Revelation 11:8

_ _ dead bodies — So Vulgate, Syriac, and Andreas. But A, B, C, the oldest manuscripts, and Coptic read the singular, “dead body.” The two fallen in one cause are considered as one.

_ _ the great city — eight times in the Revelation elsewhere used of BABYLON (Revelation 14:8; Revelation 16:19; Revelation 17:18; Revelation 18:10, Revelation 18:16, Revelation 18:18, Revelation 18:19, Revelation 18:21). In Revelation 21:10 (English Version as to the new Jerusalem), the oldest manuscripts omit “the great” before city, so that it forms no exception. It must, therefore, have an anticipatory reference to the mystical Babylon.

_ _ which — Greek, “the which,” namely, “the city which.”

_ _ spiritually — in a spiritual sense.

_ _ Sodom — The very term applied by Isaiah 1:10 to apostate Jerusalem (compare Ezekiel 16:48).

_ _ Egypt — the nation which the Jews’ besetting sin was to lean upon.

_ _ where ... Lord was crucified — This identifies the city as Jerusalem, though the Lord was crucified outside of the city. Eusebius mentions that the scene of Christ’s crucifixion was enclosed within the city by Constantine; so it will be probably at the time of the slaying of the witnesses. “The beast [for example, Napoleon and France’s efforts] has been long struggling for a footing in Palestine; after his ascent from the bottomless pit he struggles much more” [Bengel]. Some one of the Napoleonic dynasty may obtain that footing, and even be regarded as Messiah by the Jews, in virtue of his restoring them to their own land; and so may prove to be the last Antichrist. The difficulty is, how can Jerusalem be called “the great city,” that is, Babylon? By her becoming the world’s capital of idolatrous apostasy, such as Babylon originally was, and then Rome has been; just as she is here called also “Sodom and Egypt.”

_ _ also our — A, B, C, Origen, Andreas, and others read, “also their.” Where their Lord, also, as well as they, was slain. Compare Revelation 18:24, where the blood of ALL slain on earth is said to be found IN BABYLON, just as in Matthew 23:35, Jesus saith that, “upon the Jews and JERUSALEM” (Compare Matthew 23:37, Matthew 23:38) shall “come ALL the righteous blood shed upon earth”; whence it follows Jerusalem shall be the last capital of the world apostasy, and so receive the last and worst visitation of all the judgments ever inflicted on the apostate world, the earnest of which was given in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. In the wider sense, in the Church-historical period, the Church being the sanctuary, all outside of it is the world, the great city, wherein all the martyrdoms of saints have taken place. Babylon marks its idolatry, Egypt its tyranny, Sodom its desperate corruption, Jerusalem its pretensions to sanctity on the ground of spiritual privileges, while all the while it is the murderer of Christ in the person of His members. All which is true of Rome. So Vitringa. But in the more definite sense, Jerusalem is regarded, even in Hebrews (Hebrews 13:12-14), as the world city which believers were then to go forth from, in order to “seek one to come.”