Commentary on the Apocalypse 1 part 6/14

'and they had breastplates as breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was as the sound of many chariot-horses running to war;'

'and they have tails like scorpions, and stings, and in their tails is their power to harm men for five months;'

'They have over them as king the angel of the abyss;'

'his name in Hebrew is Bandon, and in Greek he has the name Apollyon.'

'Behold, there come yet two woes.'

After these things, the divinely-inspired Evangelist describes for us, elegantly and fearfully at once, the matter concerning the worms.

And in each of the things said concerning them, one might marvel at the precision of the account;

for he did not say they had teeth of lions and tails of scorpions and faces of men, but 'as,' set in each instance, expressing a certain likeness and a figurative, parabolic statement — not the literal truth.

Therefore, either he indicates through these their fearsomeness and terrifying character, or he has truly sketched an outline of their form.

'And they have over them,' he says, 'a king, the angel of the abyss;'

'his name in Hebrew is Baddon, and in Greek, Apollyon.'

And the name is either invented and fitting to the matters set forth for contemplation, or, at any rate, it shows that there are not only ministering spirits sent forth for service, on behalf of those who are about to inherit salvation, according to the divine Apostle, but also spirits sent forth for punishment, on behalf of those worthy of punishment;

such as was also that one who in one night struck down the hundred and eighty-five thousand of the Assyrians, and those who burned up the five cities of Sodom with fire.

'The one woe,' he says, 'has passed;'

'behold, there come yet two woes after these things.'

The word 'woe,' being an adverb of lamentation, indicates the evils that are present to them and that are yet to come.

'The one,' then, he says, that is, one punishment, has been spoken of;

and two more remain to be spoken of.

'And the sixth angel sounded the trumpet;'

'and I heard a great voice from the horns of the golden altar which is before God, saying to the sixth angel who had the trumpet:'

'Loose the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.'

'And the four angels were loosed, who had been prepared for the hour and day and month and year, that they might kill the third part of men.'

'And the number of the armies of the cavalry was myriads of myriads;'

'and I heard the number of them.'

'And thus I saw the horses in the vision:'

'and those sitting on them, having breastplates of fire and hyacinth and god-like in appearance;'

'and the heads of the horses were as the heads of lions, and out of their mouths proceeded fire and smoke and brimstone.'

'By these three plagues was the third part of men killed, by the fire and the smoke and the brimstone that proceeded out of their mouths;'

'for the power of the horses is in their mouth and in their tails, tails like serpents having heads, and with them they do harm.'

'When the angel sounded the trumpet,' he says, 'I heard a voice from the horns of the altar.'

By 'the horns of the altar' he means those who are pre-eminent among the angels and who stand out above the others.

And he calls the altar 'golden' because of its honor and divinity, depicting the altar as wondrous by means of the precious material known among us.

Just as we understood the horns of the altar to be the rulers among the angels,

so it is fitting to understand the altar itself as all the ministering spirits;

because they offer a rational sacrifice to God.

But what was the voice that was heard from the horns of the altar? 'Loose,' it says, 'the four angels who are bound at the great river Euphrates.'

Divine Scripture has handed down to us concerning the apostate angel — I mean Satan, and those who apostatized together with him — in one place, that they are kept under darkness in eternal chains; in another place, that they have been condemned to the depth of the sea.

For through the second epistle of Peter he says: 'For if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but cast them into Tartarus with chains of darkness and delivered them to be kept for judgment'; and through the epistle of Jude he speaks of angels who did not keep their own principality but abandoned their own dwelling — he has kept them in eternal chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day.

And the book of Job says that the apostate has been cast into the sea, figuratively describing in various ways his form and size and the bitterness of his character;

and it says that he is mocked by the angels of God.

And Isaiah also cries out concerning him, that the sword of God shall come upon the dragon, the fleeing serpent, upon the dragon, the crooked serpent;

and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea in that day.

And the prophet also, speaking concerning him, after going through all the things in creation, adds this further concerning those things that are in the sea:

'this dragon whom you formed, to sport with him.'

Things consistent with these are also said by the divinely-inspired prophet Ezekiel, speaking concerning the Egyptian:

'You have become like a lion of the nations,' he says, 'and like a dragon in the sea, and you rampaged in your rivers.'

But no one has handed down to us that they are bound in the river Euphrates, nor indeed that they will ever be loosed, nor that men will be punished through them.

For Jude, who said that they are bound with eternal chains, has thereby denied that they will ever be loosed;

and Isaiah, having said that the dragon in the sea will be destroyed on the day of judgment, did not mean that he destroys others, but that he himself is the one destroyed.

