Revelation 11:2

τὴν αὐλὴν τὴν ἔξωθεν τοῦ ναοῦ. א* reads τῆς αὐλῆς τῆς ἔσωθεν τοῦ λαοῦ, אc τὴν αὐλὴν τὴν … ναοῦ.

ἔκβαλε ἔξωθεν. Text. Rec[371] reads ἔκβ. ἔξω with B2; א* reads ἔκβ. ἔσω, P ἔκβ. ἔσωθεν.

[371] Rec. Textus Receptus as printed by Scrivener.

ἐδόθη. א* reads ἐδ. καί.

2. τὴν αὐλὴν τὴν ἔξωθεν. The words might be translated “the outer court of the Temple.” It must be remembered that “the courts of the Lord’s House” were the ordinary place for the worshippers to assemble, even before the outer and larger “Court of the Gentiles,” with its magnificent colonnades, was added to Herod’s Temple. Probably the latter is thought of, in its assignment to the Gentiles: but the meaning appears to be, that all the courts shall be profaned, up to the walls of the inmost Sanctuary.

μὴ αὐτὴν μετρήσῃς. See Revelation 10:4.

ἔκβαλε ἔξωθεν. “Cast out outside.” The sense must be “leave out for profanation.” This excludes the hypothesis (otherwise not without plausibility) that the measurement of the Temple is for destruction, not for preservation: see 2 Kings 21:13; Lamentations 2:8,—and for the destruction being regarded as the work of the prophet, cf. Ezekiel 43:3. The variations in the MSS. between “the inner” and “the outer” court, and “casting out outside” aud “casting out inside” shew that the scribes had long been preoccupied with the thought of the removal of the middle wall of partition between the court of Israel and the court of the Gentiles, for Σ and Ξ are not generally confused in the MSS. of this book.

πατήσουσιν. This doubtless refers to the words of the Lord in St Luke 21:24. Hitherto, the correspondences in this book with that Prophecy of our Lord’s have been closest with St Matthew’s version of it. Here the Vision does not go so far as the Prophecy. When the Witnesses have finished their testimony their bodies are cast out in the streets of Jerusalem, which is still standing and hugs her chains. Hence there can be no reference to the Jewish War: it is a vision of profanation, not of destruction.

μῆνας τεσσεράκοντα δύο. So Revelation 13:5. This period is apparently identical with the “1260 days” of the next verse, and Revelation 12:6 : and with the “time, times, and half a time” (i.e. 3½ years) of Revelation 12:14. In Daniel 7:25; Daniel 12:7 we have this last measure of the period given, and the time indicated by Daniel must be either identical with or typical of that indicated by St John. It is to be noted, that in Daniel 12:11-12, we have the period extended to 1290 and 1335 days.

The key to these prophecies, that speak of definite periods of time, is generally sought in Ezekiel 4:6—it is supposed that each prophetical “day” stands for a year, and by consequence a “week” is equivalent to seven years, a “month” to 30, and a “year” to 360. This gives an approximately satisfactory explanation of the one prophecy of the “70 weeks” in Daniel 9 : they would naturally be understood to extend from B.C. 536 (the decree of Cyrus) to B.C. 5 (the Nativity), A.D. 29–30 (the Crucifixion), and A.D. 70 (the fall of Jerusalem); but the terms in which their beginning and end are described can with a little pressure be applied to B.C. 457 (the decree of Artaxerxes), A.D. 26 (the Baptism of St John), A.D. 29–30, and A.D. 33—possibly the date of the death of St Stephen, and so of the final rejection of the Gospel by the Jews and of the Jewish sacrifices by God. But in no other case has a prophecy been even tolerably interpreted on this principle. If it were admitted in this, we should naturally understand that Jerusalem was to have been restored in A.D. 1330—or at latest 1360 or 1405. Indeed, if the Saracen conquest instead of the Roman were taken as the starting-point, the restoration would not fall due till 1897, and it is humanly speaking quite possible that Palestine may pass into new hands then. But men ought to have learnt by this time to distrust such calculations: as we “know not the day nor the hour,” so we know not the year nor the century. Two or three generations ago a number of independent calculations were made to converge to the year 1866 as the beginning of the end: but in that year nothing considerable happened except the Austrian war—which of all recent wars perhaps had least the character of a war between Christ and Antichrist. It was at worst an instance of the painful and not innocent way in which fallen human nature works out its best desires: the Austrians were technically in the right, while the victory of the Prussians has proved honourable and beneficial to both empires alike.