The Revisers in 1 have rightly “coming,” not “come,” as in the Authorized Version, and “abyss” as before for “bottomless pit,” here and in verse 3. English idiom perhaps requires “in” his hand, rather than “upon” literally. The angel was seen in vision with the chain hanging on his hand. In 2 “the” old serpent is more correct than the demonstrative “that,” a not infrequent fault in the Authorized Version. But would not “who” be better than “which” following? “For” completes the sense before “a thousand years.” In 3 airrOv “him” has such slender authority after &X. that all critics feel bound to expunge the word, and translators rightly supply “'t” as after “sealed.” The copulative rightly disappears before T. which should be distinguished from the singular form, as the Revisers do in vii. 1, 9 (the only true case in the book); elsewhere it is plural, but even so the Revisers might have held to uniformity with advantage save in that case. In 4 even here Wiclif, Tyndale, Cranmer, as well as the versions of Geneva and Rheims, give “seats,” instead of “thrones,” most incongruously. Would not a semicolon have been preferable to a comma after “the word of God"? For the Seer has before him two classes of sufferers in the disembodied state, and there the dividing line is marked by a change of construction. The colon is all right after “unto them” in the earliest part of the verse; because these were already changed and had followed the Lord in glorified bodies out of heaven, as seen in chap. xix. 14, and consequently were described as seated upon thrones. The saints who were slain after the translation of those symbolized by the twenty-four elders might seem to have lost all. They were too late for the rapture to heaven, and they do not survive till the Lord appears in glory to introduce His kingdom over the earth. And a distinction answering to the two classes of martyrs described in our verse had been laid down when the first of the two were seen at an early point of the Apocalyptic visions, the souls of those that had been slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held. To their cry, “How long?” it was said that they should rest yet for a time, until both their fellow-servants and their brethren that were about to be killed as they should be fulfilled. Thus the second class is anticipated in verse 11, where the first are seen to have poured out their lives under the altar. In our verse they both are seen still to be in the separate state, the earlier and the later martyrs of the Apocalyptic period; and they lived and reigned with Christ a thousand years.” They therefore lost nothing by being slain, whether those before the beast was manifested or those after that apostate power persecuted to death in all variety of antagonism to God and His saints. They now lived and reigned with Christ before the thousand years began, no less than the glorified assessors with Christ who knew the resurrection of life before either suffered. The glorious position of the Old and the New Testament saints in general appears in those previously seated on thrones. It was unnecessary to say that they lived and reigned, seeing that there they were long before risen, caught up to heaven, and are now seated on thrones when the world-kingdom of our Lord and His Christ was evidently come. The needed assurance. is given in the later clauses for those who only appeared and suffered after the rapture and before Christ's reign on His own throne. Compare Rev. 3:2121To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne. (Revelation 3:21). Those too had His portion. As He died, lived, and will reign; so they too had been slain for His sake and now reign with Him, as do all saints from the beginning. And all are brought in one way or another into this verse, which does contemplate these special martyrs, but leaves room in its first clauses before the Revisers' colon for all the saints who had gone before, martyrs or not. May I add that one could hardly conceive, if one did not know, interpreters so benighted as to suppose that “judgment was given to them” means that these saints were judged? No believer comes into judgment, but in the risen state all are destined to judge the world. How strange that orthodox men should blot this out! To make it the same as Eph. 2:66And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: (Ephesians 2:6), a present reign of the saints, is to confound prophecy with doctrine and lose all the special truth of the reign with Christ; as it is an utter mistake to take vxci.s. of bodies and apply 7rc7r. to all sorts of martyrdom. Every word seems in my judgment to convey the truth of what is abundantly set forth elsewhere—a resurrection not merely of dead persons, but also “from among” the dead. All must rise, unjust as well as just, but not all together, which is taught nowhere in Scripture, but rather what denies it. Christ rose from out of dead persons: so will the saints at His coming, leaving the rest of the dead undisturbed in their graves. And such is the plain teaching of 5. They await the resurrection of judgment, instead of rising from the dead a thousand years before to judge the world according to the wonderful purpose of God for the earth, before the judgment of the wicked dead and the eternal scene. What can be more emphatic than the words, “This is the first resurrection “? It is not the vision, but the explanation of it, not the riddle, but the solution. Indeed it is remarkable what plain language the Spirit uses here, which men have wished to allegorize.
But I turn from exposition to the less genial task of criticism. The Revisers like others have rightly omitted “But” at the beginning. In 6 we have words which correspond admirably with the apostle's earnest desire in Phil. 3:11, which would be unaccountable if there be only a general resurrection when all rise simultaneously. “Blessed and holy is he that hath part” in it. There seems no escape from this but the desperate expedient of explaining it to mean some present Christian privilege, or a future state of Christendom, as many divines have done. The former idea is perilously near those who taught that the resurrection is past already; the latter is the unworthy dream of glory on the earth for the church without Christ, instead of contentment in suffering with Him and waiting to be glorified together. Almost all the witnesses read “reign” in the future. The Alexandrian alone here commits the blunder of the present tense, though it is really more inexcusable in ch. v. 10, where it had too many companions, which misled the Revisers. Here they rightly join the Authorized Version. In 7 there is little or nothing to note. In 8 the Revisers say “to the war,” rather than “to battle,” the reading of ai,ra,v, omitted in the Received Text, not affecting the version. So in 9 “over” is more correct than “on.” There is no need to add “about” after “compass,” or surround. “From God” is questionable, and probably imported from elsewhere, though many authorities insert the words as in the Received Text. In 10 “both” the beast, &c., should be there, though the Sinaitic omits. In 11 the order in the Received Text is not the best, but the Authorized Version has not suffered; nor in the reading airrob for the better airrtiv, the difference of which has been already before us. The insertion of TOO is right, but so are all versions. In 12 it should be “the great and the small,” as in the Complutensian edition and the Revised Version, though some good copies favor “the small and the great.” It is curious that all the other early Greek editions are wrong, all the early English versions right before the Authorized Version, save in omitting the article. But the omission of the articles in the phrase as in the Received Text has no support from any known manuscript. More than a dozen cursives omit the entire phrase, among them Erasmus' copy, Codex Reuchlini. Before “the throne” should supplant “God,” which has trifling authority. Forms and order slightly vary from the Received Text, but do not affect the sense. The critics from good copies improve the order twice in 13, but there is nothing to show in the rendering. The only remarkable change in 14 is the addition at the end of “the lake of fire” on ancient and ample evidence. In 15 there is no change of reading to note, but the Revised Version is simpler than the Authorized Version. We may observe that here (11-15) it is not a judgment of the quick, as far as the nations are concerned, as in the end of Matt. 25 Hence no question is raised how they treated the King's messengers, His brethren, who are to go out yet, ere the close of this age, and test the sheep and the goats according to the figure in the Gospel. Here it is a judgment of the dead, “the rest of the dead” left by the resurrection of the righteous, with the addition of the wicked devoured by divine judgment after Satan's last muster of the unrenewed Gentiles (7-9). Not a trace of a saint is seen in the dead before the great white throne. They had to answer in judgment for their sins, and not one is said to have been found written in the book of life; and no wonder, for it is the resurrection of judgment.