tiquity has been often noticed as reminding beholders of the words in ch. iii. 12: ‘Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God.”
He that is holy (6 dyos). See on Acts xxvi.10. Christ is called holy, Acts ii. 27; xiii. 35; Heb. vii. 26; in all which passages the word, however, is dovos, which is holy by sanction, applied to one who diligently observes all the sanctities of re- ligion. It is appropriate to Christ, therefore, as being the one in whom these eternal sanctities are grounded and reside. “Aros, the word used here, refers rather to separation from evil.
He that is true (6 ddn9wes). See on John i. 9. "AdAnIuwos is not merely genuine as contrasted with the absolutely false, but as contrasted with that which is only subordinately or typi- cally true. It expresses the perfect realization of an idea as con- trasted with its partial realization. Thus, Moses gave bread, but the Father giveth the ¢rue bread (rév aprov rov ddnSivov). Israel was a vine of God’s planting (Ps. Ixxx. 8), Christ is the ¢rue ( adn 9h) vine (John xv. 1). The word is so characteristic of John that, while found only once in the Synoptic Gospels, once in a Pauline Epistle, and four times in the Epistle to the He- brews, it occurs nine times in the fourth Gospel, four times in John’s First Epistle, and ten times in the Apocalypse, and in every instance in these three latter books in its own distinctive signification.
The key of David. See on ch. i. 18, and compare Isa. xxii. 92. David is the type of Christ, the supreme ruler of the kingdom of heaven. See Jer. xxx. 9; Ezek. xxxiv. 23; xxxvil. 24. The house of David is the typical designation of the king- dom of Jesus Christ (Ps. exxii. 5). The holding of the keys, the symbols of power, thus belongs to Christ as Lord of the kingdom and Church of God. See on Matt. xvi. 19: He ad- mits and excludes at His pleasure.
No man shutteth (ovSels «reler). Read xreloes shall shut. So Rev.