Revelation 11:13

τὸ δέκατον. B2 reads τὸ τρἱτον as in the other plagues.

13. τὸ δέκατον τῆς πόλεως. This is the mildest judgement recorded in this book: we are expressly told after the far severer judgements of the Trumpets and the Bowls, that they wrought no repentance but rather blasphemy (Revelation 9:20-21; Revelation 16:9; Revelation 16:21). Here it seems as if Jerusalem by a lighter chastisement was brought, if not to repentance, to some beginning of it. Blindness in part has happened to Israel, but they are still beloved for the fathers’ sake.

ὀνόματα�. “Names of men,” as A. V[395] margin: cf. Revelation 3:4, and Acts 1:15 there quoted.

[395] Authorised Version.

χιλιάδες ἑπτά. Possibly this number is taken as approximately a tenth part of the population of Jerusalem. The city, which can never have extensive suburbs, being surrounded by ravines, can never hold a larger permanent population than 70,000; but in its highest prosperity it may have held as many, and perhaps it may again.

ἔδωκαν δόξαν. Here and in Revelation 14:7; Revelation 16:9 these words seem to imply the confession of sin, as in Joshua 7:19, and probably St John 9:24. It was the predicted work of Elijah to “turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers”: this will be fulfilled by his posthumous success, uniting the original stock of God’s People to the branches that now grow out of it (Romans 11:17, &c.).

τῷ θεῷ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ. This title (combined in Jonah 1:9; Ezra 1:2 with the Name of the LORD) seems to have been the way in which Jews living among heathens (Ezra 5:12, Nehemiah 3:4) or heathens under Jewish influence (Ezra 6:10) spoke of the God of Israel. This accounts for the way in which heathens in later times conceived of their religion. Nil praeter nubes et caeli numen adorant (Juv. XIV. 97).