4 And the woman was arrayed | golden cup in her hand full of in purple and scarlet-color, and abominations and filthiness of decked with gold and precious her fornication: stones and pearls, having a 5 And upon her forehead was woman with that of the woman men-cup in the Lord's hand, that made all tioned in chapter xii. 1, and mark the difference. The former is distinguished by rich and gaudy decorations; the latter is clothed with the sun, the source of light: the one is decked with gold and precious stones, and pearls, and has a golden cup in her hand, which is full of abominations and filthiness; while the other is lifted above all earthly glory and magnificence, and has the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown or circle of twelve stars: the former represents the city of Rome, distinguished by great magnificence, but very corrupt; the latter represents the holy city, New Jerusalem, which came down from God out of heaven, and looked as a bride prepared for her husband. The woman [Rome] was, as we have said, arrayed in purple and scarlet." These were the colors of the imperial habit, the purple in times of peace, and the scarlet in times of war. The object of the revelator is to set her off with all possible magnificence of dress. But he borrows his figures from the prophets. See the following: "Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God; Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes, was prepared thee in the day that thou wast created;" Ezk. xxviii. 12, 13. A golden cup in her hand. -This also is a prophetic metaphor, as will be seen by the following passage: "Babylon hath been a golden the earth drunken: the nations have drunken of her wine; therefore the nations are mad;" Jer. li. 7. The cup agrees exactly with the description of the woman. It is a golden cup, and she is dressed with great magnificence. ¶ Full of abominations, &c. — But notwithstanding it is a golden cup, it is full of abominations and filthiness; and so, although she was decorated with such a profusion of rich ornaments, yet she was full of wickedness and impurity. The influence of Rome upon the nations at large was decidedly bad; and hence the woman is said to give the contents of the cup to the nations to drink, and they were made drunk with the wine of her fornication. Wine is used in the Apocalypse as a metaphor in two senses, viz., 1st. To represent the wrath of God; xiv. 10; xvi. 19; and 2d. To represent the wickedness of men; xiv. 8; xvii. 2; xviii. 3. The reason is easily seen. They both madden men, like very strong wine excessively used. The judgments which God sends on men sometimes madden them, and make them act as though their reason was destroyed. "And the fifth angel poured out his vial upon the seat of the beast; and his kingdom was full of darkness; and they gnawed their tongues for pain, and blasphemed the God of heaven, because of their pains and their sores, and repented not of their deeds;" xvi. 10, 11. Judgments producing such effects might well be represented by inflam. matory wine. So the maddening influence of evil examples, especially those of a bad woman, are well described by the wine of fornication. Men's reason is driven away, and they seem to know not, nor care, what they do. The influence of the woman a name written, MYSTERY, BABYLON Rome, therefore, was represented by a golden cup, corresponding to her outward magnificence, which is full of the means of temptation and destruction. 5. Upon her forehead. The forehead is mentioned as the most conspicuous part of the body on which to place the label. So Aaron bore the motto, "Holiness to the Lord," engraved on a golden plate, upon his forehead. "And thou shalt make a plate of pure gold, and grave upon it, like the engravings of a signet, HOLINESS TO THE LORD. And thou shalt put it on a blue lace, that it may be upon the mitre; upon the fore-front of the mitre it shall be. And it shall be upon Aaron's forehead, that Aaron may bear the iniquity of the holy things, which the children of Israel shall hallow in all their holy gifts; and it shall be always upon his forehead, that they may be accepted before the Lord;" Exod. xxviii. 36-38. Subsequently it became a custom to place a mark of approbation on the foreheads of those who were worthy of particular honors. "And the Lord said unto him, Go through the midst of the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof;" Ezk. ix. 4. Thus the hundred and forty-four thousand were sealed in the forehead; Rev. vii. 3; which mark the enemies of the gospel had not; ix. 4. The redeemed are said to have the Father's name written in their foreheads; xiv. 1. The forehead being the place on which marks, or inscriptions of honor, were worn, earthly potentates conferred honors to be thus worn; and hence they ordained sentences and titles for that purpose. The beast caused all that worshipped him to receive his name in their foreheads; xiii. 16; xiv. 9. It is said by some writers, that lewd and public women THE GREAT, were accustomed, among the Greeks THE MOTHER OF HAR- 6 And I saw the woman LOTS AND ABOMINA- drunken with the blood of the TIONS OF THE EARTH. saints, and with the blood of the curiosities of this gigantic place, of which almost every trace is destroyed. It is certain that Babylon proper was not intended by the motto on the woman's forehead. Hence, she is said to be Babylon, not really, but by way of mystery, enigma, or figure; as if it were said, "Upon her forehead was a name written metaphorically, Babylon, the great." When the Son of man declared to the revelator the mystery of the seven stars and the seven golden candlesticks, he said, "The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches;" this was giving the mysterious or metaphorical sense of the figures employed. So when the revelator says, in the chapter before us, "I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast," &c., (ver. 7,) he goes on to show what was meant by those metaphors. 