implied superhuman claims which shocked the pious feelings of Jews and Christians alike. So did θεός and θεοῦ vids which, as the inscriptions prove, were freely applied to the emperors, from Augustus onwards. Theimperial system, especially with its demand for imperial worship, appeared the embodiment of ir- reverence and profane infatuation (ver. 6). This calm usurpation of divine honours was inexplicable except on the supposi- tion (ver. 2) that the empire was a tool or agent of the devil himself. Much had happened since Paul wrote Kom. xiii. 1- 6, and even since Asiatic Christians had received the counsel of 1 Peter ii. 13 f.
Ver. 2. The empire gathered up all the obnoxious qualities of Israel’s former oppressors: craft, lust of blood, and vicious energy. Hence the combination of traits from Daniel’s four beasts: gene- ral appearance that of a fierce panther, feet like a bear’s (i.¢., plantigrade), jaws like a lion’s (of devouring strength)—a Palestinian (Hos. xiii. 7, 8) picture of a perfect beast of prey, raging and raven- ing, before whom the church, like Dry- den’s milk-white Hind, “ was often forced to fly, And doom’d to death, though fated not to die’’.—xai ἔδωκεν κ.τ.λ., connect- ing the empire with the dragon of xii. and stamping it as Satanic (cf. Lueken, 22 f.; Weinel, 11-12), as a weird and wild messiah of the devil on earth.
Ver. 3. The prophet sees in the em- pire an extraordinary vitality which adds to its fascination. Disasters which would suffice to ruin an ordinary state, leave
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gic, the ‘kat ἡ πληγὴ τοῦ θανάτου person a ον denoted ὅλη ἡ γῆ ' ὀπίσω τοῦ θηρίου. by piavor , .