Revelation 20:5

5. The rest of the dead The rest are those who live not in this first resurrection life.

Lived not again The word again must be stricken out as a false reading. It is unquestionably spurious. We have then only the rest of the dead lived not.

This The Greek for this grammatically agrees with resurrection. So that, literally, we have: this (resurrection) is the first resurrection. Or, (as Alford,) making this the predicate, the first resurrection is this (resurrection.) In either case this resurrection refers to the living of the souls. This imparadised life is the life of the first resurrection. This circumscribes and fixes the meaning of the word lived. It was not merely the soul’s regenerate life in this world, or the soul’s life of the dead, who are not in this first resurrection. It is the soul’s first-resurrection life. The life of souls is the first resurrection; the added life of bodies is the second.

Until the thousand years were finished This does not imply that the rest of the dead did live after the close of the thousand years. The Greek words αχρι and μεχρι both signify until, but with a difference. The latter would determine that the not living (or any other affirmed condition) ceased at the end of the period. The former only affirms that the said condition lasted for so long, without affirming whether it lasted longer or not. It is the former that is used here. The not living of the rest lasted for a thousand years; and then he will tell us what happened. Namely, they were put into a condition by which they never could attain the first resurrection life, but did remain under the power, and finally sink into the condition of, the second death.

There are numerous instances of this use of the word until. Psalms 90:1: “Sit thou at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool,” and then sit there forever. 1 Samuel 15:35: “Samuel came no more until the day of his death,” and no more after that. Romans 15:13: “Until the law sin was in the world,” and after the law also. And so, the rest lived not until the millennium ended; nor then either.

Our note here thus far assumes the genuineness of the sentence. But the rest… finished; but Glasgow shows that the entire sentence is spurious. For, 1. It is wanting in the oldest New Testament manuscript, the Sinaitic, and in the Syrian version, dated from commencement of sixth century. 2. There is a suspicious number of variations in copies containing the sentence. There are three variations in the Greek of the words but the rest; three variations of the word for lived; two for until. These indicate that the words were interpolated in the copies containing the sentence, not wrongly omitted in those not containing it. 3. The sentence, like an interpolation, interrupts the current of the style. It breaks in between the next word, this, and the antecedent to which its affirmation refers. The sentence reads like an explanatory note by some copyist, which has been wrought into the text, and that in a very awkward position. We may add, that until the discovery of the Sinaitic Codex, this sentence has been considered by the corporeal interpreters of the lived of Revelation 20:5, as their stronghold. But no sound biblical scholar will now consider it worthy reliance as a main proof of so stupendous a theory.