Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Revelation 12:15 - 12:16
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Rev_12:15-16. The dragon cannot reach the woman flying on eagle’s wings; and, therefore, casts a stream of water out of his mouth after her, in order to destroy her. But also by this danger the woman remains unharmed, because the earth absorbs the stream.
ὡς ποταμόν . This description of the great amount of water cast forth by the serpent serves to explain and illustrate the purpose: ἵνα ταύτην ποταμοφόρητον ποιήσῃ , “to sink her carried away by the waters of the river,” as Vitr. appropriately explains the word,[3178] not occurring elsewhere in biblical Greek, but otherwise regularly formed. Hesych.[3179] explains the Homeric ἀπόερσεν [3180] by ποταμορφόρητον ἐποίησεν .
The help afforded the woman imperilled on the part of the earth is described in a way, Rev_12:16, which is conformable with the nature of the danger, as well also with the nature of the earth; the earth opens its mouth, and drinks up the stream of water. The idea recalls not so much Gen_4:11,[3181] as rather Num_16:30; Num_16:32,[3182] since it is thought the mighty flood of water vanishes suddenly and inefficaciously in the widely gaping earth.
The question concerning the genesis of this entire description, Rev_12:15-16, is essentially a preliminary question, if it be as to whether a prophecy actually to be fulfilled be found here. The allegorists make the matter too easy by comparing the water cast forth from the mouth of the serpent directly with the many waters, Rev_17:1, on which the great harlot sits, and which are there (Rev_12:15) expressly explained as a figure of many nations, and who thus reach the opinion that in this passage also the stream of water signifies a stream of people which will roll against the Church, whether they be satisfied with this general sense,[3183] or more definite references be introduced.[3184]
By any allegorical interpretation whatever, we are of course prevented from making of the description in Rev_12:15 sqq. a prophecy actually to be fulfilled, because of the similar descriptions which precede in Rev_12:1-6, Rev_12:7-12, Rev_12:13-14, not allowing such interpretation. The stream of water from the mouth of the serpent designates as little something actually occurring in the present or in the future of John as the two wings of the eagle which, in Rev_12:14, were given the woman; but, as there the escape of the woman is represented with a plastic art, which is developed from the allusion to the O. T. testimony concerning God’s preservation of his people, so John here describes the danger which Satan, in his rage, prepares for the woman still fleeing, in such a way as to form living images from the symbolical mode of speech of the O. T. Entirely remote is any allusion to the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea;[3185] but in passages like Psa_18:5-17; Psa_32:6; Psa_42:8; Psa_124:4, where pressing dangers are illustrated under the figure of great floods of water, lies the origin of the peculiar conception of the Apoc. idea; even its concrete form has a certain analogy in Psa_18:5, where what is said of “the cords of death” and “the floods of ungodliness” is in the same figurative sense as “the cords of hell,” and “the snares of death.” In such views we may recognize the foundation given the fantasy of the prophet, upon which his actual vision is ordinarily based.[3186]
[3178] Cf. the analogous ἀνεμοφόρητος .
[3179] Ed. Alberti, i. 461.
[3180] Il., iv. 348.
[3181] Züll.
[3182] ἀνοίξασα ἡ γῆ τὸ στόμα αὐτῆς καταπίεται αὑτούς , κ . τ . λ .
ἡνοίχθη ἡ γῆ καὶ κατἑπιεν αὐτ .
[3183] Hengstenb., Ebrard. Cf. Beda: “The force of persecutions.” Andreas: ἀθέων ἀνδρῶν ἣ πονηρῶν δαιμονων ἣ ποικίλων πειρασμῶν πλῆθος [“the abundance of godless men, or wicked demons, or various trials”] coming out of the mouth of the serpent,” i.e., ἐκ προστάγματος αὐτου [“by its command”], as Vict. already indicates. C. a Lap.: “The army of Antichrist.” Stern: “The flood of godless nations and infernal spirits.”
[3184] Calov.: “The Arian heretics.” Vitr.: “The Saracens, who (Rev_12:16) were defeated by Charles Martel.” Coccejus: “The armies of Maxentius and Licinius, which were defeated by Constantine the Great, and, indeed (Rev_12:16 : ἡ γῆ ), with the forces of the lands in which (Rev_12:14) the Church had already found a refuge, viz., Gaul and Spain.” Bengel: “The Turks from the year 1058 on.” Wetst.: “The armies of Cestius and Vespasian.” Hammond: “Recent persecutions after the Neronian (Rev_12:3) on the part of the Romans, who, however (Rev_12:16), were withdrawn from the Christians by the Jewish war.” Ew. ii.: “The flight of the mother congregation from Jerusalem to Pella.” Cf. Euseb., H. E., iii. 5. In connection with this, Rev_12:15 is referred to some great danger on the Jordan, possibly an attack by a faction of desperate Jews. Ew. interprets the delivering earth, but not more definitely. Auberlen: “The migration of nations, whose flood, however, is not destructive to the Church, because the earth, i.e., the cultured Roman world, received those wild Germanic masses within itself, subdued their hostility, mellowed them, and won them to Christianity.” But even granting that the allegorical mode of exposition is justified, and that in Rev_12:15-16 definite events of secular history are foretold, is it possible that the writer of the Apoc. could have conceived of the thought that the masses of nations which Satan casts forth against the Church are “won to Christianity”? This glaring contradiction is not removed by the fact that Christianity is to come into consideration “chiefly, not on its heavenly, but on its earthly side, as a force of civilization” (Auberlen, p. 297). And with respect to actual history dare it be said that the Germanic nations were cast forth like a stream of water out of the jaws of Satan, and were swallowed up by the earth? Does it agree with this, that from this Satanic stream of water the German Reformation emerged? It is a supposition more worthy of being entertained, when Aub., p. 300, recurs to the Turks.
[3185] Against Ew., De Wette, etc.
[3186] Cf. Introduction, p. 47 sq.