Mark 13 · The beast from the sea
A Number That Calls for Wisdom
Six hundred and sixty-six: the most famous number in Scripture, and the one most often misused. Revelation asks for wisdom with it, and the first Father to study it chose to wait rather than guess.
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- Texts
- Revelation 13:17–18; 14:1; 15:2; Daniel 3:1
- Figure
- The beast from the sea
- Authority
- Scripture
What the text shows
"Wisdom is needed here; one who understands can calculate the number of the beast, for it is a number that stands for a person. His number is six hundred and sixty-six" (Revelation 13:18). The number belongs to the first beast: the mark enforced by the second beast is "the stamped image of the beast's name or the number that stood for its name" (13:17).
Three things are said of it. It calls for wisdom, not cleverness. It can be calculated. And it stands for a person: a name, not a date or a place.
How a name becomes a number
In Hebrew and Greek, letters also served as numerals, so every name has a sum. The NABRE note explains that "many candidates have been nominated for this infamous number," because many combinations of letters give 666. The likeliest for John's first readers is the emperor Nero: "Caesar Nero" written in Hebrew letters gives 666, and in its Latin form 616, the reading of a few manuscripts. Nero, the note says, personifies the emperors who persecuted the Church.
Six, falling short of seven
The NABRE note adds a second meaning: six is imperfection, one short of the perfect seven, given here in "triple or superlative form." Against the beast's number Revelation sets the Lamb's company, who bear "his name and his Father's name" on their foreheads (14:1), and those who won the victory "over the beast and its image and the number that signified its name" (15:2).
The Fathers
St. Irenaeus, the first Father to write at length on the number, reads it as the sum of all apostasy: Noah "was six hundred years old when the deluge came," and Nebuchadnezzar's golden statue "had indeed a height of sixty cubits, while the breadth was six cubits" (Daniel 3:1), so that the number gathers up "the whole apostasy" (Against Heresies V.29.2) A Father or Doctor. He weighs names that fit, calling one "a very probable solution" and another "rather worthy of credit," and then refuses to name anyone: it is "more certain, and less hazardous, to await the fulfilment of the prophecy" (V.30.3) A Father or Doctor. If the name were needed now, he says, John would have announced it (V.30.3). St. Hippolytus also weighs names, Titan, Evanthas and Latinus, and says "we ought neither to give it out as if this were certainly his name": "when he appears, the blessed one will show us" (On Christ and Antichrist 50) A Father or Doctor.
The Church Church teaching
The Church has not interpreted the number. She warns against trying to unveil the future by our own means: a sound Christian attitude puts itself confidently into the hands of Providence and rejects "unhealthy curiosity" about the future (CCC 2115–2116).
Where interpreters differ Disputed
- Nero, by Hebrew letters: many modern scholars and the NABRE note; the variant 616 supports it.
- A name to be found at the end: St. Irenaeus and St. Hippolytus, who weighed candidates but named no one.
- Hidden until fulfilled: the number will be recognized when it is fulfilled, not before (Irenaeus V.30.3; Arminjon).
- Imperfection itself: six falling short of seven, three times over: humanity that makes itself God and falls short.
The response asked of us
The faithful bear another name on their foreheads, the Lamb's and his Father's (Revelation 14:1). The wisdom the number calls for is the wisdom to recognize the beast by its works and refuse its mark, not the cleverness to fit a sum to a neighbor's name. "It is more certain, and less hazardous, to await the fulfilment."
Sources
- Revelation 13–15 and Daniel 3, New American Bible Revised Edition, with notes: Revelation 13; Daniel 3
- St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies V.29–30: V.29; V.30 (New Advent)
- St. Hippolytus, On Christ and Antichrist 50: New Advent
- Catechism of the Catholic Church 2115–2116