Revelation 11:8

the street For the sing. cf. Revelation 21:21; Revelation 22:2. The word in fact means a broadstreet, such as theprincipal street of a city would be. The modern Italian piazzais the same word; but Revelation 22:2 seems to shew that it is a street rather than a square perhaps most accurately a "boulevard" in the modern sense, only running through the city, not round it.

the great city Many commentators suppose this to be the Babylon of Revelation 14:8 and chaps. 17 sqq. i.e. Rome, whether literally or in an extended sense. But this seems hardly natural. If it were, why is it not calledBabylon here, just as in the last verse the beast was called the beast? Besides, here the great majority of the inhabitants repent at God's judgement: contrast Revelation 16:9. The only other possible view is, that thisgreat city is Jerusalem:and with this everything that is said about it seems to agree.

Sodom Jerusalem is so calledin Isaiah 1:10, and is likenedto Sodom in Ezekiel 16:46. For the licentiousness of the generation before the fall of Jerusalem, see comm. on Hosea 4:14: Jos. B. J.IV. ix. 10 suggests a closer likeness.

Egypt Jerusalem, it must be admitted, is never so called in the O. T. But New Testament facts made the name appropriate: comparing Acts 2:47; Acts 5:12, &c. with the Epistle to the Galatians, we see how Jerusalem was at first the refuge of the people of God, from which nevertheless they had at last to escape as from a house of bondage.

our Lord Read, their Lord i.e. of the two Witnesses. This clause seems almost certainly to identify "the great city" as Jerusalem: perhaps St John uses the title, as implying that its old one, "the Holy City," is forfeited. At the same time, if we dosuppose the City meant to be Rome, these words can be explained, either by the responsibility of Pilate for the Lord's death, or on the principle of the beautiful legend, Domine, quo vadis?that the Lord suffered in His Servants.