And I will give [power] to my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred [and] sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.
God promises to raise up two witnesses in a city held down by foreign power. Who they are, why they wear sackcloth, and why God counts their days one by one are the questions this verse raises.
What God gives is the power to make the testimony effective:
Here we have the same word as in chapter 8:3. God says, "I will grant authority to my two witnesses, and they will prophesy" — the word means power, or effectiveness. These things are not given in any order at all; but there is adequate testimony: two lampstands, two olive trees. These witnesses have the power of Moses and Elijah.
God does not leave the trampled city without a witness:
The hostile powers act without hindrance, yet God does not let them defile the city without raising up a witness against them. Verse 3 speaks of this witness... Outwardly the witnesses are marked by the deepest humiliation, shown by their sackcloth. Inwardly they are marked by a shining light, which God gives and keeps burning. The picture comes from Zechariah 4, except that here each witness is an olive tree and a lampstand. The olive tree supplies the oil, and the oil feeds the light. God is the God of the earth, and though the holy city is trampled down He has not given up His claim to the earth. So before He makes good that claim in irresistible power, He maintains His witness in the face of the enemy.
The period is not vague. It lines up exactly with the forty-two months of the previous verse, and both are anchored in a known prophetic timetable:
Note next how long their prophetic testimony lasts. It will be a thousand two hundred and sixty days... The two periods coincide, both being three years and a half... These three and a half years are the last half of Daniel's seventieth week (Daniel 9:25-27). This is the period of Antichrist's terrible rule in Jerusalem, backed and sheltered by all the power of the last head of the Roman empire. At the close of that period Christ will come in glory.
Elsewhere the same span appears as months. Here God counts days, and the change is deliberate:
The Lord speaks of days here, not of forty-two months. It seems He does this to mark how much He values their testimony. He makes as much of it as He can. He does not sum it up together, as He does when He speaks of the beast (Rev. 13:5). Lovingly He speaks of the time as days, as though He were counting them all out.
That counting also guarantees the testimony does not fail early, and does not run late:
Their days of testimony are counted one by one. Theirs is not an on-and-off testimony. It goes on daily till the allotted period is finished, and not a day longer.
Commentators differ here. Some expect named people to return; others take the number as a legal measure:
People have made countless guesses about the number of witnesses... Others, with more reason and with some support from Scripture, suppose that Moses and Elijah are the two witnesses... The number of the witnesses is meant to convey a full and adequate testimony... Jewish law, and here we stand in Jewish circumstances, called for two witnesses to give valid evidence (Deut. 17:6; 19:15).
Others reject personal identification outright while keeping the moral likeness:
I see no proof at all that either Elijah or Moses is one of the two witnesses. The two witnesses stand in the same moral position as those two men, but there is no proof that they are the same people.
In Israel, sackcloth was the everyday dress of grief and of turning back to God (Samuel Ridout). Worn here, it says something about both the message and the men:
Being clothed in sackcloth may show that their message is one that calls aloud for repentance.
Their sorrow is not for themselves. It is over what has become of the people they belong to:
They stand apart from everyone around them, mourning over the terrible falling away of the nation they love, and everyone rejects them. Sackcloth is a fitting emblem of their testimony.
- Given — the witnesses do not produce their own power; God gives it, and it makes their prophesying effective.
- Counted — God speaks of these years in days, but of the beast's time in months. He counts out the days of those who testify for Him.
- Clothed — sackcloth marks grief and a call to repentance. Outwardly they are humbled; inwardly God feeds their light.
- Enough — under Jewish law two witnesses made evidence valid. Commentators differ on whether Moses and Elijah return in person, but the witness carries their power.
- Timed — the testimony runs the full 1,260 days and not one day longer. Then God makes good His claim on the earth in power.
These are the two olive trees and the two lamps which stand before the Lord of the earth;
The scene is Jerusalem in the last days, near the end of the times of the Gentiles, where God raises up two prophets. Verse 4 says what these witnesses are, and the picture comes straight from a vision the prophet Zechariah once saw.
