1 Thessalonians 4:16

πρωτον: D*G and many Fathers, πρωτοι; latt. vg, primi.

16. ὅτι αὐτὸς ὁ κύριος ἐν κελεύσματι, ἐν φωνῇ�, καταβήσεται�ʼ οὐρανοῦ. For the Lord Himself with a shout-of-command, with the archangel’s voice and with the trumpet of God, will come down from heaven; cf. 1 Thessalonians 1:10 (and note); Acts 1:11. Αὐτὸς ὸ κύριος: “in His personal august presence” (Ellicott); cf. 1 Thessalonians 3:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:23; 2 Thessalonians 2:16; 2 Thessalonians 3:16, for this kind of emphasis,—particularly frequent in these Epistles. In each context the “grandis sermo” (Bengel) indicates the majesty with which “the Lord,” or “God,” rises above human doings and desires.

The three prepositional adjuncts prefixed to καταβήσεται depict the Lord’s descent from heaven under the sense of its Divine grandeur. In this κατάβασις the κοιμώμενοι are to participate: how glorious, then, how far from sorrowful their lot! Ἐν is the preposition of “attendant circumstance” (Lightf.); cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:8; 2 Thessalonians 2:9 f. (see notes): its repetition adds vividness and rhetorical force; the second and third particulars, apparently, explicate the first. We must not look for literal exactness where realities are described beyond the reach of sense. The three phrases may express a single idea, that of “the voice of the Son of God” by which the dead will be called forth (see John 5:25-29), His “command” being expressed by an “archangel’s voice,” and that again constituting the “trumpet of God.” Christ predicted His return attended by “angels” (Matthew 25:31; cf. 2 Thessalonians 1:7); and the Divine “voices” of the Apocalypse are constantly uttered by “an angel,” or “mighty angel” (Revelation 5:2; Revelation 7:2, &c.). In the same Book, voice and trumpet are identified in the description of the glorified Son of Man: “I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet talking with me” (Revelation 1:10; Revelation 1:12; Revelation 4:1); cf. Matthew 24:31, “He shall send forth His angels with a trumpet of great voice.” In 1 Corinthians 15:52 the whole accompaniment is gathered into one word, σαλπίσει (impersonal). This vein of description, in its vocabulary and colouring, is derived from the Theophanies and Apocalyptic of the Old Testament: see Exodus 19:11; Exodus 19:13; Exodus 19:16 ff.; Deuteronomy 33:2; Joel 2:1; Micah 1:3; Zechariah 9:14; Isaiah 27:13; Psalms 18:9-11; Psalms 47:5.

Κέλευσμα (hap. leg. in N.T.; Proverbs 24:6 [Proverbs 30:27], LXX; see Lightfoot’s illustrations from classical Greek) is the “word of command” or “signal”—the shout with which an officer gives the order to his troops or a captain to his crew. Such “command” he might utter either by “voice”—his own or another’s—or through a “trumpet”; the “archangel” in this imagery stands by the Lord’s side as the σαλπιγκτής beside his general, to transmit His κέλευσμα. The σάλπιγξ is the military trumpet of the Lord of Hosts, mustering His array; cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:8, with its “breastplate” and “helmet” (see note). “As a commander rouses his sleeping soldiers, so the Lord calls up His dead, and bids them shake off the fetters of the grave and rise anew to waking life” (Hofmann); cf. with this, in view of the words ἄξει σὺν αὐτῷ of 1 Thessalonians 4:14, the scene imagined in Revelation 19:14 and its context.

Φωνῇ� (not τῇ φωνῇ τοῦ�., as though some known angelic chief were intended) is added in explanation of ἐν κελεύσματι, and to indicate the majesty and power of the summons. This is the earliest example of the title ἀρχάγγελος. In Jude 1:9 we read of “Michael the archangel”—an expression probably based on the Greek of Daniel 12:1, Μιχαὴλ ὁ ἄγγελος (ἄρχων) ὁ μέγας; cf. Revelation 12:7. Ranked with Michael was Gabriel, the angel of comfort and good tidings in Daniel 8:16; Daniel 9:21, and Luke 1:19; Luke 1:26. The military tenor of this context suggests Michael. Next to these two, amongst the seven chief angels recognized in Jewish teaching, stood Raphael, “the affable archangel” (Milton); cf. Tob 12:15. St Paul doubtless ranked the ἀρχάγγελοι amongst his heavenly ἀρχαί: cf. Romans 8:38; Ephesians 1:21; Ephesians 3:10; Colossians 1:16; Colossians 2:10; Colossians 2:15. See the articles on Angel in Hastings’ Dict. of the Bible and Smith’s Dict. of Christian Antiquities.

καὶ οἱ νεκροὶ ἐν Χριστῷ�, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Οἱ νεκροὶ ἐν Χριστῷ are οἱ κοιμηθέντες διὰ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ of 1 Thessalonians 4:14 (see note)—this phrase defining their present situation as “the dead,” that their past experience in dying. Being “in Christ” (cf. notes on the ἐν of 1 Thessalonians 1:1 and 1 Thessalonians 4:1; and see Winer-Moulton, p. 486, note 3), nothing can part them from Him,—death no more than life (Romans 8:38 f.). Οἱ νεκροὶ ἐν Χριστῷ forms a single idea in this context; hence οἱ is not repeated: see Winer-Moulton, p. 169. “Will rise first”—not before the other dead rise, as though theirs were a select and separate resurrection of the élite (cf. John 5:28 f.), but before “the living” saints are “caught up to meet the Lord” (1 Thessalonians 4:17): πρῶτον is antithetical to ἔπειτα ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες.

