3. One of--literally, "from among."
wounded . . . healed--twice again repeated
emphatically
(Re 13:12, 14);
compare
Re 17:8, 11,
"the beast that was, and is not, and shall ascend out of the
bottomless pit" (compare
Re 13:11);
the Germanic empire, the seventh head (revived in the eighth),
as yet future in John's time
(Re 17:10).
Contrast the change whereby Nebuchadnezzar, being humbled from his
self-deifying pride, was converted from his beast-like form and
character to MAN'S form and true position towards
God; symbolized by his eagle wings being plucked, and himself
made to stand upon his feet as a man
(Da 7:4).
Here, on the contrary, the beast's head is not changed into a
human head, but receives a deadly wound, that is, the world
kingdom which this head represents does not truly turn to God, but for
a time its God-opposed character remains paralyzed ("as it were slain";
the very words marking the beast's outward resemblance to the Lamb, "as
it were slain," see on
Re 5:6.
Compare also the second beast's resemblance to the Lamb,
Re 13:11).
Though seemingly slain (Greek for "wounded"), it remains
the beast still, to rise again in another form
(Re 13:11).
The first six heads were heathenish, Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia,
Greece, Rome; the new seventh world power (the pagan German hordes
pouring down on Christianized Rome), whereby Satan had hoped to stifle
Christianity
(Re 11:15, 16),
became itself Christianized (answering to the beast's, as it were,
deadly wound: it was slain, and it is not,
Re 17:11).
Its ascent out of the bottomless pit answers to the healing
of its deadly wound
(Re 17:8).
No essential change is noticed in Daniel as effected by Christianity
upon the fourth kingdom; it remains essentially God-opposed to the
last. The beast, healed of its temporary and external
wound, now returns, not only from the sea, but from the
bottomless pit, whence it draws new Antichristian strength of
hell
(Re 13:3, 11, 12, 14;
Re 11:7; 17:8).
Compare the seven evil spirits taken into the temporarily
dispossessed, and the last state worse than the first,
Mt 12:43-45.
A new and worse heathenism breaks in upon the Christianized world, more
devilish than the old one of the first heads of the beast. The latter
was an apostasy only from the general revelation of God in nature and
conscience; but this new one is from God's revelation of love in His
Son. It culminates in Antichrist, the man of sin, the son of perdition
(compare
Re 17:11);
2Th 2:3;
compare
2Ti 3:1-4,
the very characteristics of old heathenism
(Ro 1:29-32)
[AUBERLEN]. More than one wound seems to me to be
meant, for example, that under Constantine (when the pagan worship of
the emperor's image gave way to Christianity), followed by the healing,
when image worship and the other papal errors were introduced into the
Church; again, that at the Reformation, followed by the lethargic
form of godliness without the power, and about to end in the
last great apostasy, which I identify with the second beast
(Re 13:11),
Antichrist, the same seventh world power in another form.
wondered after--followed with wondering gaze.
JFB.
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