The verse gives two pictures. One speaks of what supplies the witnesses; the other of what they do.
They are compared to two olive trees and two lampstands. This reminds us of Zechariah 4, where the prophet sees a vision of a seven-branched golden lampstand fed by two olive trees. The two lampstands speak of their clear and capable testimony. The two olive trees show that the Spirit of God gives this testimony all the support it needs.
The link to Zechariah 4 is obvious, but so is the difference. Zechariah saw one lampstand; here there are two. Commentators read the change like this: there the work is finished, here there is only a witness to what has not yet come.
In Zechariah there is one lampstand, all of gold, with its bowl, its seven lamps, its seven pipes, and an olive tree on either side. That is perfect unity and full development... The two anointed ones the prophet saw point in their fullness to the offices of Christ as King and Priest. These are the great means of giving and keeping divine light in "the world to come." Here we have only a testimony to these things. So there were two witnesses, the smallest testimony the law would accept. The oil here goes with mourning, not with joy. And the witnesses wear the sackcloth of affliction, not the garment of praise.
That is why their light does not end the night around them:
In Zechariah the thing itself is done; here there is only testimony to it... They stand before the Lord of the earth, the One to whom the earth belongs, to maintain His claim on it. They wear sackcloth because people resist that claim. Theirs is testimony enough in the power of the Spirit, a spiritual light in the darkness — a light that does not drive the darkness away.
Two is the smallest number the law accepts to establish a case. It also measures how much light that day will have.
It will be a testimony given at Jerusalem during Israel's Great Tribulation, but not worldwide. God will acknowledge it, for "only on the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses shall a charge be established" (Deuteronomy 19:15). It will not be a full testimony, as Zechariah's was, because instead of seven lamps there will only be two... Their light will support the weak remnant still living in Jerusalem before Christ's reign.
Another writer ties the two witnesses to Israel's condition, and warns against pressing the number further:
It is an adequate testimony to the state of Israel according to God — "two witnesses." God will also be among the remnant, without acknowledging the people as His own... In the "two," I do not go beyond the idea that it is an adequate testimony.
Olive trees make them anointed men. Their message is about a King who is also a Priest.
They are anointed ones, for they are olive trees, and so they testify in the power of the Holy Spirit. They are the two lampstands, so their testimony is the light from God in the darkness of that day. Standing before the Lord of the earth shows what their testimony is about: the claims of the coming Messiah as the rightful Lord of the earth... They are also two anointed ones. Besides the power of their testimony, this points to how Christ will come and take possession — as King and Priest, a Priest on His throne, like Melchizedek.
The title is deliberate. God had handed the earth over to the Gentiles; here He takes back His own claim to it.
God is Lord over the earth. He will not let the times of the Gentiles last any longer... He had given the earth to the Gentiles (Daniel 2:37). His throne had judged Jerusalem and left it... But God will take back His place as Lord over the earth. The two witnesses testify to this lordship, to the Lord over the earth — not to the Father, or to the heavenly glory, or to the Lord of heaven.
Some older versions read "the God of the earth" here, but the reading is "the Lord of the earth." The phrase says whom they serve, and it also explains how they keep going.
The prophets stand before the Lord of the earth. They know whose presence they are in, and they endure because by faith they see Him, though human eyes cannot see Him.
- Source — The olive trees mark the witnesses as anointed men. The Spirit of God carries their testimony, not their own strength.
- Shape — Zechariah saw one lampstand and perfect unity. Here two lampstands mean testimony only, not the finished thing: the oil of mourning, not of joy.
- Sufficiency — Two is the smallest number the law accepts to establish a charge. It is light enough, though far less than Zechariah's seven, and it does not yet remove the darkness.
- Subject — They proclaim Messiah's double right: King and Priest, coming to take possession of what is His.
- Stance — They stand before the Lord of the earth, the place God takes back when the times of the Gentiles end. They know whose presence they are in, and they endure by seeing the One no eye can see.