Revelation 16:12

c. Sixth vial on the Euphrates, for the kings of the East, Revelation 16:12 .

12. Great river Euphrates Viewed here not as a part of the framework of creation, but as a symbol of the populations (Revelation 18:3) that sustain Babylon and the beast. Revelation 9:14. This symbol is drawn from a signal passage in profane history. When Cyrus the Great came with his mighty armies from the east, with many a king and prince in command of the various sections of his hosts, to conquer old Babylon, he found “the great city” impregnable. At length, in a master-stroke of military genius, he set his men to work to turn the direction of the channel of the Euphrates, which ran through the city. When its channel was sufficiently dry he led his soldiers on its bottom into the city, and so conquered it. So, then, the Euphrates was literally dried up, that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared. Most beautifully does our seer appropriate this historic event to his symbolic purpose.

Cyrus is styled by God himself (Isaiah 45:1,) “mine anointed,” that is, my messiah, and so, if not exactly a type, is certainly an illustrative figure of our Messiah. One is from the east, and the other is from “the day-spring from on high.” Luke 1:78. One conquered the literal, and the other conquers the mystical, Babylon. Here as elsewhere John’s symbols are taken from sources within the biblical range. The meaning, then, is, that the population and powers of Babylon are wasted away, that the way of our Messiah, with his kings of the east leading his armies, might be prepared to the capture of the mystic Babylon. Alford objects, that to introduce an “auspicious event” like this here, where all is adverse, would be incongruous. But the event is very inauspicious to Babylon, and so is congruous with all the previous plagues.