Revelation 2:1-7, to Ephesus. Revelation 2:1. The political and commercial primacy of Ephesus, conjoined with its prestige as a centre for the Imperial cultus which flourished beside the local cult of Diana, lent it œcumenical importance in the Eastern Empire. Christianity had for about half a centu... [ Continue Reading ]
οἶδα : nothing escapes his notice, neither the good (Revelation 2:2-3; Revelation 2:6) nor the bad (Revelation 2:4-5) qualities. ἔργα = the general course and moral conduct of life, exemplified more especially in its active and passive sides, as exertion and endurance, by κόπος and ὑπομονή, which ar... [ Continue Reading ]
The tenses as in Revelation 2:2 denote a general attitude still existing, the outcome of some special stage of persecution for the sake of the Christian name. κεκοπίακες, _cf._ κόπον (Revelation 2:2), a slight play on words; “noui laborem tuum, nec tamen laboras, _i.e._, labore non frangeris” (Benge... [ Continue Reading ]
Brotherly love, an early and authentic proof of the faith; as in Revelation 2:19; 2 John 1:5-6; 3 John 1:6, and the striking parallel of Matthew 24:12 (see 10) where, as at Corinth (see also Did. xvi. 3) party-spirit and immorality threatened its existence. Jealous regard for moral or doctrinal puri... [ Continue Reading ]
πόθεν, from what a height. Contrast Cic. _ad Attic_. iv. 17: “non recordor unde ceciderim, sed unde resurrexerim”. To realise that a decline has taken place, or to admit a lapse, is the first step and stimulus to amendment (see the fine passage in Bunyan's preface to _Grace Abounding_, and the “Hymn... [ Continue Reading ]
The message ends with a tardy echo of 2 _b_. The prophet admits that one redeeming feature in the church is the detestation of the N. Not all the spirit of animosity at Ephesus is amiss. When directed, as moral antipathy, against these detestable Nikolaitans (corresponding to the Greek quality of μι... [ Continue Reading ]
A stringent demand for attention (πίστις, ὦτα ψυχῆς : Clem. Alex.) to the utterances of prophets who were inspired by the Spirit (of prophecy, _cf._ on Revelation 19:10). These as usual are ejaculatory, positive and brief ἐκκλ. scattered local communities, and not a Catholic organisation, being the... [ Continue Reading ]
The title from Revelation 1:17-18, with special reference to Revelation 2:10 and its situation, also to the promise of Revelation 2:11. The Smyrniote Christians, in peril of death, are addressed and encouraged by One who himself has died and risen to life. He is familiar [Revelation 2:9] with the ro... [ Continue Reading ]
The message (shortest of the seven) to the Christians in Smyrna, “one of the first stars in the brilliant belt of the cities of Asia Minor” (Mommsen), a wealthy and privileged seaport, and like Sardis a constant rival of Ephesus for the title of primacy which properly belonged to Pergamos, the real... [ Continue Reading ]
μη. φοβοῦ, κ. τ. λ. “Thou orderest us to endure, not to love, trials. A man may love to endure, but he does not love what he endures” (Aug. _Conf._ x. 28). Ill-treatment, as well as misrepresentation, is traced back to a diabolic source, in the common early Christian manner (Weinel, 13 f.). The Impe... [ Continue Reading ]
οὐ μὴ (emphatic): no true Christian, much less one who dies a martyr's death, need fear anything beyond the pang of the first death. The second death of condemnation in the lake of fire leaves the faithful scatheless, no matter how others may suffer from the terrors (_cf._ on Revelation 3:12) which... [ Continue Reading ]
The title is apt in view of Revelation 2:16.... [ Continue Reading ]
The message to Pergamos, the Benares or Lourdes of the province.... [ Continue Reading ]
Two features in the local situation menaced Christianity. Pergamos, besides forming a legal centre for the district (ad earn conueniunt Thyatireni aliaeque inhonorae ciuitates, Plin. ver 33), was an old centre of emperor-worship in Asia Minor; in 29 B.C. a temple had been erected to the divine Augus... [ Continue Reading ]
ὀλίγα, the errorists are a mere minority; they do not represent or affect the main body of the church, whose fault is not sympathy but indifference. This carelessness arose probably from contempt or fear rather than through ignorance. ἐκεῖ (in the midst of loyalty and martyrdom). κρατ. (not τὸ ὄνομά... [ Continue Reading ]
