And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord was crucified.
Dead bodies. So 'Aleph ('), Vulgate, Syriac, Andreas; but A B C, Coptic, read singular, 'dead body.' The two fallen in one cause are considered one.
The great city - eight times elsewhere used of BABYLON (Revelation 14:8; Revelation 16:19; Revelation 17:18; Revelation 18:10; Revelation 18:16; Revelation 18:18-19; Revelation 18:21). In Revelation 21:10 (the new Jerusalem), the oldest manuscript omit "the great" before city; so it forms no exception. The reference is, by anticipation, to mystical Babylon. Which - `the which.'
Spiritually - is a spiritual sense.
Sodom - the term applied by Isaiah 1:10 to apostate Jerusalem (cf. Ezekiel 16:48).
Egypt - leaning on which was the Jews' besetting sin.
Where ... Lord was crucified. This identifies the city as Jerusalem, though the Lord was crucified outside. Eusebius mentions that the scene of Christ's crucifixion was enclosed within the city by Constantine: so it will be at the time of slaying the witnesses. The Beast (e.g., Napoleon and France) has been long struggling for a footing in Palestine: after his ascent from the bottomless pit he struggles more (Bengel). One of the Napoleonic dynasty may obtain that footing, and even be regarded as Messiah by the Jews, in virtue of restoring them to their own land; and so may prove the last Antichrist. The difficulty is, How can Jerusalem be "the great city," i:e., Babylon? By becoming the world's capital of idolatrous apostasy, such as Babylon, and then Rome, has been; just as she is called also "Sodom and Egypt."
Also our. A B C, Origen, Andreas, etc., read, 'also their.' Where their Lord also, as well as they, was slain. Compare Revelation 18:24, where the blood of ALL slain on earth is said to be found IN BABYLON; as in Matthew 23:35, 'upon the Jews and JERUSALEM' (cf. Rev. 11:37-38) shall 'come ALL the righteous blood shed upon each.' Jerusalem shall be the last capital of the world-apostasy, and so receive the last and worst visitation of all the judgments ever inflicted on the apostate world, the earnest of which was given in the Roman destruction of Jerusalem. In the church-historical sense, the Church being the sanctuary, all outside is the world, the great city, wherein all the martyrdoms of saints have taken place. Babylon marks its idolatry, Egypt its tyranny, Sodom its desperate corruption, Jerusalem its pretensions to sanctity, because of spiritual privileges, while being the murderer of Christ in the person of His members. True of Rome. In the special sense, Jerusalem is (Hebrews 13:12-14) the world-city from which believers were then to go forth to "seek one to come."