Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Revelation · About this commentary
The Beast That Was, and Is Not
Revelation 17:7-11
7 The angel said to me, “Why do you wonder? I will tell you the mystery of the woman and of the beast that carries her, which has the seven heads and the ten horns. · WEB
The angel decodes the beast by its career — was, is not, will be present — a history of persecuting power parodying the divine name, riding toward destruction.
The beast that you saw was, and is not; and is about to come up out of the abyss and to go into destruction.
The angel's decoding begins with the mount, and its formula is a parody of the highest name in the book. God is who is and who was and who is to come Revelation 1:4; the beast was, and is not, and shall be present Revelation 17:8 — a counterfeit of eternity assembled from a broken career. The formula is also the healed wound told as history Revelation 13:3: the persecuting power was — its long era of dominion Revelation 13:5; is not — the deadly stroke, the era-ending captivity the vision's own rule decreed Revelation 13:10; and is about to come up out of the abyss — the revival, the wound healing, the world marveling again: those who dwell on the earth... will marvel when they see that the beast was, and is not, and shall be present. The wonder is confined to one register: those whose names have not been written in the book of life — the enrolled are proofed against the marvel by knowing the story's end: he goes to destruction, stated twice in four verses.
Here is the mind that has wisdom Revelation 17:9 — the book's summons to careful reading Revelation 13:18 — the seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits. They are seven kings.
The decoding is doubled — mountains and kings at once, and in the prophets both are powers: kingdoms as mountains Jeremiah 51:25 Daniel 2:35, kingdoms as kings Daniel 7:17 Daniel 7:23. The woman — the mystery-Babylon system — sits on the whole succession of world powers: the same anatomy the dragon wore Revelation 12:3, because the dragon has worked through every one of them. Five have fallen, the one is, and the other has not yet come — from the vision's vantage, the greater number of the persecuting succession lie behind, one holds the stage, a short one follows: history counted from inside the vision, with the accent on how little remains.
The beast that was, and is not, is himself also an eighth, and is of the seven; and he goes to destruction Revelation 17:11.
The revived beast — the healed-wound power in its final form — is an eighth: a fresh appearance on the world stage; and of the seven: nothing new, the old persecuting essence returned, the same head under a new number. The book's counsel against every marveling generation is in the arithmetic: however many heads the succession grows, the trajectory is one — and he goes to destruction. The career that parodies is to come ends where every parody ends; the reader who knows that walks unamazed Revelation 17:8 through the last act.
held with reason What this mark means