Revelation 19:15

αὐτός The victory of the messiah is single-handed (“I have trodden the wine-press alone”); cf. on Revelation 19:13, an d Sap. 18:22, P s. Sol. 17:24 27, where the word of messiah's mouth is the sole weapon of his victory (an Iranian touch as in S. B. E. iv. p. lxxvii. f., the distinguishing excellence of Zoroaster is that his chief weapon is spiritual, i.e., the word or prayer). This fine idea, taken originally from Isaiah, was reproduced, naturally in a more or less realistic shape, by the rabbis who applied it to Moses at Exodus 2:11 (Clem. Alex. Stron. i. 23), and by apocalyptists (2 Thessalonians 2:8; Ap. Bar. xxxvi. f., liii. f.; 4 Esd. 10:60 f., and here) who assigned an active rôle to the messiah in the latter days. The meaning of the sword-symbol is that “the whole counsel of God is accomplished by Jesus as a stern judgment with resistless power” (Baur). Thus the final rout of the devil, anticipated in Revelation 12:12, is carried out (1.) by the overthrow of his subordinates (mentioned in ch. 13) here, and then (2) by his own defeat (Revelation 20:10), although in finishing the torso of ch. 12. (Bousset) the prophet characteristically has recourse to materials drawn from very different cycles of current messianic tradition.