Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 4:6

For a sea in heaven, cf. above (on Revelation 4:4). In Test. Patr. Leviticus 2; Leviticus 2 the sea lies within the second (first) heaven ὕδωρ κρεμάμενον ἀνάμεσον τούτου κἀκείνου, and in the Egyptian paradise the triumphant soul goes to “the great lake in the Fields of Peace,” where the gods dwell. The description, “a sea of glass, like crystal” (i.e., transparent, ancient glass being coarse and often semi-opaque, and ὕαλος being primarily = transparent, not vitreous) borrowed partly from archaic tradition (coloured by Egyptian and Assyrian ideas), is intended to portray the ether, clear and calm, shimmering and motionless. Rabbinic fancy compared the shining floor of the temple to crystal, and the hot eastern sky is likened (in Job 37:18) to a molten mirror, dry and burnished. Heaven is a sort of glorified temple (1 Kings 7:23, the sea in the Solomonic temple being copied from the oblong or round tank which represented the ocean at every Babylonian temple, while the earth was symbolised by the adjoining zikkurat), and the crystal firmament is a sort of sea. In Slav. En. iii. 1 3 the seer observes, in the first heaven, the ether, and then “a very great sea, greater than the earthly sea”. καὶ ἐν μέσῳ, κ. τ. λ.: “and in the middle (of each side) of the throne and (consequently) round about the throne,” the four חַיּוֹת of Ezekiel 1:5; Ezekiel 1:18 (cf. Apoc. Bar. Leviticus 11). γέμοντα κ. τ. λ., a bizarre but archaic symbol for completeness of life and intelligence rather than for Argus-like vigilance. The four angels of the presence in En. xl. 2 move out, like Milton's seven (Par. Lost, 3:647 f.), on various errands (lxxi. 9, cf. lxxxviii. 2, 3). The ζῷα of John are stationary, except in Revelation 15:7, where the context (cf. Revelation 6:6) might suggest that the seer took them to represent creation or the forces of the natural world (cf. the rabbinic dictum: quattuor sunt qui principatum in hoc mundo tenent, inter creaturas homo, inter aues aquilo, inter pecora bos, inter bestias leo). Note also that when they worship (Revelation 4:9), the πρεσβύτεροι acknowledge God's creative glory (Revelation 4:11), and that the O.T. cherubim are associated with the phenomena of the storm-cloud. The seer does not define them, however, and they may be, like the πρεσβύτεροι, a traditional and poetical trait of the heavenly court. τέσσερα, cf. Slav. En. xxx. 13, 14. The posture of the ζῷα may be visualised from a comparison of the Alhambra Court of the Lions.

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 4:6

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