Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 6:10

Like Clem. Rom., John is fond of δεσπότης as implying the divine might and majesty (3Ma 3:29; 3Ma 5:28). This severe and awe-inspiring conception (cf. Philo, quis rer. div. haer. 6) means that God will vindicate his holiness, which had been outraged by the murder of the δοῦλοι for whom he is responsible. In contemporary pagan religions throughout Asia Minor, the punishment of wrong-doing is often conceived in the same way, viz., as the answer to the sufferer's appeal (cf. Introd. § 2), not simply as a spontaneous act of divine retribution. “How long wilt thou refrain from charging and avenging our blood upon (ἐκ as in 1 Samuel 24:13; Psalms 42:1) those who dwell on the earth” (i.e., pagans)? The bleeding heart of primitive Christendom stands up and cries, “I have suffered”. For ἐκδικεῖν αἷμα cf. Dittenberger's Sylloge Inscript. Graec. 816 (1 cent. A.D.) ἵνα ἐγδικήσῃς τὸ αἷμα τὸ ἀναίτιον, etc.; for ἐκδ. ἐκ (= מן) of vengeance, cf. Luke 18:3-8 (ἀπὸ), a close parallel in thought, though this pathetic, impatient thirst for blood-revenge, which has “the full drift of Psalms 94 below it” (Selwyn) is inferior not only to 1 Peter 2:23 but to the synoptic wail. The Jewish atmosphere is unmistakable (cf. 2Ma 7:36; also Deissmann's Licht vom Osten, 312 f.), but this does not mean that the passage was necessarily written by a Jew. In that case we should have expected some allusion to the vicarious, atoning power of the martyrs' death (R. J. 181). The prophet evidently anticipated further persecution, since he wrote on the verge of the end precipitated by the Domitianic policy (cf. on Revelation 2:13). Such persecution follows natural disturbances, as in the synoptic apocalypse (Matthew 24:6-7; Matthew 24:21 f.), but the outline of the fifth seal is taken from Enoch, where (xlvii.) the prayer and blood of the martyred saints “rise from the earth before the Lord of Spirits,” while the angels rejoice that such blood has not been shed in vain. In En. xcvii. 3 5 the prayer of the righteous for vengeance overtakes their persecutors on the day of judgment with woeful issues (xxix. 3, 16). “Persist in your cry for judgment, and it shall appear unto you; for all your tribulation will be visited on the rulers, and on all their helpers, and on those who plundered you” (civ. 3, cf. xxii. 6, 7, where Abel's pirit complains of Cain). κατ. κ. τ. λ. always in Apocalypse opposed to the saints, almost as “the world” to “the pious” in modern phraseology. This usage is largely paralleled by that of the Noachic interpolations in Enoch (see Charles on xxxvii. 5), where the phrase has either unfavourable or neutral associations. ἅγιος here (as John 17:11 = Did. x. 3, πανάγιος Clem. Rom. xxxv. 3, lviii. 1) applied by a comparatively rare usage (1 Peter 1:15 and Revelation 4:8 being dependent on O.T.) to God, whose intense holiness must be in antagonism to the evil and contradictions of the world (Titius, 9 11).

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Expositor's Greek Testament (Nicoll)

Revelation 6:10

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