'Mystery, Babylon," therefore, means, not Babylon proper, but Babylon in a mysterious, or metaphorical sense. And why was the figure Babylon used? The term seems to have been one which the woman was willing to apply to herself. Babylon was truly a great city, and one of the wonders of the world. Rome claimed to be in glory and magnificence what Babylon was, when at the height of her pride. The sacred writers compare Rome to Babylon for other reasons, viz., to foreshadow her destruction. Babylon had been the place to which the Jews .had been carried captive, (see Psa. cxxxvii.,) and for the bondage and indignities which they suffered there, they believed that God would overthrow the city and kingdom, which was so effectually done that doubts now remain as to the exact site of the former. Nebuchadnezzar carried away the holy vessels from Jerusalem and put them in his temple at Babylon; 2 Chron. xxxvi. 7. For the wickedness of the city God decreed, that "Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, the beauty of the Chaldees' excellency, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah ;" Isa. xiii. 19. Hence comes the proverb, "Babylon is fallen, is fallen;" Isa. xxi. 9, and Jer. li. 8. Reason enough, therefore, why Babylon was used metaphorically for Rome, just as Sodom and Egypt were used for Jerusalem: "The great city, which spiritually (or by mystery) is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified;" xi. 8. Rome was doomed to fall, and to become "the habitation of devils, and the hold of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hateful bird;" xviii. 2. Rome was, in truth, the mother of harlots, whether she would see fit to wear such an acknowledgment or not. It was a habit with the prophets to call any wicked city a harlot. As for instance, 1st. Jerusalem. "How is the faithful city become a harlot!" Isa. i. 21. Also Jer. iii. 20, and Ezk. xvi. 15, — in fact the whole of the last named chapter. 2d. Tyre; see Isa. xxiii. 15—18. Scarcely anything was more common than for the prophets to represent wicked cities under this similitude. The language and style of the revelator, in this respect, would not, therefore, have appeared strange to the people whom he addressed. The "mother of harlots" shows how wide was the influence of Rome, as if she was the head of a family of cities of that description. 6. Drunken with the blood of the saints. - The woman was intoxicated with the blood of saints; i. e., she had revelled in their blood, until she had become perfectly mad or delirious. To make one drunk with blood, is to revel in slaughter. "I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh;" Deut. martyrs of Jesus; and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration. xxxii. 42. Again we find a similar metaphor: "For this is the day of the Lord God of hosts, a day of vengeance, that he may avenge him of his adversaries: and the sword shall devour, and it shall be satiate and made drunk with their blood: for the Lord God of hosts hath a sacrifice in the north country by the river Euphrates;" Jer. xlvi. 10. Once more: "And ye shall eat fat till ye be full, and drink blood till ye be drunken, of my sacrifice which I have sacrificed for you;" Ezk. xxxix. 19. The figure of the revelator, it will be seen, was a very common one in his day. His meaning was, that the woman Rome had rioted in the blood of the saints, and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus, and she scarcely knew what she was doing, like a person drunken or delirious. I wondered with great admiration. When the revelator saw the woman, "he wondered with great admiration," i. e., with great wonder, not with pleasure, or approbation. The sense of the word admiration has somewhat changed. It formerly signified wonder, without approval; but its common signification now is, gratifying wonder. In the passage, it means great marvel; and hence the angel says, in the next verse, "Wherefore didst thou marvel?” 