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Rev_20:7-10. After the completion of the one thousand years, Satan is let loose; then he leads the heathen nations, Gog and Magog, to an attack upon the saints. But fire from heaven consumes those nations, and Satan is cast eternally into the lake of fire.
λυθήσεται . Here and in Rev_20:8 ( ἐξελεύσεται ) the statement has the express form of prophecy, which also is repeated in Rev_20:10 b ( βασανισθήσονται ); in Rev_20:9 and Rev_20:10 a, however, the prophet speaks so as to report the revelation imparted to him concerning the events impending at the end.[4176]
τὰ ἕθνη . The difficulty that here the heathen nations once again enter into conflicts against the saints, after, Rev_19:21, all nations and kings (rendering allegiance to the beast) have been annihilated,—to which also the other difficulty is added, that enemies to be found in the earthly life contend against believers who are partakers in the first resurrection,[4177]—is not explained fully by emphasizing[4178] the fact that these ἔθνη , Gog and Magog, dwell at the extreme ends of the earth. Vitr., Ewald, De Wette, etc., are indeed right when in harmony with the prototype, Eze_38:3-9,[4179] and the idea of Rev_20:9 ( ἈΝΈΒΗΣΑΝ ἘΠῚ ΤῸ ΠΛΆΤΟς Τῆς Γῆς ), they regard the farthest ends of the earth as the abode of these nations;[4180] but in the entire description of ch. 8. it was presupposed that all unbelieving inhabitants of the earth without exception, all kings and nations, had served the beast, and with him had perished. It is also to be acknowledged that the introduction of ἔθνη in this passage is a similar inconsistency as was previously shown in that the winds prepared at Rev_7:1 for destruction do not afterwards come into activity; but this inconsistency—which is in general a material, and that, too, an inexplicable difficulty, only when the entire description, Rev_20:1-10, is regarded in all its individual parts as a prophecy to be thus actually fulfilled, instead of distinguishing the ideal character of the Apocalyptic mode of representation, and the actual contents of the prophecy to be determined from the analogy of the Holy Scriptures—is modified by the fact that the nations here presented, Gog and Magog, stand in no relation whatever to the beast, and dwell at such a distance that also, in this respect, they may appear with the dwellers on earth formerly found in the empire of the beast. For it is also in harmony with this, that these heathen nations are led to the conflict against the saints immediately by Satan himself.[4181]
τὸν Γὼγ καὶ τὸν Μαγώγ . Even in Jewish theology these two names occur, of which the first in Ezekiel, l. c., designates the king of the land and people of Magog[4182] as names of nations belonging together.[4183] Already, in Ezek., Magog appears, whose ethnographical determination,[4184] of course, nevertheless, lies in the background of the description[4185] as the representative and leader of the heathen nations in general, who rage against the people of God ruled by the Messiah, and are then destroyed by God. This prediction of Ezekiel was made use of already at Rev_19:17 sqq.;[4186] but only in this passage is it expressly interwoven in the description of the final catastrophe. Therefore the art. of the ΤῸΝ ΠΌΛΕΜΟΝ refers to the final attack to be made on the part of those heathen nations, as a conflict which is confessedly to be expected.[4187] [See Note LXXXIX., p. 473.] ἀνέβησαν εἰς τὸ πλάτος τὴς γὴς . From the ends of the earth (Rev_20:8) those nations come up to the broad plain of the earth,[4188] in order thus to reach the city in which the saints are encamped. The ἀναβαίνειν , which is a common expression for military expeditions,[4189] because the position of the attacked is naturally regarded as one that is to be found at an elevation,[4190] is here the more appropriate, because the going up of the nations is properly regarded against Jerusalem.[4191]
καὶ ἐκύκλευσαν τὴν παρεμβολὴν τῶν ἁγίων καὶ τὴν πόλιν τὴν ἠγαπημένην . The expression first of all distinguishes between the camp of the saints and the beloved city, i.e., Jerusalem, of course not in the sense wherein, e.g., Grot. understands by the camp, the seven churches, chs. 1–3, and by the beloved city, Constantinople; but the saints are to be regarded as gathered in the camp, in order to defend the holy city against the attacks of the heathen.[4192] The camp possibly surrounds the city, so that enemies at the same time enclose both.[4193] That the beloved city is the earthly Jerusalem,—not the new Jerusalem[4194] coming from heaven only at Rev_21:1 sqq., after the judgment of the world (Rev_20:15),—is acknowledged with substantial unanimity; but it is an ordinary eluding of the context when Jerusalem is regarded as having the force only of a symbolical designation of the Church.[4195]
καὶ κατέβη πῦρ , κ . τ . λ . Already, even in Ezekiel (Eze_39:6), this means of destruction alone is mentioned,[4196] because it is represented in the most terrible manner as an immediate instrument of the Divine judgment of wrath.[4197]
ὁ πλανῶν αὐτοὺς . Here, where, with the final judgment upon the Devil, there is an allusion to his peculiar guilt, the pres.[4198] marks in a general way his seductive influence.
