17Another angel came out of the temple in heaven, and he too had a sharp sickle. 18Still another angel, who had charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to him who had the sharp sickle, "Take your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth's vine, because its grapes are ripe." 19The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God's wrath. 20They were trampled in the winepress outside the city, and blood flowed out of the press, rising as high as the horses' bridles for a distance of 1,600 stadia.
Dig Deeper
I certainly did not grow up anywhere near a farm, nor did I ever go to a farm, but I still learned to recognize, at a very young age, the signs of harvest. For me, though, this was not a joyous time of year. Every year school would let out, the weather would turn warm, the days would get longer, and I knew that the time had come. It was time to load up into the station wagon with my mom, my aunt, my sister and my cousin. We would take what seemed at the time like a long drive to the Strawberry farm. Once we arrived everyone would pile out of the car and we had the privilege of spending a long, hot, dirty morning harvesting the strawberry crop. Once we were finished, the strawberries would be weighed, we would pay for them, and then be off on our way home, if we didn’t find a great rummage sale on the way home first.
In Matthew 24, Jesus gives a long and rather apocalyptic response to the question of when and how the Temple would be destroyed. He says in verse 32 that just as people can tell that the summer is at hand due to the signs of the fig tree, so there will be general signs that should alert His people to the fact that the time of the covenant judgment was coming. I used to wake up in the mornings as a boy and know, not just by the seasonal signs, but by what my mother was doing that it was strawberry picking day. John is informing us that all of the signs have been set and that the time of the harvest of judgment is at hand. The sickle is readied, and the judgment on the apostate people of God has come.
14:17-18 - John notes that another angel came out of the Temple in heaven, and he too hard a sharp sickle. In so doing, he returns to the theme of judgment. Although the spreading of the gospel and the overcoming of the saints is the primary focus of this Revelation, running concurrently is the idea of the cutting off of apostate Israel. In Genesis 21 we see how Isaac was recognized as the child of the promise of the covenant. Before that could happen, however, it required the excommunication of Hagar and her son Ishmael. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul compared the Old Covenant and the physical nation of Israel to Hagar, the slave woman, and Ishmael; he also compared the New Covenant and the Church to Sara, the free woman, and Isaac, the child of promise. He wrote: "Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. . . Get rid of the slave woman and her son, for the slave woman's son will never share in the inheritance with the free woman's son. . . Therefore, brothers, we are not children of the slave woman, but of the free woman" (Gal. 4:28-31). In that passage, Paul makes clear that old Jerusalem, the capital city of apostasy, had been cast out as the possessors of the Covenant. The Church was now the legitimate heir of the promises of God that had been made to Abraham. Christians are the true children of the heavenly Jerusalem.
At first glance, it may appear that this angel with the sharp sickle has come to do the same work as the previous angel, but it quickly becomes apparent that this is not the case. Here, though, John goes all the way back to Rev. 6:9-11, when the saints were gathered around the golden altar of incense, offering up their prayers for the destruction of their enemies. An angel had taken the bowl containing the prayers of the saints, filled it with the fire of the altar and threw it to the land (Rev. 8:3-5). Now, John sees that same angel, the one who had charge of the fire. This angel who has the power of the fire burning on the altar, comes from the altar of the saints’ prayers in order to hand down judgment. He is bringing the historical, physical response to the prayers of the saints. This angel also wants a harvest, but it is the harvest of the grapes of wrath. The third angel calls to the second angel, the one with the sickle, and tells him to take his sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes from the earth’s vine, because its grapes are ripe. God’s vineyard is now ripe for judgment. "Now I will tell you what I am going to do to my vineyard: I will take away its hedge, and it will be destroyed . . . I will make it a wasteland" (Is. 5:5-6).
14:19-20 - Israel, God’s vineyard, has been judged and found wanting. Judgment is now at hand: The angel swung his sickle on the earth, gathered its grapes and threw them into the great winepress of God’s wrath. This creates the substance that will be poured from the cups in chapter 16. Verses 15-19 make six references to the land (earth). Combined with the imagery of the vine, there is an emphasis that this is a judgment on the land of Israel. When considering the extensive Old Testament references to Israel as the vineyard, it doesn’t seem possible that John would have used this language without meaning to communicate the judgment of Jerusalem and Israel. The imagery for this particular passage comes from Isaiah 63:1-6, in which God is described as a man, whose robe is stained red crushing grapes in a winepress.
They were trampled in the winepress outside the city , and the blood flowed for a distance of 1,600 stadia. The number 1,600 is very symbolic as are most numbers in Revelation. It emphasizes the land: four squared (the land), times ten squared (largeness). 1,600 is slightly larger than the length of Israel. The whole land of Israel, then, is represented as overflowing with the blood of the coming judgment. The flowing blood reaches as high as the horses’ bridle, reminding the reader of the Pharaoh’s horses during the Exodus (Ex. 14:23, 28; 15:19). Old Israel had become apostate like Egypt, and now her horses would be swimming in the blood of judgment. The winepress was outside the city because in the Old Testament sacrificial system, the bodies of the sacrificial animals would be burned outside the camp. The winepress of judgment that would purify the land would be outside the city as well.
Devotional Thought
Ishmael was sent away from Isaac, and the old Israel was excommunicated in favor of the new obedient Israel. In the same way, we must cast out our life and old desires in order to embrace our new life in Christ. What area of your old self do you struggle with the most? Share your struggles and temptations with someone else this week. Make a determination to completely sacrifice to God every area of your life that you have held back.
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