Four Churches Receive Four Unsparing Diagnoses

Ephesus was the largest city of the province, with the temple of Artemis and the harbour where a courier from Patmos would land. In chapter 1 Christ stood among the lampstands; here he “walketh” among them, like the priest who went among the lamps of the tabernacle to keep them burning (Leviticus 24:2–4).

Paul warned the elders of Ephesus that “grievous wolves” would come and men would rise from among them (Acts 20:29–30). Ignatius, writing to the same church about AD 110, praised it for letting no heresy take root. “Labour” is kopos, toil to the point of weariness.

“Hast not fainted” is from the same root as “labour” in verse 2: they toiled and did not tire of toiling, a wordplay the English loses. The oldest manuscripts order the verse more simply: you have patience, and bore up for my name, and have not grown weary.

“Somewhat” is supplied by the King James; the Greek says only “I have against thee, that”. “Left” is aphekes, to let go, the verb used of the disciples leaving their nets. The single charge follows a whole verse of praise, and no second charge is added.

“Art fallen” is a perfect tense, a fall whose effect still holds. “His place” is the 1611 “its place”. “Quickly” is missing from the oldest manuscripts in this verse. Three imperatives, remember, repent, do, set the order: memory first, then a turning, then action.

The Nicolaitans appear only in Revelation. Irenaeus linked them with Nicolas the proselyte of Antioch, one of the seven in Acts 6:5, a link many doubt. The Greek name can be read as “conquer the people”, which some set beside a popular Hebrew reading of Balaam as “swallower of the people” (2:14). What is hated is their deeds.

The formula adapts Jesus’ saying “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear” (Mark 4:9) into the singular, and “churches” is plural: each letter is meant for all seven. “Paradise” is a Persian loanword for a walled garden or royal park, used in the Greek Genesis for Eden.

Smyrna, modern İzmir, lay about thirty-five miles north of Ephesus and was proud of having been refounded around 290 BC after lying desolate for centuries, so “was dead, and is alive” had a local ring. Its bishop Polycarp was burned in the city around AD 155. Smyrna is also the Greek word for myrrh.

“Poverty” is ptocheia, destitution, the word of the beggar rather than of the hard-pressed labourer. Laodicea says the reverse, “I am rich”, and is told she is poor (3:17). “Blasphemy” here has its ordinary Greek sense of slander, speech against the church.

“Crown” is stephanos, the wreath of a victor at the games, not a royal diadem. Smyrna had its own “crown”, the ring of public buildings round the hill of Pagos that ancient writers admired. “Tried” is the verb of testing and tempting, and here the devil is its agent.

“Second death” is a phrase found in the Targums, as in the Aramaic of Deuteronomy 33:6: “let Reuben live, and not die the second death”. The Greek puts two negatives before “hurt”, “shall by no means be hurt”, the strongest denial the language has.

Pergamos, old capital of the Attalid kings, was the seat of the Roman governor, who held the ius gladii, the right of the sword, the power of life and death. To this city Christ introduces himself as the one who holds the sharp sword.

“Seat” is thronos, a throne. Proposed sites include the great altar of Zeus on the acropolis, the temple of Rome and Augustus, first of its kind in Asia, and the healing shrine of Asclepius with its serpent. Antipas is otherwise unknown; “martyr” is martys, witness, the title given Jesus himself in 1:5.

“Stumblingblock” is skandalon, the bait-stick of a trap. The two sins named, idol meat and fornication, were bound together in pagan temple banquets, where trade guilds held their feasts. Paul had worked through the same question at length for Corinth (1 Corinthians 8–10).

“So” links the Nicolaitans to the teaching of Balaam, suggesting the two names describe one practice. The oldest manuscripts end “in like manner” where the King James has “which thing I hate”, a phrase that may have come across from verse 6.

The threat distinguishes: “I will come unto thee”, but “fight against them”, the teachers. A sword was waiting for Balaam too: the angel of the LORD stood in his way with a drawn sword (Numbers 22:23, 31), and Balaam was killed by the sword (Numbers 31:8).

A pot of manna was laid up before the LORD in the ark (Exodus 16:33), and Jewish tradition expected manna to fall again in the age to come; 2 Baruch 29:8 says the treasury of manna will descend from on high. Against the idol meat of verse 14 stands food no idol has touched.

Thyatira is the least of the seven cities and receives the longest letter. It was a town of trade guilds, dyers and bronze-workers; Lydia, “a seller of purple”, came from there (Acts 16:14). “Son of God” appears only here in Revelation, the title of Psalm 2:7, which verses 26–27 go on to quote.

In the best Greek text the list runs love, faith, service, patience: two inward roots and two visible fruits. “Thy works” opens and closes the list. Thyatira is the only church praised for getting better over time.

Some manuscripts read “thy wife Jezebel”, which would make her the wife of the church’s angel or leader. “Sufferest” means allowest. “Seduce” is planao, to lead astray, the verb used of Satan “which deceiveth the whole world” in 12:9.

“Space” is the 1611 word for a span of time, chronos. The oldest manuscripts read “she will not repent”, ou thelei: a refusal of the will rather than a lack of opportunity. The time given is the evidence of patience before the sentence falls.

“Bed” is kline, which is also the couch on which guests reclined at a banquet, including the guild feasts in temples; the couch of her feasting becomes a couch of sickness. The oldest manuscripts read “except they repent of her deeds”, her works being the ones they must turn from.

“Kill with death” is a Hebrew idiom: in the Greek Old Testament “death” often translates deber, pestilence (Ezekiel 33:27). The rest of the verse gathers Jeremiah 17:10, “I the LORD search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways”. The reins are the kidneys, the seat of feeling.

“The depths of Satan, as they speak” may turn their own boast, of knowing “the deep things of God” (1 Corinthians 2:10), into its true name; others think they claimed to explore Satan’s realm unharmed. “None other burden” echoes Acts 15:28, whose “no greater burden” forbade exactly the two sins of verse 20.

“Hold fast” is kratesate, grip it, the verb used when Pergamos “holdest fast my name” (2:13). “Till I come” uses heko, to arrive and be present. Nothing new is added: what they already have is enough.

Only here is the one who overcomes also the one who “keepeth my works”, and the phrase answers “her deeds” in verse 22: Jezebel’s works or Christ’s. “Unto the end” runs the obedience to the finish. “Power” is exousia, delegated authority.

“Rule” is poimanei, literally “shepherd”. The Greek Psalm 2:9 read the Hebrew verb for breaking as the verb for shepherding, and John keeps that reading, so the rod of iron is a shepherd’s club. “Shivers” is 1611 English for fragments, as a potter’s reject jar is smashed.

The morning star is the planet Venus, first light before dawn. Balaam, named in 2:14, had prophesied “there shall come a Star out of Jacob” (Numbers 24:17). Isaiah 14:12 gave the same title, “son of the morning”, to the king of Babylon who fell from heaven.

For the first time the call to hear comes after the promise instead of before it, and in the last four letters it stays there. The phrase closes Thyatira’s letter with no further word, as if the Spirit’s voice is the last thing the church should be left with.