Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Revelation 20
Verse Commentaries:
Chapter Level Commentary:
According to A, B, min., the art., which is wanting in the Rec. before διάβ ., and before σατ ., but occurs in à in both these places (so Tisch. IX.), belongs only in the latter place (Lach., Tisch.).
Rev_20:3. The αὐτὸν after ἔκλεισεν (Elz.) is spurious (A, B, à , al., Verss., Beng., Lach., Tisch. [W. and H.]). The present πλανᾷ (Griesb., Tisch.) is not sufficiently attested by B, and, besides, appears suspicious as an interpretation. Lach., also Tisch. IX. [and W. and H.] have properly maintained the Rec. πλανήσῃ according to A ( à : πλανήσει ).
Rev_20:4. The art. τὰ before χίλ . ἔτη (Elz.) is properly (A, à , min.) deleted already by Beng.
Rev_20:8. τὸν πόλ . So A, B, à , 7, 8, 9, al., Lach., Tisch. cf. Rev_19:19.
Rev_20:9. ἀπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ , which occurs also in à 1, al., before ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ (Elz.), but in other witnesses stands last (Beng.), while still others transpose the positions of the prepositions ἀπὸ and ἐκ , belongs probably (cf. Rev_21:2) in no way to the text (A, 12, al., Lach., Tisch. [W. and H.]).
Rev_20:14. Read οὗτος ὁ θάν . ὁ δεύτερός ἐστιν , ἡ λίμνη τοῦ πυρός (A, B, al., Verss., Lach., Tisch. [W. and H.]). The last words are lacking in the Rec. à modifies: οὖτ . ὁ δεύτ . θάν . ἐστ ., ἡ λ ., κ . τ . λ .
Already has judgment been executed upon the harlot,[4140] upon the beast and his accomplice the false prophet,[4141] and upon the dwellers on earth who worshipped the beast; now follows the judgment upon the proper first enemy, Satan himself, who[4142] has used all those antichristian powers only as his instruments. The judgment upon Satan, decreed from all eternity, is executed in Rev_20:10. But previous to this, there is the binding of Satan for one thousand years (Rev_20:1-3), during which time they who are to partake of the first resurrection are to reign with Christ (Rev_20:4-6), and an attack upon the camp of the saints on the part of Gog and Magog, excited by Satan, who is let loose again for a short time, which is terminated by fire falling from heaven and consuming those nations (Rev_20:7-9); but, on the other hand, there is, after the final casting of Satan into the lake of fire, the proper judgment of the world (Rev_20:11 sqq.) at which all men appear, and they who are not written in the book of life are cast into the same lake of fire as that wherein are the beast and the false prophet already since Rev_19:20, into which Satan also has been eternally cast (Rev_20:10) before the final judgment of the world, and wherein now also at that final judgment death and hell are cast (Rev_20:14).
It is, therefore, to be noted: (1) with respect to the succession of the individual judgments, that this is the reverse of the succession in which the antichristian forms are presented; for the description of the latter begins (ch. 12) with the original enemy, then proceeds to the beast and his accomplice, viz., the second beast or the false prophet (ch. 8),[4143] and finally shows the woman carried by the beast, i.e., the definite city of the world (ch. 17), ay, the individual sovereigns in whom the beast is embodied (Rev_17:11); while, on the contrary, the judgment descends first upon the city (Rev_18:1, Rev_19:10), then upon the beast, together with the false prophet, and the mass of dwellers on earth worshipping the beast (Rev_19:11-21), and, finally, upon Satan (Rev_20:10, cf. Rev_20:4 sqq.). (2) Nor is the kind of judgment without natural distinctions: the city perishes in a terrible conflagration, and the beast and false prophet, as well as Satan, are cast alive into the lake of fire of hell; while the dwellers on earth, after having suffered bodily death (Rev_19:21, cf. Rev_20:9), are again awakened at the final judgment (Rev_20:11 sqq.), and not until then cast into the lake of fire for eternal torment.
[4140] Cf. chs. 17–19.
[4141] Rev_19:20.
[4142] Cf. on ch. 12.
[4143] Where also the relation of the dwellers on earth to the beast is shown.