Bible Commentaries
Revelation 13

Verses 1-18

XII:18-XIII 10 The Wild Beast from the Sea —The Dragon stands on the seashore 18: ’he stood’ is a better reading than ’I stood’), and from overseas appears a Wild Beast with 7 heads and 10 crowned horns engraved with blasphemous names. It is like a leopard, a bear and a lion. To this Wild Beast from overseas the Dragon delegates his throne and authority and great power. One head had been wounded to death but had been cured. The world went gaping after the Beast and adored the Dragon, saying: ’Who is like to the Beast?’ And the Beast made war on the Saints for 42 months, and all save the Elect adored it. 13:1 f. For the heads, horns and crowns, see below, §§ 979j, sqq. For the head ’slain but restored to life’, see § 970k. The whole is modelled on Daniel ch 7, though for once, John combines symbols —his Beast is swift as leopard, trampling as bear, fierce as lion (2). In Daniel, 4 beasts were 4 empires. We have here the Roman Empire seen collectively (for the heads, or horns, are emperors who will reign successively). 2b. Satan hands this Empire to his delegate—irony of the Dragon ’cast down’ yet giving his throne to the Beast: but recall his offer to our Lord: ’To thee will I give all this power and the glory thereof, for to me they are handed over, and to whom I will, I give them’ (Luke 4:6). One would say that this Fallen Angel had indeed been originally entrusted with the ’princedom’ of this our world, and that his perverted intelligence makes him imagine that it still is his—and indeed, he exercises great power within it.

5 f. ’Blasphemous titles’: certain emperors (e.g. Domitian) called themselves ’Lord God’; all were treated as divine: Rome was a goddess (Dea Roma: cf.2 Thessalonians 2:4 ff.). The parody of Michael, ’who is like to God?’ by the cry: ’Who is like to the Beast?’, is obvious: the parody of the Lamb, slain yet alive again (5:6; see 8, and 13:14; 17:11) will become more precise later on. The Beast was ’allowed to act’ for the stereotyped 42 months: its victory would appear complete (cf. the Two Witnesses above) save (8) for the Elect whose names are written, from the beginning of the world, in the Book of Life belonging to/the Slain Lamb.

10. A parenthetic verse: ’Shall we not resist?’ ’No! If prison be your destiny, go to prison. If you take the sword, by the sword you shall perish. Herein, O Saints, is the sphere of your faithful endurance.’

11-18 The Wild Beast from the Land —A second Beast, coming from the land. Its two horns are lamb’s horns, but its voice is the Dragon’s. It acts as representative of the first Beast, authoritatively.

13. It works miracles and brings down fire from heaven.

15. It causes an image of the Beast to be made and to speak: and all who refuse to worship it shall be killed.

17. And all without exception must be marked with the mark of the Beast, nor can they even buy or sell unless they bear that mark. ’If you have the wits—work it out! It is the number of a (definite) man. It is 666!’ Explanation of Second Beast — This Beast, then, is the delegate of the first Beast, even as he was of the Dragon. It came from the mainland, i.e. for John, the province of Asia. In Asia, an ’Asiarch’ was high-priest of emperor-worship in each city, but also president of the league or ’commune’ of that cult in the whole of ’ Asia’. But delinquent Christians would be brought for actual trial and punishment to the proconsul and his subordinate magistrates. This second Beast may well then be a collectivity like the first—the civil and religious authority in the province, speaking (so far) mildly, though to the same effect as the Dragon—its horns were lamb’s horns, and since he will be named (10-20) the False Prophet we can recall our Lord’s warning about ’false prophets who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravening wolves’ (Matthew 7:15). (For a quite different but plausible interpretation, see below, § 971c.) The whole Emperor-cult revolved around the image of the Emperor, homage paid to which was the ultimate test of loyalty. Pliny ( a.d. 112) in the north of the province, a mild and meticulous man, would produce the imperial statue with those of the gods: if Christians would sacrifice to it with wine and incense they were freed.

13-15. ’Miracles’? Fire? Speaking statues? Were actual conjuringtricks used? Quite possibly. Mithraic statues exist having tubes making possible the emission of flames such as are sculptured on bas-reliefs of the same figure: ventriloquism was doubtless used in some cults: the ’legend’ of Alexander Abonoteichos (an Asiatic contemporary of St John) tells of his huge snake which wore a mask that he made to talk ’ventriloquially’. Christians, though not yet being martyred on any general scale, were boycotted (17), and ’marked men’. 16. Were they literally ’branded’? Ptolemy I ( 217 b.c.) branded Jews who submitted to registration with the ’stamp’ of the god Dionysos. Soldiers, slaves, certain devotees, were appropriately marked. Probably the mark of the Beast’ is another travesty—that of the ’seal’ of Baptism (e.g. 7:3). 18. Cf. the challenge in 9: ’Here is a riddle, but a place for acuteness of wit! Let him who can, reckon up the Number of the Beast. For it is the number of a (real) man. It is 666.’ All interpretations are conjectural, but I think that all may be discarded save the following. The letters of the Greek and Hebrew alphabets stood for numbers—alpha and aleph—for 1; beta, beth for 2, and so on. Therefore a name could be stated as the sum of its letters—scrawled on a wall at Pompeii is read: ’I love her whose number is 545’. (Awkward, because names of different letters could add up into the same sum!) The Sibylline’ Oracles (1:324-331) say: ’Then shall come the Son of the Great God . . . having four vowels; the consonant in him is doubled. But I will tell you the full number: eight units; as many tens, and 8 hundreds —that is what the name shall reveal to the friends of unbelief; but do thou think upon the immortal and most high Son of God, the Christ.’ The name of IESOUS, therefore, in Greek, amounted to 888. I return to this below. What then was ’666’? Irenaeus has a variant reading, 616. Idle to look elsewhere than to imperial Rome for the bearer of this name. And the name and title of ’Neron Caesar’ written in Hebrew characters add up to 666, or, if the final n of Neron be dropped (as in Latin) to 616. There are objections to this which seem to me slight in view of further considerations. A variety of this ’game’ of number-names was this: Certain numbers had an esoteric value attached to them; so if a name added up into a number which for other reasons had such a value, the person bearing it was felt himself to have that value. But 777 was a perfect number: 888, transcending it throughout by one, was the Messianic number; 666, injured throughout by one, was easily seen to be ’Antichrist’s number’; if then Neron Caesar added up to 666, and 666 independently meant Antichrist, Nero was Antichrist. Finally, if (as we shall see) Domitian, reigning presumably when John composed his Apocalypse, and an eminent persecutor, was known as ’Nero come to life again’, 666 will naturally have stood for him too, or the collectivity of persecutors, imperial, or any Antichrist who will endure so long as this world does. But we cannot even summarize the other arguments surrounding this topic.