And the Lord too, in the Gospels, when sending those who have sinned grievously into the fire prepared for the Devil and his angels, denied that he would employ them as punishers and avengers, but rather declared that they themselves are about to undergo punishment.

How then might one understand what has now been said — that they are bound in the river Euphrates, and that they will be loosed, and that they themselves will punish sinners? I think that what has been said is a figure, just as is the rule established for every vision;

for I consider that by 'the angels' he means those who are bound to the contemplation of God that intellectually gladdens.

for the divine is allegorized as a river, both in Isaiah:

'Behold, I will turn to them as a river of peace, and as a torrent overflowing with the glory of the nations;'

'The streams of the river make glad the city of God.'

And the Lord himself also, in John, in the twenty-second title concerning the Spirit, said: 'He who believes in me, as the Scripture said, rivers of living water shall flow from his belly.'

'These,' he means, 'having released them from the contemplation of God, send them forth for the punishment of the impious;'

for he says these are the ones set apart for the present day.

But then, which four angels does he mean? Perhaps those recounted by Scripture:

Michael, Gabriel, Uriel, Raphael.

And when this had come to pass, they went forth with a certain innumerable army of cavalry.

By this he means the invincible power of the divine angels, having likened it to a very great cavalry;

'And I saw,' he says, 'those sitting on the horses, having breastplates of fire and hyacinth and god-like in appearance;'

The fire is a symbol of wrath and punishment;

the hyacinth signifies that those sent are heavenly, for the sky resembles hyacinth in color;

and 'god-like in appearance' signifies that they please God, as though being 'theadeis' (pleasing-to-God), for 'adein' means 'to please.'

by fire, smoke and sulfur, and serpents, through all of which their fearfulness and unbearableness is signified.

'And the rest of mankind, who were not killed by these plagues, did not repent of the works of their hands, so as not to worship the demons and the idols of gold, silver, bronze, stone, and wood, which can neither see nor hear nor walk; and they did not repent of their murders, nor of their sorceries, nor of their thefts.'

The prophet, striking the spiritual lyre, related to us concerning those punished in Hades, saying to God:

'For there is no one in death who remembers you;'

'and in Hades, who will give you thanks?' — depriving them of both, joy in accordance with God and repentance.

For through remembering God comes spiritual joy — for the same writer says elsewhere, 'I remembered God, and was glad';

and through not confessing comes the loss of repentance; for confession is the acknowledgment of one's transgressions, arising in the soul out of remorse and conversion, through compunction.

For indeed God has appointed for us two lives, the present and the one to come.

In the present life, it is granted to us to conduct ourselves according to our own judgment and authority;

but in the life to come, recompense is given for what was lived in this life; and the present is not a time of judgment — except that one may sometimes be usefully reminded and exhorted to repentance — nor is the life to come a time for right conduct, in order that we may indeed be transformed from a condemned life into the better one.

Since these things are so, how then is it now said concerning those punished there: 'and the rest of mankind...'?

'who were not killed by these plagues,'

'nor repented of the works of their hands' —

He does not mean by this those who did not repent in the life beyond, but rather those still living, who did not repent through obedience and the sight of the things that were then about to happen,

from this and that unlawful deed,

by this aforementioned plague they did not die the intelligible death (calling the punishment 'death,' inasmuch as they will exist eternally together with the wicked) — unless, that is, they are to be punished by yet another, worse [death], which, though he attempted to name it, he passed over in silence for reasons of pastoral discretion.

from which may we all be set free;

by the grace and loving-kindness of our Lord Jesus Christ, with whom, together with the Holy Spirit, be glory to the Father, unto the ages. Amen. Book Six. Still concerning the events that occurred when the sixth angel sounded his trumpet, the divinely-inspired John relates to us in the present book; through all of which I did not go at once, seeing that the fifth book had already extended to such length.

And what else does he write happened? 'And I saw a mighty angel coming down from heaven, clothed with a cloud, and a rainbow upon his head, and his face like the sun, and his feet like pillars of fire, and he had in his hand a little scroll, opened.'

'And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left on the land, and cried out with a loud voice, as a lion roars.'

'And when he cried out, the seven thunders uttered their own voices.'

'And when the seven thunders had spoken, I was about to write;'

'and I heard a voice from heaven saying,'

'Seal up what the seven thunders said, and do not write it.'

As many, therefore, as are still living and, having heard or even seen the punishments inflicted on transgressors, have not repented, but have remained wicked, as was said before — concerning these he says, 'I saw an angel coming down from heaven,' bringing forms of punishment.

