Ver. 8. Satan’s return to encounter irretrievable defeat upon the scene of his former successes (ém’ ἐσχάτου ἐτῶν Ezek. xxxviil. 8), is an obscure and curious feature, borrowed in part from earlier beliefs in Judaism (Gog and the Parthians both from the dreaded N. E., Ezek. xxxviii. 4), but directly or indirectly from a legend common to Persian and Hellenic eschatology: in the former the evil spirit has a preliminary and a final defeat, while in the latter the Titans emerge from Tartarus only to be con- clusively worsted (Rohde, Psyche, 410 f.). No explanation is given of how Satan gets free. Inthe Iranian eschat- ology (Brandt, 590 f.) the serpent breaks loose at the call of Angra Mainy6é (God’s opponent), seduces a part of mankind and persecutes the rest, till he is overcome by the messiah, who then proceeds to raise the dead. But as John identifies the serpent with Satan, such a
474
ς Pleon- astic (cf.
Σαὐτῶν ὡς 6 ῑἄᾶμμος τῆς θαλάσσης.
Ο. καὶ ἀνέβησαν ἐπὶ τὸ
iii. 8, etc). πλάτος τῆς γῆς, καὶ ! ἐκύκλευσαν τὴν παρεμβολὴν τῶν ἁγίων καὶ
ἆ Gen. xxii.
17, xxxii. τὴν πόλιν τὴν 5 ἠγαπημένην :
12, Heb. xi. 12, on form (omitting initial ψ) cf. Helbing, 22.
g See iii. 9, and on xxi. 7; Ps. Ixxviii. 68, Ixxxvil. 2, Jer. xi. 15.
2 Kings i. 10, Zech. xii. 9, Isa. xxvi. 11.
theory was plainly out of the question. At any rate, Satan wins adherents for this fresh attempt from those barbarian hordes who survived the downfall of the Roman empire (xix. 17-21). They are called ‘*Gog and Magog,” after the traditional Opponents who were to be defeated by the redeemed Israel of the latter days, ac- cording to the faith of Judaism (Ezek. XXXVili.-xxxix.). Jerusalem, the navel and centre of the earth (Ezek. xxxviii. 12) as messiah’s residence, is besieged; but, like Gog of old, the invaders are consumed by the divine fire, whilst Satan is consigned for ever to the lake of fire, where he lies writhing among his worshippers, as a punishment for seducing men. This is at once a reminiscence of the Iranian es- chatology (Hiibschmann, 231), where the serpent is flung into molten metal as his final doom, in order to rid earth of his pre- sence, and also a reflection of Enoch liv. (Ixvii. 7) where the four angels grip the hosts of Azazel on the last day and “cast them into a burning furnace, that the Lord of Spirits may take vengeance on them for leading astray those who dwell on earth ”’.
Ver. 9. παρεμβολή, either camp (as in O.T., e.g., Deut. xxiii. 14) or army (Heb. xi. 34), the saints being supposed to lie in a circle or leaguer round the headquarters of the messiah in Jeru- salem, which—by an association common in the ancient world (e.g., Nineveh, “the beloved city” of her god Ishtar)—is termed his beloved city. The phrase is an im- plicit answer (cf. on iii. g) to the claim of contemporary Judaism which held to the title of ‘‘God’s beloved” as its monopoly (Apoc. Bar. v. 1, xxi. 21, cf. Sir. xxiv. 11). In the Hebrew Elias-apo- calypse of the 3rd century (cf. Butten- wieser, E. . i. 681-2), where Gog and Magog also appear after the mil- lennium to besiege Jerusalem, their an- nihilation is followed by the judgment and the descent of Jerusalem from heaven. This tradition of xx. 4-10 therefore be- longs to the cycle from which xi. 1-13 (xiv. 14-2c) was drawn; Jerusalem, freed from her foes and purified within, forms the headquarters of messiah’s tem-
e Hab. i. 6, Ezek. xxxviii. 11.
\h , Pe es a > A 9 και κατέβη πυρ εκ του ουρανου και
f 2 Kings vi. 14. h Ezek. xxxviii. 22. xxxix. 6,
porary reign, tenanted not simply by devout worshippers but by martyrs (cf. xiv. I-5, on mount Zion). Yet only a new and heavenly Jerusalem is finally adequate (xxi. f.); it descends after the last punishment and judgment (xi. 15 f.=xx. το f.). Wetstein cites from the Targ. Jonath. a passage which has suggested elements in this and in the preceding (xi. 17-21) vision: a king rises in the last days from the land of Magog, et omnes populi obedient illi; after their rout by fire their corpses lie a prey to wild beasts and birds. Then ‘all the dead of Israel shall live. . . and receive the reward of their works”. In the highest spirit of the O.T., however, John rejects the horrible companion thought (En. Ixxxix. 58, xciv. I0, xcvii. 2) that God gloats over the doom of the damned. An onset of foreign nations upon Jerusalem naturally formed a stereo- typed feature in all Jewish expectations of latter-day horrors; here, however, as the city is ipso facto tenanted by holy citizens, the siege is ineffective (contrast xi. 1 f.). Neither here nor in xix. 21 are the rebellious victims consigned at death to eternal punishment, as are the beast, the false prophet, and Satan. The human tools of the latter die, but they are raised (xx. 11 f.) for judgment (ver. 15), though the result of their trial is a foregone conclusion (xiii. 8, xiv. 9-10). In En. lvi., from which this passage borrows, Gog and Magog are represented by the Medes and the Parthians from whom (between 100 and 46 B.c.) a hostile league against Palestine might have been expected by contemporaries. But the destruction of the troops is there caused by civil dissensions. In our Apocalypse the means of destruction is supernatural fire, as in 2 Thess. i. 8, ii. 8, 4 Esd. xii. 33, xiii. 38-39, Ap. Bar. xxvii. 10, Asc. Isa. iv. 18 (where fire issues from the Beloved to consume all the godless); the Parthians also appear some time before the end, in the penulti- mate stage when the Roman empire and its Nero-antichrist make their last attack. But the prophet is still left with the orthodox eschatological tradition of Gog