βασανισθήσονται , κ . τ . λ . Eternal torture; cf. Rev_14:11.
[4176] Cf. Rev_19:9 sq., 17 sq.
[4177] See on Rev_20:10.
[4178] Vitr.
[4179] Cf. especially Eze_38:15. ἀπʼ ἐσχάτου βοῤῥᾶ .
[4180] Against Hengstenb.: “The corners comprise whatever lies within the corners,” so that the four corners of the earth designate, in fact, the same as τὸ πλάτος τῆς γῆς .
[4181] Cf., on the other hand, Rev_16:13 sq.
[4182] Gen_10:2. Cf. Winer, Rwb., on this word.
[4183] “At the end of the extremity of the days shall Gog and Magog, and their army, come up against Jerusalem; but by the hand of King Messiah shall they fall, and seven years of days shall the children of Israel kindle their fire with their weapons of war” (Targ. of Jerusalem on Num_11:27). Avoda Sara I.: “When Gog and Magog shall see war, the Messiah will say to them, Why hast thou come hither? They will reply, Against the Lord and his Christ.” Cf. Wetst.
[4184] Cf. Joseph., Ant. Jud., I. Revelation 6 : Μαγώγης δὲ τοὐς ἀπʼ αὐτοῦ Μαγώγας ὀνομασθέντας ᾥκισε , Σκύθας δὲ ὑπʼ αὐτῶν (sc. Ἑλλήνων ) προσαγορευομἑνους [Magog colonized those named from him Μαγώγαι , but called by them (sc. the Greeks) Scythians]. M. Uhlemann (Zeitschr. für Wissenschaftl. Theol. herausg. von Hilgenfeld, 1862, p. 265 fl.) has in an exceedingly instructive way shown that Magog originally meant nothing but “dwelling-place, the land of Gog.” But the name of the people, Gog, means “mountain.” All etymological and geographical marks show that we are to recognize the actual people of Gog in the inhabitants of the Caucasus, as also the Greek καυκάσιον οὖρος in Herodotus really says nothing else than “the Asiatic Kauk (Gog), or the Asiatic high mountain” (p. 283).
[4185] Cf. Eze_38:15.
[4186] Cf. Rev_16:13 sqq.
[4187] Cf. Rev_16:14 : τὸν πολ . τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκέιν , κ . τ . λ .
[4188] Cf. Hab_1:6.
[4189] 1Ki_22:4; Jdg_1:1.
[4190] Hengstenb.
[4191] Cf. Luk_18:31.
[4192] De Wette.
[4193] ἐκυκλ . Cf. Luk_19:43.
[4194] Cf. Andr., who, indeed, if the text is correct, says expressly τὴν νέαν Ιερουσ ., but in his other remarks presupposes the earthly Jerusalem.
