Ver. rr. The military function of the messiah is known even to the philosophic Philo, who (de praem. et poen. 15-20) represents him incidentally as καὶ στραταρχῶν καὶ πολεμῶν ἔθνη. The victory of messiah over the earthly foes of God’s kingdom meant the triumph of the kingdom, according to Jewish and Jewish Christian hopes; but owing to the increased spiritualisation of the latter, this nationalistic tradition was laid side by side with the wider hope of an eternal, universal judgment upon dead and living. The latter was originally independent of the earlier view, which made the culmina- tion of providence for Israel consist in the earthly subjugation of her foes. The prophet John, by dividing God’s foes into the two classes of Rome and Rome’s de- stroyers, preserves the archaic tradition and also finds room for the Gog and Magog tradition later on.
Ver. 12. διαδήµατα πολλά, bec. he is king of kings (Ptolemy on entering An- tioch put two diadems on his head, that of Egypt and that of Αδία (τ Macc. xi. 13);
42---13.
καὶ ἐπὶ τὴν κεφαλὴν αὐτοῦ " διαδήµατα " πολλά -
467
w Contrast
Xii. 3, *éxwv 7 ὄνομα γεγραμμµένον ὃ οὐδεὶς οἶδεν εἰ μὴ αὐτός " xiii. τ. πες : Aa ὁ ας x Loosely 13. καὶ * περιβεβλημένος ἱἵμάτιον βεβαμμένον ! ΄ αἵματι resuming 4 the con- καὶ κέκληται τὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ, "'' Ὅ AOTOC ΤΟΥ ΘΕΟΥ.’ struction of ver. = . . . ~ 11. Ὑ Cf. on ii. 17. z Dat. cf, Joh. xxi. 8. a Art. with pred. irreg. after ὄνομα (as vi. 8, viii. 11, etc.)
' BeBappevov (AQ, min., Ar., edd.) is preferable to pepappevov (Hort, Swete)— the conjectural origin of the variants περιρεραµµενον (9) ερραµενον, ρεραντισ- pevov, etc.—which is probably a corruption of it or due to dittography with yeypap-
μενογν.
cf. the ten golden diadems of royalty in ancient Egypt). Once crowned with thorns, Jesus is now invested with more than royal rank (cf. Barn. vii. 9, where Jesus, once accursed, is shown crowned). Eastern monarchs wore such royal in- signia when they went into battle (e.g., 2 Sam. i. 1Ο). Jesus has far more than the four (of a good name, of the law, of the high priesthood, of the divine kingdom, Targ. Jeius. on Deut. xxxiv.) 5 or three (omitting the first) which Jewish tradition assigned to Moses (see Pirke Aboth, iv. 13, vi. 5; Joseph. Bell. i. 2, 8, prophetic, priestly, and royal honours). — ὄνομα κ.τ.λ.» cf. Ep. Lugd., ‘“when Attalus was placed on the iron seat and the fumes rose from his burning body, he was asked, ‘What name has God?’ ‘God,’ he answered, ‘has not a name as man has.” Contrast 6 οὐδεὶς κ.τ.λ., with Matt. xi. 27. The earlier words, πιστ. κ. ἀληθ., are a description of the messiah’s character and function, rather than a title. At this debit, which is the only event in the Apocalypse at all cor- responding to the second advent (i. 7), the messiah’s judicial power is practi- cally restricted to the external work of crushing the last pagan opposition to God’s cause on earth ; it becomes therefore almost military. The divine commandant of the saints is “ faithful and true,’ as he loyally executes the divine purpose and thus exhibits fidelity to the interests of the faithful. The sense remains un- changed, whether the two adjectives are taken as synonyms, or ἀληθ. assigned its occasional meaning of ‘“‘real’’, Evenin the latter case, to be real would mean to be trustworthy.
Ver. 13. ‘‘ Dipped in blood” ({.ε., the blood of his foes): from the ‘‘crimsoned garments’’ of Yahveh in Isa. Ixiii.; cf. also ver. 15 with “I have trodden the wine-press. . . . Yea, I trod them in mine anger (κατεπάτησα αὐτοὺς ἐν θυμῷ Μου), and trampled them in my fury,”’
etc. Add Targ. Palest. on Gen. xlix. 11, ‘* How beauteous is the King Messiah! Binding his loins and going forth to war against them that hate him, he will slay kings with princes, and make the rivers red with the blood of their slain, and his hills white with the fat of their mighty ones, his garments will be dipped in blood, and he himself like the juice of the wine-press.”’ The secret name denotes his superiority to all appeals ; it indicates that the awful and punitive vigour of his enterprise made him impervious to the invocations of men. This is no Logos who dwells among men to give light and life; it is a stern, militant, figure of vengeance attacking the rebellious. Hence his name is mysterious; for “‘ the identity, or at least the close connection between a thing and its name, not only makes the utterance of a holy name an invocation which insures the actual pre- sence of the deity invoked, it also makes the holy name too sacred for common use or even for use at all” (Jevons’ Introd. Hist. Relig. 361). The passage reflects certain phases of later messianic belief in Judaism, which had been tinged by the Babylonian myth of Marduk, Ea’s victorious son, to whom divine authority was entrusted. Marduk’s tri- umph was explained by Babylonian theo- logians as caused by the transference to him of the divine Name (so Michael, En. Ixix. 14). 13 6 may be a Johannine gloss upon the unknown name of ver. 12 (cf. Phil. ii. 9, το), under the influence of passages like Heb. iv. 15, Sap. xviii. (‘‘ Thine all-powerful Logos leapt from heaven out of the royal throne, as a stern warrior into the midst of the doomed land, bearing the sharp sword of Thine unfeigned commandment’’), and Enoch xc. 38 (cp. however Beer, ad loc.). ---κέκληται, perf. of existing state, '΄ the past action of which it is the result being left out of thought ’’ (Burton, 75). Ifthe above explanation of the mysterious name