Bible Commentaries
Revelation 14

Verses 1-20

XIV:1-5 The Lamb upon Mount Sion with his Retinue —After the Dragon and his two Wild Beasts, the Lamb, and a throng of followers having his Name, and God’s, upon their foreheads; they stand upon Mount Sion and sing a hymn that none can learn but they: they are virgins, first-fruits for God and for the Lamb. 1. Mount Sion, where the Lamb is standing, contrasted with the shifting sands where the Dragon stands (12:18), indicates security. 144,000 is a ’perfect number’. The Seal of God on their forehead is contrasted with the Mark of the Beast, above.

2, 3. The song, and the music like thunderous waters, seems to be sung first by the inhabitants of heaven, but is learnt and repeated by the multitude.

4, 5. Tradition takes their virginity in the strict sense: else, the fact that they have never been faithless but follow the Lamb everywhere might suggest that they have never been false to their spiritual wedlock with the True God (immemorial metaphor) by idolatry, which indeed tits the context better.

(b) 6-13 A group of Two Mysteries —Three angels proclaim the approach of God’s judgement upon the world;

(8) the fall of the great City, ’Babylon’; and 9-11, the punishment of those who have accepted the Mark of the Beast. 6 f. ’Another Angel’: perhaps in contrast with the Eagle of 8:13, but probably just yet another angel’. He has an ’eternal gospel’, or message, to proclaim. Medieval mystics, and, later, reformation heretics, saw, in this, some new enduring revelation opposed to, or supplementing, what had hitherto been transitorily or inadequately revealed. It simply means the ultimate and everlasting triumph of the One God Creator of all that is: let all therefore worship him and him alone.

8. The second Angel proclaims in prophetic anticipation the fall of the pagan city ’Babylon’, the Wanton, source of worldcorruption—titles to be worked out later. This is modelled closely on, e.g.Isaiah 21:9; Jeremiah 50:2, etc. Persecuting forces like Niniveh, Babylon, Tyre and now Rome have given the maddening cup of spiritual as well as bodily harlotry to their subjects, 9-11.

But the third Angel declares that God will give them his Cup—his Cup of Wrath; see the same fierce contrast in Os 7:5. This wine is ’mixed’, yet ’unmixed’— not diluted as normally with water, but mingled with worse intoxicating drugs. Twice John insists that they who worship the Beast and receive his Mark are those to whom he refers (11): they have no rest ’day or night’ in their torment: contrast those who worship God, day and night, in their gladness of salvation (7:15; and 4:8). Does 12 —’Here is the endurance of the Saints!’—belong to what precedes or to what follows? If to the former—the Faithful must show that endurance in the imperial persecution: if to the latter, they will find the reward of their endurance in what John is about to say.

13. A Voice from Heaven declares that those who die in the Lord are forthwith blessed—their good works follow them into heaven. What Voice? God’s own? or rather the Holy Spirit’s (13b ) speaking through the Prophet? —To die, or rest, in the Lord: cf.1 Cor, 15:18; 1 Thessalonians 4:16. Vg punctuates wrongly and substitutes iam for the emphatic ?a?: ’Blessed are the dead . . . from now on! Forthwith!’ ’Yes’, says the Spirit, ’they shall rest from their troubles, for their good works follow along with them.’

(c) 14-20 A Double Vision Interposed —14-16. The Son of Man, crowned, throned on a white cloud, holds a sickle which an Angel bids him reap with, for the harvest is ripe. He does so. 17-10. An Angel is then bidden to perform earth’s vintage, for the grapes too are ripe. They are cast into the winepress outside the city, and trodden. Blood foams up ’to the bridles of the horses’ and deluges the land. What is this double ’Judgement’? He who is seated upon the cloud is, like the Enthroned, not named, but, being ’like a Son of Man’ is certainly the Messias (cf. Daniel 7:13-14; Matthew 24:20) coming for judgement: an Angel can well call to him, as we ourselves do at Advent and Pentecost. But why a Harvester and a Vintager? Is Christ’s harvesting incomplete? does he gather only the Elect? (so P. Allo.) I incline to think that John, for his systematic arrangement, had to introduce two Visions and used the very ancient symbols of harvest and vintage for these, and then possibly assigned the harvesting to Christ (though in Matthew 13:39 the reapers are the angels), and the vintaging, seen in terms of blood and therefore of punishment, to subordinates. Certainly the ’white’ cloud—unlike a thunder-cloud—suggests benevolence, not wrath: and the Angel having power’ over the fire’ (18. He came from the altar—of holocaust?) may allude to hell-fire: but that Christ should save with his own hand and entrust damnation to others seems to me unusual, inaccurate and displeasing.

19. ’Cast’ does not mean ’hurl’, but ’set it to work’. Matthew 10:34 has the same word for ’sending’ peace upon earth. The winepress was’ outside the city’, presumably Jerusalem (Joel 3:12; Zach 14:4. Very likely [ib. 10] the royal winepress was actually on the Mount of Olives). 20. ’1,600 furlongs’ can but mean a vast extent: nothing material or (here) mystical corresponds to it, though it may mean the whole world other than the Holy City. (Ib.) Blood ’up to the bridles’ unfortunately must mean a flood, not a splashing spray, if the image is traditional (it is elaborated in Enoch 1:8 ff.): if it is, one must suppose that John took two symbols of the final judgement and re-used them as his double vision.—What are these ’horses’ abruptly introduced? Perhaps since the Last Day was traditionally expressed as a treading of a winepress, and as a battle, the mention of the winepress inevitably suggested battle-imagery, just as battleimagery in ch 19 evokes the mention of a winepress. (The Hebrews had, so to say, various ’dialects’: an idolatry-dialect—’that have eyes and see not, ears and hear not, etc.’: a ’Last Day’ dialect—’stars falling from heaven’, etc.; a battle-dialect, which used certain phrases almost automatically though they were not meant to be taken literally—e.g. washing one’s hands in an enemy’s blood.)