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from many, much less from very many, but from one, that which is especially needed in the case of the beast is, that there may be a place where the seven heads and the ten horns may be fixed. 8 ) No one who shall have weighed the system of the numbers of this book, the whole picture of the beast, and especially the close of this thirteenth chapter of the Apocalypse, will say that a multitude, whether great or lessened, is indefinitely denoted. The same inter- pretation of the number of the beast by a reference to the Roman legion, is refuted by the Acta Basileensia , etc., published A. 1730, p. 42, etc.
Lightfoot arrives at the same conclusion by a different course of argument, when he thus writes : — “ The 42 months and 1260 days, also a time, times, and half a time, are short phrases taken from Daniel, who, when he employs that mode of speaking, describes the rage of Antiochus, and the trampling under foot of Religion, which was about to last during the space of three years and six months, Dan. vii. 25, and xii. 7, 11, in which certain times of adversity and affliction (and not any definite period) seem to be marked out. This meaning of expressions of this kind prevailed everywhere among the Jewish writers.” — Chron. N. T. on Ap. xi. The two examples w'hich he there subjoins are foreign to the purpose ; and since the numbers in the same, and the very numbers used by Daniel, have a precise meaning, the numbers used in the Apoca- lypse ought not, as though they merely contained an allusion to those of Daniel, to be weakened, but to be taken with equal preci- sion. Otherwise, in fact, the number of the lxx. weeks, which Lightfoot takes precisely, would still, because it is a round number, have to be taken as a certain number for an uncertain one, by some allusion or other (an error, which God forbid that any fall into !)
In short, the indefinite interpretation is as though he should say : A multitude is designed in general terms ; there is no need of an arithmetical computation, by which the numbers are solved in a specific sense. But the text says, Count . And since that is not said at random, but to point out the hope of finding, we now pro- ceed to make the computation.
§ 3. Another number ^adapted to the explanation of the number of the beast by calculation , and, that affording proper facility [for count- ing], both ought to be sought in the text , and is found , viz. that of xlii. months. — The prophecy, 1) bids us to compute ; 2) names the number of the beast ; 3) names the number of a man ; 4) and says that it is 666. All these things are pertinent to the subject ;
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