Revelation 13:3

The prophet sees in the empire an extraordinary vitality which adds to its fascination. Disasters which would suffice to ruin an ordinary state, leave Rome as strong as ever, thanks to her marvellous recuperative power. The allusion is not to the murder of Cæsar (so e.g., Bruston, Gunkel, Porter), nor to the illness of Caligula (Spitta), but (so Düsterdieck, O. Holtzmann, B. Weiss, etc.) to the terrible convulsions which in 69 A.D. shook the empire to its foundations (Tac. Hist. i. 11). Nero's death, with the bloody interregnum after it, was a wound to the State, from which it only recovered under Vespasian. It fulfilled the tradition of the wounded head (Daniel 8:8). Song of Song of Solomon 4 Esd. 12:18 (where the same crisis is noted) “post tempus regni illius [i.e., Nero's] nascentur contentiones non modicae et periclitabitur ut cadat et non cadet tunc, sed iterum constituetur in suum initium”; also Suet. Vesp. 1 and Joseph. Bell. iv. 11, 5, Revelation 7:4; Revelation 7:2 (Rome unexpectedly rescued from ruin by Vespasian's accession). The vitality of the pagan empire, shown in this power of righting itself after the revolution, only added to its prestige. The infatuation of loyalty, expressing itself in the worship of the emperor as the personal embodiment of the empire, grew worse and worse. A comparison of 3 a with 12 (cf. Revelation 13:18) shows, however, a further allusion, viz., to the Nero redivivus belief (cf. Introd. § 5). This is not developed until 17, but already the beast is evidently identified in a sense with one of its heads, who is a travesty (3 a = Revelation 5:6) of the Lamb, i.e., an antichrist. The context would certainly read quite naturally without 3 a, but it is implied in 12 (and 18), and none of the numerous attempts to analyse the chapter into source and revision is of any weight, in view of the general style and characteristics. These indicate the author's own hand. Even the translation-hypothesis (e.g., Bruston, Gunkel) leads to arbitrary handling. See Introd. § 6.