The prayer of ver. 17 is answered in ver. 20, which repeats the assurance of the messiah’s speedy advent. This pap- τυρία ᾿Ιησοῦ, in the prophetic conscious- ness (xix. 10), is specifically eschato- logical. The close and sudden aspect of the end loomed out before Judaism (cf. 4 Esd. iv. 26, 44 50, Apoc. Bar. xxiii. 7, Ixxxiii. 1) as before the Chris- tian church at this period, bait it was held together with calculations which anticipated a certain process and pro- gress of history. The juxtaposition of this ardent hope and an apocalyptic pro- gramme, here as in Mark xiii. 5-37 and 4 Esd. xiv. 11, 12, is one of the anti- nomies of the religious consciousness, which is illogical only on paper. In San- hed. 97 a, a rabbinic cycle of seven years culminating in messiah’s advent is laid down; whereupon '' Rab. Yoseph saith, There have been many septennial cycles of this kind, and he has not come. . Rabbi Zera saith, Three things come unexpectedly : the messiah, the finding of treasure-trove, and a _ scorpion ’”’ (cf. Drummond’s Fewish Messiah, 220). --Κύριε The Lordship of Jesus is de- fined as his right to come and to judge (xxii. 12), which is also the point of Rom. xiv. 9-12 (cf. Kattenbusch, ii. 609, 658 f.). Ἔρχον, κύριε is the Greek ren- dering of the Aramaic watchword of the primitive church (cf. on ver. 17), which possibly echoed a phrase in the Jewish liturgy (cf. on 1 Cor. xvi. 22, and E. Bi. 2935, 2036).
Ver. 21. A benediction at the close of the reading (i. 3, xxii. 7) before the congregation, rather than an epistolary
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epilogue to the Apocalypse. The epis- tolary form in which apocalypses, like historical and homiletical writings of the age, were occasionally cast, was connected with their use in Christian worship. Such open letters of pastoral counsel were circulated by means of