Revelation 14:20

New Testament

18 Another angel, who was in charge of the fire, came from the altar and called in a loud voice to the angel who had the sharp sickle, “Use your sharp sickle and gather the clusters of grapes off the vine of the earth, because its grapes are now ripe.” 19 So the angel swung his sickle over the earth and gathered the grapes from the vineyard of the earth and tossed them into the great winepress of the wrath of God. 20 Then the winepress was stomped outside the city, and blood poured out of the winepress up to the height of horses’ bridles for a distance of almost 200 miles.

4 Ezra 15:36

2 Esdras
Pseudepigrapha

34 See the clouds stretching from east and north to south! 35 Their appearance is hideous, full of fury and tempest. 36 They will clash together, they will pour over the land a vast storm; blood, shed by the sword, will reach as high as a horse’s belly, a man’s thigh, or a camel’s hock. 37 Terror and trembling will cover the earth; all who see the raging fury will shudder and be stricken with panic. 38 Then vast storm-clouds will approach from north and south, and others from the west.

 Notes and References

"... We begin with a collection of texts which are clearly related in some way (Revelation 14:20; 1 Enoch 100:3; 4 Ezra 15:35-36; Ginza; y. Ta'an 4:8; Lamentations Rabbah 2:24; b. Gittin 57a; Prayer of Rabbi Shimon ben Yohai 9) ... This collection of texts, ranging in date from the second or first century B.C. to the medieval period, from Jewish, Christian and (in one case) Mandean works, clearly shows that Revelation 14:20 makes use of a topos which was widely used to indicate slaughter, in war, of exceptional proportions. In most cases it occurs in the context of apocalyptic prophecy. Most appropriately it is used with reference to the last battle of history, in which sinners will destroy each other on an unprecedented scale, but in many of the later apocalypses it describes an earlier battle in the sequence of events which lead to the end of history. In some cases, the battle which, from the fictitious standpoint of the pseudepigraphal prophecy, is set in the future may be an event already in the past from the standpoint of the author and his readers ..."

Bauckham, Richard The Climax of Prophecy: Studies on the Book of Revelation (pp. 40-43) T&T Clark, 1993

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