Revelation 20:4

Revelation 20:4. And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them. A new vision, or rather a further unfolding of that with which we have been occupied, is presented to us. We have first to ask what the ‘thrones' are. Are they simply places of exalted dignity, or are they seats for judgment? The two ideas might be combined were it not that reigning, not judging, is the prominent idea both of this passage and of Daniel 7:22 upon which the representation in all probability rests. The thrones before us are thrones of kings (chap. Revelation 3:21). Those that ‘sat upon them' are certainly neither angels nor God; nor are they the twenty-four Elders, for it is the invariable practice of the Seer to name the latter when he has them in view. They can be no other than all the faithful members of Christ's Church, or at least all of whom it is said in the last clause of the verse that they ‘reigned' with Christ.

And judgment was given unto them. These words cannot mean that the righteous were beheld seated as assessors with the Christ in judgment, for the word of the original used for judgment denotes the result and not the act of judging; and, so far as appears, there were at this moment none before them to be judged. The use of the word ‘given' leads to the thought of a judgment affecting themselves rather than others. If so, the most natural meaning will be that the result of judgment was in such a manner given them that they did not need to come into the judgment. As they had victory before they fought (1 John 5:4; see also on Revelation 20:9), so they were acquitted before they were tried.

And I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the witness of Jesus and for the word of God, and such as worshipped not the beast, neither his image, and received not his mark upon their forehead and upon their hand. What the Seer beheld was ‘souls,' and the analogy of chap. Revelation 6:9, a passage in many respects closely parallel to this, makes it clear that they were no more than souls. They had not yet been clothed with their resurrection bodies. The word ‘beheaded' is very remarkable; nor does it seem a sufficient explanation when it is said that beheading was a Roman punishment. It was certainly not in this way alone that the earliest witnesses of Jesus met at the hands of the Roman power their martyr fate. There must be some other reason for the use of so singular a term. It would seem that the bodies of Jewish criminals were usually cast out into the valley of Hinnom, ‘the beheaded or hanged in one spot, the stoned or burnt in another' (Geikie's Life of Christ, ii. 575). May the Seer have in his mind the thought present to him in chap. Revelation 11:8-9, when he spoke of the dead bodies of the two witnesses as lying in the street of the great city and not suffered to be laid in a tomb? These were the ‘beheaded.' The exposure to which they had been subjected, and the contumely with which they had been treated, are thought of more than the manner of their death. And who were they? Are they no others than those described in the next clause as ‘not worshipping the beast,' etc., or are they martyrs in the more special sense of the term? The particular relative employed in the original for ‘such as,' together with the grammatical construction, favours the former idea. In all the clauses of the verse only a single class is spoken of, that of Christ's faithful ones, and they are described first by their fate and next by their character (comp. chap. Revelation 1:7, and see on chap. Revelation 14:12). If we suppose them to be martyrs in the literal sense we must think of that very small class which suffered by decapitation, excluding the much larger ‘army of martyrs' who had fallen by other means. Besides which, we introduce a distinction between two classes of Christians that is foreign to the teaching of Christ both in the Apocalypse and elsewhere. God's people without exception are always with their Lord; the promise that they shall sit upon His throne is to every one that over-cometh (chap. Revelation 3:21); and in Revelation 20:6 nothing more is said of these beheaded sufferers than may be said of all believers. We have already seen that St. John recognises no Christianity that is not attended by suffering and the cross. Every attempt to distinguish between actual martyrs and other true followers of Jesus must in the very nature of the case be vain. How often has there been more true martyrdom in bearing years of pining sickness or meeting wave after wave of sorrow than in encountering sword or axe or fire!

And they lived, and reigned with the Christ a thousand years. The word ‘lived' must, by every rule of interpretation, be understood in the same sense here as in the following clause, where it is applied to ‘the rest of the dead.' In the latter connection, however, it cannot express life spiritual and eternal, or be referred to anything else than mere awaking to life after the sleep of death in the grave is over. In this sense we must understand it now. The word might have been translated ‘rose to life' as in chaps, Revelation 2:8; Revelation 13:14. At this point, therefore, the resurrection of the righteous comes in they ‘lived.' But they not only lived, they ‘reigned.' The word denotes only that condition of majesty, honour, and blessedness to which the righteous are exalted. There is no need to think of persons over whom they rule.