Revelation 11: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

John is given a measuring stick and told to measure God's temple, the altar, and the worshipers, but to leave out the outer court, which is handed to the nations, who will trample the holy city for forty-two months. Two witnesses speak God's message for 1,260 days, are killed by the beast from the bottomless pit, lie dead in the street for three and a half days, then are raised and taken up to heaven, and an earthquake follows. The seventh angel then blows his trumpet, voices in heaven announce that the kingdoms of the world now belong to the Lord and to his Christ, and the twenty-four elders bow and give thanks. The chapter ends with God's temple in heaven opened and the ark of the covenant seen inside.

Claim by Claim

1. 11:1
   • A reed like a rod was given to the narrator.
   • The angel stood.
   • The angel said to rise and measure the temple of God.
   • The angel said to measure the altar.
   • The angel said to measure those who worship in the temple.
2. 11:2
   • The angel said to leave out the court outside the temple.
   • The angel said not to measure that outer court.
   • The outer court has been given to the nations.
   • The nations will trample the holy city underfoot for forty-two months.
3. 11:3
   • The speaker will give power to his two witnesses.
   • The two witnesses will prophesy for one thousand two hundred and sixty days.
   • The two witnesses will be clothed in sackcloth.
4. 11:4
   • These two are the two olive trees.
   • These two are the two lampstands.
   • The two lampstands stand before the God of the earth.
5. 11:5
   • If anyone wants to harm the two witnesses, fire comes out of their mouth.
   • That fire devours their enemies.
   • If anyone wants to harm the two witnesses, he must be killed in this manner.
6. 11:6
   • The two witnesses have authority to shut heaven so that no rain falls during the days of their prophecy.
   • The two witnesses have authority over the waters to turn them into blood.
   • The two witnesses have authority to strike the earth with every plague as often as they wish.
7. 11:7
   • When the two witnesses have finished their testimony, the beast that comes up out of the abyss will make war against them.
   • The beast will overcome the two witnesses.
   • The beast will kill the two witnesses.
8. 11:8
   • The dead bodies of the two witnesses will lie in the street of the great city.
   • That great city is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt.
   • Our Lord was crucified in that city.
9. 11:9
   • People from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will look at the dead bodies of the two witnesses for three and a half days.
   • They will not allow the dead bodies to be placed in a tomb.
10. 11:10
    • Those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over the two witnesses.
    • Those who dwell on the earth will make merry.
    • Those who dwell on the earth will send gifts to one another.
    • The reason is that these two prophets tormented those who dwell on the earth.
11. 11:11
    • After the three and a half days, the breath of life from God entered into the two witnesses.
    • The two witnesses stood on their feet.
    • Great fear fell upon those who saw them.
12. 11:12
    • The two witnesses heard a loud voice from heaven.
    • The voice said to them, Come up here.
    • The two witnesses went up to heaven in the cloud.
    • Their enemies watched them go up.
13. 11:13
    • In that same hour there was a great earthquake.
    • A tenth of the city fell.
    • Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake.
    • The rest were terrified.
    • The rest gave glory to the God of heaven.
14. 11:14
    • The second woe has passed.
    • The third woe is coming quickly.
15. 11:15
    • The seventh angel sounded his trumpet.
    • There were loud voices in heaven.
    • The voices said that the kingdoms of this world have become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.
    • The voices said that he will reign forever and ever.
16. 11:16
    • The twenty-four elders sit before God on their thrones.
    • The twenty-four elders fell on their faces.
    • The twenty-four elders worshiped God.
17. 11:17
    • The elders said they give thanks to the Lord God Almighty.
    • The elders addressed him as the one who is, and who was, and who is to come.
    • The elders said he has taken to himself his great power.
    • The elders said he has begun to reign.
18. 11:18
    • The nations were angry.
    • God's wrath has come.
    • The time has come for the dead to be judged.
    • The time has come to give reward to God's servants the prophets.
    • The time has come to give reward to the saints and to those who fear God's name, small and great.
    • The time has come to destroy those who destroy the earth.
19. 11:19
    • The temple of God in heaven was opened.
    • The ark of his covenant was seen in his temple.
    • There were lightnings.
    • There were voices.
    • There were thunderings.
    • There was an earthquake.
    • There was great hail.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

11:1

A reed was the hollow cane stalk that surveyors cut for a measuring rod; the standard one ran roughly ten feet. The King James "rod" here means a walking staff, so the picture is of a measuring cane about as long as a man's staff. Measuring a sanctuary this way comes from Ezekiel 40 to 42, where a figure with a measuring reed paces out a temple. The word translated "temple" is not the whole walled complex but the sanctuary building itself, which is why the outer courtyard can be left out of the measuring in the next verse.

11:2

"Gentiles" is the King James word for the nations, meaning everyone who is not Jewish. In the Jerusalem temple the outer courtyard was the one area non-Jews were permitted to enter; inner courts were barred to them on pain of death. "The holy city" is Jerusalem. Forty-two months is three and a half years, the same span given as 1,260 days in the next verse and as "a time, and times, and half a time" in Daniel 7:25; it was the length of time the Jerusalem temple stood desecrated under Antiochus IV in the 160s BC, and it became a standing figure for a fixed, limited period of oppression.

