Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Beast from the Abyss Kills Them
Revelation 11:7-10
7 When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them. · WEB
Only when the testimony is finished can the beast kill the witnesses, and the world holds a feast over the corpses of the word.
When they have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them, and kill them.
The first clause rules the sentence: when they have finished — the witnesses are untouchable until their assigned testimony is complete; the fire-mouthed word Revelation 11:5 cannot be killed mid-commission. Only at the era's close does the power rise that can silence it — the beast that comes up out of the abyss, the book's first beast-sighting, surfacing from the demonic deep Revelation 9:1–2 before his formal introduction Revelation 13:1 Revelation 17:8. At the end of the twelve hundred sixty days, at the era's exhausted edge, a power from the abyss makes open war on the witness of God — and wins: overcome them, and kill them. There is a moment in the story when the word of God lies publicly dead.
Their dead bodies will be in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified Revelation 11:8.
The morgue is the great city — the book's name, from here forward, for the world-order in rebellion, Babylon by its final title Revelation 16:19 Revelation 17:18 — and its spiritual aliases are a moral map: Sodom, the civilization of open corruption; Egypt, the power that said who is Yahweh, that I should listen to his voice? Exodus 5:2 — defiant atheism with a state behind it; and where also their Lord was crucified — the city, wherever it stands, that kills the word made flesh. At the great era's end, the abyss's power wears all three faces at once: corruption, God-denial, and Christ-rejection enthroned — and in its street the Scriptures lie unburied.
From among the peoples, tribes, languages, and nations, people will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and will not allow their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb Revelation 11:9 — refusal of burial, antiquity's ultimate contempt; and the term is the great period miniaturized, three and a half days for three and a half times: the word's death-sentence is a short parody of its long persecution.
And the world celebrates: those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them... and they will give gifts to one another, because these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth Revelation 11:10 — the book's only festival: mankind exchanging presents over the corpse of the testimony that had tormented its conscience. The verse is the most acute thing Scripture says about why the word is hated: it torments — the drought and fire of truth on the unrepentant Revelation 11:5–6 — and its silencing feels, for three and a half days, like liberation.
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