And there are seven kings.... — Better. They are seven kings: five (not “are fallen,” but fell, the one is, the other is not yet come; and when he shall come, he must continue a short time. It has been debated whether these kings are individual sovereigns, or 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. Our space is insufficient to discuss here the whole question. But the language here used 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 the “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 cried, 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 shall 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. (See Daniel 7:23). This brings us to the drift of the parent 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, viz., Egypt and Assyria: these figure in the ancient prophecies as forces hostile to the righteous King. St. John, whose visions took the range of 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 that in these 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, that exalted herself 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 is 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 seems generally admitted that they were all on the seventh head. The seventh head, which represents the seventh kingdom, or manifestation of the world principle which is described as not yet come, then, was different in appearance from the others. It was ten-horned. It had not 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 rather an aggregation of monarchies 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 should arise (Daniel 7:7; Daniel 7:23-24).
The seventh kingdom (the ten-horned head) it is said will, when it arises, continue a “short time.” The 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.