David Aune in his WBC volume (p. 205) translates as “Behold I will throw her into a sickbed” and explains as follows:
“The expression βάλλω αὐτὴν εἰς κλίνην, ‘I will throw her into a sickbed,’ is a Hebrew idiom that means ‘to cast upon a bed of illness,’ i.e. to punish someone with various forms of sickness (Charles, 1:71-72; see Exod 21:18; 1 Macc 1:5; Jdt 8:3). In one part of a complex curse on a Jewish amulet from the Cairo Geniza (TS K1.42, lines 31-33), we read: ‘may they fall into bed with sickness [יפול במטה בחדירה yippôl bammiṭâ baḥǎdirâ] as long as he dwells in the place that they stole’ (Schiffman-Swartz, Incantation, 85, 88). In the ancient tradition first found in Deut 13:5-11, false prophets are to be executed (cf. 1Q375=Apocryphon of Moses 1.4-5; 11QTemple 54.10-15; 61.1-2; 4Q158=4QReworkedPentateuchª frag. 6, line 8; Philo Spec. Leg. 1.315-17), it is surprising that ‘Jezebel’ is not threatened with death, though her ‘children’ are (v. 23). That the two clauses in this verse are parallel is indicated by the fact that the verb βάλλω is not repeated, though it is understood as the verb whose object is τοὺς μοιχεύοντας, ‘those who fornicate’. ‘Those who commit fornication’ with Jezebel do not seem to be confined exclusively to her followers or disciples; rather they include those who have been drawn into the circle of the prophetess and her school and have been negatively influenced by her teachings, i.e. have practiced both the eating of meat sacrificed to idols and illicit forms of behavior”.
And here is what RH Charles wrote in his ICC volume (referred to above):
“We have here a clear instance of Hebrew parallelism, and likewise of Hebrew idiom, though, so far as I am aware, not hitherto recognized by any scholar. While some scholars have quite wrongly taken κλίνην here to denote a banqueting couch, most others have rightly recognized it to be a bed of illness or suffering, but have not explained how this interpretation can be justified. Now, if we retranslate it literally into Hebrew, we discover that we have here a Hebrew idiom, i.e. נפל למשכב= “to take to one’s bed,” “to become ill” (Ex. xxi. 18): hence “to cast upon a bed” means “to cast upon a bed of illness.” This idiom is found in 1 Macc. i. 5, ἔπεσε ἐπὶ τὴν κλίνην, and Jud. viii. 3, ἔπεσε ἐπὶ τὴν κλίνην, which books are translated from the Hebrew. Thus we should render: “Behold I cast her on a bed of suffering’ ” (Vol. 1, p. 71).
Grant Osborne in his BECNT volume also makes two interesting observations. One is that the bed imagery ironically plays with the OT idolatry = adultery theme, “She has debauched herself with pagan gods on a bed of idolatry, so now God would ‘cast’ (βάλλω ballō) her onto a different kind of ‘bed’, a bed of pain” (p. 158). He also notes that the theme of sickness is also latent in the clause referring to the judgment on Jezebel’s children in v. 23: “While there could be a link with the children of Ahab, who were killed in 2 Kings 10:7 (cf. the child of David and Bathsheba in 2 Sam 12:14), a closer parallel linguistically to ἀποκτενῶ ἐν θανάτῳ (apoktenō en thanatō, kill with death) here is found in Ezek. 33:27 LXX, where part of the judgment on Israel was that many would ‘die with plague’. The same form is also found in Rev. 6:8, where the ‘pale horse’ and its rider, ‘Death,’ are given power to ‘kill by … plague’ ” (p. 160). Aune similarly translates ἀποκτενῶ ἐν θανάτῳ as “kill with the plague” (p. 206).
Here is what Louw-Nida says about this phrase:
23.152 βάλλω εἰς κλίνην: (an idiom, literally ‘to throw on a bed’) to cause someone to become very ill—‘to cause illness, to make sick.’ ἰδοὺ βάλλω αὐτὴν εἰς κλίνην … εἰς V 1, p 270 θλῖψιν μεγάλην ‘look, I will make her sick … and she will suffer terribly’ Re 2:22.
Johannes P. Louw and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), 269–270.
Bart Ehrman talks about it: https://youtu.be/f_L4_LmqImY?t=5601
Revelation 2:22 meaning
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