Nimrod and Cain?

 

Revelation 14:9-10:  “And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive [his] mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation; and he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels, and in the presence of the Lamb:”

 

            Note that not only “Babylon” but also the beast and his worshippers are all coming under the wrath of God.  In verse 8 we saw that there were links between Nimrod and Babylon.  In this verse we may discern links between Cain and Nimrod, for it was Cain who bore the mark of his sin.  (See also Commentary on 13:14-18 “Mark of the Beast“.)

 

                                                                 The Bitter Cup

 

Revelation 14:8-10 RSV:  “She who made all nations drink the wine of her impure passion’….’If any one worships the beast and its image, and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also shall drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured unmixed into the cup of his anger….(vs. 20) “…and the wine press was trodden outside the city, and blood flowed from the wine press, as high as a horse’s bridle, for one thousand six hundred stadia.”

            Jesus drank the “bitter cup” for all Mankind:  Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42; John 18:11;

And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou [wilt]. (Matt. 26:39)

 

            The bitter cup which Jesus so dreaded was the cup of God’s wrath which He knew must be poured out upon unrepentant sinners.  Jesus came to bear that penalty for sin.  He knew what this cup was for He had been with the Father when it was poured out upon the world in Noah’s day, when it was poured upon Egypt in Moses‘ day, when it was poured upon Israel when she was dispersed and taken into captivity by Assyria, when it was poured upon Judah when she went into Babylonian captivity, and many other times when groups or individuals had trespassed beyond the limits of God’s grace. 

            No other mortal ever understood like Jesus the full extent of the cup of God’s wrath.  The disciples had coveted a position of honor in the kingdom they supposed the Lord was about to set up.  Jesus told them: “You know not what you are asking.  Are you able to drink the cup that I am to drink?”  They answered Him: “We are able.”  Yet, when the time came for Jesus to begin the great atoning suffering, the disciples all fled.  It was not until after the resurrection, ascension and advent of the Holy Spirit that they became able to partake of the cup of suffering.  The disciples only partook of the cup of suffering, but not of the cup of God’s wrath, for Jesus had taken that in behalf of all those of Mankind who would accept His sacrifice.

            Jesus had freely offered the cup of the new covenant in His blood.

27 And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave [it] to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 28 For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. (Matt. 26)

 

            He drank the cup of cursing that we might partake of the cup of blessing:

The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? (1 Cor. 10:16)

            After the prayer of surrender in the Garden of Gethsemane, the mob came to take Jesus by force.  Peter drew his sword but Jesus rebuked him:

Then said Jesus unto Peter, Put up thy sword into the sheath: the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? (John 18:11)

            Jesus drank the bitter cup of God’s wrath so that Mankind could escape that awful penalty of their sins.  However, for those who refuse to participate in His sacrifice, to eat of His Body and drink of His Blood, the wrath of God is coming upon them.  This great day of God’s wrath is described in Revelation chapters 16 and 17.

            Israel was supposed to have been God’s pleasant vineyard, but had become symbolically “Merathaim” as in Jeremiah 50:21 in his prophecy against “Babylon.”  “Merathaim” is a dual form from the Hebrew root marah, meaning ‘bitterness,’ or ‘rebellion.’  As a dual form, it means ‘double rebellion.’

            A kindred root is mârad, meaning ‘contumacious, [stubbornly disobedient. Contumacy is stubborn resistance to authority], rebellious…  This is the root also of the word “Nimrod,” the founder of Babylon, (Gen. 10:8-9).  Mârad is used poetically in Job 24:13 of those who rebel against the light (Ges. Lexicon, s. v.).  The idol god worshipped in Babylon also had the name Merodach from this same root word.

            Since Babylon had caused all nations to drink of her wine cup of fornication, (see also Deuteronomy 32:33), God decrees that she shall be forced to drink from His wine cup of wrath, (see also Psalms 75:8).  In Revelation 17:6 it is decreed that the cup which she hath filled shall be filled to her double.  The “cup” of which she drank was the blood of saints and martyrs, (the Christians).  Now she is to suffer double for the suffering she has caused.  (See Deuteronomy 32:40-42).  In 14:20 we see the wine for the cup of wrath being prepared.

