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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Revelation 16
Verse Commentaries:
Chapter Level Commentary:
Rev_16:2. Instead of ἐπὶ τ . γ . (Elz., Beng.), read εἰς τ . γ . in accordance with A, B, C (Lach., Tisch. [W. and H.]; cf., already, Griesb.). But, according to the same witnesses and à , read ἐπὶ τ . ανθρ . (Beng., Lach., Tisch. [W. and H.]), instead of εἰς τ . ἀ . (Elz.).
Rev_16:3. ψυχὴ ζωῆς ἀπέθ ., τὰ ἐν τ . θαλ . So also A, C, Lach., Tisch. [W. and H.]. The rec. ψυχ . ζῶσα ἀπέθ . ἐν τ . θαλ . ( à : ἐπὶ τ . θ .) makes the text easier.
Rev_16:5. ὅσιος . So A, B, C, Lach., Tisch. The rec. has interpolated καὶ ὁ . à has the art. without the καὶ (Tisch. IX.).
Rev_16:7. The interpretation ἄλλου ἐκ before τοῦ θυσιαστ . (Elz.) is rejected already by Beng., Griesb., in accordance with decisive testimonies.
Rev_16:14. The ἄ before ἐκπορεύεται (Elz., Tisch.) is satisfactorily maintained by A, B. Lach. has deleted it upon the authority of the Vulg. à 1 has the inf. indorsed by Ew. ii.; it is corrected: ἐκπορεύεται , without ἂ .
Rev_16:17. The ἀπὸ before τοῦ ναοῦ (B, Elz., Tisch.) is to be preferred to the ἐκ (A, Beng., Lach., Tisch. IX. [W. and H.]), because the latter appears to be written in order to mark the ἐκ τοῦ ναοῦ in distinction from the ἀπὸ τοῦ θρόνου . à has only ἐκ τ . ναοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ .
Rev_16:18. ἄνθρωπος ἐγένετο . So A, 38, Lach., Tisch. Elz. (Beng., Griesb. [W. and H.]), with B, verss., interpret: οἱ ἄνθρωποι ἐγένοντο .
At the command of a voice sounding forth from the heavenly temple, the seven angels pour forth their vials upon the earth; yet the plagues caused thereby not only work no repentance in the inhabitants of the earth worshipping the beast, but have rather the effect of leading them to the open blasphemy of God who has sent these plagues.[3662] The more certainly, therefore, must these hardened men incur the now immediately impending final judgment, to which Rev_16:15 also expressly alludes.
[3662] Rev_16:9; Rev_16:11; Rev_16:21.
All seven vials are poured forth successively, without interruption; for such does not occur either at Rev_16:5-7, or at Rev_16:7. This, as well as the circumstance also that the number seven of the vials appears to be resolved neither into three and four, as the epistles,[3663] nor into four and three, as the seals and trumpets,[3664] nor even into five and two,[3665]—for the separation so prominent in the former series of visions, which could be found here with equal right in Rev_16:5 sqq., vv., 9, 11, 15, nevertheless dare be exclusively sought in none of these passages,—corresponds to the haste with which now the end itself, before which these last plagues (Rev_15:1) still lie, draws on. That the vials have their place so directly before the actual end, is expressed also by the fact that the plagues proceeding therefrom are limited no longer to the third of the earth and its inhabitants,—as was the case in the trumpet-plagues, which, however, were already still more violent than the seal-plagues pertaining only to a fourth,—but they are inflicted upon the entire number of the inhabitants of the earth worshipping the beast (Rev_16:2; Rev_16:8 sqq.), and all the sea, together with all that lives therein. The special parallelizing of the vials with the trumpets, which occurs in the sense of the recapitulation theory,[3666] divides the progress, so clearly occurring and always accelerated, of the development which presses with great intensity to the catastrophe. Already the first vial has in its effect no analogy whatever with the first trumpet, so that the text of itself presents an obstacle to arbitrary parallelizing. The analogies which occur between vials 2, 3, and trumpets 2, 3, vial 6 and trumpet 6, vial 7 and seal 6, give no basis whatever for the recapitulation-parallelism, partly because the other numbers of the vials, trumpets (and seals) do not agree, partly because the seeming parallels are essentially distinguished from one another also in individual points;[3667] partly, also, because a certain repetition of particular means of plague, which, however, forms also a gradation of the same, was indeed unavoidable, since, for a thrice-repeated sevenfold series of visions, the sphere whence the prophetic contemplation of the plagues must be developed could not always offer new forms,—and such plagues particularly must appear to be repeated, as presented themselves after the type of the Egyptian plagues to the contemplating mind of John.
[3663] Cf. p. 145.
[3664] Cf. pp. 256, 315 sq. So in this passage, Beng., Eichh., Ewald, Züllig.
[3665] Cf. De Wette.
[3666] Cf. Introduction, p. 13 sq.
[3667] Cf., e.g., vial 6 with trumpet 6.