18. XccX'/iSg brass ; X/(3ccvog , incense : ya XxoX//3avo$, a species of brass, like incense. See Bochart’s Hierozoicon, at the end, where, in a full discussion, he explains it as white brass . Comp. Dan. x. 6, on shining brass. Ilesychius, u,raffu yocXxrj, Xa/unpa, oX>j, YLpr\rig, “ The Cretans express by it what is wholly of brass, shining all over.”
17. ['fig vexpbcj as dead) Great contrition of nature usually precedes a large bestowing of spiritual gifts. — V. g.] — b nrpurog xa / 6 Uya rog, the first and the last) A most glorious title. In Hebrew pnnx pty&n, Isa. xliv. 6, xlviii. 12; where the Septuagint renders it, kyu npurog xai syu [jji to, ravra, rrXijv s/JjOo ovx t<Sn &sog : and again, syut e//x/ crpwrog, xa/' sycJj eJ/jji tig rov aiobvu. In both passages the translators appear to have considered the word hyurog as insufficient to express the dignity of the speaker, and yet in fact it answered admirably to the Hebrew. Isa. xli. 4, *E yu Qsbg Kpurog, xai ug ra InipyoiAtvcc (CD^inx DS) eyu> sifii. The Messiah is speaking of Himself. Comp. ch. xlviii. 16. Hence in the Apocalypse the Lord J esus applies this description to Himself, and explains it by the words which follow. Let the Form be ob- served :
I am the First , and the Last :
and the Living One : and I became dead , and
behold, 1 am alive , etc.
The immediate construction, The first and the Last , declares, that His Life, by the brief intervention of death, was interrupted in such a manner, that it ought not even to be considered as interrupted at all. Artemonius, in his treatise de Init. Evang. Job., interprets the First and the Last as the most excellent and the most abject , p. 248; but if this were the meaning, the order of the events would require to be in- verted, and that it should be written, The Last and the First. It is plainly a title of Divine glory, the First and the Last , in Isaiah; and in his writings Artemonius in vain endeavours so to bend the same title, that it may denote the Beginning and the End : p. 249, and the following.
18. vsxpbg , I became dead) It might have been said, acrs- davov, I died : but in this passage with singular elegance it is said, I became dead , to denote a difference of times, and of the events in them. — aiuivcav) Both the formula tig roi/g aiumg ruv a/wvwv, and the word a/xriv, are of very frequent use in Doxologies. Therefore the copyists with ready pen completed that formula by writing this word