            In these seven great “bowls“, the wrath of God is completed, fully realized, and the last of these last plagues is the cup of wrath upon Babylon which she must drink, 15:1 and 16:19.  This cup of wrath is the great drunkards “bowls” in 15:7.  (See Word Study for 14:8 “Cup”.)  The word “cup” used here corresponds to the Hebrew word used in Amos 6:6 as cups of intemperance, drunkenness.  In Exodus 38:3 and Numbers 4:14 it is the word for a bowl used in the sacrifices.  In Leviticus 23:13, Numbers 15:1-11; and 28:11-14 it is the bowl used for the drink-offering for the sacrifices.

            These great golden bowls, (KJV: vials), may represent in one sense the “bowls” of the time-telling heavens.  The “seven bowls” may represent seven years filled with the wrath of God and great tribulation upon the unbelieving Jews in the first instance, (the immediate fulfillment), as an example of that which will come upon the entire earth after they have had opportunity to accept or reject Christ.  (See Matthew 24:21; Romans 2:9-10, 22; 7:14; Revelation 1:9).  The winepress and the threshing floor are both images of great tribulation.  (Revelation 19:15).

            Another Hebrew word for the cup of wrath is chêmâh.  It is used in Jeremiah 25:15 and 51:7 of the cup of wrath which Jehovah causes the nations to drink.  (See also Job 21:20)  The cup of wrath in the passage in Jeremiah caused the nations that drank of it to go mad because of the sword of the Lord.  The cup was given first to “the city which is called by my name,” (Jer. 25:29).  This corresponds to the New Testament pattern of “the Jew first and also the Greek.”  It is the surety of God’s judgment upon all nations:

And shall you go unpunished?  You shall not go unpunished, for I am summoning a sword against all the inhabitants of the earth, says the Lord of hosts. (Jer. 25:29 RSV).

 

The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 is not an acquittal for the rest of the world; on the contrary, it is a guarantee of God’s judgment after the whole world has had opportunity to accept Christ.

            The cup is a cup of poison that burns the bowels, Deuteronomy 32:24 and Psalms 58:5.  This same word also has an opposite meaning, ‘milk,’ which might have been suggested for irony and ambiguity, (as used in Job 29:6).  Jehovah would have given them ‘milk and honey’ if they had been obedient, but they chose instead the cup of poisoned wine.

 

From Henceforth

 

Revelation 14:13:  “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord henceforth….for their works do follow them.”

            Before Christ‘s resurrection the righteous dead had gone to a place where they were safe, but captive, sometimes called “Abraham‘s bosom” or even “Sheol.”  At His resurrection Christ led this place of captivity to Heaven.  Some of these righteous dead who were resurrected with Christ were seen in Jerusalem for a short time. (Matt. 27:52-53).

            “Their works do follow them.”  They will receive a reward in heaven, (Matt. 25:21, 23; Luke 19:17) and their names will continue to be remembered on earth as a blessing.

A Sharp Sickle

 

Revelation 14:14-16:  “One like a Son of Man with a golden crown on his head, and a sharp sickle in his hand….And he that sat on the cloud thrust in his sickle on the earth; and the earth was reaped.”

 

            This represents the Lord Jesus gathering his wheat into the garner.  This happened upon the land of Judea and among the Jews in dispersion during the forty years from the crucifixion of Christ to the destruction of Judea and Jerusalem.  Matthew 3:12 RSV:

His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.

 

Harvest Time

 

Revelation 14:17-20 (RSV):  “And another angel came out of the temple in heaven and he too had a sharp sickle.”

 

            After the Son of Man gathers the good grain into His garner, then the angel of the harvest commands that the “vine of the earth/land” be reaped, (see verse 19).  [The “winepress” and the “threshing floor” were sometimes the same place used for both purposes as in Judges 6:11.]  This “vine of the earth/land” is closely related to Babylon and the Beast for it partakes of their same punishment, that is, the “winepress of the wrath of God.”  (See also 19:15). 