οὕτως κ. τ. λ. Are the N. put parallel to, or identified with, the Balaamites? The latter becomes more probable when the symbolical sense of N. and B [902] (see above, on Revelation 2:6, and Kalisch's _Bible Studies_, i. 23) is adopted. In this event a single class of errorists is in view; they are... [ Continue Reading ]
The church as a whole must repent of her too tolerant attitude to these errorists, but the threatened visitation is directed against the errorists themselves in the shape of some physical malady or mortal sickness, according to the current belief in early Christianity (_cf._ on 1Co 5:4-5; 1 Corinthi... [ Continue Reading ]
The reward for those who deny themselves pagan pleasures in this world is (as in Revelation 2:26) participation in the privileges (_Pereq Meir_ 5), reserved for God's people in the latter days (here = a victor's banquet, Genesis 14:18), not as hitherto (Revelation 2:7; Revelation 2:11) simply partic... [ Continue Reading ]
χαλκολιβ. Some local allusion to the bronze-work for which Thyatira was famous. _Son of God_ (_cf._ Kattenbusch ii. 563 f.) is practically an equivalent for messiah (Luke 4:41), or for the superhuman personality of Jesus as divinely commissioned (_cf._ Grill, pp. 76 77) to carry out God's purpose fo... [ Continue Reading ]
The longest message of the seven is to a church in the least important of the cities (judged from the historical standpoint) Thyatira, a township of Northern Lydia, the holy city of Apollo Tyrimnaios, adjacent to the high road between Perg. and Sardis. It soon became a centre of Montanism.... [ Continue Reading ]
Instead of being retrograde like Ephesus, Thyatira has steadily progressed in _the works_ of Christianity. The sole flaw noted (see Ramsay's discussions in _D. B._ iv. 758 f., _Seven Letters_, 338 f.) is an undue laxity shown to certain members (not, as at Pergamos, a mere minority) who, under the s... [ Continue Reading ]
Women (_cf._ Acts 21:9; 1 Corinthians 11:5, and the later Ammia in Philadelphia: Eus. _H. E._ ver 17. 2) occasionally prophesied in the early church, and false prophetesses were as likely to exist as false prophets. This “Jezebel of a woman, alleging herself to be a prophetess,” seems to have been s... [ Continue Reading ]
The immorality was flagrant; more flagrant still was the obstinate persistence in it, despite admonitions and forbearance (_cf._ Ecclesiastes 8:11; Bar. Ap. xxi. 20; 2 Peter 3:9). This allusion to an abuse of God's patience and to a warning given already (hardly in some writing like Jude 1:2 Peter,... [ Continue Reading ]
κλίνην (bed, not a couch of revelry) aegritudinis non amoris; disease or sickness (_cf._ for the phrase, 1MMalachi 1:5) the punishment of error, especially of error accompanied by licentiousness. The inscriptions from Asia Minor abound with instances of the popular belief that impurity, moral and ev... [ Continue Reading ]
τέκνα, literally, perhaps with an indirect allusion to the killing of Ahab's seventy sons. ἀποκτ. θ. (Hebraism), “I will utterly slay”; see on Revelation 6:8. If any particular form of death is meant, it may be pestilence (the inscriptions often mention fever), which represented to an Oriental mind... [ Continue Reading ]
To know “the depths” of the divine being and counsel was a characteristic claim of the Ophites and the later Gnostics; _cf._ Iren. _adv. Haer._ ii. 22, 1 (qui profunda bythi adinuenisse se dicunt; _cf._ 3), and Tertullian's sarcastic description (_adv. Vàlent_. 1), “Eleusinia Ualentiniana fecerunt l... [ Continue Reading ]
Triumph here consists in unflagging attention to the duties of a Christian vocation. The ἔργα are (Revelation 14:12; Revelation 19:8) the normal activities of this calling, viewed as the outcome of a personal relation to Jesus; they are “his,” as commanded by him and executed in his strength. The ge... [ Continue Reading ]
To “grant the morningstar” (a characteristically loose usage of δίδωμι) means, not to invest him with its glory, nor to give him possession of Christ himself, but (so Bleek, after Victor.) to make the dawn of salvation or of life eternal shine on him after his dark afflictions. The victor shares in... [ Continue Reading ]