400
d Reward andielony et Sk, (e.g. Jer. TOU Gpvtou. XXXi. g-
12); Lev- 15. itic privi- lege (Deut. x. 8, etc., of. Ps. Sol. ii. 40).
Ε ΧΙ. το, XXli. 3 (wor- ship).
f Divine favour and proe tection,
16.
17.
Ps. Sol, vii. 1, 5; cf. xxi. 3, John i. 14, also Lev. xxvi. 11, Isa. iv. 5, Ezek. xxxvii. 27, etc. i i Ezek. xxxiv. 23, Ps. xxiii. 1, John x. 1f.; not Death,
cxxi. 6; from Isa. xlix. 1Ο. Clem. Rom. li.
h Xvi. ο.
Ἀ , δελ lol , καὶ 6 καθήµενος ἐπὶ τοῦ θρόνου
ὅτι τὸ dpviov τὸ ava μέσον 1 τοῦ θρόνου καὶ © ὁδηγήσει αὐτοὺς ἐπὶ Σ ζωῆς πηγὰς * ὑδάτων,
k xxi. 6, xxii. 1, 17, John iv.
καὶ ἔπλυναν τὰς στολὰς αὐτῶν καὶ ἐλεύκαναν αὐτὰς ἐν τῷ αἵματι
διὰ τοῦτό εἶσιν ἐνώπιον τοῦ θρόνου τοῦ Θεοῦ, καὶ λατρεύουσιν αὐτῷ ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτὸς ἐν τῷ vad αὐτοῦ *
f , ΕΒΕ > , σκηνωσει επ αυτους.
οὐ πεινάσουσιν ἔτι, οὐδὲ διψήσουσιν ἔτι, Σ οὐδὲ μὴ πέσῃ em αὐτοὺς 6 ἥλιος, οὐδὲ πᾶν " καῦμα |
ποιμανεῖ αὐτούς,
6 Ps.
10, vii. 8 (Jer. ii. 13), Cant. iv. 15.
Tava µεσον, the true reading, is not a subtle allusion to mediatorship (Abbott, 198-199) but a loose synonym for εν µεσω (cf. Weymouth, Fourn. Philol., 1869, ii. 318-322): the ζωσας of min., Me., Syr. (ζωην και επι S.) is a correction of the orig. gen. of quality ζωης (MSS., edd.), which is thrown to the front (like σαρκος in
I Pet. iii. 21) for emphasis.
ward in the Apocalypse (cf. xiv. 13) when the martyrs and confessors are men- tioned, as if the writer held that such an experience alone could yield the deepest consciousness of communion with One who was conceived essentially as a Lamb who had been slain, a faithful witness, etc. (cf. Titius, 216, 217). On the high respect for martyrs, of which this forms an early trace, see Weinel, 142-144. At the same time it is to the blood of the Lamb, not to their own blood, that they owe their bliss and triumph; redemption, not martyrdom, is the essential basis of their deliverance. People might be re- deemed without becoming martyrs ; as, for example, either recreant Christians or those who happened to die a natural death. But no one could be a martyr without having the strength of redemp- tion behind him.
Ver. 15. Ritual as well as pastoral traits from the O.T. fill out the concep- tion of this final bliss with its favoured position (ἐνώπ. Opdv.). Note the singular tenderness of the oxymoron—je that sitteth on the throne (the majestic al- mighty God) shall overshadow them with a presence of brooding, intimate, care ; followed by ποιμανεῖ here (as op- posed to ii. 27) in its literal sense of tender shepherding on the part of Jesus. The messiah as shepherd was an ancient and familiar conception. This verse is partly adapted from Enoch xlv. 4-6. Unlike John i. 14, it reflects a Christian fulfilment of the Jewish anticipation (cf. xiii. 6, xxi. 3; Zech. ii. ro f.; Sir. xxiv.
8 f.) that the Shekinah would return in the era of final bliss.
Ver. 16. οὐ py with both fut. indica- tive and subjunctive (=ii. 11), in emphatic assertions. For the absence of scorching as a trait of the Hellenic Utopia, cf. Dieterich, 31-33. If katpa corresponds here to the sense of the Isaianic equiva- lent καύσων, the reference is to the scorching sirocco. Sothe Egyptian dead yearned for a cooling breeze in the next world—“ Let me be placed by the edge of the water with my face to the north, that the breeze may caress me, and my heart be refreshed from its sorrows ” (see Maspero, Dawn of Civil. p. 113).
Ver. 17. {wis goes with ὑδάτων (‘living waters’) though prefixed for emphasis, like σαρκὸς in 1 Peter iii. 21 (cf. xvi. 3 πᾶσα ψυχὴ ζωῇς) ; a favourite Johannine idea. In Enoch xlii, xlviii, the fountains contain wisdom which is drunk by all the thirsty, though in the centre there is also ‘‘a fountain of righteousness which was inexhaustible” ; elsewhere in the division of Sheol assigned to the spirits of the righteous there is '' bright spring of the water of life” (xxii, 9) in accordance with the Pythagorean belief that the dead suffered from thirst in the underworld (Luke xvi. 24, ef. Dieterich, 97 f.). In the familiar vignette of ancient Egyptian eschatology, the de- ceased kneels before Osiris who pours out to him the water of life (the motto being that the soul may live); cf. Renouf’s “ Hibb. Lect.,” p. 141, and for ‘“‘living ” waters as divine, R. S.127. In the ideal