Revelation 17:8

Revelation 17:8. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not, and is about to ascend out of the abyss, and to go into perdition. Whatever may be the difficulty of interpreting these words, one thing is clear, that they contain no reference to Nero or any supposed rising of his from the grave. We saw that such an interpretation was wholly inapplicable to chap. 13. It is equally inapplicable now. In the first place, let us mark carefully the three members of this verse, ‘was,' ‘is not,' ‘is about to ascend,' etc. They are the obvious counterpart of the three members of the doxology in chaps. Revelation 1:8 and Revelation 4:8, which ‘was,' and ‘is,' and ‘is to come.' In the second place, we have to notice the words ‘ascend' and ‘go.' They are words almost consecrated in the Gospel of St. John to our Lord's resurrection and departure to the Father. In the third place, the word used for ‘perdition' is important. It denotes the destruction prepared for the ungodly (comp. John 3:16), a state in every particular the reverse of that heavenly and glorious life to which Jesus ‘goes.' Keeping these things in view, there can be no doubt that in what is here said of the beast we have a travesty of what is said elsewhere of our Lord; and this alone compels us to think of something wider and more conspicuous than any single Emperor of Rome. We learn both from the Fourth Gospel and the Apocalypse that St. John is accustomed to view evil in three great stages. First, it contends against Christ and His Church; secondly, it is conquered; lastly, it breaks out again before it experiences a complete destruction. Such a course of things is exactly what we have here, ‘was' representing the first period, ‘is not' the second, and ‘is about to ascend,' etc. the third. The evil of the world, beheld by the Seer as concentrating itself in the Roman Empire, is to him the particular form in which the beast existed in his day. Then, by the work of Jesus it was ideally destroyed (comp. Colossians 2:15). Lastly, it bursts forth again to be overwhelmed for ever. The representation is precisely parallel to that of chap. Revelation 13:3.

In the remaining part of the verse it is only necessary to call attention to the change of reading in the last clause, shall be present instead of ‘yet is' of the Authorised Version. The three characteristics are the same as before, the third ‘shall be present' corresponding to ‘is about to ascend' of the first part of the verse. On the name written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, comp. chap. Revelation 13:8; Revelation 17:9. Here is the mind which hath wisdom. The explanation follows. The ‘wisdom' spoken of is Divine spiritual insight, gained by an experimental knowledge of the ways of God. This circumstance alone might be enough to show that, even if Rome be present to the mind of the Seer as one illustration among many of the evil before his eyes, he cannot be thinking of Rome alone. In what he is about to say, he would tell us, the thought of the seven-hilled city may most readily occur to the superficial reader. But we are not to think of it. ‘Wisdom' leads to a less literal, to a more spiritual, interpretation (comp. chap. Revelation 13:18).

The seven heads are seven mountains upon which the woman sitteth. These words, it is easy to see, form the stronghold of those who think that in the ‘woman' of this passage we are dealing with the city of Rome, and in the ‘beast' with one of its Emperors, most probably Nero; yet it is impossible to adopt the interpretation, further at least than is involved in the admission that the thought of Rome may have been present to the mind of St. John as one, perhaps even as the most prominent, phase of a much wider truth. In the first place, the number ‘seven' is not to be literally understood. There is indeed a peculiar propriety in interpreting it symbolically in the present instance, for the power described is the dark contrast of the Church, is the antichrist in opposition to the Christ. But the ‘seven' churches were not literally seven, they were a symbol of the universal Church. In like manner the ‘seven' mountains are not literally seven. They symbolize a seat of evil as wide as was the good, if in the one case the one Catholic Church, in the other the one Catholic synagogue of Satan. In the second place, starting with the fact that the first clause of Revelation 17:10 ought to be translated not ‘And there are' but ‘and they are seven kings,' it will be at once perceived that we cannot literally interpret the seven ‘heads' first of seven ‘mountains' and then of seven ‘kings.' In the third place, we are told in chap. Revelation 13:3 that one of the seven ‘heads' was wounded to death, a description which cannot apply to a literal mountain. These ‘seven mountains' then are not mountains. They are an Old Testament expression for powers (comp. Isaiah 2:2; Daniel 2:35), and we have in them the first part of a double description of the same object, first ‘mountains' and then ‘kings.'