11:3

"Threescore" is sixty, so a thousand two hundred and threescore is 1,260 days: three and a half years of thirty-day months, matching the forty-two months of verse 2. Two is the number of witnesses the law required to establish any charge as true (Deuteronomy 19:15), so a pair of witnesses is a legally sufficient testimony. Sackcloth was coarse, dark cloth woven from goat hair, worn next to the skin as the recognized dress of mourning and of prophets calling for repentance.

11:4

The image comes from Zechariah 4, where the prophet sees a gold lampstand flanked by two olive trees that feed oil straight into it, and the two trees are identified as "the two anointed ones" who stand before the Lord of the whole earth. A King James "candlestick" is not a holder for a wax candle but a lampstand, a stand carrying small lamps that burn olive oil.

11:5

In 1611 English "will" often carried its older sense of "wants to" or "intends to" rather than marking simple future tense, so "if any man will hurt them" means if anyone wants to harm them.

11:6

"Shut heaven" means shut up the sky so that it holds back rain. The two powers described here are the signature acts of Israel's two most famous prophets: Elijah shut off the rain for three and a half years (1 Kings 17 to 18), and Moses turned the Nile to blood and struck Egypt with plagues (Exodus 7 to 12). "All plagues" means every kind of plague, not the entire set of them.

11:7

"The bottomless pit" translates the Greek word abyss, the unfathomable deep pictured as a shaft or prison where hostile spirits are confined. "The beast" is introduced here without explanation and described at length later; the word means a wild animal, not a domestic one. "Overcome them" means defeat or overpower them.

11:8

"Spiritually" here does not mean devoutly; it is the King James rendering of a word meaning figuratively or symbolically, the opposite of literally. Sodom and Egypt are used as bywords rather than as places: Sodom was the city destroyed for its wickedness in Genesis 19, and Egypt was the country that enslaved Israel. Prophets had already applied the name Sodom to Jerusalem as an insult (Isaiah 1:10).

11:9

"Kindreds and tongues" means tribes and languages. "Shall not suffer" means shall not permit or allow. Leaving a corpse exposed instead of burying it was one of the gravest humiliations the ancient world knew, a punishment aimed at the dead person's honor as much as at the body, and burial within a day was expected as a basic duty even toward enemies.

11:10

Sending portions of food and gifts to one another was the standard way of marking a public festival in Jewish practice (Nehemiah 8:10, Esther 9:19 and 22), so the detail pictures the world keeping a holiday over the deaths. "Make merry" means celebrate. "Them that dwell upon the earth" is a fixed phrase in this book for the settled population of the world that is hostile to God, not simply for human beings in general.

11:11

The Greek word behind "Spirit" also means breath or wind, and the whole line echoes Ezekiel 37, where breath from God enters a valley of dry bones and they stand on their feet as a living army. "Great fear fell upon" is a Hebrew way of saying terror seized them.

11:12

"Come up hither" means come up here. Going up in a cloud is the language used of Elijah's departure and of the ascension in Acts 1:9, where a cloud conceals the one taken up. "Beheld" means watched.

11:13

"The same hour" means at that very moment rather than within a sixty minute span. "The remnant" here simply means the rest, those left over, with no special religious sense. "Affrighted" means terrified. To "give glory to" God was a set phrase for openly acknowledging him, used both of praise and, in legal settings, of a guilty party admitting the truth (Joshua 7:19); the text does not settle which is meant.

11:14

A "woe" is a cry of disaster, the shout an ancient mourner or prophet raised over a doomed city. Three of them were announced earlier (Revelation 8:13) as attached to the last three trumpet blasts, so the first and second woes are the events of chapters 9 to 11 and the third arrives with the seventh trumpet in the next verse.

11:15

The oldest manuscripts read "the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord," in the singular; the King James follows later copies that have the plural "kingdoms." "Is become" means has become. "Christ" is not a second name but the Greek for Anointed One, the equivalent of the Hebrew Messiah, so "his Christ" means the king he has anointed.

11:16

"Four and twenty" is twenty-four, the older way of saying the number. "Seats" is the King James word for thrones; the same Greek word is translated "throne" elsewhere in the book. These elders were introduced in Revelation 4:4. Falling on the face was the ordinary posture of homage before a king in the ancient Near East, not simply a gesture of prayer.

11:17

"Which art, and wast" means who is and who was. Earlier in this book the formula runs "which is, and which was, and which is to come" (Revelation 1:4 and 1:8); many early manuscripts lack the third clause here, and the King James includes it from later copies. The Greek verb behind "hast reigned" points to the moment a reign is taken up rather than to a long past rule, which is why it can be read as "have begun to reign."

11:18

There is a play on words in the Greek that English cannot easily carry: the nations were enraged and God's rage has come, the same root twice. "The saints" translates a word meaning the holy ones, people set apart for God; it does not refer to a special class of exceptionally holy individuals. "Them that fear thy name" means those who hold him in awe, and "small and great" is a stock phrase for everyone regardless of rank or importance.

11:19

"Testament" is the King James word for covenant, a binding agreement. The ark of the covenant was the gold covered wooden chest holding the stone tablets of the law; it stood in the innermost room of the sanctuary behind a curtain, where only the high priest went, and only once a year. It disappeared when Babylon destroyed the temple around 587 BC and was never in the second temple, so a curtain drawn back on the ark itself would have been an unimaginable sight to a first century reader. The "voices" listed among the lightnings and thunderings render a word for loud noises or rumblings, not speech. This cluster of storm signs is the standard biblical description of God appearing, as at Sinai in Exodus 19:16.