And, he says, his appearance and form were as follows:

The cloud alludes to the formlessness and invisibility of the holy angels;

for the cloud is a type of imperceptibility;

for signifying the invisibility of God, the prophet says, 'cloud and thick darkness are round about him.'

'and a rainbow upon his head;'

as if he were saying: the sum and the most excellent of the good things among angels is brightness;

and he says, 'and his face was like the sun;'

and this is a proof of pure brightness —

a created brightness, indicative of that [brightness] which comes through virtues;

therefore the brightness of the rainbow is not uniform, but variegated, exhibiting all the virtues of the angels;

whereas the sun alludes to their natural radiance.

Therefore he was clothed with the rainbow, for the virtues pertain to us;

but he had a face resembling the sun, for every natural advantage is in us.

'and his feet like pillars of fire;'

The fire signifies the punishment which he came bringing against the impious.

and he says, 'and he had in his hand a little scroll, opened;'

Daniel, mentioning such books, says:

'before him the court sat, and books were opened.'

And the little scroll was that in which were written the names and the offenses of the exceedingly impious who were to be punished.

Therefore he also called it, diminutively, a 'little scroll'; for there exists, on the one hand, the 'book,' or 'scroll' — both terms being used in divine Scripture — in which the names of all men are written, as I said before; and, on the other, the 'little scroll,' in which are written [the names] of the exceedingly impious.

For the worshipers of idols, and those stained with murders and sorceries, and those afflicted with the other things which he listed, are not so many as to fill an entire book.

and he says, 'and he set his right foot on the sea, and his left on the land;'

this is, on the one hand, a sign of the greatness of the saints;

and a sign, on the other, that he was bringing the matters of punishment both to those who transgressed on land and to those on the sea — such as pirates, or others who had done evil in other ways.

'and he cried out with a loud voice, as a lion roars;'

and the fact that the holy angel roared as lions [roar] is a symbol of the wrath against the impious.

and he says, 'and when he cried out, the seven thunders uttered their own voices;'

By 'seven thunders' he means the seven ministering spirits, of which he made mention before; therefore it is stated with the [definite] article;

'the seven thunders,' he says — having reference to those seven spirits.

And what does the crying out of the seven spirits mean? That they too altogether give their vote of consent to the punishments against sinners, offering up a hymn of thanksgiving to God, because all things have been done justly.

and at the same time, by crying out, he also made clear the kinds of punishments.

'And I was about,' he says, 'to write the things spoken by the seven spirits;'

'and I heard a voice from heaven saying,'

'Seal up what the seven thunders said, and do not write it.'

'Seal' means something like: 'keep the memory imprinted upon your mind';

and the fact that he was forbidden to commit it to writing is a matter of [divine] economy, for a reason God knows; perhaps because, being lighter than the punishments commonly supposed, and befitting the goodness of him who punishes, they would have made themselves [seem] contemptible to men.

For what do the divinely-inspired Gregory and Evagrius, the great [master] of the gnostic writings, say concerning these matters? The one [Gregory] says: 'punishment becomes an act of loving-kindness for those around Adam, for thus I am persuaded that God punishes'; and elsewhere, 'neither is mercy without judgment, nor is judgment without mercy.'

But Evagrius says: 'let the loftier discourse concerning judgment remain hidden from the younger [monks] and from worldly people';

for they do not know the pain that is the ignorance of a rational soul that has been condemned.

'And the angel whom I saw standing on the sea and on the land raised his right hand to heaven, and swore by him who lives forever and ever, who created heaven and the things in it,'

'and the earth and the things in it, and the sea and the things in it, that there shall be no more delay;'

'but in the days of the voice of the seventh angel, when he is about to sound the trumpet;'

This is said according to a figure of ellipsis;

for he means: 'when the seventh angel is about to sound the trumpet, the whole punishment against the impious will be completed, being both diverse and manifold.'

He does not mean that this will happen at the moment [the angel] sounds the trumpet within the vision, since the other events did not then come to pass either; but rather that it will happen when he sounds the trumpet at the appointed time.

When this comes to pass, he says, the mystery of God will be brought to completion, just as he announced good news to his own servants the prophets.

For the prophets prophesied up until the judgment and the recompense of the good and the wicked, but after this no longer.

...mystery, nor any prophetic prediction any longer.

And I heard the voice from heaven again, speaking with me and saying:

Go, take the little scroll that lies open in the hand of the angel who stands on the sea and on the earth.

And I went to the angel, saying to him:

...and it will make your belly bitter, but in your mouth it will be sweet as honey.

