It is well that in the Revised Version the first eight verses form a separate section. Nowhere in the book is such a division more imperatively called for, though probably even the Revisers themselves do not all appreciate the importance of their own arrangement, which tends to guard the reader from confounding the eternal state with the millennial to the loss of their marked distinctiveness. For as chapter 20 gave us the thousand years, during which on the one hand Satan seduces no more and on the other the risen saints reign with Christ, as the power and pride of man were put down at the beginning, so the last uprising of the nations when Satan is loosed at the end will come to naught, and heaven and earth depart, and God will judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ the Lord. After this judgment of the dead a new heaven and a new earth are seen, for the first were gone away, and the sea, it is said, exists no more: a most weighty contrast with the world that now is, and also with the world as it is to be during the thousand years. Vegetable and animal life could not be without the sea, unless by a perpetual miracle which would be absurd. The sea is the greatest of separating barriers for the nations, as it represents the restless masses of mankind not subject to regular government. Then heaven and earth is in everlasting order and harmony, all the wicked being consigned to the lake of fire, and God all in all (1 Cor. 15:28). Hence in these verses we have neither nations nor kings any longer; whereas we have both, and a state of things, however new and blessed, suited to both, in the section that begins with verse 9 down to 22:5. But this is really retrogressive; when the Lamb is put forward prominently, and the governmental relation of the Bride, the Lamb's wife (the holy and heavenly city having the glory of God), to the nations—and kings of the earth. In short, as we may see more when we come to the later section, it is as clearly millennial, as the previous short section now before us is post-millennial, when provisional dealings have no more place, and all is fixed forever. Hence there is an absoluteness of blessing in 3, 4, and a universal extent, strikingly distinct from the beautiful picture of the favored complement out of all nations on the earth looking to she reign of Christ in chap. 7:15-17. Here it is a question of “men,” and God Himself with them, tabernacling with them (not merely spreading His tabernacle over them), and they His people (or peoples) and He with them, their God. Nor is it only every tear wiped by Him from their eyes, but death no more and mourning and crying and pain no more, the first things being gone away and all things made new, which is but relatively true of the millennium. So all the wicked are seen to have their part in the lake of fire, which cannot be till the thousand years are over. The distinctive traits point therefore unmistakably here, not in the vision that follows, to the eternal state, of which Scripture says little, but that little full of pregnant instruction.
In 1 ἀπῆλθον (or- αν) is right, not παρῆλθε as in the Compl. edition as well as the Received Text following Codex Reuchlini and a few other cursives. The true reading is more energetic. The last clause is singularly tampered with in the Alexandrian uncial, “I saw the sea no more,” which is quite short of the truth conveyed. So Dusterdieck is all wrong in talking about a new sea, for the text clearly distinguishes “the sea” from what is said of the first heaven and the first earth. In 2 is one of those unseemly additions for which Erasmus appears to be responsible, following no known Greek copy but the Clementine edition and inferior manuscripts of the Vulgate. For the more ancient Latin copies (Amos Demid. Fuld. Tol. &c.) reject “1 John” with à ABP, more than forty cursives, and all or nearly all the ancient versions. And so also for putting καινἠν at the end, not the beginning, of the phrase, which would perhaps admit of the marginal rendering of the Revised Version, though the text seems to me correct as in the Authorized Version. “Out of heaven from God” is the true order, though P 1.49. 79. and other cursives support the Received Text and the Authorized Version. It was not earthly, but “out of heaven;” it was not of human source, but divine, “from God;” and, what is noticeable (though the marriage was recorded not here but in chap. xix. more than a thousand years before), “made ready as a bride adorned for her husband.” In 3, consequent on the descent of the holy city, a great voice is heard out of the “heaven” (or “throne"). It is hard to decide, and ought not to be closed up, as in the Revised Version, without even a marginal note, that some ancient authorities support the former, B P, almost all the cursives, and the ancient versions (save the Vulgate and margin of the Armenian as) against 14t A 18. and the exceptions just stated. “The tabernacle of God [is) with men,” His presence in the church now glorified and come down for the eternal state; and thus God will tabernacle (not “over” but) “with” them. On general principles we can say that men are changed thus to have dwelling with them. “Peoples” is the reading of à A 1.79.92. and perhaps others; but the mass, with B P and the old versions, supports, as in the Complutensian edition, the singular, which Tischendorf thinks more probably an emendation. It appears to me that αὐτοί might rather influence a scribe in favor of the plural and thus bring in the various reading. Tischendorf also omits with à B, more than thirty cursives and several ancient versions, &c., θεὸς αὐτῶν or αὐτ. θ. and so the Complutensian edition, Tregelles, Westcott, and Hort. In 4 the Received Text, with A. 1. &c., adds “God,” but authority in general omits, as well as ἀπ' αὐτῶν in B and some fifteen cursives. Before θἀν. à and a few cursives &c. read no article, the effect of which would be to say “there shall be no death more,” not “death shall be no more,” as with the article in A B P and most. It is strange that ὅτι should be left out of the last clause, and that Tregelles should cite àp.m. as omitting it, for there it is, but not the previous ἔτι, by an obvious slip, with the strange blunder of πρόβατα for πρῶτα. Even Afford and Tregelles bracket ὅτι, and Tischendorf accepts, as Lachmann, and Westcott and Hort reject it. But this is a narrow line for the Revised Version without a note to the reader that the mass of authority is opposed to A P, and some old Latin copies, though Amos and Fuld. may be doubted. In 5 ἐπἱ τῷ θ. is right and best supported against τοῦ θ. as in the Received Text. The dative best expresses proper and permanent relationship. The variety is great as to κ. π. πάντα, as it should be. “To me” is questionable; though à P, most cursives and versions sustain it. “Faithful and true” is best supported. In 6 discrepancy again abounds. “It is” (as in the Received Text), or “they are” (A &c.), “done"; or “I am become,” as in à B P, &c. Yet the best supported reading which the Complutensian edition adopted is intrinsically the worst. The first seems to be only formed by Erasmus according to the Vulgate. The second appears to be right. The omission of εἰμι or insertion of αὐτῷ is scarce felt in translation. In 7 “these” (not “all") things hardly can be questioned: so good is the authority. It is rather God's everlasting glory in Christ than the special glory of reigning with Christ, the Heir of all things, the final unchanging blessedness of the redeemed, each overcomer having God his God, and he His son, where the article is quite wrong. In 8 the Received Text fails to give the article, though in Codex Reuchlini Erasmus ought to have seen it written above in red. The better authorities (à A P, some cursives, and old versions, &c.) support Erasmus and the Received Text (as against the Complutensian edition, Griesbach, Scholz, with B, very many cursives, and other ancient versions, &c.) in omitting καὶ ἁμαρτωλοῖς, “and sinners.” The emphatic form is right in the last clause, where Codex Reuchlini misled Erasmus, &c., and P has only “death.” No; it is exactly not death merely because of sin as in Eden at the beginning, nor destructive judgments on the earth as in the past or the future; but now at the end “the second death,” because of grace and truth fully come yet rejected, despised, or corrupted. God is not mocked. If life in Christ be refused, all ends in endless separation and wrath from God; their part is in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone.