The Seductive Word

The word ‘Armageddon’ has captured the imagination of many people around the world. Commonly taken to refer to a war of unbelievable magnitude, Movie Flavor reports that there are 29 movies that have the word ‘Armageddon’ in their titles. They have overcounted, but the point still stands. And the question must be asked: What is it about this word that has scriptwriters, directors and producers reaching out for it?

The word ‘Armageddon’ appears only once in the bible, in Revelation 16.16, where we read, “And the demonic spirits assembled the kings at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.” Here note that the word ‘harmegedon’ is a transliteration of the Greek in Revelation 16.16. Most English translations, following the King James Version, render it as ‘Armageddon’. Since the most common usage of the word in English is ‘Armageddon’ and since nothing significant is lost by using this rendition, I will follow suit in this post.

The most common interpretation of the significance of Armageddon is that it will be the location of the final battle between the returning Jesus and all his enemies. However, is this actually borne out in the text of Revelation? In order to answer that question, we need to determine the place of this solitary mention of Armageddon in the narrative of the book and interpret is carefully from within that context.

The book of Revelation is famously characterized by references to or sequences of sevens. The reference to Armageddon comes in the sequence of the seven bowls of the wrath of God. As usual, interpreting any part of the bible (or any text for that matter) should take into account as much of the context as possible. Since the whole set of seven bowls comprises one single movement in the narrative, it is unhelpful to interpret any of the bowls apart from the others. Hence, I ask the reader to indulge me as I quote the entire 16^th chapter.

The Seven Bowls

Then I heard a loud voice from the temple telling the seven angels, “Go and pour out on the earth the seven bowls of the wrath of God.”

So the first angel went and poured his bowl on the earth, and a foul and painful sore came on those who had the brand of the beast and who worshiped its image.

The second angel poured his bowl into the sea, and it became like the blood of a corpse, and every living thing in the sea died.

The third angel poured his bowl into the rivers and the springs of water, and they became blood. And I heard the angel of the waters say, “You are just, O Holy One, who are and were, for you have judged these things; because they shed the blood of saints and prophets, you have given them blood to drink. It is what they deserve!” And I heard the altar respond, “Yes, O Lord God, the Almighty, your judgments are true and just!”

The fourth angel poured his bowl on the sun, and it was allowed to scorch people with fire; they were scorched by the fierce heat, but they cursed the name of God, who had authority over these plagues, and they did not repent and give him glory.

The fifth angel poured his bowl on the throne of the beast, and its kingdom was plunged into darkness; people gnawed their tongues in agony and cursed the God of heaven because of their pains and sores, and they did not repent of their deeds.

The sixth angel poured his bowl on the great River Euphrates, and its water was dried up in order to prepare the way for the kings from the east. And I saw three foul spirits like frogs coming from the mouth of the dragon, from the mouth of the beast, and from the mouth of the false prophet. These are demonic spirits, performing signs, who go abroad to the kings of the whole world, to assemble them for battle on the great day of God the Almighty.(“See, I am coming like a thief! Blessed is the one who stays awake and is clothed, not going about naked and exposed to shame.”) And the demonic spirits assembled the kings at the place that in Hebrew is called Harmagedon.

The seventh angel poured his bowl into the air, and a loud voice came out of the temple, from the throne, saying, “It is done!” And there came flashes of lightning, rumblings, peals of thunder, and a violent earthquake, such as had not occurred since people were upon the earth, so violent was that earthquake. The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell. God remembered great Babylon and gave her the wine cup of the fury of his wrath. And every island fled away, and no mountains were to be found, and huge hailstones, each weighing about a hundred pounds, dropped from heaven on people, until they cursed God for the plague of the hail, so fearful was that plague.

The Theme of the Bowls

If there is a theme to the seven bowls it is that God’s wrath is poured out on those who are allied with the beast with the intention of rendering them unable to function. Bowl 1: Painful sores would incapacitate them. Bowls 2 and 3: Blood in the seas and the rivers would affect their water supply. Bowl 4: Hot sunlight would scorch them and make them unable to function. Bowl 5: Darkness would place them in an environment deprived of light. Bowl 7: Lightning, thunder and earthquakes would threaten their lives. In other words the six bowls other than the sixth are all about frustrating the plans of those who have decided to rally against God and the Lamb. This must be the governing principle which should guide our interpretation of the sixth bowl.

In other words, any attempt to interpret the sixth bowl without looking at the overarching theme of the cycle of bowls itself is misguided at best and intentionally misleading at worst. Of course, there are many examples of the latter approach, primarily from preachers in the affluent Western countries who erroneously think that their affluence automatically places them on God’s side. And many of them are so committed to militarism that I seriously wonder if they are reading the same book as I am!

