Wine of Wrath

 

Revelation 17:2: “The kings of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.”

Revelation 18:3 RSV:  “All nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication.“

 

            The “wine of her fornication” is clearly defined in 17:6: “And I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.”  In light of Jesus’ warning that Jerusalem would be held responsible for “All the righteous blood shed upon the earth.” (Matt. 23:35), it is clear that Babylon the Great is the spiritually fallen city of Jerusalem.

            Not only had the unbelieving Jews killed Christ, but also they had persecuted the saints and had slain them throughout the Roman Empire.  They had instigated their murders also through the auspices of the Romans and thereby had caused “the kings of the earth” to partake of “the wine” of their blood and consequently of “the wine” of God’s wrath.

 

Is Not

 

Revelation 17:8: “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not.”

 

            “Because it was and is not and is to come,” would indicate that this beast at the time of the writing “is not” on earth, but is in the bottomless pit, and “is to come” from there but must also return to that pit, or perdition.

            “Is not” may mean “lives not” in the spiritual sense.  In the New Testament the Flesh must die in order for one to live in the Spirit.  The Flesh must be crucified daily.  In this description of the “beast” we find a corollary with the “Flesh” for in this life, it seems to continually resurrect and must be put down again and again.

 

Seven Heads

 

Revelation 17:9: “Seven heads.”

 

            The “seven heads” of the beast: – this is not the “woman,” that is, the harlot city, but rather “the beast.”  It was the “beast” that had seven heads, not the “woman.”  The “beast” is unsanctified Flesh, indwelt of satan.  The image projected here is suggestive of Rome, which is said to be built upon seven mountains, but note that Jerusalem is also said to be built upon “seven mountains”, see following article, “City on Seven Hills”.  Rome was the “arm of flesh” upon which fallen Jerusalem had come to “ride” or depend.  The “Woman” was the harlot city Jerusalem who had fallen to such an extent that she had degraded herself by departing from her true Husband, God, and was consorting with a beast! 

            In the spiritual sense, this seven-headed Beast is none other than the old Serpent/Dragon of chapter 12 who pursued the Woman into the wilderness but, being frustrated for forty-two months, went to make war on her seed.  However, after the time of her wilderness sojourn, it seems that the Dragon made love to her and won her favors.  She is here seen coming “out of the wilderness” riding this horrible creature that she originally fled from.

 

 

City on Seven Hills

 

Revelation 17:9: And here [is] the mind which hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, on which the woman sitteth.

            The reference here to Rome is more apparent than real.  Every literate man in the Roman Empire knew of the tradition that Rome was built upon seven hills.  A reference so obvious would hardly need to be referred to as a mystery that must be explained.  There was also a tradition that Jerusalem was built upon seven hills.  I propose, therefore, that the reference is not only to Rome, but more basically to Jerusalem.

            There was also a tradition that ancient Babylon itself was built upon seven hills.  This is probably a fact, for both Strabo and Dio Cassius mention that the ruins of ancient Babylon consisted of seven mounds.[1]  Thus these seven literal hills of ancient Babylon are used also for symbolic Mystery Babylon.

            The facts are that Rome was built on nine hills and Jerusalem, in AD 70, contained at least eight.  The legend of the seven hills of Rome comes from the festival of the septem montes, mistakenly interpreted as “seven mountains.”  This was actually merely the festival where the original three groups, the Palatine, the Esquiline and the Caelius first came together and formed an association of villages and a common religion, (Cary and Scullard, 34, 39).  It nevertheless formed the basis of a tradition that persists to this day.  Rome was built on seven hills in tradition only, not in fact.

            Be that as it may, the question we will endeavor to answer here is: Was Jerusalem literally built upon seven hills, or was this, too, merely a tradition?  Josephus describes the city of Jerusalem, its hills, its walls and its towers, (underlines and material in { } mine):

The city was built upon two hills which are opposite to one another, and have a valley to divide them asunder; … Of these hills, that which contains the upper city is much higher, and in length more direct.  Accordingly, King David called it the ‘Citadel,’ … but it is by us called the ‘Upper Marketplace.’  But the other hill, which was called ‘Acra,’ [the site of the Hasmonean Palace], and sustains the lower city, is of the shape of a moon when she is horned; over against this was a third hill, {Moriah, the Temple mount, see below}, but naturally lower than Acra and parted formerly from the other by a broad valley.  However, in those times when the Asamoneans reigned, they filled up that valley with earth, and had a mind to join the city to the temple.  They then took off part of the height of Acra, and reduced it to be of less elevation than it was before, that the temple might be superior to it” (Wars, 5.4.1).

