Revelation 17:12

The angel’s question follows straight on from what John has just seen: the woman “drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Revelation 17:6). The verb behind “marvel” is thaumázō, to wonder or marvel, and by implication to admire. It comes from the noun thaûma, a wonder. John is astonished at a sight both splendid and horrifying, and the angel answers his astonishment with an explanation. This vision comes after the seven bowls of wrath in Revelation 16, when one of the bowl angels calls John to see “the judgment of the great whore that sitteth upon many waters” (Revelation 17:1).

“I will tell thee the mystery” uses mystḗrion, a secret once hidden and now made known by God to those he gives it to. In Scripture a mystery is meant to be told, and the angel spends the rest of Revelation 17 telling it. God has always shown his servants what he is doing. Daniel told Nebuchadnezzar that “there is a God in heaven that revealeth secrets” (Daniel 2:28). Amos says, “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). Paul says that the mystery of Christ, hidden in other ages, “is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Ephesians 3:3–5). So God gives his people understanding of the powers that oppose him and of how they will end.

The beast “carrieth” the woman. The verb is bastázō, to lift, bear or carry. She rides on the beast’s strength, and the beast gives her the power and the platform for her influence. The arrangement lasts only for a time, because later in the chapter the beast’s ten horns turn on her, “and shall make her desolate and naked” (Revelation 17:16), and her fall is told at length in Revelation 18. The words “which hath the seven heads and ten horns” point back to the beast as John first saw it (Revelation 17:3). The angel explains the heads in verses 9 to 11 and the horns in verses 12 and 13.

The one who opens these mysteries is Christ. He is the one “that openeth, and no man shutteth; and shutteth, and no man openeth” (Revelation 3:7), and in heaven it is the Lion of the tribe of Judah who prevails to open the sealed book (Revelation 5:1–5).

The word for beast, thēríon, means a wild beast or animal. In Revelation it names the great figure who rises against God, and the picture goes back to Daniel’s vision, where four great beasts come up out of the sea (Daniel 7:3) and stand for kingdoms. The fourth of Daniel’s beasts has ten horns (Daniel 7:1–8). John has already seen a beast with seven heads and ten horns rise from the sea, receive the dragon’s power and make war with the saints (Revelation 13:1–10).

“Was” is ēn, the imperfect of the verb “to be”. The beast had a past, then a time when it “is not”, a time of absence or apparent defeat, and then it “shall ascend”. This three-part description mimics God’s own name in Revelation. God is the one “which is, and which was, and which is to come” (Revelation 1:4), and the living creatures cry, “Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come” (Revelation 4:8). The Lord Jesus speaks of himself in the same way as the Alpha and Omega, “which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty” (Revelation 1:8, Revelation 22:13). The beast’s “was, and is not, and yet is” is a counterfeit of the eternal God.

Its return matches the beast John saw earlier: “his deadly wound was healed: and all the world wondered after the beast” (Revelation 13:3). The beast comes back as if from death, which is a false resurrection. Christ truly died and rose again, and he says, “I am the resurrection, and the life” (John 11:25). All power in heaven and in earth is given to him (Matthew 28:18), and the beast’s power is borrowed and brief.

“Wonder” in verse 8 is thaumázō, the same verb as John’s “marvel” in verse 7. John marvels, and the angel gives him understanding. The people who dwell on the earth wonder too, and they go after the beast. These are the ones “whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world.” Their admiration of the beast marks them out as people who are blind to what it is and where it is going.

The book of life is God’s register of those he has chosen for salvation. Daniel speaks of a deliverance for “every one that shall be found written in the book” (Daniel 12:1). Paul speaks of fellow-labourers “whose names are in the book of life” (Philippians 4:3). At the last judgment, “whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20:15). Revelation calls it “the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8), and Paul says that God “hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Ephesians 1:4).

This gives God’s people deep comfort. Their names were written before the beast ever rose, so their safety rests on God’s eternal purpose and lies beyond the beast’s reach. The world’s wonder at the beast cannot move a name God has written.

“Here is the mind which hath wisdom” tells us that understanding this vision takes wisdom. “Mind” is noûs, the faculty of understanding, and here it means understanding that God gives. Revelation says the same of the beast’s number: “Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast” (Revelation 13:18). God gives that wisdom to those who ask: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God” (James 1:5). And all wisdom leads to Christ, who is “the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24).