Coming back to the bowls, each of them makes it difficult or impossible for the humans who have sided with the forces of evil to function adequately. While the language used does describe some damage being brought upon the earth, the focus is not on this environmental damage but on how this damage adversely affects those who have declared themselves to be God’s enemies. It is this, then, that must guide us as we attempt to understand the sixth bowl and the role of Armageddon in the narrative.

However, before we proceed to look more closely at the sixth bowl, let us take a brief excursus as look at the last part of Revelation 19, where most people think the battle of Armageddon takes place because what we will discover there will help us in our interpretation of the sixth bowl.

The Non-Battle of Armageddon

In Revelation 19.19-21 we read, “Then I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to wage war against the rider on the horse and against his army. And the beast was captured, and with it the false prophet who had performed in its presence the signs by which he deceived those who had received the brand of the beast and those who worshiped its image. These two were thrown alive into the lake of fire that burns with sulfur. And the rest were killed by the sword of the rider on the horse, the sword that came from his mouth, and all the birds were gorged with their flesh.”

Did you see it? Did you see the great description of the battle? We read that the beast and the armies of the kings of the earth were gathered to wage war. The next thing we read is, “And the beast was captured.” Where is the battle? We read only of a gathering to wage war and then of the capture. What is conspicuous by its absence is any mention of any actual warfare.

This is a common strategy in Revelation. John builds the tension and anticipation of the reader with indications to look here or see something. But when John actually looks he sees something completely different. The pre-eminent case of this is in chapter 5, where John is asked to look at the Lion of the tribe of Judah only to find the Lion conspicuously absent and only the slaughtered Lamb present.

In chapter 19 too, ever since chapter 16 and the mention of Armageddon, the reader is expecting there to be a great showdown between the Lamb and the beast with each of them having their armies alongside. The interlude in chapters 17 and 18 describing the fall of Babylon only increases the anticipation with the destruction of one of the lesser, though not inconsequential, actors. When the rider on the white horse shows up in the middle of Revelation 19, the reader would surely be thinking that the battle, which was put off for the interlude concerning Babylon, would now be the focus of the narrative.

However, if that was what the reader was expecting, she would be sorely disappointed because John only tells us about the capture of the beast and the false prophet without even one word about the actual battle? I know I am speculating here, but I can imagine that those who first heard the book being read aloud would have asked the reader to do a double take here to confirm that there was no description of this greatly anticipated battle. And I’m sure they would have been confused about this seemingly unacceptable omission. However, if they had the opportunity to go back to chapter 16 they would have been able to understand that, from what John has written in chapter 16, we should not have had any expectation of a battle!

The Non-Place of the Non-Battle

As mentioned earlier, John tells us in chapter 16 that the demonic spirits assembled the armies at a place called Armageddon in Hebrew. Most often this is taken to mean ‘mountain of Megiddo’. However, Michael Heiser objects to this in The Naked Bible Podcast episode 392. Since his argument is quite involved, indulge me while I quote a large chuck from the episode. Heiser says, “Har Magedon means ‘mount of’ something. And it can’t be Megiddo, because there is no mountain there. Anyone who’s been to the site, the first question should be to your tour guide, ‘Where is the mountain?’ Because there isn’t any. It’s a plain. So Kline thought, ‘What if we’re not dealing with Hebrew M-G-D (the first three consonants of Megiddo)?’ What if instead we have har and then mem, ’ayin (the other Hebrew consonant that has that G sound). Like Gomorrah is actually not spelled with Hebrew G (gimel); it’s spelled with ’ayin (’amorah). It has that back of the throat G sound. So Kline’s like, ‘Well, what if we have mem ’ayin daleth? And we have har mōʿed?’ And as soon as he came to that observation, the whole thing opened up. Because har mōʿed is the mount of assembly from Isaiah 14. This is where God rules. It’s Zion. It’s Jerusalem.”

The last claim, however, is patently false! Isaiah 14 does mention a ‘mount of assembly’. However, the parallel in v. 13 is with Mount Zaphon and not Mount Zion. And Mount Zaphon was on the eastern side of the Jordan between the Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee, in other words, nowhere even near Jerusalem. This kind of misleading of readers or listeners to make a point is really sad and I have to admit that I have lost quite a bit of respect for Kline and Heiser because of this. Unfortunately, there are so many sites online that seem to have not bothered to check either the text of Isaiah or the geography of the region and who have bought hook, line, and sinker into what Kline and Heiser have proposed. It’s time we stop being gullible consumers!