1 Thessalonians 4:17 resumes in its subject, under the aforesaid antithesis, the ἡμεῖς οἱ ζῶντες οἱ περιλειπόμενοι of 1 Thessalonians 4:15 (see notes above). For πρῶτον—ἔπειτα, apposing things consecutive either in time or in importance, cf. 1 Corinthians 12:28; 1 Corinthians 15:46; 1 Timothy 3:10; Mark 4:28; James 3:17.

ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς ἁρπαγησόμεθα ἐν νεφέλαις, together with them will be caught up in (the) clouds. Ἅμα σὺν αὐτοῖς bears the stress of the sentence, explaining definitely the οὐ μὴ φθάσωμεν of 1 Thessalonians 4:15, which formed the central word of the λόγος κυρίου; cf. ἐπισυναγωγή, 2 Thessalonians 2:1 (see note). The combination ἅμα σύν, denoting full association (una cum; rather than simul cum, Vulg.), recurs in 1 Thessalonians 5:10, where, as here, the temporal sense of ἅμα is inappropriate; cf. Romans 3:12; 1 Timothy 5:13; Acts 24:26, in which passages ἅμα signifies not simultaneity but conjunction: “we the living shall join their company, who are already with the Lord.”

Ἁρπάζω implies a sudden, irresistible force: “we shall be seized, snatched up … into the air”; cf. 2 Corinthians 12:2; 2 Corinthians 12:4 (of St Paul’s rapture into the third heaven); Matthew 11:12; Matthew 13:19; Acts 8:39; Revelation 12:5. Ἐν νεφέλαις, not “into” but “amid clouds,”—surrounding and upbearing the rapt “like a triumphal chariot” (Grotius). Christ Himself, and the angels at His ascension, spoke of His coming thus attended (Matthew 24:30; Matthew 26:64; Acts 1:9 ff.; cf. Revelation 1:7; Revelation 10:1; Revelation 11:12; Revelation 14:14 ff.). The Transfiguration gave an earnest of Christ’s heavenly glory, when “a bright cloud overshadowed” those who were with Him, and “a voice” spake “out of the cloud” (Matthew 17:5). There is something wonderful and mystical about the clouds,—half of heaven and half of earth; their ethereal drapery supplies the curtain and canopy of this glorious meeting.

The raising of the living bodies of the saints along with the risen dead implies a physical transformation of the former; this the Apostle sets forth later in 1 Corinthians 15:50 ff.: “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,” &c. (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:1-4; Philippians 3:21). Some mysterious change came upon the sacred body of Jesus at His resurrection, for it was emancipated from the ordinary laws of matter. Such a metamorphosis St Paul seems to have conceived as possible without dissolution.

Ἁρπαγησόμεθα is qualified further by two εἰς-clauses of direction: εἰς�, εἰς�, to meet the Lord, into (the) air. “The air,” like the “clouds,” belongs to the interspace between the heaven from which Christ comes and the earth which He visits. He is represented as met by His Church, which does not wait till He sets foot on earth, but ascends to greet Him. The somewhat rare (Hebraistic?) idiom εἰς� (cf. לקְרַאת הָאֱלֹהִים, Exodus 19:17) is found in Matthew 25:1 (ὑπάντησιν), 6, with reference to the Virgins of Christ’s parable, “going forth to meet the Bridegroom”; our Lord’s words are running in the writer’s mind. This prepositional phrase occurs with the dative in Acts 28:15. Chrysostom finely says: καὶ γὰρ βασίλεως εἰς πόλιν εἰσελαύνοντος, οἱ μὲν ἔντιμοι πρὸς�· καὶ πατρὸς φιλοστόργου παραγινομένου, οἱ μὲν παῖδες καὶ ἄξιοι παῖδες εἶναι ἐπʼ ὀχήματος ἐξάγονται, ὥστε ἰδεῖν καὶ καταφιλῆσαι … ἐπὶ τοῦ ὀχήματος τοῦ πατρὸς φερόμεθα … ἐν νεφέλαις ἁρπαγησόμεθα· ὁρᾷς τὴν τιμὴν ὅσην καὶ τὴν�· καὶ τὸ πάντων μακαριώτερον, οὔτω σὺν αὐτῷ ἐσόμεθα. Whether St Paul imagined that after this meeting Christ and His people would return to earth, or move upwards to heaven, he does not indicate.

καὶ οὕτως πάντοτε σὺν κυρίῳ ἐσόμεθα, and so we shall be always with the Lord. This last word of consolation addressed to the sorrowing bereaved of Thessalonica, includes their sleeping beloved with themselves. Toward this conception of future happiness St Paul’s mind gravitates, rising clear of all images of place and circumstance in its view of the state of the departed and the glory of the redeemed: cf., to the like effect, 1 Thessalonians 5:10; 2 Thessalonians 2:1; Romans 8:17; Romans 8:39; 2 Corinthians 5:8; Ephesians 2:6; Colossians 3:1-4; Philippians 1:23; 2 Timothy 4:18; also John 12:26; John 14:3; John 17:24; Acts 7:59; 1 John 3:2; Revelation 22:4. “The entire content and worth of heaven, the entire blessedness of life eternal, is for Paul embraced in the one thought of being united with Jesus, his Saviour and Lord” (Bornemann).