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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Revelation 13:1 - 13:1
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Rev 13:1-18. Vision of the beast that came out of the sea: The second beast, out of the earth, exercising the power of the first beast, and causing the earth to worship him.
I stood - So B, Aleph, and Coptic read. But A, C, Vulgate, and Syriac, “He stood.” Standing on the sand of the sea, HE gave his power to the beast that rose out of the sea.
upon the sand of the sea - where the four winds were to be seen striving upon the great sea (Dan 7:2).
beast - Greek, “wild beast.” Man becomes “brutish” when he severs himself from God, the archetype and true ideal, in whose image he was first made, which ideal is realized by the man Christ Jesus. Hence, the world powers seeking their own glory, and not God’s, are represented as beasts; and Nebuchadnezzar, when in self-deification he forgot that “the Most High ruleth in the kingdom of men,” was driven among the beasts. In Dan 7:4-7 there are four beasts: here the one beast expresses the sum-total of the God-opposed world power viewed in its universal development, not restricted to one manifestation alone, as Rome. This first beast expresses the world power attacking the Church more from without; the second, which is a revival of, and minister to, the first, is the world power as the false prophet corrupting and destroying the Church from within.
out of the sea - (Dan 7:3; compare Note, see on Rev 8:8); out of the troubled waves of peoples, multitudes, nations, and tongues. The earth (Rev 13:11), on the other hand, means the consolidated, ordered world of nations, with its culture and learning.
seven heads and ten horns - A, B, and C transpose, “ten horns and seven heads.” The ten horns are now put first (contrast the order, Rev 12:3) because they are crowned. They shall not be so till the last stage of the fourth kingdom (the Roman), which shall continue until the fifth kingdom, Christ’s, shall supplant it and destroy it utterly; this last stage is marked by the ten toes of the two feet of the image in Dan 2:33, Dan 2:41, Dan 2:42. The seven implies the world power setting up itself as God, and caricaturing the seven Spirits of God; yet its true character as God-opposed is detected by the number ten accompanying the seven. Dragon and beast both wear crowns, but the former on the heads, the latter on the horns (Rev 12:3; Rev 13:1). Therefore, both heads and horns refer to kingdoms; compare Rev 17:7, Rev 17:10, Rev 17:12, “kings” representing the kingdoms whose heads they are. The seven kings, as peculiarly powerful - the great powers of the world - are distinguished from the ten, represented by the horns (simply called “kings,” Rev 17:12). In Daniel, the ten mean the last phase of the world power, the fourth kingdom divided into ten parts. They are connected with the seventh head (Rev 17:12), and are as yet future [Auberlen]. The mistake of those who interpret the beast to be Rome exclusively, and the ten horns to mean kingdoms which have taken the place of Rome in Europe already, is, the fourth kingdom in the image has TWO legs, representing the eastern as well as the western empire; the ten toes are not upon the one foot (the west), as these interpretations require, but on the two (east and west) together, so that any theory which makes the ten kingdoms belong to the west alone must err. If the ten kingdoms meant were those which sprung up on the overthrow of Rome, the ten would be accurately known, whereas twenty-eight different lists are given by so many interpreters, making in all sixty-five kingdoms! [Tyso in De Burgh]. The seven heads are the seven world monarchies, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, the Germanic empire, under the last of which we live [Auberlen], and which devolved for a time on Napoleon, after Francis, emperor of Germany and king of Rome, had resigned the title in 1806. Faber explains the healing of the deadly wound to be the revival of the Napoleonic dynasty after its overthrow at Waterloo. That secular dynasty, in alliance with the ecclesiastical power, the Papacy (Rev 13:11, etc.), being “the eighth head,” and yet “of the seven” (Rev 17:11), will temporarily triumph over the saints, until destroyed in Armageddon (Rev 19:17-21). A Napoleon, in this view, will be the Antichrist, restoring the Jews to Palestine, and accepted as their Messiah at first, and afterwards fearfully oppressing them. Antichrist, the summing up and concentration of all the world evil that preceded, is the eighth, but yet one of the seven (Rev 17:11).
crowns - Greek, “diadems.”
name of blasphemy - So C, Coptic, and Andreas. A, B, and Vulgate read, “names of blasphemy,” namely, a name on each of the heads; blasphemously arrogating attributes belonging to God alone (compare Note, see on Rev 17:3). A characteristic of the little horn in Dan 7:8, Dan 7:20, Dan 7:21; 2Th 2:4.