Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Winepress
Revelation 14:17-20
17 Another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven. He also had a sharp sickle. · WEB
The second harvest is the vintage, called for by the angel of the altar's fire, trodden outside the city to a depth that ends measurement.
Another angel came out of the temple which is in heaven. He also had a sharp sickle. Another angel came out from the altar, he who has power over fire, and he called with a great voice... "Send your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of the vine of the earth, for the earth's grapes are fully ripe!"
The second harvest is the vintage, and its summons comes from a loaded address: from the altar — the altar under which the martyrs cried how long Revelation 6:9–10, whose fire was flung to earth to begin the trumpets Revelation 8:3–5, whose horns commanded the sixth Revelation 9:13, and which will shortly ratify the bowls: true and righteous are your judgments Revelation 16:7. The angel who has power over fire — the altar's fire, the prayers' fire — calls for the vintage: the treading of the grapes is, in the book's own tracing, the final answer to the blood of the saints Revelation 16:6 Revelation 19:2.
The clusters of the vine of the earth — over against the true vine and its branches John 15:1, the earth has grown its own vine: the world-system's full fruitage, fully ripe — the second ripeness of the chapter, wickedness matured to its finished form as the wheat matured to its own Revelation 14:15 Genesis 15:16. Two crops have been growing in one field all along Matthew 13:30; the end is both of them, ripe.
The angel thrust his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vintage of the earth and threw it into the great wine press of the wrath of God. The wine press was trodden outside of the city Revelation 14:19–20.
The winepress is Isaiah's terrible image, and the book will name its treader when he rides Revelation 19:15: the one who trod the press alone, garments stained Isaiah 63:2–3 — Joel's valley where the multitudes are gathered and the press overflows because their wickedness is great Joel 3:13. Outside of the city — judgment executed away from the place of mercy, where the offerings were burned Hebrews 13:12 and where, at the end, the final assault dies around the beloved city Revelation 20:9.
And blood came out of the wine press, up to the bridles of the horses, as far as one thousand six hundred stadia Revelation 14:20 — depth to a warhorse's bridle, distance of four hundred squared: totality squared upon totality, the measure that says no one in the vintage escapes and nothing of it remains. The chapter that began with a Lamb and a song Revelation 14:1–3 ends at the press — the two harvests side by side, and every reader located, by the three messages just flown, in one crop or the other Revelation 14:9–12.
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