Anyway, since Heiser is speaking off the cuff here, the sentences are all broken and disjointed and not entirely coherent. So let me explain his point. He recognizes that there is no mountain in Megiddo because it’s a plain. So he concludes that it cannot refer to Megiddo. What then could it refer to? He picks up an argument from Meredith G. Kline, which goes as follows. There are two Hebrew letters that could have the ‘g’ sound. One is obviously the gimel. The other is the ‘ayin. Kline observes that the place name ‘Gomorrah’ is spelled with a leading ‘ayin in Hebrew but is pronounced with a leading ‘g’ sound as indicated by the word itself, i.e. Gomorrah. Hence, Kline suggests that when John writes ‘harmagedon’ and refers to a Hebrew place name, he intends us to understand that the first three consonants are not mem (‘m’), gimel (hard ‘g’) and daleth (‘d’) but mem (‘m’), ‘ayin (guttural ‘g’) and daleth (‘d’). Kline then proposes that this indicates the Hebrew word har mo’ed, which means ‘mount of assembly’. He then claims that this is a reference to Jerusalem, a point that I have strongly disputed above.

Granted that Greek has no way of rendering the Hebrew ‘ayin, the above argument about ‘har mo’ed’ might make sense, except for three glaring reasons that both Kline and Heiser fail to observe, even though these points are glaringly obvious. First, the Hebrew text during the first century did not have any vowel pointing. Hence, any reference in the Old Testament to the assembly would have read ‘mw’d’. Note, that I have added a ‘w’ to indicate the ‘waw’ that always appears in the Hebrew and indicates the initial ‘o’ vowel sound. However, if John intended magedon to refer to assembly in Hebrew, why did he not write mogedon, with an initial ‘o’ vowel sound? After all, Greek has the letters omicron and omega that could provide an ‘o’ sound. Yet, John chose to write magedon, with the first vowel being an alpha rather than either an omicron or an omega, strongly suggesting he was not thinking of ‘mo’ed’.

Second, relying on the leading consonant in Gomorrah is worse than circular reasoning. We have already admitted that Greek has no way of rendering the ‘ayin sound. Hence, any alphabetic rendering of it must be ad hoc in nature rather than universal, especially since ‘ayin itself was known to have multiple sounds. We ourselves know that ‘g’, for example, can have a hard sound as in ‘gut’ or a soft sound as in ‘giraffe’. Finding that it has a hard sound in any particular word does not tell us anything about how it should be pronounced in another word. In fact, this view is further undermined by the fact that ‘mo’ed’ is pronounced without the guttural sound! (See this video and pay attention to the reading of v.14. at the 3:58 mark.) In other words, even if ‘ayin is sometimes pronounced with a ‘g’ sound, it is not in the word ‘mo’ed’, which is the only word that matters for this argument. So this seems to be a reasoning from absolutely nothing!

Third, John was writing to Greek speaking people, most of whom were probably Gentiles. The book is already quite cryptic and would have required the hearers to spend quite a bit of time trying to understand it just as twenty centuries later we are still attempting the same. Which is more likely, that he expected them to know obscure idiosyncrasies of Hebrew pronunciation, which are accessible only to native speakers of the language, or that he expected them to know or get to know the topography of a well known place in the Jezreel Valley? I submit it is the latter because the former stretches all bounds of imagination.

Proof by Contradiction

Suppose, however, that Kline and Heiser are right. Maybe they are seeing something that eludes me. How would that fit in with the rest of the bowl cycle? We have the first five bowls, all introducing some kind of obstacle or difficult situation for those who are against God. And we end with a grand earthquake, which would hinder any plans the forces of evil would have. Just before this we are told that the demonic spirits assemble the armies at Jerusalem (according to the view of Kline and Heiser). How is this a hindrance to these forces? According to the book, Jerusalem is already under the control of the forces of evil. These armies would be gathering at their headquarters. This is not a hindrance of any sort.

To the contrary, if we say that the armies would gather at Jerusalem, we are saying that they already have a preferred base of operations and are gathering there. Their plan would then be to launch their assault against God and the Lamb from this base of operations. Far from being a hindrance of any sort, this would actually align exactly with their plans. In that case, we have to ask ourselves how this sixth bowl actually fits into the bowl cycle. If the first five and the seventh bowls all present a case in which the forces against God are hindered or thwarted, how would the sixth fit into that scheme when it does exactly the opposite?

It is quite clear then that any suggestion that Armageddon refers to Jerusalem is based not on anything inside the text but on some quite esoteric considerations from outside the text. While taking cues from outside the text is not necessarily poor hermeneutics, when this goes against the thrust of what is in the text, it should be a warning about these external considerations. This warning is amplified when the considerations themselves are so esoteric that they require, in this case, the implausible expectation that Gentile Christians would know the variability of pronunciation of Hebrew consonants when the vowels themselves do not point in that direction! It is for these reasons that I think Kline’s and Heiser’s proposal actually carries very little water.