[4195] Augustine, Beda, Andr., Vitr., Hengstenb. Likewise Klief.: “The essential meaning is “that finally also the peripheral nations shall in a mass arise somewhere against the Lord and his people, and that thereby, at some place, the Divine judgment of destruction shall occur” (p. 280).
[4196] Cf., on the other hand, Eze_38:22.
[4197] Cf. Gen_19:24; Lev_10:2; Num_16:35; Luk_9:54.
[4198] Cf. Rev_14:13.
With respect to what is said Rev_20:1-10, we must distinguish between the unprejudiced establishment of the exegetical results, and the theological judgment of what is found based upon the analogy of Scripture; and only from the former can we arrive at the latter. The exegetical comprehension of Rev_20:1-10, as a whole and in its details, has its most essential condition in the recognition of the fact that what is here described lies immediately before the proper judgment of the world (Rev_20:11 sqq.) and after those judicial acts of the entire final catastrophe which are described in Rev_19:19-21; i.e., in other words, every exposition must utterly fail which in Rev_20:1-10 maintains a recapitulatio,[4199] which can occur only if the interpretation here be also allegorical. This false mode of exposition is expressly applied by Augustine,[4200] and that, too, from polemical interests against the Chiliasts.[4201] But the exegetical principle determining it is followed also by all those who[4202] have found in Rev_20:1-10 predictions whose fulfilment could be recognized in certain historical events and states of the Church or the world, i.e., such as still occur within the present development of time. That mode of exposition must be comprehended as allegorizing, which necessarily is most arbitrary in points of the text that most clearly demand another mode of explanation. Augustine, e.g., in order to be able to recognize the one thousand years reign in the present state of the Church,[4203] must find its beginning, viz., the binding of Satan, in the earthly life of Christ, and interpret the ἜΒΑΛΕΝ ΑὐΤῸΝ ΕἸς ΤῊΝ ἌΒΥΣΟΝ : “The innumerable multitude of the godless is signified, whose hearts are very deep in malignity towards the Church of God.” The resurrection, Rev_20:5, he interprets in the sense of Col_3:1; and on Rev_20:4 remarks: “It must not be thought that he speaks concerning the final judgment, but the thrones of rulers and the rulers themselves, by whom the Church is now governed, are to be understood.” He accordingly explains Rev_20:8 sq., since Gog means “roof,” and Magog “from a roof:” “They are, therefore, nations in which we understand the Devil enclosed, as it were, from above, and he himself proceeding in some way from them, as they are the roof and he, from the roof.” As to the declaration also: “They went up on the breadth of the earth,” they are indicated not at all as having come, or about to come, to one place, as though the camp of the saints and the beloved city were in one place, although this is nothing but the Church of Christ spread abroad throughout the whole world. Similar misconceptions occur in Victorin.,[4204] Beda,[4205] Luther,[4206] Hammond, Grot., etc.,[4207] Wetst.,[4208] Hengstenb,[4209] and others.
[4199] Introduction, p. 13 sq.
[4200] De Civ. D., XX. c. 9, Revelation 2 : “Afterwards by recapitulating what the Church is doing in those thousand years.” Cf. Beda: “Recapitulating from the origin, he explains more fully as he said above: The beast,” etc. Cf. Rev_17:8.
[4201] Id., XX. c. 7, Revelation 1 : “They call them χιλιαστάς from a Greek word, whom we, by a literal rendering, may call millenarians. It is tedious, however, to give a refutation in details, but we ought rather to show how this scripture is to be received.”
[4202] As especially also Hengstenb.
[4203] l. c., c. 7, Revelation 2 : “The thousand years, moreover, may be understood in two ways, either because in those last years, this is done: i.e., in the sixth millennium of years, as on the sixth day, whose later spaces are now passing, and finally on the sabbath that shall follow, which has no evening, viz., during the repose of the saints which has no end; or he certainly represented the one thousand years as all the years of this age.”
