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These verses set before us the barbarous usage which the two witnesses should meet with from the antichristian world, for the faithful discharge of their duty; they shall be slain, politically and civilly, say some; deposed, silenced, imprisoned, and laid aside as useless and dead.
Literally, say others, they shall be put to death for the testimony of Jesus, by bloodshed, fire, and faggot. They shall overcome them, that is, in their persons, but not in their cause.
See here the Christian church founded in blood, that of Christ its head; watered with blood, that of his ministers and members. God suffers his sometimes to be actually slain, for his own glory, their honour, and the church's good: but mark the time specified when the witnesses were slain; it was when they had finished their testimony.
Observe, 2. Besides the antichristian cruelty, in killing these witnesses, their barbarous inhumanity, in denying them burial, not suffering some to be buried at all, and digging up the bones of others that had been long buried. The place where this was done is called Sodom and Egypt, and the great city where our Lord was crucified: which, if literally understood, signifies Jerusalem, compared to Sodom for the abominable sins of the Gnostics committed in her; and to Egypt, for oppression: but if mystically understood, Rome, or the Roman empire, is conceived by most Protestants to be here intended by Egypt and Sodom; like Egypt, for idolatry, tyranny, spiritual darkness, obstinacy, and obduracy; like Sodom for uncleanness, yea, worse than Sodom, uncleanness being not only practised but tolerated, yea, allowed publicly, licences being ther given to such public houses, and books written in defence of Sodomy at Rome, where Christ may be said to be crucified in his members as long as this apostate power holds up.
Observe, 3. The great joy and exultation which is here discovered at the slaughter of these witnesses; the antichristian rabble triumph and make merry, rejoice and send gifts, to one another.
Lord! how madly do the wicked rejoice at the death of those men that used their utmost endeavours to have saved them! They that dwell on the earth shall rejoice and make merry.
Observe, 4. The special reason assigned why the members of antichrist's kingdom did thus triumph at the head of the witnesses, and their supposed utter extinction, namely, because the two witnesses tormented them that dwell on the earth; that is, by their public preaching, by their private reproving, by their denouncing of God's judgments against them; for not suffering them to go on quietly and undisturbedly in the ways of sin, they grew very uneasy with them, and rejoiced when they thought the world fully rid of them.
Lord! how does the preaching of thy word, which comforts and supports thy children, which is sweeter to them than the honey, and more esteemed by them than their necessary food, how does the same word preached torment notorious sinners; and, instead of receiving the message, they rage at the messenger, and triumph and dance with Herod, to see that head cut off whose tongue was so bold to tell them of their faults: They rejoiced, because these two prophets that tormented them were slain.