Omit angel.

Power was given (ἐδόθη)

Rev., it was given.

With fire (ἐν πυρί)

Lit., "in fire." The element in which the scorching takes place.

Glorify Him by repentance.

His kingdom was darkened

Compare Exodus 10:21, Exodus 10:22.

They gnawed (ἐμασσῶντο)

Only here in the New Testament.

For pain (ἐκ τοῦ πόνου)

Strictly, from their pain. Their, the force of the article τοῦ.

See on Revelation 9:14.

Of the east (ἀπὸ τῶν ἀνατολῶν ἡλίου)

Lit., as Rev., from the sunrising. See on Matthew 2:2; and see on dayspring, Luke 1:78.

Possibly with reference to Exodus 8:1-14.

Omit of the earth and.

World (οἰκουμέης)

See on Luke 2:1.

The battle (πόλεμον)

Rev., more literally, war. Battle is μάχη.

That great day (ἐκείνης)

Omit. Read, as Rev., "the great day."

These words are parenthetical.

As a thief

Compare Matthew 24:43; Luke 12:39; 1 Thessalonians 5:2, 1 Thessalonians 5:4; 2 Peter 3:10.

Watcheth (γρηρορῶν)

See on Mark 13:35; see on 1 Peter 5:8.

Keepeth his garments

"During the night the captain of the Temple made his rounds. On his approach the guards had to rise and salute him in a particular manner. Any guard found asleep when on duty was beaten, or his garments were set on fire. The confession of one of the Rabbins is on record that, on a certain occasion, his own maternal uncle had actually undergone the punishment of having his clothes set on fire by the captain of the Temple" (Edersheim, "The Temple," etc.).

Shame (ἀσχημοσύνην)

Only here and Romans 1:27. From ἀ not and σχῆμα fashion. Deformity, unseemliness; nearly answering to the phrase not in good form.

The proper Greek form Ἃρ Μαγεδών. The word is compounded of the Hebrew Har mountain, and Megiddon or Megiddo: the mountain of Megiddo. On Megiddo standing alone see Judges 1:27; 1 Kings 4:12; 1 Kings 9:15; 2 Kings 9:27. See also Judges 5:19; Zechariah 12:11; 2 Chronicles 35:22; 2 Kings 23:30. "Bounded as it is by the hills of Palestine on both north and south, it would naturally become the arena of war between the lowlanders who trusted in their chariots, and the Israelite highlanders of the neighboring heights. To this cause mainly it owes its celebrity, as the battle-field of the world, which has, through its adoption into the language of Revelation, passed into an universal proverb. If that mysterious book proceeded from the hand of a Galilean fisherman, it is the more easy to understand why, with the scene of those many battles constantly before him, he should have drawn the figurative name of the final conflict between the hosts of good and evil, from the 'place which is called in the Hebrew tongue Harmagedon'" (Stanley, "Sinai and Palestine").

Megiddo was in the plain of Esdraelon, "which has been a chosen place for encampment in every contest carried on in Palestine from the days of Nabuchodonozor king of Assyria, unto the disastrous march of Napoleon Buonaparte from Egypt into Syria. Jews, Gentiles, Saracens, Christian crusaders, and anti Christian Frenchmen; Egyptians, Persians, Druses, Turks, and Arabs, warriors of every nation that is under heaven, have pitched their tents on the plain of Esdraelon, and have beheld the banners of their nation wet with the dews of Tabor and Hermon" ("Clarke's Travels," cit. by Lee). See Thomson's "Land and Book" (Central Palestine and Phoenicia), p. 208 sqq.; and Stanley, "Sinai and Palestine," ch. ix.

Two great slaughters at Megiddo are mentioned in the Old Testament; the first celebrated in the Song of Deborah (Judges 5:19), and the second, that in which king Josiah fell (2 Kings 23:29). Both these may have been present to the seer's mind; but the allusion is not to any particular place or event. "The word, like Euphrates, is the expression of an idea; the idea that swift and overwhelming destruction shall overtake all who gather themselves together against the Lord" (Milligan).

Omit of heaven.

