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Rev_13:3. καὶ μίαν έκ τ . κεφ . With the accus., an express εἷδον is, indeed, not placed,[3264] but its idea results[3265] from the connection, since the ΕἿΔΟΝ , Rev_13:1, which is repeated besides in Rev_13:2, continues to be effective.
Ὡς ἘΣΦΑΓ . The Ὡς stands just as in Rev_5:6, only that in this passage the circumstance which explains how that one head bore the marks of an actual mortal wound, and yet could be represented like the rest in all the vigor of life, is expressly designated: ΚΑῚ Ἡ ΠΛ . Τ . ΘΑΝ . ΑὐΤ . ἘΘΕΡΑΠΕΎΘΗ .
The more significant that is, which is said in Rev_13:3 a., and the more this special feature of the entire image of the beast from the sea is adapted thereto, in order to adjust and test the correct interpretation of the whole, the more certain, on the other hand, to become helpless here, is every exposition that misunderstands the image of the beast as a whole. Hengstenb., Ebrard, Auberlen, etc., who regard the θηρίον an image of the world-power in general, infer from Rev_17:10, with entire impropriety, that the head wounded unto death, and again healed, is the sixth, i.e., that whereby the Roman form of the world-power is symbolized. But although Hengstenb. further interprets that “by Christ’s atonement” a mortal wound is inflicted upon Roman worldly affairs and heathenism,—a wound which, therefore, could appear as again healed, because the outward condition of the Roman Empire still continued, as John himself must have felt this ungodly power in his banishment to Patmos,
Ebrard and Auberlen prefer an interpretation expressly rejected by Hengstenb. They observe, that by the migration of nations the mortal wound was given the Roman Empire; but that this wound was healed, because a new “Roman Empire” had arisen, whose chief strength rests just in the Germanic nations. This Holy Roman Empire, however, appears as the sixth head of the beast, healed of its mortal wound, because its Christianity is secularized, ay, in all Christian appearance, often of a directly antichristian activity; viz., in the Papacy. But the Christian aspect of this form of the world-power is positively expressed in the fact that the head of the beast ( ὡς ἐσφαγμ .) bears in itself a certain resemblance to the Lamb ( Ὡς ἘΣΦΑΓΜ ., Rev_5:6). The mode of exposition thus reverts in essentials to the old Protestant; only that this was the more correct, so far as it did not acknowledge the vague significance of the ΘΗΡΊΟΝ of the world-power in the abstract, but understood it as a definite reference to Rome. Thus Calov., in dependence on Luther, explains “ ‘the beast wounded,’ most correctly, of the Roman Empire, harassed by the invasions of the barbarians, who for more than three centuries wounded, devastated, and held Rome, so that, during that whole time, there was no Western emperor. It was also healed by the medical aid of Charlemagne and Leo III.” Coccejus understood the head as the Grecian part of the Roman Empire: “In this part the beast received a fatal wound when Julian restored the worship of the gods.” The ἘΘΕΡΑΠΕΎΘΗ is interpreted: “Julian was removed, and Jovian, the Catholic, succeeded him.” Phil. Nicolai referred the wounding to the dominion of seven hundred years by the Moors in Spain; the healing, to the expulsion of the enemy by King Ferdinand. Most consistently Vitringa explains that the mortal wound is the humiliation of Pope Alexander 13 by the Emperor Frederick in the year 1160, and that the healing is the humiliation of the Emperor by the Pope in the year 1177:[3266] on the other hand, Bengel, with his far-reaching interpretation,[3267] stands already nearer the moderns, as Ebrard and Auberlen. But the former, as well as the latter, interpretation is rejected both by the connection of ch. 12[3268] and by the particular points in Rev_13:1-2 The ΘΗΡΊΟΝ is just as certainly not the abstract world-power, as the seven heads are not particular “phases of the world-power,” but kings, and that, too, Roman kings. Besides this, the quid pro quo which is ascribed to the writer of the Apocalypse, by representing him as describing the Holy Roman Empire as the empire of heathen Rome which has been again revived, is compatible neither with historical truth nor with a sound conception of biblical prophecy. In both respects, it is impossible to regard an historical development, which is dependent upon the Christian element, and which—in all its unchristian and antichristian deterioration—yet remains in its entire course Christian, and has produced truly holy fruit, as a head of this beast of the dragon. The only indication in the text, which apparently supports such a misconception, Auberlen, etc., have found in the expression ὡς ἘΣΦΑΓΜ ., as, from the comparison of Rev_5:6, they have inferred that thereby there is ascribed to the healed head a Christian, i.e., an apparently Christian, life and nature. But supposing, what does not necessarily lie in the expression, that a significant contrast were intended between the Lamb standing there as slain, and the head of the beast wounded, as it were, to death: is it, then, not much more correct to explain, as Victorin. already has done,[3269] viz., that the person represented by the head wounded and again healed is to be regarded as a pretended Christ in whom the sufferings and resurrection of the Lord appear to be imitated?
