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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Revelation 20:13 - 20:13
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Gave up (edōken). Just “gave” (first aorist active indicative of didōmi), but for the sea to give is to give up (effective aorist). Sea as well as land delivers its dead (all kinds of dead, good and bad). Swete notes that accidental deaths will not prevent any from appearing. Milligan is sure that the sea here means “the sea of the troubled and sinful world.”
Death and Hades (ho thanatos kai ho hāidēs). “An inseparable pair” (Swete) as in Rev 1:18; Rev 6:8; Rev 20:14. So in Mat 16:18 “the gates of Hades” means the power of death. Etymologically Hades is the unseen world where all who die are as opposed to this visible world, but in actual use Hades is sometimes treated as the abode of the unrighteous (Luk 16:23). Charles thinks that this is true here, though there is nothing to show it apart from the personification of death and Hades and the casting of both into the lake of fire in Rev 20:14. Here again “each man” (hekastos) receives judgment according to his deeds (Mat 16:27; 1Co 3:13; 2Co 5:10; Rom 2:6; Rom 14:12; 1Pe 1:17; Rev 2:23).