Charles Ellicott Commentary Revelation 17:10

"and they are seven kings; the five are fallen, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he cometh, he must continue a little while." — Revelation 17:10 (ASV)

And there are seven kings...—A better translation is: They are seven kings: five (not “are fallen,” but fell, the one is, the other has not yet come; and when he will come, he must continue a short time.)

It has been debated whether these kings are individual sovereigns, forms of government, or kingdoms. The last view is the one adopted in this Commentary. The wild beast belongs to no one age but is a power which has risen in every age; the seven heads represent the successive culminations of the world-power. Space here is insufficient to discuss the whole question. But the language used here and the passages in the earlier prophets, which may be called the parent passages of the present vision, favour the interpretation that great world-kingdoms are intended. The language favours this view.

It is said that kings fell. The word is the one which has been used for political catastrophe: the cities of the nations fell (Revelation 16:19); Babylon, it is proclaimed, has fallen (Revelation 14:8). It suits the overthrow of empires and is so used in the LXX; to apply it to individual kings is to ask that it should be equivalent to “they died.” It is to be noticed that the four beasts of Daniel (Daniel 7:3–8) are declared to be four kings (Revelation 17:17), but these kings are not individual kings but represent kingdoms .

This brings us to the meaning of the original passage. Daniel saw four wild beasts rise from the sea; they represented the then-great world-power Babylon, and its three successors: Persia, Greece, and Rome. This is a guide to us here, as most commentators admit; but two great world-powers had preceded Babylon, namely, Egypt and Assyria. These figure in the ancient prophecies as forces hostile to the righteous King. Saint John, whose visions encompassed the world’s drama, could not see the representative of the ever-rising spirit of worldly hostility to God’s chosen without seeing Egypt and Assyria included.

The voices of Moses and Isaiah called to him across the centuries, proclaiming that in these empires the world principle of their day found its clearest and strongest manifestation. In various empires the world-power showed itself: in Egypt, the house of bondage (Exodus 20:2); in Assyria, which exalted itself against God (Isaiah 37:23); in Babylon, the hammer of the whole earth (Jeremiah 50:23); in Persia, and in Greece; and in succession these kingdoms fell, only to be succeeded by another—Rome. Five fell; the one is.

But what is the seventh, the other who has not yet come? We must recall the appearance of the wild beast. It had seven heads and ten horns. Where were these ten horns? It is generally admitted that they were all on the seventh head. The seventh head, which represents the seventh kingdom (or manifestation of the world principle described as not yet come), was then different in appearance from the others. It was ten-horned. It did not have the same unity of appearance as the others.

Now the ten horns are explained as ten kings or minor powers (Revelation 17:12). The conclusion, therefore, is that the seventh head must be an aggregation of monarchies rather than a single universal empire. This agrees with Daniel’s prophecy that out of the fourth kingdom (which corresponds, as we have seen, with the sixth head of the wild beast here) ten kings would arise (Daniel 7:7 and Daniel 7:23-24).

The seventh kingdom (the ten-horned head), it is said, will, when it arises, continue for a short time. This short time is probably the same as the one hour in Revelation 17:12, where the ten kingdoms, represented by the ten horns, receive power one hour with the wild beast.