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Eureka

AN EXPOSITION OF THE APOCALYPSE
Sixth Edition, 1915
By Dr. John Thomas (first edition written 1861)

 

 

Chapter 9

Section 1 Subsection 3

The Abyss

 


 
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This leads me to remark, that in these places of the apocalypse, abussos is improperly rendered "bottomless pit." In Isa. xliv. 27, what in the Septuagint is abussos, or abyss, is in the Hebrew tzulah "deep;" and is explained in Jer. l. 38 and li. 36, of Babylon’s power, which is also likened to a dragon therein. Hence, in Daniel’s time, the eagle-winged lion of Babylon was the dragon of the great sea, or abyss, so long as its dominion extended to the Mediterranean; but when it lost that jurisdiction, then its "sea," or abyss, was said to be "dried up."

Abyss is frequently used in the Greek version as synonymous with sea. The following passages show this sense of the word abussos. In Job xxxviii. 30 -- "the face of the abyss is frozen;" xli. 31, "he maketh the abyss to boil like a pot; he maketh the sea like a pot of ointment." In Isa. lxiii. 13, where is he "that led them through the abyss" by the hand of Moses? It is manifest that there is nothing bottomless in the abyss as used in these texts.

In Rom. x. 7, abyss is used by Paul in asking, "Who shall descend into the abyss?" in the C.V. deep: and he tells us what sense he attaches to the word in letting us know the purpose of the descent -- "that is," says he, "to bring up Christ again from among dead ones, ek nekron." This is an abyss which is "never full;" still bottom can be reached when "there shall be no more death, and the grave shall be destroyed. In this use of the word, abyss does not signify "the invisible receptacle of departed spirits," but the common receptacle of dead bodies; or more strictly speaking, the aggregate of dead bodies themselves. These are a sea of death, which when living were "a troubled sea, whose waters cast up mire and dirt" (Isa. lvii. 20).

The apocalyptic abyss is this troubled sea of nations, inhabiting the countries circumjacent to the Great Sea; and out of which Daniel’s four beasts arose. Arabia is physically and politically "the pit" of this "abyss" -- physically, because it is a sandy sea-bottom; and politically, because its tribes may be regarded as the lowest, or worst of the peoples of the east. The key of the abyss, that is brought down from heaven by the binding angel, is power to suppress the Dragon-Government, and to destroy the Beast-Polity of the abyss, or sea (Apoc. xiii. 1): and to maintain its suppression for a thousand years. The abolition of the Dragon-Government will be the reduction of all its officials in church and state to the common level of mankind; and the depriving them of all power to recover the position lost during that long period. Thus, they will be commingled with the waters of the great national abyss - they will have been "cast into the abyss, and shut up, and sealed" with such a mark of divine reprobation, that they will be able to deceive the nations by their hypocritical pretensions, and blasphemous projects, no more for ages.

What a different key is this to the key of the pit! This key is power given to one to open the pit to let out clouds of tormentors and destroyers. Their mission is not to deliver the nations from official and clerical deceivers; but to torment and injure these blind leaders, and those who are blindly led by them. These all "have not the seal of the Deity in their foreheads;" and were therefore obnoxious to the stinging calamities inflicted by the bold, licentious, and ferocious swarms emergent from the smoke-clouds of the flaming pit.

 

 


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