The wine press was trodden: this means, of course, that the grapes in the wine press were trampled on. Again the passive form of the verb is used. Given the fact that this is a figure of the punishment of the wicked, it would be very difficult to try to identify the ones who were treading on the grapes. But if a subject is required, one may use an unknown subject (agent) and say “They trod on the grapes and squeezed the juice out.” However, in languages that must identify the subject, one may say “God’s angels trod….”

Outside the city: the location of the winepress is new information, but it is given in such a way as to allow the reader to think that the wine press was taken outside the city for the grapes to be trampled on. New Jerusalem Bible tries to incorporate this information in the discourse in a normal way by placing it at the very beginning of the verse, as follows: “… and put it into a huge winepress, the winepress of God’s anger, outside the city.” The city here is Jerusalem.

Blood flowed from the wine press: instead of grape juice it is blood that flows out.

As high as a horse’s bridle: some take the Greek text to mean “as high as the bridles of the horses,” by which it is implied that warriors on war horses were riding through this flood of blood. But it seems better to take the Greek to mean the depth of the flow of blood, as Revised Standard Version and Good News Translation interpret it. If the expression makes sense, it can be retained; otherwise it will be better to imitate Good News Translation and say “about five feet deep” or “about a meter and a half deep.”

One thousand six hundred stadia: it is not certain whether the figure 1600 has a symbolic meaning, so it is better to give the distance in modern terms. A stade was a Greek measure of distance, 607 feet or 185 meters long; the total distance comes to 184 miles or 296 kilometers. New Revised Standard Version has now “for a distance of about two hundred miles.”

Quoted with permission from Bratcher, Robert G. and Hatton, Howard A. A Handbook on The Revelation to John. (UBS Handbook Series). New York: UBS, 1993. For this and other handbooks for translators see here .