[3264] Against the false Rec.
[3265] Cf. Rev_4:4.
[3266] As a new interpretation, Vitr. proposes. “The first five fallen (Rev_17:10) heads are five distinguished popes before the Reformation: Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III., Boniface VIII., John XXII.; after the Reformation follow Paul III., Paul VIII., and finally the eighth, still future Pope, who shall put to death Christ’s witnesses” (Rev_11:7).
[3267] “You may see the paroxysms both of wounding and healing in the history of Gregory VII., Paschal II., Calist II., Alexander III., and others. Whatever adversity then happened is wounding; and whatever prosperity, healing.”
[3268] Auberlen has, indeed, found the migration of nations in Rev_12:15 sqq.
[3269] “This one, therefore, viz., Nero, being raised, God will send as a king worthy of the worthy, and a Messiah such as the Jews have merited.” Cf. Beda: “Antichrist, pertaining to the heads of the earthly kingdom, in imitation of our true Head, professes to have risen again, an though having been slain, and presents himself for men’s reception, instead of Christ, who truly did this.” In like manner, Zeger, C. a Lap., etc.
If we turn from such explanations as do not need a special refutation,[3270] that of Victorin. is first presented, which, being brought again to notice by Corrodi[3271] and Eichhorn, has been of late resolutely defended by Lücke, De Wette, Bleek, Baur, Volkmar, Hilgenf., E. Renan, etc[3272] The Roman historians of the report bruited shortly after Nero’s death, that he was still living, and would again appear,[3273] are quoted. This opinion, which was current especially in Asia,[3274] is recognized by the writer of the Apoc.; and two circumstances concur, which seem to greatly urge the explanation from that fancy of the enigmatical discourse concerning the head of the beast wounded to death, and again healed. On the one hand, it has penetrated Christian literature, viz., the Apocalyptic:[3275] on the other hand, it appears to give a definite explanation of Rev_17:8, and the one best harmonizing with Rev_13:3, viz., that Nero, slain by his own hand, appears returning from the abyss of hell, and working again as the living antichrist.
