Apocalypse 11:8
And their bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city, which is called spiritually, Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord also was crucified.
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- Vulgate (Clementine)
- Et corpora eorum jacebunt in plateis civitatis magnæ, quæ vocatur spiritualiter Sodoma, et Ægyptus, ubi et Dominus eorum crucifixus est.
- Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)
- καὶ τὸ πτῶμα αὐτῶν ἐπὶ τῆς πλατείας τῆς πόλεως τῆς μεγάλης, ἥτις καλεῖται πνευματικῶς Σόδομα καὶ Αἴγυπτος, ὅπου καὶ ὁ κύριος αὐτῶν ἐσταυρώθη.
Haydock's commentary
Their bodies shall lie in the streets. It is what has often happened to the bodies of the martyrs, and may happen to Henoch[Enoch] and Elias[Elijah], for three days and a half, for a short time.
The great city. Some understand any city where Christians are persecuted. Others by the following words, where also their Lord was crucified, will needs have to be understood Jerusalem, which they hold shall be rebuilt in the time of antichrist, and where by him shall be put to death Henoch and Elias. But others think it may be expounded of heathen Rome, which in a mystical sense might be called Sodom for its infamous crimes, and Egypt for its idolatries and superstitions, where Christ might be said to be crucified, not as to himself, but in his members, according to what he himself said, Matthew xxv. 40., "inasmuch as you did it to one of these, my least brethren, you did it to me." (Witham)
City; Jerusalem, which it is supposed will be the residence of antichrist, and filled with a great concourse of people. (Menochius)
From Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary, 1859, in the transcription made by Todd Easton and kept online by John Paul Wohlschied at johnblood.gitlab.io/haydock.
The Fathers on this verse
St Victorinus of Pettau Commentary on the Apocalypse of the Blessed John, From the eleventh chapter
8. “And their dead bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city, which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt.”] But He calls Jerusalem Sodom and Egypt, since it had become the heaping up of the persecuting people. Therefore it behooves us diligently, and with the utmost care, to follow the prophetic announcement, and to understand what the Spirit from the Father both announces and anticipates, and how, when He has gone forward to the last times, He again repeats the former ones. And now, what He will do once for all, He sometimes sets forth as if it were done; and unless you understand this, as sometimes done, and sometimes as about to be done, you will fall into a great confusion. Therefore the interpretation of the following sayings has shown therein, that not the order of the reading, but the order of the discourse, must be understood.
St Jerome The Letters of St. Jerome, Paula and Eustochium to Marcella
6. How, then, you will say, do we read in the apocalypse written by John: “The beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall…kill them [that is, obviously, the prophets], and their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified?” If the great city where the Lord was crucified is Jerusalem, and if the place of His crucifixion is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt; then as the Lord was crucified at Jerusalem, Jerusalem must be Sodom and Egypt. Holy Scripture, I reply first of all, cannot contradict itself. One book cannot invalidate the drift of the whole. A single verse cannot annul the meaning of a book. Ten lines earlier in the apocalypse it is written: “Rise and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. …
St Ephrem the Syrian Ephraim Syrus: Nineteen Hymns on the Nativity of Christ in the Flesh, Hymn IV
Let every man chase away his weariness, since that Majesty was not wearied with being in the womb nine months for us, and in being thirty years in Sodom among the madmen.