Revelation 13:3

Revelation 13:3. And I saw one of his heads as though it had been slain unto death; and his death-stroke was healed. The rendering alike in the Authorised and Revised Versions of the Greek word which we have translated ‘slain' (in the one ‘wounded,' in the other ‘smitten') is peculiarly unfortunate and objectionable. The word occurs eight times in the Apocalypse. In seven of these it must be translated ‘slain,' or ‘slaughtered,' or ‘killed.' How can it be otherwise translated here? The statement in the verse is the counterpart of that in chap. Revelation 5:6, where we read of the ‘Lamb as though it had been slaughtered.' In both cases there had been actual death, although in both there had also been a revival, a resurrection, to life. The one is a mocking counterpart of the other. The Seer does not tell us to which of the seven heads he specially refers, but a comparison of the words now used by him with those of chap. Revelation 17:8-11 seems clearly to show that the sixth head, or the Roman power, was in his eye.

The language before us, it will be observed, is thus utterly inconsistent with the idea entertained by so many in modern times, that the sixth head, instead of being the Roman power in general, is the Emperor Nero himself, regarding whom the rumour is said to have prevailed, that after his death he would return to life and revive all the horrors of his former reign. It is extremely doubtful whether such a rumour was in existence at the time when the Apostle wrote. The thought would seem rather to have arisen long afterwards, when the misinterpretation of this passage gave it birth. Even Renan admits that ‘the general opinion was that the monster (Nero), healed by a Satanic power, kept himself concealed somewhere and would return' (L ' Antechrist, p. 350). The form which the belief assumed was not that Nero had died, but that he had hidden himself in the wilds of Parthia, from which he would come again to strike terror into the world. This being the case, there are at least two important points on which the statement of the passage before us is directly at variance with that rumour. In the first place, the head of the beast spoken of had not simply disappeared from view: it had been actually slain. A death-stroke had been inflicted. It had died as really as the Lamb of God had died on Calvary, and the Seer saw that it had done so. The words ‘as though' before ‘it had been slain' no more imply that there had not been a real death than they imply this in chap. Revelation 5:6, where they are used of the slain Lamb. In the second place, this head was not to revive at some future day. It had already revived, and its death-stroke had been already healed. In order, therefore, to make the story of Nero's disappearance and reappearance constitute the foundation of the passage before us, it is necessary to suppose that the prevalent rumour was that that monster of iniquity had both died and risen from the dead; and neither particular was embraced by it. What is spoken of is the world-power in the form of its sixth head. That power received a mortal stroke by the work of Christ. The world was then ideally and really overcome. It revived, and resumed its working.

And the whole earth wondered after the beast. The words ‘the whole earth' cannot be understood to mean only the Roman people. They must be allowed their full force, and thus they afford a further proof that in the ‘beast' we have a representative of the general world-power. See a fuller discussion of the Nero hypothesis in note on Revelation 13:18.