Revelation 20:5

Revelation 20:5. The rest of the dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished. If the view taken of Revelation 20:4 be correct, the ‘rest of the dead' spoken of in Revelation 20:5 can signify none but the ungodly. Believers without exception have been included among those enumerated in the previous verse. There remain only those who have rejected the Lamb, and have given themselves to the service of the beast. Apart from this consideration, we are led by the Apocalypse itself to interpret the word ‘dead' of the ungodly (comp. on chap. Revelation 11:18). No doubt it is difficult to say why in this case we should read of ‘the rest of the dead' rather than of ‘the dead.' May it be that they are viewed as the counterpart of the faithful remnant which we have met in chaps. Revelation 2:24 and Revelation 12:17? At the point now reached by us the resurrection of all men, both good and bad, has taken place.

This is the first resurrection. The word ‘this' with which the last clause of the verse begins is to be understood as bearing its common acceptation ‘of this nature.' The writer refers not to the word ‘lived' alone, where it first occurs in his previous description, but even more particularly to the word ‘reigned;' or, rather, he refers to the whole account which he has given of the blessedness of the righteous. He is thus, it will be observed, speaking not of an act, but of a state. He is not thinking of any first act of rising in contrast with a second act of the same kind. He is describing the condition of certain persons in comparison with others after an act of rising, predicable of them both, has takin place. Hence the fact, so different from what we should naturally, on first reading the words, expect, that there is no mention of a second resurrection. Nor can it be for a moment pled that the first resurrection implies a second. The Seer chooses his words too carefully to leave room for such an inference. The contrast that he has in view is not between a first and a second resurrection, but between a ‘first resurrection' and a ‘second death.' In the first of these two the rising from the dead may be included, but the thought of the condition to which that rising leads is more prominent than the act.