But against this mode of exposition it is to be remarked: (1) The writer of the Apocalypse in no way betrays such impurity and limitation of faith and Christian culture, that without injustice a superstition dare be ascribed to him which the Roman authors already had derided.[3276] In any case, if John subscribed to that illusion, nothing more could any longer be said concerning a truly prophetical character of the Apoc., dependent upon inspiration, and concerning its canonical authority.[3277] (2) In reference to Rev_17:8,[3278] it must be mentioned already here, how difficult it is by the ΘΗΡΊΟΝ which is there described, to understand Nero alone, who is symbolized, just as in ch. 13, by one of the seven heads of the beast. (3) But it is also in the highest degree doubtful whether the Nero-myth were current already at the close of the first century, as they try to find it in John: on the contrary, unmistakable traces indicate that the original Nero-myth received the form in which it is now by an anachronism, regarded as utilized in the Apoc. only by combining with it misunderstood passages like Rev_13:3; Rev_17:8, and 2Th_2:3 sqq. Sueton., Tacit., and Dio Chryst. by no means say that it was their opinion that the actually dead Nero had returned from the lower regions to life; but they report[3279] that it was not properly known in what way Nero had died, and that, therefore,[3280] the report originated that he was not at all dead, but had escaped to the Parthians, and would return to take vengeance on his enemies. So it stands in the sibylline books, where Nero appears as a fugitive,[3281] who is to return from the ends of the earth, his temporary place of refuge.[3282] That this Nero-myth was diffused among Christians by the authority of the sibylline books, is attested by Lactantius, who explains it not only as madness, but also indicates its natural origin:[3283] “Cast down, therefore, from the head of the government, and fallen from its summit, the impotent tyrant suddenly was nowhere present, so that a place not even of burial might appear on earth for so wicked a beast. Whence some madmen believe that he has been translated and reserved alive, the sibyl saying that the fugitive matricide shall come from the ends of the earth,” etc. Therefore Lactantius also knows nothing, as yet, of a resurrection and return of the dead Nero, but he has in view the faith of some madmen, supported by the sibylline books, that the still living Nero had found a refuge somewhere at the ends of the earth, whence he will return as a precursor of the antichrist.[3284] But this superstition, still diffused at his time, Lact. regards so senseless, because thereby a life a century long must be presupposed to Nero; while the entire fable could be explained without difficulty, from the fact that the grave of Nero was unknown,—an explanation which is proved to be right, inasmuch as Nero was actually buried with the greatest silence.[3285] In Lactantius, therefore, the Nero-myth, designated as senseless, does not have the form in which they want to find it presented by the writer of the Apoc.
Augustine is the first to testify to the existence of the expectation that Nero would arise from the dead, and return as antichrist, since he expressly remarks that this form of the myth, by the side of the older, has resulted from an interpretation of 2Th_2:3 sqq. that is as bold as it is perverted:[3286] “Some think that this[3287] was said of the Roman Empire,—as his declaration, ‘The mystery of iniquity doth already work,’ he wanted to be understood of Nero, whose deeds seemed as though of antichrist. Whence some suspect that he will rise again, and be the antichrist. But others think that he was not slain, but rather had withdrawn so as to be regarded slain, and was concealed alive in the vigor of the age, in which he was when he was believed to have died, until he would be revealed at his own time, and be restored to the government. But to me such presumption of those thinking these things is very wonderful.” In this connection, also, Augustine does not mention the Apoc.[3288] This is done by Sulp. Severus,[3289] who, however, does not combine the myth of the revivification of the dead Nero with Rev_13:3, but under the presumption that Nero had actually committed suicide[3290] records the entirely peculiar turn to the matter: It is believed that the wound which Nero inflicted upon himself was healed, and that he still lives, and at the end of the world will return as antichrist. The complete form of the myth is given first by Victorin., who expressly says that the actually deceased Nero would be again raised by God, and be sent as the pseudo-Messiah for judgment upon the ungodly; but Victorin.’s own words[3291] betray the origin of the myth thus fashioned, in the same way as Augustine[3292] testifies to the origin of another application of the myth from 2 Thessalonians 2. It cannot, therefore, in any way be asserted upon an historical basis, that the writer of the Apocalypse, when he represents one of the heads of the beast as wounded to death and again healed, depends upon an idea current at his time, concerning the return of Nero raised from the dead,—for such an idea does not belong as yet to his time,—but it must be asserted that the writer of the Apoc. has himself fashioned this manner of expressing the Nero-myth. No one, however, has ventured this.
[3270] Grot. on ὡς ἐσφ .: “The Capitol was burned while the Vitellians and Flavians warred with one another.”
ἒθεραπ .: “For the same Vespasian restored the Capitol, who also restored the Roman Empire, and, indeed, with great pomp of idolatry.” Züllig, who in Rev_13:18 finds the name of Balaam: “Balaam, slain as anti-Moses, now has returned to life, with seven heads, as the anti-Messiah, as the one for whom he will now be regarded returned from death to life.”
