377
h “In αρ- pear- ance,”
i Cf. on xxi.
Σἰάσπιδι Kal * capdiw *
ς 11. 1 Ezek. i. 28, ἄπ. Aey. Ν.Τ., cf. x. r,where
senting the sun. With a sublime re- straint, the author leaves the royal pre- sence undefined, though he is more defi- nite and explicit on the whole than (say) Ezekiel. The latter’s advance in this respect upon his predecessors was εχ- plained by the rabbis (cf. Streane’s Cha- giga, p. 73) as a needful counteractive to the Jewish belief that visions were im- possible outside Canaan, and as a help to men of the captivity who needed ‘special details to support them in their trials” (cf. above, i.g f.). The σάρδιον, a flesh-coloured, semi-transparent, often golden or ruddy gem, answers to our red jasper or cornelian, so-called perhaps from Sardis, whence the stone was origi- nally exported. ὅμοιος, adj. only here with two terminations. ‘The striking simile 6p. dp. A. i. κ. σ. recalls the por- trait statues of Roman emperors and others, in which the raiment is worked out in hard-coloured stones—a fashion introduced in the last years of the re- public from Ptolemaic Egypt” (Myres, E. Bi., 4812).—ltpigs. The nimbus or halo round the throne is green, op. (cf. Deissm. 267) being malachite or more probably an emerald (xxi. 19), to which the ancients attributed a_talismanic power of warding off evil spirits. ‘Thou hast made heaven and earth bright with thy rays of pure emerald light” (hymn to Ra, E. B. D. 8). The rabbis (Cha- giga, 16 a) discouraged any study of the rainbow, as it symbolised the glory of God. As the symbol of God’s covenant, it may be here a foil to the forbidding awe of ver. 5 a (which develops 3 a, as 5 6 develops 3 6-4); ‘‘ Deus in judiciis semper meminit foederis sui’’ (Grotius.) But, like the parabolic details of Jesus, these traits are mainly descriptive. The association of jasper, sardius, and emerald isa genuinely Hellenic touch: cf. Phaedo, ττο, where Plato describes the real earth under the heavens of paradise as a place where in perfection lie such things ag exist here but in fragmentary beauty— for example, the pebbles esteemed here, σάρδιά τε καὶ ἰάσπιδας καὶ σµαράγ- δους. Flinders Petrie, taking op. as rock-crystal, argues that the rainbow here is of the prismatic colour which a hexagonal prism of that colourless stone would throw (Hastings, D. B. iv. 620).
378
η Sc. εἶδον from ἰδού. ο On the
300.