            This “vine of the earth” probably designates those unbelieving Jews who lived in the land of Judea, but not in Jerusalem, (“Babylon“).  “Without the city,” (verse 20), may refer to the battles that had raged within the outlying regions of Judea before the final siege of Jerusalem.

            The siege of Jerusalem, (circa AD 70), in the context of the preceding battles throughout the land is interpreted as fulfillment of Joel 3.  Revelation 14:14-20 are especially suggestive of Joel 3:13.  The true Judah, (Christians), and Jerusalem, (the Church), is having its good fortunes restored because her persecutors, the Pharisaic Jews, are being destroyed.  Isaiah 63:1-6 foretells of this time when the Messiah would take the role of gâ’al, or Vindicator, Avenger, Redeemer of the innocent blood of His people, the Christians.

            The unbelieving Jews who rejected Christ had became more and more extreme in their rituals of keeping the law and reverencing the earthly temple.  Consequently they gathered en masse into Jerusalem for the feast days.  Like the valley of Jehosaphat, this became a place where the Lord would judge them.  (Jehosaphat means “Jehovah is Judge”.)

            It was during one of these feasts that Titus closed in around the city and laid siege to it, confining thousands of Pharisaic Jews inside the city where multitudes died of hunger or at the hands of their fellow men. When Titus besieged the city, there were at least three warring factions with armies of Jews warring over the lucrative position of High Priest.  These were then closed in with each other and the people.  These violent groups killed each other as well as those whom they suspected of wanting to join the rival factions.  They also killed anyone who had food or other things they desired.  They fought and slaughtered one another even into the Holy of Holies and upon the most Holy Altar.

            The blood from this “winepress of wrath” flowed into a river where it stained the water as deep as the horses’ bridles for 1600 furlongs, (stadia).  This would have been approximately 160 miles.  This statement is to contrast the earthly city, the backslidden Jerusalem, with the glorious city seen by Ezekiel in chapter 47.  The wicked earthly city has a river of blood flowing from it, whereas Ezekiel’s vision in chapter 47 is that of Revelation 22 where the River of Life flows from the heavenly city.  One city has the River of Death and the other has The River of Life.

 

Blood from the Winepress

 

Revelation 14:20.  “And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand [and] six hundred furlongs.”

 

            The furlong is approximately one-tenth of an English mile, according to Bullinger.  This would make the space of “a thousand six hundred furlongs” to be equal to about one hundred and sixty miles.  That would be about equal to the entire length of the land of Judea and Samaria and Galilee.  Since the average normal quantity of blood in the human body is about 5 quarts, the blood of the population of the whole earth today, estimated at five billion persons, would only be about a foot deep in a four-square-mile area.  We know, therefore, that the meaning is symbolic and not literal.  He is saying that there will be such a slaughter that the whole land will be virtually a river of blood.[1]

            This was adequately fulfilled in the slaughter of about 1,100,000 Jews in Jerusalem in the War of AD 70.  Those who fled and were dispersed throughout the countryside did not escape, for there were successive further slaughters, for example, in the reign of Domitian and Hadrian.  In Hadrian’s time, the self-styled Messiah, Bar Cochaba, arose in rebellion and some estimate that more than three million Jews were slaughtered at that time.  In the Dispersion, there were also mass slaughters, for example in Alexandria.  It would be impossible to estimate the literal amount of blood that flowed.  The point that the Revelator makes in 14:20 is that there was an unimaginable and massive slaughter.  The hyperbole he uses is more expressive of the facts than a literal calculation would be.  (See Part 2: “Referents: Rabbinic Writings” regarding this verse.)

            The final sacrifice upon the altar of the Temple at Jerusalem was the actual blood of unholy men (Wars, 5.4.4; 5.10.5; 5.1.2 and 3).  These men represented the entire Jewish nation who had rejected the acceptable blood of Jesus’ sacrifice so that now God required their blood in fulfillment of the law of sin and death.

            In the end of the time of the Gentiles there will be a similar slaughter of unholy flesh upon the sacred altars.  Those slaughters of the Jews will, by comparison, be only a small scale model.  The horrors, famines, and ungodliness will be multiplied a thousand fold.  All this is accompanied by an absence of reverence and inability to repent.