Revelation 14:3

Who sing the new song? angels or the redeemed? In Revelation 5:9 it is chanted not before the living creatures and elders but by them; here it is not originally sung by the redeemed (as in Revelation 15:3-4; Ezra 2:42) but is intelligible to them and to them alone. Their experience enabled them to enter into its meaning. This privilege is due to (Revelation 14:4-5) their previous character and conduct, This inner circle are ascetics, παρθένοι. i.e., not merely unmarried or free from sexual vice but celibates (cf. Cheyne, Orig. Psalter, 446; Hoennicke, das Judenchristentum, 1908, 130 f.; Balden-sperger, 109; von Dobschütz, 39 f., 228, 261); cf. 1 Corinthians 7:32. The prevailing Jewish respect for marriage did not check a tendency to celibacy which was by no means confined to the Essenes or Therapeutae. Even Methodius, who allegorises the seven heads of Revelation 12:3 into the seven deadly sins and the stars of Revelation 12:2 into heretics, takes this phrase literally, in the sense of virginity not simply of purity (so Epiph. Hær. xxx. 2); and, although the touch is too incidental to bear pressing, it is unmistakable (cf. Introd. § 6). In the popular religion of Phrygia there was a feeling (expressed in the eunuchism, e.g., of the priests at Hierapolis) that one came nearer to the divine life by annihilating the distinction of sex, while in the votive inscriptions of Asia Minor (C. B. P. i. 137) marriage is not recognised as part of the divine or religious life. This atmosphere of local feeling, together with the lax moral conscience of the popular religion, would foster the religious tendency to regard celibates as pre-eminently near to God. ἀκολουθοῦντες : either a historic present to secure vividness (ἀκολουθήσαντες, syr. S), in which case the allusion is to their earthly loyalty (reff.), or, more probably (in view of ὑπάγει, pres.), a description of their heavenly privilege and position (cf. Revelation 7:17), borrowed from Egyptian religion where the “followers of Horus,” the divine and victorious son of Osiris, were a series of celestial kings who were supposed to have reigned during the earlier dynasties. To be among the “followers of Horus” was an equivalent for immortal life. Cf. E. B. D. 101: “Let me rise up among those who follow the great God; I am the son of Maûti, and that which he abominateth is the spirit of falsehood [cf. Revelation 14:5]. I am in triumph!” ἀπό in 3, 4 is equivalent to the partitive ἐκ (cf. Revelation 5:9). ἀπαρχή : they form the firstfruits of mankind for God; others are to follow, but these are the élite, they have a prestige all their own. The idea of priority shades into that of superiority, though in a very different way from that of Romans 11:16. Dr. Rendel Harris (in Present Day Papers, May, 1901) describes the interest and excitement at Jerusalem during the early days of summer when “the first ripe figs were in the market. When one's soul desires the vintage or the fruitage of the summer … the trees that are a fortnight to the fore are the talk and delight of the town.” καὶ τ. ἀ., usually taken as a scribe's gloss. Elsewhere the saints are redeemed by, not for, the Lamb (Revelation 5:9).