Revelation 11:1-2

“And I was given a rod (קְנֵה הַמִּדָּה) like a staff, with the words” (λέγων by a harsh attraction, cf. LXX of 1 Kings 20:9; Joshua 2:2, is left in apposition to the subject implied in ἐδόθη), “Up (or come = קוּמ) and measure the temple of God and the altar (of burnt-offering, which stood outside the inner shrine) and (sc. number) those who worship there” (i.e., in the inner courts, Revelation 13:6; for constr. cf. 2 Samuel 8:3). The outer court (Ezekiel 10:5) is to be left out of account (ἐκβ. = “omit” or exclude as unworthy of attention), “for it has been abandoned (or, assigned in the divine counsel) to the heathen, and (indeed) they shall trample on the holy city itself (emphatic by position, = Jerusalem) for two and forty months.” In Asc. Isa. iv. 12 antichrist's sway lasts for three years, seven months, and twenty-seven days, but three and a half years is the conventional period for the godless persecutor to get the upper hand (cf. Revelation 13:5, after Daniel's “time, and times, and the dividing of time,” i.e., three and a half years, Daniel 7:25; Daniel 12:7). Originally this broken seven as the period of oppression reflected the Babylonian three and a half winter months (S. C. 309 f.; Cheyne's Bible Problems, 111 f.), preceding the festival of Marduk in the vernal equinox, a solstice during which Tiamat reigned supreme. Here it is the stereotyped period of the καιροὶ τῶν ἐθνῶν (Luke 21:24), extending to the second advent. μετρήσῃς. To measure is here not a prelude to ruin but a guarantee of preservation and restoration (Zechariah 2:1 f.). Failure to satisfy God's standard or test means calamity for men. but when he surveys their capacities and needs in peril, it implies protection. As the context implies, this is the idea of the present measuring. It is not to be identified prosaically with “orders given to the Roman soldiers, who were encamped in Jerusalem after its destruction, not to set foot in what had been the Holy of Holies” (Mommsen).