Revelation 20:9, up over the breadth of the earth

Habakkuk has the plural, breadths; John has the singular. Ezekiel's army comes up against one land; John's spreads across the whole earth. Habakkuk speaks of Babylon conquering Judah; John speaks of the last enemy attacking God's people. Beale's reason: the earlier invasion foreshadows the last one.

Babylon and Gog were the great invaders of Israel's history and prophecy. John sets the final attack on the church in their line. Beale reads the breadth of the earth as worldwide, so the camp under siege is the church scattered everywhere.

Beale finds a unique parallel in Ezekiel 38-39, a countless end-time enemy that goes up upon the land (38:11, 16; 39:2) and is judged by fire from heaven. Some Greek copies of Ezekiel 38:11 even call the land a city. For the phrase itself he says the wording of Habakkuk 1:6 in Greek, Babylon going on the plain of the earth, is drawn on here. The vault's Greek has epi ta plate tes ges; the Hebrew has lemerchavei erets, to the broad places of the earth, so here the Greek and the Hebrew agree. Beale adds that the old Greek of Daniel 12:2 uses the same phrase for the whole earth, but the vault's Greek Daniel is the version called Theodotion, which reads differently there. The CSB Study Bible cross-references Ezekiel 38:16, Joel 3:2 and Zechariah 14:2. The grade is drawn here: the shared phrase and verb point to these texts.