the sun-rising might be prepared;” the final combats and the final destruction of Babylon still remained.
There is reference here plainly to the position of the Euphrates: it is not, I conceive, the kings of the east, but the kings who came from the east τών άπό άνατολών ήλίου. This drying up of the great ‘river Euphrates prepared their way. I suppose, from other passages, the Euphrates will, at any rate temporarily, be dried up for Israel to pass over, but I do not see that this passage applies to it in the midst of a symbolical prophecy, the vial being said to be poured out on it. It is commonly, from a previous passage, considered that it is the drying up of the Turkish power: it may be so, or at least there may be something analogous, taking the whole chapter in a subordinate and preparatory sense, which I believe it has had, and is having in our own days, as I have expressed of other chapters, only over a longer period. Such application I believe this chapter has had; and this falls in consistently with the whole plan of the protracted scheme of prophecy, because the second beast loses its character as a beast and becomes a false prophet before the final close. The saints in the fifteenth had their victory over the effort to make them worship the image of the beast; but it was the
