Revelation 13:18

χξς ́. C 5 11 and Tyc[462] still preserve the reading older than St Irenæus ἑξακόσιαι δέκα ἕξ.

[462] Tyconius.

18. ἐστάθην. If correct, it would mark the beginning of a new vision, just as Daniel 8:2; Daniel 10:4 begins a vision with a statement of where he saw it. If we read ἐστάθη, which was certainly the commonest reading before Andreas, the connexion will be, the dragon departed to make war and he stood on the sand of the sea waiting for the beast to come up to fight his battles. As Tischendorf observes, if Chapter s 12. and 13. are to be so closely connected, it becomes an unanswerable question, where is the dragon’s throne which is given to the beast; but this is not an unanswerable objection to the best attested reading.

Revelation 13:1. εἶδον ἐκ τῆς θαλάσσης. Daniel 7:3.

κέρατα δέκα καὶ κεφαλὰς ἑπτά. The ten horns are from Daniel 7:7. But the beast seen by Daniel seems to have only one head, Daniel 7:20 : and hence some have supposed that this beast is not the same as that, but a combination of all Daniel’s four—and that the seven heads are obtained by adding together the four heads of the leopard with the single ones of the other three beasts. But this seems farfetched: it is better to remember (see on Revelation 4:7) that God is not obliged always to reveal the same truth under the same image. St John’s vision was like enough to Daniel’s to indicate that it applied to the same thing, but it supplied details which Daniel’s did not. For one thing, comparing this description with Revelation 12:3, we learn that this beast has a special likeness to the Devil.

ὀνόματα βλασφημίας. Cf. Revelation 17:3. Divine honours were paid to every good or even tolerable emperor after his death, and claimed by Gaius, Nero and Domitian in their lifetime: both the tribute and claim were blasphemous: the claim was put forward more violently by Gaius, more persistently by Domitian, whom his subjects had to call “our Lord and our God,” to Christian ears a double blasphemy: Σεβαστός, the official title of all emperors, sounded like a divine name and was treated as such in Asia, and was therefore blasphemous. It is uncertain whether the plural implies that each head bore more blasphemous names than one.

18. ὁ ἔχων νοῦν ψηφισάτω. “The terms of the challenge serve at once to show that the feat proposed is possible, and that it is difficult.” (Alford.)

ἀριθμὸς γὰρ�. Comparing Revelation 21:17, it appears that these words mean “is reckoned simply by an ordinary human method.”

χξϚʹ. The reading χιϚʹ is ancient, but certainly wrong: and it is not impossible that the repetition (which must strike every one in the words, though the Greek figures do not suggest it like the Arabic) of the number 6 is significant: it approximates to, but falls short of, the sacred 7. Certainly we get no help by referring to 1 Kings 10:14—where the number is probably arrived at by calculating that Solomon got 2000 talents every three years: cf. 1 Kings 10:22.