The lex to/zoww judgment on this draconic regime anticipated in 11:18 is
fleshed out in chs. 14 and following. Here two double motifs dominate: first, those who judge are both God and the Lamb (accompanied with an army of martyrs),and second, the judgment focuses both on Babylon, the geopolitical centre of the draconic order, and on the beasts and all their allies.^*^
Let us begin by considering two pivotal aspect of the fall of Babylon. First, its quick and catastrophic demise^^ is God’s judgment on the city for its blasphemous ways, its injustice, and its culpability in the death of the martyrs as well as its other victims.^^ However, second, although God is seen as the agent of the city’s destruction, both as it is anticipated and after it has been accomplished, 17:15-18 suggests His actual involvement is indirect. Probably drawing on fears associated
with the Nero Redivivus myth, John anticipates how precisely one of the emperors
who have occupied the position of the beast, accompanied with an alliance of other kings, will turn on its foi*mer centre of power and destroy it.*^ Babylon falls on the basis on which it is built. The Real Politik of brute force breeds the force that eventually will destroy it, and “the gospel reveals God’s wrath in that the human culture based on violence is shown for what it really is.”^°
Now let us consider the final judgment of the draconic order of the beast. First, just as God was seen as the decisive origin of the fall of Babylon, so Jesus, as a great warrior king accompanied with his army of martyrs, is seen as the agent who
Throughout the impending judgment is attributed to God, often depicted as the fulfilment of God’s ôpyq (14:10; 16:19; 19:15). The role o f Jesus as eschatological judge begins to emerge in ch. 14 where he is first introduced as the Lamb accompanied with his army of martyrs (14:1-5) and as the agent of the double harvest (14:14-20). His victorious role in the final battle of the beasts and those allied to them is anticipated in 16:15, explicitly stated in 17:12-14 and depicted in 19:11-21.
This double concern is evident in 14:8-11, where the angelic call to repentance in light of the impending judgment is followed first by an anticipation of the fall of Babylon (14:8) and second by the final judgment on the beast and its allies (14:9-11). While both of these concerns are evident in the bowl sequence, chs. 17-18 focus on the judgment of Babylon and 19:11-21 on the defeat of beast’s regime.
The swiftness is repeatedly emphasised in Rev 18. The chapter begins anticipating that her plagues will overtake her èv pict i)pépg (18:8a), and in their three-fold lament, the city’s vassal kings and merchants cry that her judgment cam pig wpg. (18:10, 17, 19)
14:8; 16:19; 18:5, 8b, 20,24; 19:2.
See especially Bauckham 1993a:407-31, who also notes that “redivivus” may be a mistaken tenn since it implies the belief that Nero has died, which is not a common motif in the myth; rather, people thought he had fled, “in hiding somewhere in the east, and would return across the Euphrates.” (421; cf. Witherington 2003:177-79; Beale 1999:17-18, 877-78)
defeats the beast and its accomplices.^* Second, however, despite the strongly militaristic imagery of 19:11-21, this is not to be seen as a literal battle but as a legal judgment, where the draconic order of the beast is defeated by Him who is called “the
Word of God” (18:13) and makes war with the sword of his mouth. Although this
suggests that this battle is not won by conventional military means, this does nevertheless mean that it is a decisive and effective battle since the divine word accomplishes its purposes by merely uttering them.^^ Third, this judgment may be depicted as a battle precisely to emphasise that before the kingdom of God can appear as the new geopolitical order on a transformed creation, the kingdom of the world, both its central elite and everything associated with it must be removed.Fourth, precisely because the Messianic warrior is accompanied by the army of martyrs, this also suggests that just as the martyrs in history expose the fundamental weakness in the power of the beast and thus demonstrate that it is God and not the Beast who has authority over the natural world, so in the eschaton their way is vindicated. In the final demise of all violent pretence of transitory human power, the way of the martyrs who follow the lamb will s t a n d F i n a l l y , and perhaps most importantly, how this judgment actually takes place is never stated. Considering how the actual fall of Babylon is depicted, it is tempting to see the demise of the beasts within the same
self-defeating logic of violence.^^ At minimum it must mean that the way of the
warrior on the white horse in Rev 19 cannot be inconsistent with how he as the Lamb
The judgment of Christ as the warrior on the white horse accompanied with his army of martyrs in 19:11-21 is first anticipated in 14:1-5 where Christ, as the Lamb, is introduced as standing on Mt. Zion with his 144.000, then in depiction of the treading of the wine press in 14:20, and finally Christ’s anticipation of his own coming as a thief is set in the middle of an anticipation of the final battle in 16:13-16. Against Collins 1976:224; Swete 1911:253, 1 follow Beale (1999:960) and others in seeing
Tà arpaTeupara as the saints (Caird 1966:244; Harrington 1993:191; Witherington 2003:243). ^ Just as it there symbolises the effectiveness of the kerygmatic witness (cf. 11:5), so here it represents the effectiveness of the word of judgment. Is this perhaps to be seen as a counterpart to the creative word in Genesis 1, the divine word that is effective simply in its utterance?
” Bauckham and Hart 1999:140-41.
See Collins 1977 on traditions of resistance in first century Judaism, raging from active revolt to two types of non-violent resistance. Revelation stands within a synergistic tradition of non-violent resistance in which the suffering and death of the saints play an active role in the impending judgment of God on his enemies.
See Bredin 2003:200-214 for a non-violent reading of Rev 19. Regarding the rule of the Lamb revealed at Easter Bauckham 1993b:64 says, “When the slaughtered Lamb is seen ‘in the midst o f the divine throne in heaven (5:6; cf. 7:17), the meaning is that Christ’s sacrificial death belongs to the way God rules the world .... Christ’s suffering witness and sacrificial death are, in fa c t... the key event in
God’s conquest of evil and establishment of his kingdom on earth.” Similarly, Barr (1984:42) sees a reversal of militaristic imagery in ch. 19 like what is seen in 5:5-6. Ford (1984:67), in her unlikely reading of the rider of ch. 19 as the Memra, sees Revelation as “pacifist apocalyptic writing.” See Collins 1990:65-72 for counter arguments.
won the decisive victory at Easter.^^ However, since the text is silent on the matter, it is perhaps better to be agnostic about the mode of this judgment,^^ This silence may indeed be important since it can neither provide an eschatological justification of the use of coercive force nor foreclose the possibility that the exercise of such force may at times be appropriate.^^
While the focus may be on the judgment on Babylon and the Beasts, the
regime change is not completed before the Dragon that has been banished from the
earthly realm (20:1-2, 10) and humanity as a whole have been judged according to what citizen registry their deeds have landed them in (20:11-15). This ultimate legal action sounds the final death-knell to the kingdom of the world, both the powers behind it and the those who persist in allegiance to it, and paves the way for the appearance of the kingdom of God as the divine throne descends from heaven to the earthly realm, in which not a trace of the old order will be found. (21:8, 27; 22:15)