Many have written or spoken about the seven bowls of wrath in Revelation, chapter sixteen, some calling them the seven last plagues. These incorporate the whole wrath of God, and men love to tell us what that might mean. Of course, some tell us these things will yet occur in our future, while others conclude they have been occurring throughout church history. So, things have been written, and voices have been heard, and opinion has been formulated, and sides have already been taken. But, what if most of what has been written or spoken about in the Apocalypse that formulated Christian opinion about the, so-called, End Times, was all wrong. What if, the Apocalypse was written about the judgment of the Jews during the first century AD, just as the writers of the New Covenant text have been telling us? What if…
Revelation 16:1 describes a vision in which John heard a voice that came out of the Temple of God in heaven. The seven angels that are mentioned there are the same as those mentioned in Revelation 15:1, and, according to my study, these seven bowls, taken together, comprise the whole wrath of God, as understood in my previous study: The Cup of His Indignation. Although the language is apocalyptic and shouldn’t be understood literally, I believe we can understand that the angels received their authority from the Lord, delegated through one of the four living creatures (Revelation 15:7; cp. Revelation 4:6-9) who seem to symbolize the Throne of God (Ezekiel 1:5-28).
The voice, which John heard within the Temple of God in heaven (Revelation 16:1), commanded the seven angels to “Go” and “pour out” (G1632) their bowls filled with the wrath of God upon the earth. It is interesting that this same word, pour out (G1632), is used by Jesus to say the blood of the righteous was “shed” (G1632) upon the earth from Abel to Zacharias (Matthew 23:35), and that generation of Jews would be judged for their shed or poured out (G1632) blood, and the only people the Lord claimed would be judged for this shedding of blood were the first century AD Jewish authorities who rejected Christ, and those who believed them rather than the Gospel (Matthew 23:29-36).
According to Revelation 16:2, the first angel poured out his bowl upon the “earth”. Some interpret this to mean the confines of the Roman Empire.[1] However, in my opinion, it points to the confines of Jewish lands (Judea, Galilee). The earth is often used to point to Jewish lands (Matthew 23:35; cp. Luke 13:33; see also Luke12:49, 51; 21:26), and the fact that the Lord said the Jewish authorities, who opposed him in the first century AD, would be judged for all the shed blood of the saints up to that point in time, tends to support the proposition that, when the first angel poured out his bowl upon the earth, the text is pointing to the Jewish lands, Judea and Galilee.
The result of this judgment was a ‘boil’ (G1668) that came upon all men who had the mark of the beast and worshiped his image. This judgment has been compared with the sixth plague of Egypt (Exodus 9:9-11). The same Greek word in the Septuagint (G1668) for the boil or sore in Exodus 9 is used in Revelation 16:2. It is also the same Greek word (G1668) that is used to describe leprosy in Leviticus 13:18-27. Moreover, in Deuteronomy 28 the same sore (G1668) was mentioned by Moses as a curse from the Lord (Deuteronomy 28:15, 27, 35) if the people would reject his Covenant, which was rejected in the first century AD, when Jesus was rejected as the Messiah by the Jewish state.
We need to keep in mind that Egypt persecuted the people of God, by keeping them in bondage. There, the magicians and all those who worshiped the Egyptian gods were affected by Moses’ sixth plague. During the first century AD, it was the Jews who persecuted Jesus’ disciples who are in view, so in Revelation 16:2 all those who worship the image of the Beast and have his mark were affected by pouring out the first bowl.
The noisome (G2556) and grievous (G4190) sore in the KJV is translated evil (G2556) and wicked (G4190) in The Scriptures 2009 translation. These words are adjectives that modify sore (G1668). The nouns are found together in 1Corinthians 5:8. The Greek word (G4190) there is used to emphasize “wicked” activity (Luke 3:19). In Egypt the judgment was physically painful, but in the first century AD the persecutors of the righteous were spiritually affected. That is, they who received the “mark of the beast” received an evil (G2556), wicked (G4190) sore (G1668), or a mark from heaven by way of separating them from the righteous (cp. Revelation 7:3).
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[1] See People’s New Testament.
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