[4204] Who, regarding the number 1000 as composed of 10 which is to be interpreted as indicating the Decalogue, and 100 as intended for “the crown of virginity,” explains: “He who has maintained with integrity his purpose of virginity, and has faithfully fulfilled the commandments of the Decalogue, is a true priest of Christ, and, perfecting with integrity the millenarian number, is believed to reign with Christ, and for him the Devil is bound aright.”
[4205] Who, e.g., refers the first resurrection, to baptism.
[4206] Who reckons from the time of John to the Turks.
[4207] Who put the binding of Satan in the time of Constantine, and by Gog and Magog understand, like Luther, the Turks.
[4208] Who understands the thousand years as “the times of the Messiah,” whose duration also is specified as forty years, occurring in the forty years from the death of Domitian, and, by Gog and Magog, understands Barcocheba.
[4209] Who finds the beginning of the thousand years’ reign in the coronation of Charlemagne in the year 800.
More correct than the interpretations of all these allegorists is that of the chiliasts, inasmuch as they do not maintain the recapitulation, so greatly cherished by the former, but rather leave the thousand-years’ reign in the place in which it occurs in the Apocalyptic description of the entire end. Nor have all who upon the basis of the Apoc. seriously believed in the future entrance of the thousand-years’ reign,[4210] indulged in such sensuous portrayals of the Apocalyptic picture, as were peculiar to Cerinthus[4211] and Papias,[4212] and in general to heretics regarded as chiliasts. In accordance with the text, Justin and Irenaeus especially maintain the points, that the thousand-years’ reign follows the first resurrection, that of the righteous, and that it occurs upon earth, as they properly regard the beloved city as Jerusalem. The thousand years, both these Fathers take literally.[4213] Their interpretation of the former reference is more correct than that of Auberlen, who upon the presumption that “the earth, as yet not glorified, could not be the place for the glorified Church,”[4214] infers that believers coming forth with Christ from the invisibility of heaven shall be invested with glorified bodies ( Ἡ ἈΝΆΣΤ . Ἡ ΠΡ ., Rev_20:5), and then are to return with Christ to heaven, in order thence to rule over the earth[4215]—in connection with which the contradictory Rev_20:9 is not at all taken into consideration. In regard to the second, viz., the chronological reference, the ancients have seen more correctly than Bengel, who even traced two periods of one thousand years each, of which the former was to begin in the year 1836, with the destruction of the beast (Rev_19:20) and the binding of Satan, and the second was to begin with the loosing of the Devil, and to cease immediately before the end of the world (Rev_20:11).
[4210] Justin, Dialogue with Trypho, c. 81. See Introduction, p. 74 sq. Cf. Iren., Adv. Haer., V. c 36: “John, therefore, with delight foresaw the first resurrection of the just, and their inheritance in the kingdom of the earth.” Cf. V. c. 34 sq.
[4211] Euseb., H. E., III. 28.
[4212] Iren., V. 33.
[4213] Cf. Psa_90:4; Gen_2:17; Gen_5:5. Adam is regarded as dying “on the day” of his eating, because he was not fully a thousand years old.
[4214] p. 381.
[4215] p. 378 sqq.