An Alternate and Subversive Interpretation

Now, we saw that Heiser admits that there is no mountain in Megiddo. He concludes then that this must mean that John did not intend to refer to Megiddo. But what if we take it the other way around? Megiddo was a well known place in the Jezreel Valley and had been the site of many battles. In the imagination of the Old Testament, Megiddo played a significant role because it was where the last ‘good’ king, Josiah, was killed in 609 BC. Since Josiah was the last king who was not a vassal of any foreign kingdom, it is technically with his death that the independent kingdom of Judah ceased to exist. Hence, the place of his death, Megiddo, carried enormous significance in the imagination of the exilic and post-exilic Judeans. Because of its significance, the terrain of Megiddo was also well known. Everyone knew or could easily get to know that there was no mountain there.

I can imagine a scenario where the scroll of Revelation was being read out to the first recipients. When the reader got to Revelation 16.16 and mentioned Armageddon, someone may have asked, “I thought Megiddo was a plain. Are you sure John wrote Armageddon?” When the reader checked and responded in the affirmative, someone may have asked, “But then where is this mountain?” The reader may have then checked with the courier who had brought the scroll from Patmos. He might have been carefully instructed by John concerning some of the more gnarly parts of the narrative.

“Where is this mountain?” the reader would have asked the courier. And the courier, with a wry, knowing smile and a carefully timed wink, would have replied, “Precisely!”

Just like the conspicuously absent lion of chapter 5, a conspicuousness that we have done our very best to forget through art and song, the mountain of Megiddo is also not something that actually exists. In other words, when the demonic spirits are assembling the kings of the earth at Armageddon, they are assembling at a ‘non-place’. What this means is that these spirits will do their very best to assemble their forces but will never find a suitable place where they can take their stand against the truth speaking white rider. This fits perfectly with the idea of hindrance or obstacle that characterizes the other six bowls. What could be a greater hindrance or obstacle to an army than that it cannot find a place at which to organize itself for a battle? What could be more devastating to an army than the truth that, in the face of God’s wrath on them, they will never be able to extricate themselves from chaos and achieve even the slightest bit of organization that a headquarters could facilitate?

What we have seen is that, not only will there not be any actual battle between the Lamb and the forces of evil, but also there is no place at which the forces of evil can make muster! Hence, contrary to being the scene of the most cataclysmic battle in history, Armageddon is actually a word that spells the final defeat of evil precisely when evil is shown to be powerless even to organize itself against the truth speaking white rider. Armageddon, then, is not something that the people of God need to fear. It is not the site of some upcoming battle that we should hope God would spare us from, as expected by those who adhere to the odious doctrine of the Rapture. Rather, it is the non-site of the upcoming non-battle between the Lamb and God’s enemies, who cannot even find a place from which to attack the Lamb.

We should have expected this if we took the book of Revelation seriously. The book was written to seven churches in first century Asia Minor. These churches were facing different levels of opposition and the book was written to demonstrate that the slaughtered Lamb is still in control despite the opposition that the people of God were facing. It was a book written to comfort and reassure Christians who were increasingly pressured to think that the opposition they were facing meant that the Lamb was no longer in charge of putting God’s plans into effect.

But Revelation was also written to convince those persecuted Christians that violence is the tool of the dragon, utilized by the beast, and sacralized by the false prophet. That is why there is no Lion in the book of Revelation. God does not work through a Lion but only through a Lamb. And that is why there is no place called Armageddon for the dragon, beast, and false prophet cannot even take a stand against the truth speaking white rider.

If this second purpose was not crucial to Revelation, John could well have portrayed the white rider wielding a sword in his hand rather than in his mouth. He could have described a Lion with a luxuriant, flowing mane instead of a Lamb standing with its throat slit. It is precisely because of these features of the book that we should reject all views that give violence a divine imprimatur. Of course, Revelation is a book that contains a lot of violence. However, the elusive-because-illusive Lion and the non-site of the non-battle of Armageddon should be the interpretive lenses through which we interpret even those passages that describe violent action, especially violent action purportedly committed by God.

It seems clear to me that it is our consistent refusal to accept the way of the Lamb that makes many of us salivate for a final bloody battle between Jesus and the dragon’s forces. I would go so far as to say that those Christian teachers who actually teach that there will be such a battle are the antichrists of our time, causing the great apostasy that Jesus did warn would precede his return. But if you have reached here, you have no excuse. You can no longer rely on an empty hope.