Revelation 16:12

τῶν βασιλέων. Tyc.? (ap. Aug. Ap.[558] omits βασιλέων and translates eorum. Primas[559] and Commodian read venienti regi.

[558]? (ap. Aug. Ap.) Tyconius reproduced in the homilies in the Appendix to St Augustine.
[559] Primasius, edited by Haussleiter.

12. [τὸν] Εὐφράτην, Revelation 9:14 sqq. Where Babylon confessedly stands for Rome, we should naturally understand the Euphrates to be used also in a symbolical sense, possibly as meaning the Tiber. But the Tiber is not a very “great river”: and the mention of “the kings of the east” (lit., “the kings from the rising of the sun”) as needing to pass the Euphrates seems to mark it as meant literally.

ἐξηράνθη τὸ ὕδωρ αὐτοῦ. Referring to the way that the ancient Babylon was actually captured by Cyrus, by drawing off the water of the Euphrates into a reservoir, so as to make its bed passable for a few hours. Though not mentioned in Daniel 5, nor by Cyrus in his lately discovered account of the capture, there seems no doubt that this incident is historical: the details given in Hdt. I. 191 agree exactly with those of the predictions in Isaiah 44:27; Isaiah 45:3; Jeremiah 50:38; Jeremiah 50:44; Jeremiah 51:30-32; Jeremiah 51:36.

ἵνα ἑτοιμασθῇ ἡ ὁδός. Compare the prophecies (Isaiah 41:2; Isaiah 41:25) of the advance of Cyrus. It may have been felt that his success and services did not exhaust their meaning. He is spoken of as advancing on Babylon “from the East”; much more would any invader of the apocalyptic Babylon come from the East, if he had to cross the literal Euphrates.

τῶν βασιλέων τῶν�. See crit. notes. The reading of Primasius would imply a still more direct reference to Isaiah; that of Tyconius is probably based on the tradition that the ten tribes were still awaiting their return in the extreme east. The plural presents no difficulty; the Arsacidae all called themselves kings of kings: and if a more definite application were needed, we might think of the kings of Parthia and Armenia. In Revelation 17:6 we hear of the kings of the earth combining to attack Babylon, and the Euphrates may be dried up only that the kings from the east may be able to advance to take their part in the assault. But why do they specially need their “way to be prepared”? The Euphrates is a far less impassable frontier than the Alps or the Mediterranean: it was in fact in St John’s day the weak side of the empire. And probably in this fact we may see the key to the prophecy. In Daniel 8:8; Daniel 11:4 we have the division of Alexander’s empire described as “toward the four winds of heaven”: in Revelation 11:5-6 the Egyptian and Asiatic kingdoms are designated as “the kings of the south and of the north.” It is implied therefore that the kings of Macedon are kings of the West: and it remains that the other great and permanent kingdom (of smaller ephemeral ones there were more than four) which arose from the dissolution of Alexander’s shall be “the kings of the east.” Now this designation obliges us to think of the Parthians, the longest-lived of all the Alexandrine kingdoms, and the only one surviving in St John’s day. This differed from the others, in respect that its royal dynasty was native not Macedonian, but it was not the less a portion of Alexander’s empire, inheriting his traditions. (The veneer of Greek culture existing among the Arsacidae is well illustrated by the grim story of the performance of the Bacchae at the time of the death of Crassus: it is instructive also to look at the series of coins engraved in Smith’s Dictionary s.v. Arsacidae, where we see Hellenic types gradually giving way to Assyrian.) In Enoch liv. 9 we hear of “the chiefs of the east among the Parthians and Medes”: that passage throws no real light on this, except as shewing who “the kings of the east” were understood to be, by a person familiar with the same ideas as St John. Now in St John’s time (whether the earlier or later date be assigned to the vision) there were apprehensions of a Parthian invasion of the empire on behalf of a Pseudo-Nero (Tac. Hist. I. ii. 3), i.e. a shadow of Antichrist: and it is likely that St John’s prophecy is expressed (as so many O.T. prophecies are) in terms of the present political situation. But it had no immediate fulfilment: the danger from Parthia under Domitian passed off, and soon afterwards its power was broken for ever by Trajan. But its place was taken in time by the Sassanian kingdom of Persia, which remained for three centuries the most formidable enemy of Rome. Then, as Parthia had been broken by Trajan and fell before Persia, so Persia, broken by Heraclius, fell before the Arabs, who endangered the existence, and actually appropriated great part, of the Eastern Empire. To them succeeded the Turks, before whom it fell.

Now while no event in this series can be called a definite or precise fulfilment of St John’s prophecy, we may hold that this habitual relation of “the kings of the east” to the Roman empire supplies a number of typical or partial fulfilments. A pseudo-Nero, made emperor by a Parthian conquest of Rome, and ruling (as might he expected) in Nero’s spirit, would have been almost a real Antichrist; and for such a revelation of Antichrist St John’s immediate readers were meant to be prepared. Again, in the conquests and persecutions of Sapor and Chosroes, of Omar, Mohammed, and Suleiman, it was intended that the Christians of the empire should see the approaches and threatenings of the kingdom of Antichrist. But the empire—whether Roman, Byzantine, or Austrian—continued to “withhold, that he may be revealed in his season”; and its modern representatives will continue to do so “until it be taken out of the way: and then shall that Wicked be revealed.”
It may be observed that Daniel 11:40 sqq. seems to imply that the political situation in the East in the days of Antichrist will be not unlike that in the days of Antiochus: for while it is certain that the early part of that chapter applies to the latter, it is hard to regard the passage beginning at Daniel 11:36 as adequately fulfilled in him. Humanly speaking, it does not seem that the changes now going on in the east are as capable of producing a conquering empire, as they are of producing an antichristian fanaticism: but qui vivra verra.