 

            Lightfoot identifies this third hill as Moriah, the Temple Mount (CNT, vol. 1, p. 50).  Josephus describes the Temple hill:

Now this temple, as I have already said, was built upon a strong hill.  At first the plain at the top was hardly sufficient for the holy house and the altar, for the ground about it was very uneven, and like a precipice; but when king Solomon … had build a wall to it on its east side, there was then added one cloister founded on a bank cast up for it, and on the other parts the holy house stood naked; but in future ages the people added new banks, and the hill became a larger plain.  They then broke down the wall on the north side, and took in as much as sufficed afterward for the compass of the entire temple; and when they had built walls on three sides of the temple round about, from the bottom of the hill, and had performed a work that was greater than could be hoped for (in which work long ages were spent by them, as well as all their sacred treasures were exhausted, which were still replenished by those tributes which were sent to God from the whole habitable earth,) they then encompassed their upper courts with cloisters, as well as they [afterward] did the lowest [court of the] temple.  The lowest part of this was erected to the height of three hundred cubits, and in some places more; yet did not the entire depth of the foundations appear, for they brought earth, and filled up the valleys (Wars, 5.5.1).

 

In paragraph 2 he describes another hill:

It was Agrippa who encompassed the parts added to the old city with this wall … for as the city grew more populous, it gradually crept beyond its old limits, and those parts of it that stood northward of the temple, and joined that hill to the city, made it considerably larger, and occasioned that hill, which is in number the fourth, and is called ‘Bezetha,’ in our language, which if interpreted in the Grecian language, may be called the ‘New City’, (5.5.2).

            Josephus states that the towers built upon this wall were at a very high elevation, one of which furnished “a prospect of Arabia at sun-rising, as well as it did of the utmost limits of the Hebrew possessions at the sea westward”.  Another of these towers reached an altitude of about ninety cubits and resembled a lighthouse tower, (5.5.3).  Not only were these towers very tall, but

They appeared much taller by the place on which they stood; for that very old wall {?} wherein they were was built on a high hill, and was itself a kind of elevation that was still thirty cubits taller.

            Thus we have the four hills: (1) the “Upper City” also called the “Upper Marketplace” or “The Citadel”; (2)Acra, later the site of the Hasmonean Palace; (3)The Temple site, “Moriah”; and (4)Bezetha, meaning “New City”, beyond the original walls of the Old City.

            Josephus has previously described another hill which would have been within the third north wall which Agrippa began in AD 42.  In describing the arrival of Titus‘ troops in AD 70, they came to a place called Scopus;

From where the city began already to be seen, and a plain view might be taken of the great temple.  Accordingly, this place, on the north quarter of the city and adjoining thereto, was a plain, and very properly named Scopus [the prospect;] and was no more than seven furlongs from it (ibid., 5.2.3).

            A furlong was about 606 feet; therefore the distance would have been about 4242 feet, (7 x 606), or about 4/5 of a mile.  Scopus, was the wide high plain in the northwest area of the City.  It would have been a fifth hill.

            Lightfoot quotes Josephus and comments further on the hills of Jerusalem, (volume 1, pp. 50-57).  There is a sixth hill called “Ophel“, between the Temple and the City of David, although its exact location is disputed.  It is given as the place of residence for the Temple servants, Nehemiah 11:21.  It is mentioned several other times in the Scriptures but the word is variously translated ‘hill’, ‘tower’, or just left untranslated, ‘Ophel’ (ZPBD p. 610).

            A seventh hill, but actually the first in point of time, is called the “City of David“, or “Zion“.  It was the original site conquered by David from the Jebusites.  The term “Zion” later came to be used to designate the Temple Mount and the City as a whole (ibid., p. 914).

            This would bring the number of hills to seven, but some of these hills consisted of two peaks that had been leveled into the valleys.  This happened on at least two occasions, once when Solomon leveled the peaks to make a wider plain for the Temple, and once when the Hasmoneans took off the top of Acra to build their palace.[2]  Indeed, we probably have the Biblical reference to these fills in the word “Millo“.[3]  This word is left untranslated from the Hebrew.  The root of the word means ‘to be full.’  It seems quite clear from the context that the millo is the place(s) where the earth filled in the valleys, that is, “the [earth] fill.”

            An eighth hill is Calvary, which, if located at the site now known as the Church of the Holy Sepulchre would have been “without the gate” of the Old City walls, yet within the walls begun by Agrippa in AD 42 and therefore within that great city “where also our Lord was crucified,” at the time of the writing of Revelation.  Calvary, however, is never mentioned as a place of buildings.