[3271] Krit. Gesch. des Chiliasmus, Zür., vol. ii., p. 308 sqq.
[3272] Der Antichrist, Germ. ed., Leipz. and Paris, 1873, p. 278.
[3273] Tacit., Hist., ii. Revelation 8 : “About the same time, Achaia and Asia were terrified by a false rumor, as though Nero were approaching, and a fluctuating rumor concerning his death, the majority, on this account, thinking and believing that he was alive.” Cf. Sueton., Nero, 100:57; Dio Chrys., Or., xxi., ed. Reiske., T. I., p. 504.
[3274] So that a false Nero, who availed himself of this in a remarkable way, found a following among the Parthians. Sueton., l. c.; Tacit., Hist., i. Revelation 2 : “War also with the Parthians, near at hand, was stirred up by the farce of the pretended Nero.”
[3275] Sibyll. Orac., ed. Serv. Gall., L. VIII., p. 688: ὅταν γʼ ἐπανέλθη ἑχ περάτων γαἱης ὁ φυγἀς μητροκτόνος ἐλθών [“When the matricide fugitive returns from the opposite part of the earth”]. Cf. p. 716; L. V., p. 547; Sulp. Sev., Hist., s., L. II., Opp. ed.; G. Hom., Lugd. Bat., 1647, p. 373: “Certainly his body, viz., that of Nero, was slain; whence it is believed, that, although he pierced himself with the sword, yet that he was restored by the healing of his wound, as it is written of him: And the stroke of his death was healed, in order that he might be seut at the end of the world to exercise the mystery of iniquity.”
[3276] Dio Chryst., l. c.: τρόπον τινὰ οὐχ ἅπαξ αὐτοῦ τεθνηκότος , ἀλλὰ πολλάκις μετὰ τῶν σφόδρα οἰηθέντων αὐτον ζῇν .
[3277] This statement is not based on a narrow-minded conception of the canon (Volkm.), but asserts the demands which justice and cautious piety make of exegetes. The Apoc., with respect to its other contents, stands so high that it is utterly impossible that it should advance any superstitious statement directly contradictory to the simplest Christian faith and thought (also against Weiss., p. 34). But if it be exegetically proved that this is nevertheless the case, it appears necessary to surrender the deutero-canonical authority of the book. But, in spite of all its dazzling appearance, the exegesis of Volkm., as well as of Ewald, etc., is on this point incorrect.
[3278] See on the passage.
[3279] Cf. especially Dio Chryst., l. c.: καί οὕτως ἀπέστησαν ἀπʼ αὐτοῦ καὶ ἠνάγκασαν ὄτῳ ποτὲ τρόπῳ ἀπολέσθαι αὐτόν · οὑδέπω γὰρ καὶ νῦν τοῦτό γε δῆλόν ἐστιν [“And thus they stood aloof from him, and urged the question in what way he had died; for this even now was not as yet manifest”].
[3280] Cf. Tacit., l. c.
[3281] φυγάς , L. VIII., 13:71; ed. Friedlieb, φεύγων , L. V., 13:364.
[3282] In the same sense also is the passage, L. V., 13:33, to be understood. ἔσται καὶ ἅϊστος ὀλοίϊος , εἶτʼ ἀνακάμψει , where Gallaeus (“will utterly be destroyed”) and Friedlieb (“the pernicious vanishes away”) mistranslate the ἄϊστος . It is said only that the pernicious one, i.e., Nero, will become invisible, viz., by flight, but will return. It is altogether a perversion when the sibylline expressions concerning the return of Nero are compared with the Apoc., in order to make a Nero redivivus acceptable here; for in the sibylline books the chief matter is lacking, as, e.g., Hilgenf. himself acknowledges (Zeitschr. f. Wiss. Th., 1871, p. 39. Cf. also, 1869, p. 421 sqq.).
[3283] De Mort. Persec., c. 2.
[3284] “A precursor of the devil, and going before him as he comes to devastate the earth, and overthrow the human race.”
