to the level of the Christian church, and also those Jews who had been martyred for refusing to worship the emperor (cf.
vii. 9, xvil. 6, and Jos. B. F. vii. το, 1).
But the primary thought of the Christian
prophet is for Rome’s latest victims in
the Neronic persecution and the recent enforcement of the cultus under Domi- tian. The general idea is derived from
Zech. i. 12, Ps. Ixxix. 10, and En. xxii. 5
(‘‘and I saw the spirits of the children
of men who were dead, and their voice
penetrated to the heaven and com- plained,” from the first division of Sheol).
Ver. 10. Like Clem. Rom., John is fond of δεσπότης as implying the divine
might and majesty (3 Macc. ili. 29, v. 28).
This severe and awe-inspiring concep-
tion (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 through- out Asia Minor, the punishment of wrong-doing is often conceived in the same way, οἱδ., 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 Sam. xxiv. 13, Ps. xlii. 1)
those who dwell on the earth” (i.e.,
pagans)? The bleeding heart of primitive
Christendom stands up and cries, “I
392
Vi.
Ww =oBepos " δεσπότης 6 ἅγιος καὶ ἀληθινός, οὐ * κρίνεις καὶ "ἐκδικεῖς τὸ 7 αἷμα.
κύριος (Philo), Plato, Buthyd. ἑκάστῳ " στολὴ * λευκή, καὶ 302: cf.
on Luke
ii. 29, Acts iv. 24, Did. x. 3, Dan. iii. 37, ix. 8, etc. i Ziii. 4, 5, 18.
2, Deut. xxxii. 43, etc. y John xvi. 2.
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. (=
Ὢ) of vengeance, cf. Luke xviii. 3-8
(ἀπὸ), a close parallel in thought, though this pathetic, impatient thirst for blood- revenge, which has “the full drift of Ps. xciv. below it” (Selwyn) is inferior not only to r Peter ii. 23 but to the synoptic wail. The Jewish atmosphere is unmistakable (cf. 2 Macc. vii. 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 allu- sion to the vicarious, atoning power of the martyrs’ death (R. ¥. 181). The prophet evidently anticipated further persecution, since he wrote on the verge of the end precipitated by the Domitianic policy (cf. on ii. 13). Such persecution follows natural disturbances, as in the synoptic apocalypse (Matt. (xxiv. 6-7, 21 f.), but the outline of the fifth seal is taken from Enoch, where (xlvii.) the prayer and blood of the mar- tyred 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. xevii. 3-5 the prayer of the righteous for vengeance overtakes their persecutors on the day of judgment with woeful issues (xcix. -3, 16). ‘‘ Per- sist in your cry for judgment, and it shall appear unto you; for all your tribula- tion 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 spirit complains of Cain).— κατ. κ.τ.λ. always in Apocalypse op- posed to the saints, almost as ‘‘the world’”’ to ‘the pious”’ in modern phrase- ology. 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 xvii. 11= Did. x. 3, πανάγιος Clem. Rom. xxxv. 3, lviii. 1) applied by a com- paratively rare usage (1 Peter i. 15 and Apoc. iy. 8 being dependent on O.T.) to ποά, whose intense holiness must be