And I took the little scroll out of the angel's hand and ate it up, and it was in my mouth sweet as honey;

and when I had eaten it, my belly was made bitter.

You must prophesy again concerning peoples and nations and tongues and many kings.

'And the voice which I heard from heaven' — he says he heard it again speaking with him.

And what was it saying? To take the scroll from the angel.

Having taken it, he says, I ate it, and it was sweet in my mouth, but after the eating, bitter in my belly.

Since the divinely-inspired evangelist both saw and heard the punishments against the impious — so that he might be instructed by actual experience and not by hearing alone how hateful to God the lawless deeds of men are, being both bitter and abominable — he is taught this through the vision; for he did not know this from personal experience, being a holy man who had remained a virgin — and through this to know that the wrath of God against the impious is just.

For the scroll contained both the names and the sins of those who had transgressed greatly, as has been said before.

He was therefore commanded to eat this, and, as it were, through the vision, to come by taste and by a certain intelligible experience into the bitterness of sins.

And having eaten, he found them sweet to the mouth, but bitter to the belly after the eating;

sweet while being committed, but bitter once brought to completion.

For it becomes the occasion of punishment, and also, through remorse, it embitters those who have practiced it.

Such also was the tree forbidden by God in paradise, which all interpret figuratively as sin, producing knowledge of good and evil;

good in the tasting, but evil after the experience.

And 'he says to me,' the text says, 'you must prophesy again concerning peoples and nations and many kings,' as if he were saying:

Do not, because you have seen in a vision both the consummation of the present age and the wrath against the impious, now suppose that the day of the consummation is already present in actual fact;

for much time remains in between, so that you will yet prophesy to many nations and kings.

Therefore, even until now, the divinely-inspired John prophesies through his Gospel and his catholic epistles and through this present Apocalypse;

for all things have been spoken and prophesied by him in the Spirit;

And there was given to me a reed like a rod, and a voice said:

Rise and measure the temple of God and the altar, and those who worship in it,

but the court that is outside the temple, cast it out, outside the temple;

cast it out, and do not measure it, because it has been given to the nations, and they will trample the holy city for forty-two months.

In what has gone before, the vision showed the divinely-inspired John the multitude of the saints who are with Christ and behold the divine throne, among whom those from the nations were many times more numerous than those from Israel.

But now it shows him another thing, namely how many are those who found favor in the time of the old covenant, and how many in the time of the new.

And observe how skillfully this is sketched out for him.

A surveyor's reed is given to him, so that he might measure the temple of God and the altar within the temple — clearly the one in Jerusalem — and those worshiping in it.

For those who pleased God in the times of the old covenant were measurable, on account of their small number.

And 'the court,' he says, 'which is outside the temple, cast out, and do not measure it, because it has been given to the nations.'

Having measured the temple and the altar and those sacrificing in it, he heard that the court must be cast out to the outside and enlarged, but not measured, since it happens to exceed measure.

'To the nations,' he says, 'the court has been given,' and it is joined to the temple, and yet is outside it;

and the new covenant is likewise joined to the old.

It accomplishes spiritually and in truth, and it differs from it, according to Jeremiah, who says:

'Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make with the house of Israel and the house of Judah a new covenant, not according to the covenant which I made with their fathers, in the day when I took hold of their hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt.'

He therefore calls the new covenant 'the court of the temple.'

Then the vision, mystically signifying that the Christ who is styled both Christ and beginning in the new covenant is also Lord of the old, just as it seems to Paul, who says concerning Israel: 'for they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them';

he called the new covenant the court of the old;

for the court is the beginning and entrance to God, though not the temple itself.

Therefore he did not measure the court, through which both it and those within it are signified;

for both the new covenant and those in it who have lived rightly are beyond comprehension — the latter because of their countless multitude, the former because of the subtlety and loftiness of its doctrines.

As for its saying 'it was given to the nations' — the good things of the new covenant were indeed also given to Israel; but since those from the nations within it outnumber those from Israel who found favor, it has indicated the whole by the greater part, saying that the court was given to the nations.

And 'the holy city,' he says, 'they will trample for forty-two months' — the city, not indeed the temple — calling the church 'city,' concerning which it has been said: 'Glorious things are spoken of you, O city of God' — the heavenly Jerusalem, the mother of the firstborn, those enrolled in heaven.

But what does the measure of forty-two months signify? It indicates that the time of the commonwealth of the new covenant will be brief upon the earth, and thereafter the end will come.

For the number forty, being composed of four tens, is not perfect, and likewise neither is the number two.

