Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 1:19

οὖν, at the command of him who has authority over the other world and the future (resuming Revelation 1:11. now that the paralysing fear of Revelation 1:17 has been removed). Like the author of 4th Esdras, this prophet is far more interested in history than in the chronological speculations which engrossed many of the older apocalyptists. The sense of γράψον κ. τ. λ. is not, write the vision already seen (ἃ εἶδες, Revelation 1:10-18), the present (ἃ εἰσὶν, Revelation 1:20 to Revelation 3:20, the state of the churches, mainly conceived as it exists now and here), and the future (ἃ μέλλει γενέσθαι μετὰ ταῦτα, i.e., Revelation 4:1 f.), as though the words were a rough programme of the whole book; nor, as other editors (e.g., Spitta) unconvincingly suggest, is ἃ εἰσὶν = “what they mean,” epexegetic of ἃ εἶδες, or εἶδες (cf. Revelation 10:7; Revelation 15:1) in a future perfect sense (Selwyn). The following Chapter s cannot be regarded merely as interpretations of Revelation 1:10-18, and the juxtaposition of μέλλει γεν. (from LXX of Isaiah 48:6) fixes the temporal meaning of εἰσίν here, even although the other meaning occurs in a different context in Revelation 1:20. Besides, Revelation 1:10-18 is out of all proportion to the other two divisions, to which indeed it forms a brief prelude. The real sense is that the contents of the vision (εἶδες, like βλέπεις in Revelation 1:11, being proleptic) consist of what is and what is to be, these divisions of present and future underlying the whole subsequent Apocalypse. The neut. plur. with a plural verb and a singular in the same sentence, indicates forcibly the indifference of the author to the niceties of Hellenistic grammar. For the whole see Daniel 2:29-30, also Barn. i.: “The Lord (δεσπότης) hath disclosed to us by the prophets things past and present, giving us also a taste of the firstfruits of the future”; v.: “We ought, therefore, to be exceedingly thankful to the Lord for disclosing the past to us and making us wise in the present; yea as regards the future even we are not void of understanding”. Moral stimulus and discipline were the object of such visions: as Tertullian declares of the Mortanist seers: “uidunt uisiones et ponentes faciem deorsum etiam uoces audiunt manifestas tarn salutares quam occultas” (de exhort. cast. 10).

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 1:19

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