Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Revelation · About this commentary
Armageddon
Revelation 16:12-16
12 The sixth poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates. Its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared for the kings that come from the sunrise. · WEB
The Euphrates dries by the Cyrus pattern, three frog-spirits gather the kings, a thief-warning interrupts, and the place is named for Megiddo's mountain.
The sixth poured out his bowl on the great river, the Euphrates. Its water was dried up, that the way might be prepared for the kings that come from the sunrise.
The sixth bowl runs on the oldest deliverance-pattern in the prophets. Babylon fell in one night when Cyrus turned the Euphrates from its channel and marched under the walls on the dried bed — the event Isaiah named in advance: Cyrus, God's anointed, the dry-er of rivers, the opener of two-leaved gates Isaiah 44:27–28 Isaiah 45:1 Jeremiah 50:38. In the book's final geography, Babylon is the world-system enthroned on many waters, and the waters are decoded within the vision itself: peoples, multitudes, nations, and languages Revelation 17:1 Revelation 17:15. The drying of the Euphrates is the drying of Babylon's support — the multitudes that carried her withdrawing Revelation 17:16, the human sea shrinking from under the city that sat on it — that the way might be prepared for the kings from the sunrise: deliverance arriving from the east, as the sealing angel rose from the sunrise Revelation 7:2 and as the true King's coming is lightning from the east Matthew 24:27 — the Cyrus-pattern fulfilled by Cyrus's greater antitype.
I saw coming out of the mouth of the dragon, and out of the mouth of the beast, and out of the mouth of the false prophet, three unclean spirits, something like frogs; for they are spirits of demons, performing signs, which go out to the kings of the whole inhabited earth, to gather them together for the war of that great day of God the Almighty Revelation 16:13–14.
The counterfeit trinity — dragon, beast, false prophet Revelation 13:11 — issues its counter-gathering from its mouths: the war's last weapon is what every weapon in this book has been, speech — demonic spirits working signs Revelation 13:13–14, a three-fold un-gospel answering the three angels Revelation 14:6–9, recruiting the kings of the whole earth for the confrontation the second psalm staged long ago Psalms 2:2.
And into the muster, a voice interrupts in the first person: "Behold, I come like a thief. Blessed is he who watches, and keeps his clothes" Revelation 16:15 — the third beatitude, Sardis's warning Revelation 3:3 repeated on Armageddon's brink: the reader addressed directly, mid-battle-muster, about garments and wakefulness Revelation 3:18.
He gathered them together into the place which is called in Hebrew, "Harmagedon" Revelation 16:16 — the mountain of Megiddo: the plain where Israel's decisive judgments fell, under the mountain where Elijah staged the contest that one question decided — if Yahweh is God, follow him 1 Kings 18:21 Judges 5:19. The name is the battle's nature: Armageddon is the world's last Carmel — every knee gathered to one test of who is God, with fire about to fall.
held with reason What this mark means