            Whether or not the “seven hills” of Jerusalem were literal, there is a record of the tradition in the Rabbinic writings:

There is one who asserts Jerusalem to stand on seven hills; but whether upon a reason more light, or more obscure, is not easy to say.  ‘The whale showed Jonah (saith he^y) the Temple of the Lord, as it is said, “I went down to the bottom of the mountains:” whence we learn that Jerusalem was seated upon seven mountains.’  One may sooner almost prove the thing itself, than approve of his argument.  Let him enjoy his argument to himself; we must fetch the situation elsewhere (CNT, vol. 1 pp.50-57. Note y: Tanch.fol.52.3).

 

As to the veracity of the Rabbis, Lightfoot says:

But let us have leave not to esteem all things for oracles, which they say, who now show those places; since it is plain enough that they mistake in many other things: and let it be without all controversy, that they study not so much truth in that affair, as their own gain.  I wish less credit had been given to them, and more search had been made out of Scripture, and other writers, concerning the situation of the places (ibid., p. 55).

            While the question must be unresolved as to absolute proof of the seven literal hills, the fact remains that there was a Rabbinic tradition that so stated, just as there is an historical tradition that Rome is built on seven hills.

 

Mountains as Kings?

 

Revelation 17:9-10 RSV: “The seven heads are seven mountains….they are also seven kings.”

 

            The “mountains” of Revelation 17:9 are also “Kings“, 17:10.  How could “mountains” be “kings“?  The answer lies in the fact that the Roman Emperors, (Kings), were set up as idols and that “mountains” in the Bible were High Places for idolatry.  The City upon seven “Mountain-Kings” represents a city that is totally given over to idolatry, and the seven reminds us of what the Covenant says about idolatry.

            Was this City necessarily Rome, or was it Jerusalem with its own special brand of idolatry?  While Rome was full of pagan idols and temples, Jerusalem, formed her own idols.  While pretending such religious devotion in refusing emperor worship, at the same time they denied the Covenant of God by following their own traditions, which, in effect, were designed to circumvent the actual Law of God.  While “straining at the gnats” they “swallowed the camels.”  They worshipped the Flesh by depending upon fleshly descent for their claim to salvation.  They were willing to give their lives for the silver and gold of the Temple and its cult while perpetrating the abomination of desolation by slaying one another on the Holy Altar.  By Rabbinic reinterpretation of the Covenant, they made all necessary concessions to Roman idolatry in order to satisfy the demands of commerce.  Their idols were fleshly descent, traditions, silver and gold, the Temple, and commerce, all works of the Flesh.

            While the reference to the “Seven mountains” in Revelation 17:9 seems to refer to Rome, it was equally applicable to the city of Jerusalem.

 

Roman Appointed Kings of Judea from 37 BC to AD 70

 

Revelation 17:10:  “Five are fallen, one is, and one is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”

            If the seven-headed beast of Revelation chapters 13 and 17 is the Roman Empire, and the seven heads are seven Roman Emperors, the following table should reflect these Emperors:

 

17:10: “Five are fallen“:

1. Augustus: Emperor 27 B.C. – AD 14

2. Tiberius: AD 14-37

3. Caligula: AD 37-41

4. Claudius: AD 41-54

5. Nero:     AD 54-68

 

“One Is”, (the sixth):

6. Galba: became Emperor for a few months of AD 68.  The passage must have been written in this short space of time.

 

“One is not yet come, (the seventh); and when he cometh, he must continue a short space.”

7. Otho: Declared Emperor January 1 AD 69.  Since Vitellius was declared Emperor by his troops on January 3, 69, Otho’s reign may be said to have continued only three days, “a short space” indeed!  Vitellius was confirmed by the Senate after defeating Otho in battle.

 

17:11: The beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.

 

8. Vitellius was actually the eighth Emperor confirmed by the Senate.  If we are consistent that the “beast” is the Roman Empire, then here we must say that the Empire itself is the eighth head.  Perhaps the writer was saying that the Empire would go on in spite of its intestinal civil war.  For those who favor the “Nero redivivus” theory, (Cary and Scullard, 451-2)[4], it is said of Vitellius: “He gave himself up to an incessant round of dissipations which recalled those of Nero’s later years, save they lacked Nero’s artistry” (ibid., p.406).

 

Eighth King

 

Revelation 17:11:”And the beast that was, and is not, even he is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into perdition.”

            The “Eighth King” is the “beast,” that is, in the spiritual sense, the Flesh as ruled by the devil.  He is, was, and is not; i.e., he is not subject to time as are Men; he is therefore a spiritual creature.  He is going into perdition, see 19:20.