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Bible Dictionaries
Har-Magedon
Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible
or HAR-MAGEDON . The name of the place in which, according to Revelation 16:16 (AV [Note: Authorized Version.] Armageddon) , the kings of the lower world are to be gathered together by the Dragon, the Beast, and the false prophet, to make war upon God. The most generally accepted location makes this to be the mountains of Megiddo , that is to say, those surrounding the plain of Megiddo, in which so many great battles of the past were fought. The difficulty with this explanation is that one would expect the plain rather than the mountains to be chosen as a battle-field. Another explanation finds in the word a survival of the name of the place in which the gods of Babylonia were believed to have defeated the dragon Tiâmat and the other evil spirits. Such a view, however, compels a series of highly speculative corrections of the text, as well as various critical suppositions regarding the structure of the Book of Revelation. While the reference is apocalyptic, it seems probable on the whole that the word perpetuates Megiddo as the synonym of the battle-field whether above the earth or in the under world on which the final victory over evil was to be won.
Shailer Mathews.
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Hastings, James. Entry for 'Har-Magedon'. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/hdb/h/har-magedon.html. 1909.