“The seven heads are seven mountains” is the first key. The word “are”, eisí, sets the two side by side as one thing. The word for mountains, óros, means a mountain or a hill. Rome was famously built on seven hills, and John’s first readers, living under Rome’s power, would have known that at once. John most likely wrote under the emperor Domitian, around AD 95, in a time of persecution. The prophets also used mountains as a picture of kingdoms and seats of power. Isaiah says that “the mountain of the LORD’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains” (Isaiah 2:2). The LORD says to Babylon, “Behold, I am against thee, O destroying mountain” (Jeremiah 51:25). In Nebuchadnezzar’s dream the stone that strikes the image “became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth” (Daniel 2:35). So the seven mountains can point to Rome in John’s day and also to a wider line of powers, and verse 10 at once adds that the heads are kings.

The woman is gynḗ, a woman or wife. She has already been named “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH” (Revelation 17:5), arrayed in purple and scarlet and holding a golden cup. She “sitteth”, káthēmai, on the mountains, which speaks of a settled seat of authority. Her rule rests on these powers and is bound up with them, so the idolatry she stands for is tied closely to the political and economic power of the world.

“And there are seven kings” gives the heads a second meaning. The word for king, basileús, means a king, one with authority to rule. “Five are fallen” uses píptō, to fall, here in the sense that their rule is over. “One is” names the king reigning when John received the vision, and “the other is not yet come”. When he comes, “he must continue a short space”. The word “must” is deî, the word for what is necessary, what must or ought to happen, and here it says that the shortness of his reign is fixed. Seven in Revelation often speaks of completeness, so the seven make up a full and finished series.

This is a picture of God ruling history. Daniel says that God “removeth kings, and setteth up kings” (Daniel 2:21), and the psalmist says, “But God is the judge: he putteth down one, and setteth up another” (Psalm 75:6–7). Every king in the series has his time measured out. Five are already gone, the one who is will go, and the last is given only a short space.

“The ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings” explains the horns that John saw on the beast in Revelation 13:1 and again in this chapter. The word for horn, kéras, stands in prophecy for strength, dominion and kings. Daniel was told, “the ten horns out of this kingdom are ten kings that shall arise” (Daniel 7:24).

These kings “have received no kingdom as yet”. In John’s day their rule still lay in the future, and their rise belongs to the end. They “receive power as kings”, and the word for power is exousía, which covers authority and also plain power. Their authority is received, granted to them from outside. It lasts “one hour”, hṓra. In the New Testament an hour was a twelfth part of the day or of the night, so its length varied with the season. Here “one hour” means a short, appointed time, the same brief span that verse 10 gives the last king. They rule “with the beast”, in a close alliance that shares its purpose and its authority. Some take ten as a literal count of rulers, and others take it as a full coalition of powers, and on either reading the kings rise late, rule briefly, and stand with the beast.

“These shall make war with the Lamb” names the beast and the ten kings, the whole alliance of the verses before. Their war is a direct rebellion against Christ. Daniel saw the same pattern: “the same horn made war with the saints, and prevailed against them; Until the Ancient of days came, and judgment was given to the saints of the most High” (Daniel 7:21–22). The war of this verse is carried out when Christ returns on the white horse and takes the beast (Revelation 19:11–21).

The Lamb is arníon, the diminutive of the word for lamb, a little lamb, and it is Revelation’s great name for Christ. John the Baptist pointed to him as “the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). In heaven John was told that the Lion of the tribe of Judah had prevailed, and when he looked he saw “a Lamb as it had been slain” who came and took the book (Revelation 5:5–7). So the one who wins this war is the one who was slain, and he wins by the cross. “Having spoiled principalities and powers, he made a shew of them openly, triumphing over them in it” (Colossians 2:15), and through death he destroyed “him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). The beast’s defeat is the last outworking of a victory Christ has already won.

“And the Lamb shall overcome them” uses nikáō, to subdue, conquer, prevail, get the victory. It is the same verb as the promises to the churches, made “to him that overcometh” (Revelation 2:7, 2:11, 2:17, 2:26, 3:5, 3:12, 3:21). The Lamb’s people overcome because he has overcome.

These verses tell us the end of the story while the beast is still at its height. God tells his servants the mystery, so the powers that dazzle the world are named and understood. The beast comes up from the pit, borrows the look of God’s eternal name, gathers kings and armies, and is twice said to be going into perdition. Every king in the series has his time counted, down to a short space and one hour.

Over all of it stands the Lamb who was slain, Lord of lords and King of kings. His people’s names were written before the foundation of the world, and the beast’s whole power cannot touch that record. When the war comes, the Lamb overcomes, and those who are with him share his victory as the called, the chosen and the faithful.