Revelation 11:9 - Printer Friendly

ESV: For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb,

NIV: For three and a half days some from every people, tribe, language and nation will gaze on their bodies and refuse them burial.

NASB: Those from the peoples, tribes, languages, and nations will look at their dead bodies for three and a half days, and will not allow their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb.

CSB: And some of the peoples, tribes, languages, and nations will view their bodies for three and a half days and not permit their bodies to be put into a tomb.

NLT: And for three and a half days, all peoples, tribes, languages, and nations will stare at their bodies. No one will be allowed to bury them.

KJV: And they of the people and kindreds and tongues and nations shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not suffer their dead bodies to be put in graves.

NKJV: Then those from the peoples, tribes, tongues, and nations will see their dead bodies three-and-a-half days, and not allow their dead bodies to be put into graves.

At times in the past, people doubted some of the incidents depicted in Revelation, claiming that there was no way for the "entire world" to literally see something as it happened. Today, through the media of television and hand-held devices, people can follow events around the globe in real time. It is not hard to believe, therefore, that for three and a half days, at least some people from virtually all tribes and languages and nations will gaze at the dead bodies of the two witnesses.

Their morbid delight at viewing the dead bodies is matched only by their wicked refusal to grant the bodies of the two witnesses burial in a tomb. The people demonstrate by their despicable delight in the death of the two witnesses that "the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick" (Jeremiah 17:9). When Jesus hung on the cross and would soon die, "the rulers scoffed at him, saying, 'He saved others; let him save himself, if he is the Christ of God, his Chosen One'" (Luke 23:35). The soldiers also mocked Him. However, both Jesus' adversaries and the two witnesses' adversaries would soon learn that evil cannot triumph over good.

Revelation 11:3–14 follows on the heels of a brief assertion that the Gentiles will possess the temple's outer court and trample Jerusalem for forty-two months. We learn also that God will authorize two witnesses to prophesy during those forty-two months. Here we gain information about the two witnesses' ministry, what happens to them, and God's immediate response. The passage ends by alerting us to the fact that the second woe has ended, but the third woe is coming soon.

This chapter continues the interlude between the sixth and seventh trumpet judgments. John received a measuring rod and was told to measure the temple, the altar, and the worshipers. However, he was told not to measure the court outside the temple, because the Gentiles would overrun it for three and a half years. During that time, two divinely authorized witnesses would prophesy. They would have power to summon fire from heaven and to strike the earth with plagues. At the end of their testimony the beast from the pit will kill them and leave their bodies in a street in Jerusalem. But, three and a half days later, God will resurrect their bodies and draw them up to heaven. At that time a powerful earthquake will level a tenth of Jerusalem and kill seven thousand people. When the seventh trumpet sounds, loud voices in heaven proclaim Jesus as the possessor of the world's kingdoms, and the twenty-four elders praise Jesus as the Lord God Almighty who will begin to reign. He will judge the dead but reward His servants. The chapter ends with the opening of the temple in heaven.

The eleventh chapter of Revelation provides information about an event that transpires between the sounding of the sixth and seventh trumpets. It involves two powerful witnesses that God raises up in the middle of the tribulation. These two witnesses minister throughout the second half of the tribulation. They are martyred, but God raises them up and lifts them to heaven. Concurrent with their ascension a mighty earthquake destroys one tenth of Jerusalem and kills seven thousand people. This is the second woe. The first woe is described in chapter 9 as an invading army of locusts.

The word ''revelation'' means ''an unveiling or disclosure.'' This writing unveils future events such as the rapture, three series of judgments that will fall on the earth during the tribulation, the emergence of the Antichrist, the persecution of Israel and her amazing revival, as well as Jesus' second coming with His saints to the earth, the judgment of Satan and his followers, and finally, the eternal state. This content, combined with the original Greek term apokalypsis, is why we now refer to an end-of-the-world scenario as ''an apocalypse.''