1. ”A vifiog, the ivind) The winds in this passage denote the as- suaging mitigations of threatening evils ; for the holding of them hack hurts , ver. 2. A remarkable allegory.
1 The epithet , oAjj, is considered of less importance in the margin of Ed. maj. than in Ed. 2 and Vers. Germ. — E. B.
ABCA Vulg. support oAy? : Rec. Text omits it. — E.
2 Ver 15. sKpvyj/ecu exvrovg, hid themselves) Where was now the spirit of those whom the world had so greatly feared ? — V. g.
Ver. 17. r<V, who) They who are freed from wrath to come, having fellowship with the Lamb. — V. g.
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2. ” A Wovy another) This other angel is distinguished either from the angel who makes proclamation, ch. v. 2 ; or from the four angels who hurt, in this passage.
*3. we may seal) By this sealing, the servants of
God out of the tribes of Israel are preserved, all along from the time of John, against the calamities which threaten under the seven trumpets. Before this there had been no need of sealing, before the danger. The ancestors are sealed at one time, and their posterity at another. If the ancestors were slain, there would be no posterity. Under the trumpet of the fifth angel, not even are those slain who are not sealed ; much less, therefore, are they slain who are sealed.
4. T (fpariX) Israel in the strict sense is denoted. For this book pronounces literally respecting Israel many things, which some take in a figurative sense. Israelism , as H. More terms it, Book i., Synops. proph., cap. 4, ought not to be too much extended. Lampe rightly says, that the Jews ought to he sought for in the Apocalypse ,* more than most interpreters have found them. Medit. anecd. in Apoc., p. 261.
5. 6. Awdsjca ^iXiadsc, twelve thousand) We ought to take the twelve thousand twelve times with such exactness, that they may amount altogether not to 143 or 145, but to 144 thousands. Bound numbers often have an exact value : see Jer. lii. 30, where a total of 4600 souls is made up of numbers by no means round, preceding in the same place. Perhaps there are so many heads or fathers (just as in Bom. xi. 4, men , not souls, are enumerated), together with their posterity. [The twelve tribes [ die zwolf Stamme] are men- tioned hy six pairs. — Not. Crit.]
6. NspdaA/^* Mawffffij, Napthali : Manasseh) Dan is omitted , be- cause that tribe had now long ago fallen away to the single family of Hussim , as the Hebrews say ; and this family itself seems to have perished by wars before the times of Esdras. For in the Chronicles , where the posterity of the patriarchs is mentioned , Dan is omitted. And perhaps this is predicted in Amos viii. 14. John of Antioch relates that a few survived of the tribe of Dan , and that they fled into Phoenicia. — Grotius. It is not so much that Dan is omitted, as that his small numbers, concealed under Manasseh, are joined with Napthali, whose brother he was by the same mother. \_For Nap-
1 ocko ductro^yjs falov,from the rising of the sun ) It was from the east, there- fore, that the plagues began. — V. g. — tyiv yviu xa,l rvjv Odhotwoiv, the earth and the sea ) Here the trees are also mentioned. The earth is Asia ; the sea, Europe; the rivers (ch. viii. 10) and the trees, Africa — V. g.
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