Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Revelation 19:3

Revelation 19:3. And a second time they said, Hallelujah. The thought of a ‘second' time has peculiar importance in the eyes of St. John (comp. John 4:54). It confirms with a singular degree of emphasis the idea with which it is connected. And her smoke goeth up for ever and ever. It went up as the smoke of Sodom (Genesis 19:28). Before, in chap. Revelation 11:8, ‘the city' that was spiritually ‘Sodom and Egypt' was that where our Lord was crucified Jerusalem. Here it is Babylon. The fate of the first city out of which God's people were called turns out to have been a prophecy of the fate of the last. Thus does God fulfil His word, and ‘bind and blend in one the morning and the evening of His creation' (Dr. Pusey). But it was more tolerable for Sodom than it will be for Babylon; for (though indeed St. Peter says Sodom ‘suffereth the vengeance of eternal fire,' yet) its fires were quenched in the waters of the Dead Sea. This fire goes up ‘for ever and ever' (comp. Isaiah 66:24).

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Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Revelation 19:3

Old Testament

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