See Exodus 9:18.

Every stone about the weight of a talent (ὡς ταλαντίαια)

The adjective, meaning of a talent's weight, agrees with hail; hail of a talent's weight; i.e., having each stone of that weight. Every stone is therefore explanatory, and not in the text. Hailstones are a symbol of divine wrath. See Isaiah 30:30; Ezekiel 13:11. Compare Joshua 10:11.

Said of Babylon, Jeremiah 51:13; the wealth of Babylon being caused both by the Euphrates and by a vast system of canals. The symbol is interpreted by some commentators as signifying Babylon, by others pagan Rome, Papal Rome, Jerusalem. Dante alludes to this passage in his address to the shade of Pope Nicholas III., in the Bolgia of the Simonists.

"The Evangelist you pastors had in mind,

When she who sitteth upon many waters

To fornicate with kings by him was seen.

The same who with the seven heads was born,

And power and strength from the ten horns received,

So long as virtue to her spouse was pleasing."

"Inferno," xix., 106-110.

The figure of a harlot committing fornication with kings and peoples occurs frequently in the prophets, representing the defection of God's Church and its attachment to others. See Isaiah 1:21; Jeremiah 2:20; Jeremiah 3:1, Jeremiah 3:6, Jeremiah 3:8; Ezekiel 16:15, Ezekiel 16:16, Ezekiel 16:28, Ezekiel 16:31, Ezekiel 16:35, Ezekiel 16:41; Ezekiel 23:5, Ezekiel 23:19, Ezekiel 23:44; Hosea 2:5; Hosea 3:3; Hosea 4:14. The word is applied to heathen cities in three places only: to Tyre, Isaiah 23:15, Isaiah 23:16, Isaiah 23:17; to Nineveh, Nahum 3:4; and here.

To manage and guide the beast.

A scarlet-colored beast

The same as in Revelation 13:1. This beast is ever after mentioned as τὸ θηρίον the beast. For scarlet, see on Matthew 27:6.

See on Luke 16:19.

Decked (κεχρυσωμένη)

Lit., gilded.

Precious stones (λίθῳ τιμίῳ)

Lit., precious stone.

Golden cup

Compare Jeremiah 51:7.

Abominations (βδελυγμάτων)

See on Matthew 24:15.

As was customary with harlots, who had their names inscribed on a ticket. Seneca, addressing a wanton priestess, "Nomen tuum pependit a fronte," thy name hung from thy forehead. See Juvenal, Satire vi., 123 sqq., of the profligate Messalina, "having falsely assumed the ticket of Lycisca."

Mystery

Some understand this as a part of the name, others as implying that the name is to be interpreted symbolically.

Babylon

See on 1 Peter 5:13. Tertullian, Irenaeus, and Jerome use Babylon as representing the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages Rome is frequently styled the Western Babylon. The sect of the Fraticelli, an eremitical organization from the Franciscans in the fourteenth century, who carried the vow of poverty to the extreme and taught that they were possessed of the Holy Spirit and exempt from sin - first familiarized the common mind with the notion that Rome was the Babylon, the great harlot of the Apocalypse (see Milligan, "Latin Christianity," Book xii., ch. vi.). On the passage cited from Dante (v. i.), Dean Plumptre remarks: "The words have the interest of being a medieval interpretation of Revelation 17:1-15, in which, however, the harlot and the beast seem somewhat strangely blended. The harlot is the corrupted Church of Rome; the seven heads are the seven hills on which the city is built; or perhaps, with an entirely different exegesis, the seven gifts of the Spirit, or the seven sacraments with which that Church had, in its outset, been endowed: the ten horns are the ten commandments. As long as the Church was faithful to her spouse, she had the moral strength which came from those gifts, and the divine law which she represented. When that failed, she became as a harlot, and her whoredom with kings was the symbol of her alliance with secular powers for the oppression of the nations" (On "Inferno," xix., 110).

The saints include the martyrs or witnesses, but the latter word emphasizes the testimony of the saints which has been the cause of their death. For martyr; see on 1 Peter 5:1.