Through these the text indicates that the condition of the new order will not linger long in the present life;

whence Scripture also calls the time of the new covenant the 'last hour,' and again the 'eleventh hour,' in which the Only-Begotten became man;

but in the age to come it will last forever.

And to say that those from the nations will trample the holy city, that is, the church, signifies their conducting themselves within it.

'And I will grant it to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy for two thousand two hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.'

'These are the two lampstands, which stand before the God of the earth.'

'And if anyone wants to harm them, fire proceeds out of their mouth and devours their enemies;'

'and if anyone wants to harm them, he must in this way be killed.'

'These have authority to shut heaven, so that no rain may fall during the days of their prophecy, and they have authority over the waters to turn them into blood, and to strike the earth with every plague, as often as they wish.'

Since all things pertaining to the Lord's incarnate dispensation were depicted for the evangelist in the vision — the birth, the temptation, the teachings, the insolent acts committed against him, and further the cross, and the resurrection, and the second coming, and in addition to these the recompenses of both the saints and the sinners — but the matters concerning the forerunners of his second coming were passed over — now, as if by way of returning, the things concerning them are taught: that Elijah the Tishbite will indeed come has been foretold to us by divine Scripture, and is everywhere plain;

for Malachi says: 'Behold, I will send you Elijah the Tishbite before the great and glorious day of the Lord comes, who will turn the heart of the father to the son, and the heart of a man to his neighbor, lest I come and strike the earth with utter destruction';

and the Lord, speaking in Matthew concerning the Baptist: 'and if you are willing to accept it, this is Elijah who is to come.'

But concerning another forerunner we have heard nothing clear anywhere, except that Genesis said of Enoch that, having pleased God, he was translated, and the wise apostle said of him: 'By faith Enoch was translated so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had translated him.'

But an ancient account, from tradition, prevails in the church:

...that when the coming of the Antichrist is about to draw near...

for they say that these two will come forth beforehand and bear witness in advance that the signs that will be worked by him are deception, and that one must not believe the accursed impostor.

Concerning these things the vision now speaks;

that they will prophesy for so many days — whether this states a certain mystical number, or the number that will actually occur.

And this they will do, he says, clothed in sackcloth.

For they will mourn over the disobedience of the men of that time.

'These,' he says, 'are the two olive trees and the two lampstands standing before the Lord on the earth.'

The divinely-inspired prophet Zechariah saw a lampstand supporting seven lamps, and two olive branches, but the branches standing in the two nozzles of the lamps, speaking somewhat as follows:

'What are the two olive branches that are in the hands of the two golden pipes?'

And he heard from the angel who spoke with him that they are 'the sons of oil, who stand beside the Lord of all the earth.'

Is it not the case, then, that here too he speaks of them? For the fact that it is stated with the articles, 'these are the two olive trees'—

and 'the two lampstands,' makes its declaration with reference to a certain agreed-upon signification, except that what were there called the two nozzles, here he called the two lampstands.

That the two olive branches have indeed been interpreted, by the saints, as referring to the two peoples, those from the Jews and from the nations, is not unknown.

It can, however, also signify the two prophets of whom the present discourse speaks.

'And if anyone wishes to harm them,' he says, 'fire proceeds out of their mouth and devours their enemies; and they have authority to shut heaven, that it may not rain during the days of their prophecy.'

This is among the most highly plausible things.

For if one of them, Elijah the Tishbite, possessed such authority even before he fulfilled the ministry pertaining to Christ, how would it be implausible that he should have it while running before Christ? And, he says, 'they have authority over the waters, to turn them into blood, and to smite the earth with every plague, as often as they will.'

For since the coming of the Antichrist will occur according to the working of Satan, with all power and signs and wonders of falsehood, as Paul says in writing his second epistle to the Thessalonians, and since signs drew men toward assent and belief, for this reason the two prophets also, who declare concerning him that he is a deceiver and impostor, will employ signs of every kind, so that they may draw their hearers toward belief.

'And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that ascends out of the abyss will make war with them, and will conquer them, and will kill them.'

'And their corpse he will lay in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified.'

'And some from the peoples and tongues and tribes and nations see their corpse.'

And they will not allow it to be laid in a tomb.

'And those who dwell on the earth rejoice over them and are glad, and will send gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.'

'And when,' he says, 'they have finished their testimony'—

for they will testify that this one who is present is not the Christ, but is some deceiver and impostor and destroyer.

But the Son of God will come very soon, in whom one must believe as Savior and God, who came before for the benefit of mankind, and now comes again.

'And the beast,' he says, 'that ascends out of the abyss'—

he calls the Antichrist a 'beast' because of his savagery and inhumanity and bloodthirstiness;