Revelation 3:18

The counsel is conveyed in the dialect of the local situation. ἀγοράσαι in the poor man's market (Isaiah 55:1, cf. Matthew 6:19-20), significant words as addressed to the financial centre of the district. “From me,” is emphatic; the real life is due to man's relation with Christ, not to independent efforts upon his own part. Local Christians needed to be made sensitive to their need of Christ; in Laodicea evidently, as in Bunyan's Mansoul, Mr. Desires-awake dwelt in a very mean cottage. “Refined” = genuine and fresh, as opposed to counterfeit and traditional (cf. Plato, Rep. iii. 413 e, 416 e). For παιδεία wrought upon the people of God by a divine Davidic king whose words are πεπυρωμένα ὑπὲρ χρυσίον τίμιον, see Ps. Sol. 17:47, 48. ἱμάτια. Laodicea was a famous manufacturing centre, whose trade largely consisted of tunics and cloth for garments. The allusion is (cf. below, on Revelation 3:20 and Revelation 16:15) to careless Christians caught off their guard by the suddenness of the second advent. κολλούριον or κολλύριον (cf. the account of a blind soldier's cure by a god [Aesculapius?] who bade him κολλύριον συντρῖψαι, Dittenberger's Sylloge Inscript. Graec. 807, 15 f.), an eye-salve for tender eyes: an allusion to the “Phrygian powder” used by oculists of the famous medical school at Laodicea (C. B. P. i. 52). To the Christian Jesus supplies that enlightenment which the Jews found in the law (Psalms 19:8); “uerba legis corona sunt capitis, collyrium oculis” (Tract. Siphra fol. 143, 2); “uerba legis corona sunt capitis, torques collo, collyrium oculis” (Vajikra R., fol. 156, 1). True self-knowledge can be gained only by the help of Christ, i.e., in the present case mediated by Christian prophecy. Like Victor., Lightfoot (Colossians, p. 44) interprets this allusion by the light of Ephesians 1:8; Colossians 1:27, as a rebuke to the vaunted intellectual resources of the Church; but there is no need thus to narrow the reference. It is to be observed that John does not threaten Laodicea with the loss of material wealth (cf. Pirke Aboth, cited above on Revelation 2:9) in order to have her spiritual life revived.