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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Revelation 17:8 - 17:8
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
beast ... was, and is not - (Compare Rev 17:11). The time when the beast “is not” is the time during which it has “the deadly wound”; the time of the seventh head becoming Christian externally, when its beast-like character was put into suspension temporarily. The healing of its wound answers to its ascending out of the bottomless pit. The beast, or Antichristian world power, returns worse than ever, with satanic powers from hell (Rev 11:7), not merely from the sea of convulsed nations (Rev 13:1). Christian civilization gives the beast only a temporary wound, whence the deadly wound is always mentioned in connection with its being healed up the non-existence of the beast in connection with its reappearance; and Daniel does not even notice any change in the world power effected by Christianity. We are endangered on one side by the spurious Christianity of the harlot, on the other by the open Antichristianity of the beast; the third class is Christ’s little flock.”
go - So B, Vulgate, and Andreas read the future tense. But A and Irenaeus, “goeth.”
into perdition - The continuance of this revived seventh (that is, the eighth) head is short: it is therefore called “the son of perdition,” who is essentially doomed to it almost immediately after his appearance.
names were - so Vulgate and Andreas. But A, B, Syriac, and Coptic read the singular, “name is.”
written in - Greek, “upon.”
which - rather, “when they behold the beast that it was,” etc. So Vulgate.
was, and is not, and yet is - A, B, and Andreas read, “and shall come” (literally, “be present,” namely, again: Greek, “kai parestai”). The Hebrew, “tetragrammaton,” or sacred four letters in Jehovah, “who is, who was, and who is to come,” the believer’s object of worship, has its contrasted counterpart in the beast “who was, and is not, and shall be present,” the object of the earth’s worship [Bengel]. They exult with wonder in seeing that the beast which had seemed to have received its death blow from Christianity, is on the eve of reviving with greater power than ever on the ruins of that religion which tormented them (Rev 11:10).