2 Kings 1:10-14

1:10 Elijah replied to the captain, ¹  “If I am indeed a prophet, may fire come down from the sky and consume you and your fifty soldiers!” Fire then came down ²  from the sky and consumed him and his fifty soldiers.

1:11 The king ³  sent another captain and his fifty soldiers to retrieve Elijah. He went up and told him, ⁴  “Prophet, this is what the king says, ‘Come down at once!’” ⁵  1:12 Elijah replied to them, ⁶  “If I am indeed a prophet, may fire come down from the sky and consume you and your fifty soldiers!” Fire from God ⁷  came down from the sky and consumed him and his fifty soldiers.

1:13 The king ⁸  sent a third captain and his fifty soldiers. This third captain went up and fell ⁹  on his knees before Elijah. He begged for mercy, “Prophet, please have respect for my life and for the lives of these fifty servants of yours. 1:14 Indeed, ¹⁰  fire came down from the sky and consumed the two captains who came before me, along with their men. ¹¹  So now, please have respect for my life.”

Acts 4:29-30

4:29 And now, Lord, pay attention to ¹²  their threats, and grant ¹³  to your servants ¹⁴  to speak your message ¹⁵  with great courage, ¹⁶  4:30 while you extend your hand to heal, and to bring about miraculous signs ¹⁷  and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

Revelation 13:3

13:3 One of the beast’s ¹⁸  heads appeared to have been killed, ¹⁹  but the lethal wound had been healed. ²⁰  And the whole world followed ²¹  the beast in amazement;

[1:10]  ¹ tn Heb “answered and said to the officer of fifty.”

[1:10]  ² tn Wordplay contributes to the irony here. The king tells Elijah to “come down” (Hebrew יָרַד, yarad), but Elijah calls fire down (יָרַד) on the arrogant king’s officer.

[1:11]  ³ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:11]  ⁴ tc The MT reads, “he answered and said to him.” The verb “he answered” (וַיַּעַן, vayya’an) is probably a corruption of “he went up” (וַיַּעַל, vayya’al). See v. 9.

[1:11]  ⁵ sn In this second panel of the three-paneled narrative, the king and his captain are more arrogant than before. The captain uses a more official sounding introduction (“this is what the king says”) and the king adds “at once” to the command.

[1:12]  ⁶ tc Two medieval Hebrew mss, the LXX, and the Syriac Peshitta have the singular “to him.”

[1:12]  ⁷ tn Or “intense fire.” The divine name may be used idiomatically to emphasize the intensity of the fire. Whether one translates אֱלֹהִים (’elohim) here as a proper name or idiomatically, this addition to the narrative (the name is omitted in the first panel, v. 10b) emphasizes the severity of the judgment and is appropriate given the more intense command delivered by the king to the prophet in this panel.

[1:13]  ⁸ tn Heb “he”; the referent (the king) has been specified in the translation for clarity.

[1:13]  ⁹ tn Heb “went up and approached and kneeled.”

[1:14]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “look.”

[1:14]  ¹¹ tn Heb “their fifty.”

[4:29]  ¹² tn Or “Lord, take notice of.”

[4:29]  ¹³ sn Grant to your servants to speak your message with great courage. The request is not for a stop to persecution or revenge on the opponents, but for boldness (great courage) to carry out the mission of proclaiming the message of what God is doing through Jesus.

[4:29]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “slaves.” See the note on the word “servants” in 2:18.

[4:29]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “word.”

[4:29]  ¹⁶ tn Or “with all boldness.”

[4:30]  ¹⁷ tn The miraculous nature of these signs is implied in the context.

[13:3]  ¹⁸ tn Grk “one of its heads”; the referent (the beast) has been specified in the translation for clarity. Here καί (kai) has not been translated because of differences between Greek and English style.

[13:3]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “killed to death,” an expression emphatic in its redundancy. The phrase behind this translation is ὡς ἐσφαγμένον (Jw" ejsfagmenon). The particle ὡς is used in Greek generally for comparison, and in Revelation it is used often to describe the appearance of what the author saw. In this instance, the appearance of the beast’s head did not match reality, because the next phrase shows that in fact it did not die. This text does not affirm that the beast died and was resurrected, but some draw this conclusion because of the only other use of the phrase, which refers to Jesus in 5:6.

[13:3]  ²⁰ tn The phrase τοῦ θανάτου (tou qanatou) can be translated as an attributive genitive (“deathly wound”) or an objective genitive (the wound which caused death) and the final αὐτοῦ (autou) is either possessive or reference/respect.

[13:3]  ²¹ tn On the phrase “the whole world followed the beast in amazement,” BDAG 445 s.v. θαυμάζω 2 states, “wonder, be amazed…Rv 17:8. In pregnant constr. ἐθαυμάσθη ὅλη ἡ γῆ ὀπίσω τ. θηρίου the whole world followed the beast, full of wonder 13:3 (here wonder becomes worship: cp. Ael. Aristid. 13 p. 290 D.; 39 p. 747 of Dionysus and Heracles, οἳ ὑφ᾿ ἡμῶν ἐθαυμάσθησαν. Sir 7:29; Jos., Ant. 3, 65. – The act. is also found in this sense: Cebes 2, 3 θ. τινά = ‘admire’ or ‘venerate’ someone; Epict. 1, 17, 19 θ. τὸν θεόν).”