:9; Revelation 14:14 f., Revelation 16:13-16; Revelation 19:17 f.), the prophet at the same time used the special conception of a Nero-antichrist whose allies were mainly Eastern chiefs (Revelation 9:14 f., Revelation 16:12; Revelation 17:12 f.), and also shared the O.T. belief in a weird independent outburst from the skirts of the earth (Revelation 20:8). Hence the rout of nations here is only apparently final. See on Revelation 20:3. The lake of fire, a place of torment which burns throughout most of the apocalypses (Sibyll. ii. 196 200, 252 253, 286, etc.; Apoc. Pet. 8), was lit first in Enoch, (sec. cent.) where it is the punishment reserved for Azazel on the day of judgment (Revelation 9:6) and for the fallen angels (Revelation 21:7-10) with their paramours. The prophet prefers this to the alternative conception of a river of fire [Slav. En. 10.]. The whole passage reflects traditions such as those preserved (cf. Gfrörer ii., 232 f.), e.g., in Targ. Jerus. on Genesis 49:11 and Sohar on Lev. Exodus (miracula, uariaque et horrenda bella fient mari terraque circa Jerusalem, cum messias reuelabitur), where the beasts of the field feed for one year, and the birds for seven, upon the carcases of Israel's foes. The supreme penalty inflicted on the opponents of Zoroastrianism is that their corpses are given over to the corpse-eating bird s, i.e., ravens (Vend. 3:20, 9:49). cf. I ntrod. § 4 b.

The messiah who forms “the central figure of this bloodthirsty scene,” written like the preceding out of the presbyter's “savage hatred of Rome” (Selwyn, 83) has a semi-political rather than a transcendental role to play. The normal Christian consciousness (cf. Revelation 22:12) viewed the return of Jesus as ushering in the final requital of mankind; but in these special oracles (cf. Revelation 17:14) where a semi-historical figure is pitted against Christ on earth, the latter is brought down to meet the adversary on his own ground a development of eschatology which is a resumption of primitive messianic categories in Judaism. The messiah here is consequently a grim, silent, implacable conqueror. There is no tenderness in the Apocalypse save for the pious core of the elect people, nothing of that disquiet of heart with which the sensitiveness of later ages viewed the innumerable dead. Here mankind are naïvely disposed of in huge masses; their antagonism to the messiah and his people is assumed to have exposed them to ruthless and inexorable doom. Nor do the scenic categories of the tradition leave any room for such a feeling as dictated Plutarch's noble description (De Sera Uind. 555 E. F.) of the eternal pangs of conscience. Upon the other hand, there is no gloating over the torments of the wicked.

Now that the destructive work of messiah is over, the ground seems clear for his constructive work (cf. Ps. Sol. 17:26 f.). But the idiosyncracies of John's outlook involve a departure from the normal tradition of Judaism and early Christianity at this point. Satan, who survives, as he had preceded, the Roman empire, still remains to be dealt with. The third vision of doom, therefore (Revelation 20:1-10) outlines his final defeat, in two panels: (a) one exhibiting a period of enforced restraint, during which (for 2, 3 and 4 7 are synchronous) messiah and the martyrs enjoy a halcyon time of temporal and temporary bliss, (b) the other sketching (Revelation 19:7-10) a desperate but unavailing recrudescence of the devil's power. The oracle is brief and uncoloured. It rounds off the preceding predictions and at the same time paves the way for the magnificent finalê of 21 22, on which the writer puts forth all his powers. But it is more than usually enigmatic and allusive. “Dans ces derniers chapitres les tableaux qui passent sous nos yeux n'ont plus la fraícheur vivante de ceux qui ont précédé. L'imagination ayant affaire à des conceptions absolument idéales et sans aucune analogie avec les réalités concrètes de la nature, est naturellement moins sûre d'elle-même, et ne parvient plus aussi facilement à satisfaire celle du lecteur” (Reuss). Ingenious attempts have been made (e.g., by Vischer, Spitta, and Wellhausen) to disentangle a Jewish source from the passage, but real problem is raised and solved on the soil of the variant traditions which John moulded at this point for his own Christian purposes. In the creation-myth the binding of the chaos-dragon or his allies took place at the beginning of the world's history (cf. Prayer of Manass. 2 4). As the dragon came to be moralised into the power of spiritual evil, this temporary restraint (cf. on Revelation 19:2) was transferred to the beginning of the end, by a modification of the primitive view which probably goes back to Iranian theology (cf. Stave, 175 f., Baljon, Völter, 120 f., Briggs, etc.). The conception of messiah's reign as preliminary and limited on earth was not unknown to Judaism (Encycl. Relig. and Ethics, i. 203 f.) or even to primitive Christianity (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:21-28, where Paul develops it differently). But the identification of it with the sabbath of the celestial week (which was originally non-messianic, cf. Slav. En. xxxii. 33.) and the association of it with the martyrs are peculiar to John's outlook. A further idiosyncracy is the connection between the Gog and Magog attack and the final manœuvre of Satan. The psychological clue to these conceptions probably lies in the prophet's desire to provide a special compensation for the martyrs, prior to the general bliss of the saints. This may have determined his adoption or adaptation of the chiliastic tradition, which also conserved the archaic hope of an earthly reign for the saints without interfering with the more spiritual and transcendent outlook of Revelation 20:11 f. His procedure further enabled him to preserve the primitive idea of messiah's reign [4] as distinct from that of God, by dividing the final act of the drama into two scenes (4 f., 11 f.). With the realistic episode of 1 3, angels pass off the stage (except the angel of Revelation 21:9 f. and the angelus interpres of xxii. 6 10), in accordance with the Jewish feeling that they were inferior to the glorified saints to whom alone (cf. Hebrews 2:4) the next world belonged. There is no evidence to support the conjecture (Cheyne, Bible Problems, 233) that ἄγγελον in Revelation 19:1 represents “an already corrupt text of an older Hebrew Apocalypse, in which mal'âk was written instead of mikâ'çl ” (cf. above on Revelation 12:7).