Revelation 14:19 - Exposition

And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth. This angel is described in quite a different manner from "him who sat on the cloud" ( Revelation 14:16 ). And cast it into the great wine press of the wrath of God; into the wine press, the great [winepress], etc. The feminine substantive has agreeing with it a masculine adjective. It is doubtful whether we ought to see in this anything more than a mere slip of grammar. Possibly the word is of either gender. It is connected with the festival of Bacchus. Wordsworth, however, accounts for the masculine form of the adjective by supposing that the writer wishes to give a stronger force to the word, and to emphasize the terrible nature of the wrath of God. We have the same image in Revelation 19:15 , and it seems derived from Isaiah 58:1-14 , and Lamentations 1:15 . Destruction by an enemy is alluded to as the gathering of grapes in Isaiah 17:6 and Jeremiah 49:9 . The text itself explains the signification of the figure. There seems also some reference in the language to those who "drink of the wine of the wrath of her [Babylon's] fornication" ( Jeremiah 49:8 ).