The two witnesses

John is given a measuring rod and told to measure the temple of God and the altar, and to count the worshippers there, but to exclude the outer court because it has been given to the Gentiles, who will trample on the holy city for forty-two months.

Forty-two months, twelve hundred and sixty days and three and a half years are the same period stated three ways, and the figure runs through the whole book. It comes from Daniel, where a time, times and half a time describes the persecution under Antiochus IV, and it functions as a symbol for a limited season of trouble.

Two witnesses are given authority to prophesy for those twelve hundred and sixty days, clothed in sackcloth.

They are described as the two olive trees and the two lampstands that stand before the Lord of the earth, an image taken from Zechariah, where an olive tree on each side of a lampstand supplies it with oil, and the two are identified as the anointed ones, a priest and a governor.

Their powers are a combination of two earlier prophets. They have power to shut up the heavens so that it will not rain, which is Elijah, and power to turn the waters into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, which is Moses. Fire comes from their mouths and devours their enemies.

Who they are has been answered in every possible way: two individuals still to come, Moses and Elijah returning, the law and the prophets, the church in its role as witness, or two historical figures now unidentifiable. Nothing in the description settles it, and the number two is itself the legal requirement for valid testimony.

When they have finished, the beast that comes up from the Abyss attacks and kills them. Their bodies lie in the public square of the great city, figuratively called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. That last clause points at Jerusalem while the two code names point elsewhere.

For three and a half days people from every nation gaze at their bodies and refuse them burial, and celebrate and send each other gifts.

Then the breath of life from God enters them, they stand on their feet, and a loud voice calls them up to heaven in a cloud while their enemies watch.

Measuring appears in Ezekiel as well, where a man with a measuring line surveys a temple in a vision, and in Zechariah, where a man is stopped from measuring Jerusalem because it will be a city without walls.

The three and a half days their bodies lie in the street is half of the seven that would be a complete period, matching the three and a half years elsewhere, and both are broken periods rather than whole ones.

The witnesses are killed only after they have finished their testimony, which is a small clause with a good deal in it: the beast cannot touch them until the work is done.