Revelation 8:3

ἐπὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίον. Lachmann and Text. Rec[285] read ἐπὶ τὸ θυσιαστήριον with Revelation 1; Primas[286] reads super altarium dei here, and below ad aram dei auream for ἐπὶ τὸ θ. τὸ χρυσοῦν: and in Revelation 8:5 ex igni arae dei for ἐκ τοῦ πυρὸς τοῦ θυσιαστηρίον. The same abbreviation could be read θεοῦ and θυσιαστηρίου, which may explain the conflation in the Old Latin Text.

[285] Rec. Textus Receptus as printed by Scrivener.
[286] Primasius, edited by Haussleiter.

θυμιάματα. Primas[287] reads supplicamenta.

[287] Primasius, edited by Haussleiter.

3. ἄλλος ἄγγελος. In Tobit l.c. it is the seven Angels themselves who present the prayers of the Saints before God: but, though the detail varies, the passages agree in assigning a priestly work to Angels on behalf of God’s people on earth.

ἐπὶ τοῦ θυσιαστηρίον. The golden altar of incense in the Tabernacle was only a cubit square and two cubits high (Exodus 30:2), and we have no reason to suppose that the analogous one either in the first or the second Temple was larger: perhaps we may gather from 2 Chronicles 5:5 that the former had identically the same one. But the altar of burnt-offering was a large platform rather than what we commonly imagine an altar (see 1Ma 1:59, where the small Greek “idol altar” stands on the “altar of God” as its basement-it cannot he substituted for it): in the Tabernacle it was five cubits square, in Solomon’s Temple 20, in Zerubbabel’s probably the same, and in Herod’s 50 according to Josephus, 32 according to the Mishna. In the Temple at any rate, the height of the altar was such that the officiating priests had to come up upon a ledge surrounding it (and such an ascent is contemplated in Exodus 20:26). Probably here, though the Angel is offering incense not burnt-offering, the Altar where he officiates is conceived as rather of the larger type: see on Revelation 6:9. It is certainly superfluous to suppose that the Vision is accommodated to the Jewish ritual, in which the priest took fire from the altar of burnt-offering to light his incense on the golden altar.

λιβανωτὸν must mean “censer” here, though the Greek word properly means “incense.”

δώσει ταῖς προσευχαῖς. Literally, “give it to the prayers”; and if the literal translation requires a gloss, that of the A. V[309] can hardly be the right one. The sense is not absolutely clear, this is the one place in this Book where the dative does not mark a personal or personified recipient. It would hardly be stranger if it were by the prayers of the saints that the Angel offered incense here, and that the incense went up, as in next verse. Apparently the image is, that the prayers of the saints are already lying on the Altar, and the Angel, in modern liturgical phrase, “censes the holy things.” Thus disappears the supposed theological necessity for identifying this Angel with the Lord Jesus: “the prayers of all saints” are presented by Him and by no one else, as is implied in Revelation 5:8-9, where the incense is the prayers of the saints, not something added to them. But here the Angels offer their own worship, as it is “given to them,” in union, perhaps in subordination, to those of the redeemed. The prayers here spoken of are those of all saints, not of the Martyrs exclusively: still, it is well to notice that the Altar where we offer our prayers is apparently the same where they poured out their lives, Revelation 6:9.

[309] Authorised Version.