7. Wherefore didst thou marvel? -The revelator marvelled at the woman, and the beast on which she sat; as if he would have said, What can these things mean? To this the angel replies: "I will tell thee the mystery." What mystery? Ans. That "of the woman and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns." I will tell thee what these metaphors mean; I will let thee into the hidden sense. Mystery. Unfortunately, the word mystery has been greatly misunderstood. It has been thought to mean, something absolutely incomprehensi 7 And the angel said unto me, Wherefore didst thou marvel? I will tell thee the mystery ble and unintelligible. But this, as Parkhurst says, is a very unscriptural and dangerous sense. "I think proper to observe, (says that author,) that I have carefully taken notice of all the passages in the New Testament in which the term mystery occurs; and this I have the rather done, because a most unscriptural and dangerous sense is but too often put upon this word, as if it meant somewhat absolutely unintelligible and incomprehensible. A strange mistake! since in almost every text wherein it is used, it is mentioned as something that is revealed, declared, shown, spoken, or which may be known or understood." (See his Lexicon, under Musterion.) Dr. Campbell maintains that this word is used in two senses only in the New Testament, neither of which has any relation to the idea of incomprehensibility. One sense is that of arcanum, a secret. But he adds: "The word is sometimes employed to denote the figurative sense, as distinguished from the literal, which is conveyed under any parable, allegory, symbolical action, representation, dream, or vision. It is plain that in this case the term musterion is used comparatively; for, however clear the meaning intended to be conveyed in the apologue, or parable, may be to the intelligent, it is obscure, compared with the literal sense, which, to the unintelligent proves a kind of veil. The one is, as it were, open to the senses; the other requires penetration and reflection. Perhaps there was some allusion to this import of the term when our Lord said to his disciples, 'To you it is given to know the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; but to them that are without, all these things are done in parables ;' (Mark iv. 11.) The apostles were let into the secret, and got the spiritual sense of the similitude, whilst the of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns. 8 The beast that thou sawest, multitude amused themselves with the letter, and searched no further. In this sense musterion is used in these words: The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks are the seven churches; Rev. i. 20. Again, in the same book, 'I will tell thee the mystery of the woman, and of the beast that carrieth her,'" &c. Thus far Dr. Campbell; and the testimony of these two authors we shall regard as sufficient to settle the question as to the New Testament sense of the word before us. (Prelim. Dis. ix., pt. i., sec. 7.) 8. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not.- - Here the angel begins to tell the mystery of the woman and the beast that carrieth her, agreeably to the promise made by him, which was given in the preceding verse. The beast is first described, notwithstanding the woman is mentioned first in the order of the chapter. The description of the beast occupies from verse 8 to verse 17, inclusive. The description of the woman is exceedingly brief, and occupies only the 18th verse. Let us first examine carefully what is said about the beast. "The beast that thou sawest, was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit." Here are three kinds of time mentioned, viz., the past, the present, and the future. He was, he is not, and shall be. What does this mean? It has the appearance of an enigma. What should we infer from the words except that the power intended by the beast once was, then ceased to be, and afterwards revived again? Prof. Stuart solves the enigma by referring to a belief which existed in regard to Nero, the great was, and is not: and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition and they that dwell on the earth shall persecutor of the church, that he should be assassinated, should disappear for a time, and then should revive again and reign. His words are: "The beast means the Roman emperors, specifically Nero, of whom the report spread throughout the empire is, that he will revive, after being apparently slain, and will come as it were from the abyss, or Hades; but he will still perish, and that speedily." If such a belief did exist in the empire in regard to Nero, it would be sufficient ground for the revelator's description, although he himself had no faith in what the multitude believed. His reference to this common belief or superstition would show just as conclusively who he meant, as though the belief were ever so well founded. In the description of the beast in xiii. 3, we read: "And I saw one of his heads as it were wounded to death; and his deadly wound was healed." This may also be a reference to the common belief concerning Nero. We spake not positively of the sense of that verse, when we considered it in its place. In xiii. 14, the revelator is particular to mention that the beast had his wound by a sword, which would make it possible that the assassination of Nero was referred to. The beast, it was said, "should ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition." This scourge came up from beneath. He did not come down from above, as a blessing from heaven; but sprang up from beneath, as a scourge to the world. See, also, xi. 7. But he will not remain long; he is to be lost; he will utterly pass away and be heard of no more; he will go into perdition. See remarks under ver. 11 of this chapter. ¶ And they that dwell on the earth shall wonder. That is, all except the Christians, all except those |