The biblical-theological discussion of Rev_20:6, which John Gerhard[4216] directs against the chiliasts,[4217] he opens by recalling the fact that the expressions of the Apoc. must be explained the more certainly from the analogy of Holy Scripture, for the reason that it is a deutero-canonical book. Moreover, from this analogy it is maintained,[4218] first, that the kingdom of Christ on earth never, even not at the end of days, is to be one that is to prevail externally; then that all the dead are to arise on one day; that there will be only one general resurrection of the dead at the coming of the Lord; therefore—so Gerhard evades by incorrectly interpreting what stands written, Rev_20:1-10—the beginning of the thousand-years’ reign is probably to be discerned in the time of Constantine, Gog and Magog are to be taken as Turks, etc. It is, however, rather to be decided, that neither the distinction made by the writer of the Apoc. between a first and a second resurrection, nor the insertion of a thousand-years’ reign in the space of time thus obtained, nor the binding and loosing of Satan, and the attack of the heathen, coincide with the eschatological statements of the Holy Scriptures in such a way that this Apocalyptic description could be understood in dogmatical seriousness; but the text itself makes us acquainted with an ideal description, whose particular features appear in harmonious connection only when the ideal character of the entire poetical picture is correctly estimated. What according to the real doctrinal prophecy of Scripture fall upon one day of the coming of the Lord,—viz., the resurrection of all the dead (among whom believers have indeed the priority,[4219] but in no way in the sense as though a special period of time, as the thousand-years’ reign, intervened between the resurrection of believers and that of other men) and the judgment of the world,—appears in the Apocalyptic description distributed into a long series of special, but coherent, acts. Upon this depends the vivid beauty of the Apocalyptic drama; but this poetical beauty is not only destroyed, but also perverted to a chiliastic want of judgment, if the ideal representation be taken as a theological statement of doctrine. The ideal character of the entire description is unambiguously presented, especially in that the risen saints have their camp in the earthly Jerusalem, and are attacked by earthly heathen nations; and yet the presence of heathen enemies, after all the dwellers on earth have been slain (Rev_19:21), is an inoffensive inconsistency, only if the treatment be neither in the one case nor the other of actual things. Klief. also approximates this view by avoiding the extension of time, and finding in the symbolical number only the idea indicated that the Lord’s victory is one that is absolute.
A vain attempt to put in a favorable light chiliasm, supposed to be based upon the analogy of the Holy Scriptures, has recently been made by L. Kraussold.[4220] He denies that in Rev_20:4-5 a resurrection of dead believers is indicated, and says:[4221] “The souls of the righteous live before God and with God,—that is their first resurrection.” But by thus ascribing to the righteous a twofold “resurrection,” he emphatically asserts that the souls of the righteous, after the first resurrection, are still without glorified bodies, and at the same time understands the thousand-years’ reign—of which these righteous souls are participants—as referring to a finally impending, actually historical time of the peaceful development of the kingdom of God on earth.[4222]
[4216] Loci Theol., T. XX., p. 124. Ed. Cotta, Tüb., 1781.
[4217] Cf. also Aug. Conf., Art. XVII.
[4218] l. c., p. 121.
[4219] 1Co_15:23; 1Th_4:16; cf. Introduction, p. 85.
[4220] Das Tausend-jährige Reich u. die Offenb. Joh. Erl., 1863.
[4221] p. 72.
[4222] p. 75.
At all events, Luthardt is in better agreement with the text, when correctly estimating Rev_20:4-5, he finds the hope pledged of the future dominion of Christ and his glorified Church, over the rest of mankind, but is content with not being able to determine that which lies beyond the present order of things. [See Note XC., p. 474.] If the ideal character of the entire description be acknowledged, the numerical designation of a thousand years can be stated only in a schematical sense,[4223] and can give no occasion, as even in Hengstenb., for an Apocalyptic reckoning. For there is no reason for ascribing to John the play-work by which the Talmudists and the Church Fathers, combining such passages as Isa_63:4, Zec_14:7, Genesis 1, with Psa_90:4, have inferred that the Messianic reign will last a thousand years,[4224] or that the world will stand for six millenniums, and in the seventh millennium the eternal sabbath will follow.[4225] [See Note XCI., p. 474.]
[4223] Cf. Psa_90:4.
[4224] Cf. De Wette.
[4225] Barnab., Epistl. c. 15.
LXXXIX. Rev_20:8. τὸν Γὼγ καὶ Μαγώγ
XC. Rev_20:1-10
XCI. Rev_20:1-10