Revelation 19:17

Revelation 19:17. And I saw one angel standing in the sun, and he cried with a loud voice, saying to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven, Come, be gathered together unto the great supper of God. For the angel's standing ‘in' the sun comp. what was said on the thrones of the twenty-four elders at chap. Revelation 4:4. The Lamb is come. But another supper has to be eaten: it is ready, and the invitation to it is issued. All ‘the birds that fly in mid-heaven' are invited; and it is apparently for this reason that the angel stands ‘in the sun' (which is to be conceived of as in the zenith of its daily path), so that he can the more easily summon the birds that fly in the uppermost regions of the air. At the same time it seems not unlikely that the sun of chap. Revelation 1:16 is also in the writer's eye. The Son of man is come to judgment: the angel who summons to it is the expression of the sun as he ‘shineth in his power.' Much difficulty has been felt in the effort to determine what is represented by these ‘birds.' Yet attention to the natural strain of the passage as well as to Revelation 19:21 ought to leave us in little doubt upon the point. They cannot possibly be the enemies of the Lord, the armies of antichrist, for Revelation 19:18 shows us that these constitute the materials of the banquet, the food that is eaten. They must, therefore, be simply the birds of prey, the vultures, whose province it is to fly in the loftiest regions of the sky, and which are here introduced in order to convey to us a clear image of the destruction awaiting the ungodly. The picture is obviously taken from Ezekiel 39:17-22, and it forms a striking contrast to the supper of the Lamb spoken of in Revelation 19:7-9. To this latter the people of the Lord come in peace and joy, and are feasted with the food which has been prepared for them by the Bridegroom of the Church. To the former the enemies of the Lord are summoned, not to feast but to afford a feast to all fierce and hateful birds.