[3285] Eutrop., Hist. Rom. vii. Revelation 18 : “The remains of Nero, which were buried in a humble way.”
[3286] De Civ. D., L. XX., c. 19, § 3.
[3287] l. c., Rev_13:7.
[3288] That Nero had sometimes been regarded the antichrist of Daniel, because of his persecution of the Christians (Jerome on Dan_11:28 : “Whence many of our writers think that because of the greatness of his cruelty and baseness, the Domitian Nero would be antichrist”), does not belong here.
[3289] l. c.
[3290] Etiamsi se gladis transfixit.
[3291] Nanc ergo caetera.
[3292] l. c.
Any other explanation of Rev_13:3 is therefore hardly possible, than that indicated already in the Introduction.[3293] By a combination with Rev_17:8-11, the result is attained that the mortal wound cannot be referred to the sixth,[3294] but must be referred to the fifth, head of the beast. This is correctly acknowledged by Ewald, Lücke, De Wette, etc., as they are further right in accounting Nero as the last of the fallen kings. But to proceed from this to the interpretation of Rev_13:3, advocated by Ewald, Lücke, etc.,—which is proved to be just as untenable,—is not only not demanded by Rev_17:8-11, but is prohibited, because it is not said there that the fifth fallen king, i.e., Nero, would return as the eighth, but that the future eighth would be the personified beast himself. But of this nothing whatever is said in ch. 13; it is not once to be perceived from ch. 13 that an eighth king is at all to be expected, so that this point (Rev_17:11) is not in any way to be introduced into Rev_13:3. The healing of the mortal wound certainly cannot, therefore, refer to one of the heads of the beast (the fifth), as it is neither said in ch. 17, nor agrees with the statement in Rev_13:3, that the fifth fallen (deceased) king will return as the eighth. On the contrary, the healing of the mortal wound on the fifth head of the beast must correspond to that which is stated in ch. 17, so that the beast is not, and yet is; viz., it is in so far as the sixth king is. The existence of the sixth king is the healing of the mortal wound on the fifth head, whose infliction caused the beast not to be, and whose healing again caused the beast, nevertheless, to be. Thus ch. 17 gives the riddle, and ch. Rev_13:3 the clew whereby the riddle is solved. The mortal wound is inflicted upon the (fifth) head of the beast, and the interregnum immediately succeeding. It is to be observed, that it is not at all said that the coroneted horn on the (fifth) head was stricken off, and grew again,—this would attach the idea expressly to the person of Nero, and correspond with the opinion of Ewald, Lücke, De Wette, and Volkm.,—but that, in accordance with the distinction between the heads and the horns (cf. Rev_13:1), the idea of the Roman Empire, so far as it was under the Emperor Nero, is expressed[3295] This empire, designated by the fifth head of the beast, received a mortal wound when Nero, the bearer of the empire, and the last of the race of the Caesars which had founded the empire, committed suicide, and that, too, under the compulsion of the rebellion of a usurper (Galba), who, as little as his two successors (Otho, Vitellius), could in any way be regarded the restorer of the empire which was destroyed with Nero. The healing of that mortal wound did not ensue until Vespasian, the founder of a new dynasty, restored the empire, as its actual possessor, to its ancient strength and vitality. Thus, at the foundation of the prophetical enigmatical discourse of the writer of the Apoc. concerning the beast wounded to death and again restored, concerning the three coroneted horns which, nevertheless, do not stand upon particular heads (Rev_13:1), and concerning the beast which is not and yet is, there lies the same historical view which is declared by the Roman historians, in their representation of the threefold regency between the death of Nero and the accession of Vespasian, only as a sad interregnum.[3296]
[3293] p. 47 sq.
[3294] Hengstenb., Auberlen.
[3295] Volkm. urges that in Rev_13:3, it is not said that the beast was wounded on its head, etc. But what in Rev_13:3 he is wrong in omitting, is correctly said in Rev_13:12.
[3296] Sueton., l. c.; Dio Cass., Hist. Rom., ed. J. Leuncl., Hannov., 1606, p. 7353.