Commentators on the Second Woe

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The Creation Concept


Introduction
Charles D. Alexander
Henry Alford
William Barclay
G. K. Beale
Henry Bechthold
I. T. Beckwith
E. W. Bullinger
William Burkitt
Adam Clarke
Augustus Clissold
Thomas Coke
James B. Coffman
John N. Darby
Austin Farrer
William Fulke
Andrew Fuller
William Brown Galloway
John Gill
James Gray
David Guzik
George Leo Haydock
Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg
John Hooper
H. A. Ironside
Franciscus Junius
William Kelly
A. E. Knoch
Paul E. Kretzmann
George Eldon Ladd
John Peter Lange
Clarence Larkin
Joseph Law
John MacArthur
James M. MacDonald
William Marsh
Fredrick Denison Maurice
Heinrich Meyer
J. Ramsey Michaels
William Milligan
Henry M. Morris
William R. Newell
John H. Ogwyn
Ford Cyrinde Ottman
David C. Pack
Jon Paulien
J. Dwight Pentecost
Peter Pett
John A. Pinkston
Matthew Poole
Vern S. Poythress
James Stuart Russell
Ray Stedman
Joseph Augustus Seiss
Justin Almerin Smith
John Trapp
John F. Walvoord
Daniel Whedon
Christopher Wordsworth

Whedon's Commentary on the Bible

Verse 14

14. The great river Euphrates—Literal Greek, in the river, the great Euphrates. Alford notes that this river-symbol has been the puzzle of commentators. It certainly will be insoluble to any one who looks to the literal Euphrates, or to any Eastern locality, for the meaning. It was upon that great real river, illustrious in profane and sacred history, that Babylon was founded. But in our Apocalypse, Babylon is symbolically antichrist’s capital. And we are expressly told that the waters upon which Babylon “sitteth” “are,” (Revelation 9:15,) “peoples and nations.” That is, they are the human supporters of antichrist universally, without regard to locality. And thus while the locustine influences come upon the earth from the bottomless pit and from Abaddon, the tumults and blood-sheds of war spring up from the masses of men; from the lust of the flesh and the wild ambitions of the depraved heart. The four angels are the war-spirits in and among those “peoples and nations.” They are four, the cosmical number, implying that no particular war is meant, but the sum total of wars during the Christian ages. These are bound by divine restraint until the hour determined by divine justice. Then the word goes forth, Loose! and the four war-angels spring in all directions on their mission of vengeance.

Verse 15

15. For an hour—Our version gives the indefinite article instead of the definite the, and thus misleads some interpreters into a very devious course. They have taken these notes of time as telling how long the war was to last, and then, having calculated, symbolically, the length of the period, have endeavoured to find a war of the exact length in actual history. But these time-words indicate not the length of any one war, but the precise instant when, by divine permission, they commence. At the right hour, in its due place in month and year, the minister of vengeance springs forth.

For to slay—The error-demons only torment; the war-demons slay.

Third part of men—The divine number three indicates, like the five months of Revelation 9:5, (where see note,) a divinely-fixed limitation. It of course implies no literal fulfilment as to number.

Verse 16

16. Horsemen—Alford correctly says, that the four angels are apparently “resolved into the hosts of cavalry.” The cavalry alone, of this great army, is stupendous, letting alone the infantry. The number amounts to two hundred millions. It is the decimal of totality raised to the seventh power, and reduplicated, to indicate how vast the totality of the wars of the Christian ages would be!

Heard the number—For no human eye could see it.

Verse 17

17. I saw—The forms of the horses; he could only hear the number.

Fire—Rather, fire-coloured, a fiery red.

Jacinth—A dull, smoky red.

Brimstone—An adjective, sulphureous. The three colours of the breastplates correspond to the three elements issuing from the horses’ mouths.

Out of their mouths—Had real cavalries been described, swords and arrows would have been in their hands. But these are not war-men, but war-demons—symbols of the furies of war. The fire is the blaze of warlike wrath; the smoke (see note on Revelation 9:2) betokens moral darkness; the brimstone, destruction.

Verse 19

19. Tails—Another demoniac trait. See note on Revelation 9:10

Had heads— Alford, with justice, reprehends Elliot’s absurdly making these tails figure the “horse-tails” on the standards of the Turkish pachas. Indeed, a large share of the interpretations of the historical commentators may fairly be styled exegesis run wild. More taking, perhaps true, is the idea that the fire, smoke, and brimstone, here, are a foreshadowing of the effects of gunpowder. But they are really intended as infernal imageries correspondent to those in Revelation 9:1-2. The mouths of the horses breathed the direct destructions of war; the tails figured the resulting effects entailed by it. The tails of the horses became as serpents with biting heads at the end. A fit intimation of the devastation, poverty, demoralization, and barbarization, left behind by wars.

Verse 20

20. The rest—The two thirds of the profane world, not the sealed of God, (note Revelation 9:4,) remained obdurate. War punishes and reduces the number of the wicked and brings them to subjection; but it rather demoralizes than reforms the incorrigible.

Repented not—Of their false religions in this verse; of their wicked practices in the next verse. The pagan adhered to his idols, the criminal to his crimes. Two classes of pagan thinkers are distinguished; those who worshipped the mere image, and those who worshipped the supposed deity it represented.

Devils—Demons, which in the Greek includes both good and bad spirits.

Verse 21

21. Four classes of crime are named as specimens. They are crimes, not of pagan alone, but of virtual pagans, even in Christian lands.



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