Life Flows from the Throne, and the Prophecy Returns to Its Hearers

“There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God” (Psalm 46:4), and Zechariah 14:8 promised that “living waters shall go out from Jerusalem”. Eden had its river too (Genesis 2:10). Here the river’s source is a throne shared by God and the Lamb.

The punctuation is uncertain: “in the midst of the street of it” may belong with verse 1, so that the river runs down the middle of the city’s street. “Tree” is xylon, which can be collective, a row of trees on both banks, as in Ezekiel 47:12, where “all trees for meat” grow on either side of the river.

Zechariah 14:11 had said of Jerusalem, “there shall be no more utter destruction; but Jerusalem shall be safely inhabited”, and the Hebrew word there, cherem, is the ban or curse. After naming God and the Lamb, the verse says “serve him”, singular: one pronoun covers both.

Moses was told, “Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live” (Exodus 33:20). The psalmist hoped, “I will behold thy face in righteousness” (Psalm 17:15). The high priest alone wore the LORD’s name on his forehead, engraved on a gold plate (Exodus 28:36–38); here every servant bears it.

“Giveth them light” echoes the priestly blessing, “The LORD make his face shine upon thee” (Numbers 6:25), now permanent. “They shall reign for ever and ever” completes Daniel 7:18, “the saints of the most High shall take the kingdom, and possess the kingdom for ever, even for ever and ever”.

The last words repeat the book’s first line almost exactly: “to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass” (1:1). The book closes the frame it opened. The best Greek text reads “the God of the spirits of the prophets”, a phrase close to Paul’s “the spirits of the prophets” in 1 Corinthians 14:32.

The voice breaks into the angel’s words without any introduction, and the speaker can only be Christ. This is the sixth of the book’s seven beatitudes, and it repeats the first (1:3) nearly word for word: blessed is the one who keeps the sayings of this prophecy.

“I John” names the writer for the first time since chapter 1, closing the frame. “Saw these things, and heard them” is the language of an eyewitness giving testimony, the pairing that opens 1 John: “that which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes”.

The angel ranks himself with three groups: John, the prophets, and every reader who keeps the book. The Ascension of Isaiah, an early Christian work, has an angel refuse Isaiah’s worship in the same way (7:21), which shows how live this temptation was among early readers of visions.

In 10:4 John was told to seal up the seven thunders; now everything else is to be left unsealed. The reason given, “the time is at hand”, is the phrase that closed the book’s first blessing in 1:3. The book is framed by the same urgency at both ends.

The saying follows Daniel 12:10, spoken just after Daniel’s book was sealed: “the wicked shall do wickedly: and none of the wicked shall understand; but the wise shall understand”. Ezekiel 3:27 has the same shape: “He that heareth, let him hear; and he that forbeareth, let him forbear.”

Isaiah 40:10 is the source: “Behold, the Lord GOD will come with strong hand … behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him”, repeated in Isaiah 62:11. The last clause echoes Psalm 62:12, “thou renderest to every man according to his work”.

Three paired titles are gathered in one sentence. “Alpha and Omega” was spoken by God in 1:8 and 21:6, “the beginning and the end” by God in 21:6, and “the first and the last” by Christ in 1:17 and 2:8. Here one speaker claims all three.

The seventh beatitude. The two readings of its opening look alike in Greek capitals: ΠΟΙΟΥΝΤΕΣ ΤΑΣ ΕΝΤΟΛΑΣ, “doing his commandments”, and ΠΛΥΝΟΝΤΕΣ ΤΑΣ ΣΤΟΛΑΣ, “washing their robes”. “Right” is exousia, authority, permission to approach the tree that cherubim once guarded (Genesis 3:24).

“Without” means outside the gates, where the unclean were kept outside the camp. Dogs in these cities were scavengers, not pets, and the word was a stock insult; Deuteronomy 23:18 uses “dog” of a male temple prostitute, and Paul turns it on his opponents in Philippians 3:2. The list follows 21:8, ending again with lying.

The only time in the book that Jesus names himself this way. “You” is plural, hymin, meaning every hearer in the churches. Root and offspring is the riddle Jesus himself posed in Mark 12:35–37: David calls the Christ his Lord, “and whence is he then his son?”

At the Feast of Tabernacles Jesus cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37). “Whosoever will” is ho thelon, the one who wants to: desire is the only qualification named. The verse offers the water twice, once to the thirsty and once to the willing.

The warning adapts Deuteronomy 4:2, “Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish ought from it”, and 12:32. Ancient writers guarded texts this way; the Letter of Aristeas says a curse was laid on anyone who altered the Greek translation of the Law.

Deuteronomy 29:20 has the same structure: on the one who turns aside, “all the curses that are written in this book shall lie upon him”. Erasmus’s only Greek manuscript of Revelation lacked the last six verses, and he supplied them from the Latin Vulgate, which is how its “book of life” came into the printed Greek behind the King James.

“Come, Lord Jesus” renders the early Aramaic prayer maranatha, “Our Lord, come”, which Paul leaves untranslated in 1 Corinthians 16:22 and the Didache places at the close of its Eucharistic prayer (10:6). “He which testifieth” is the “faithful witness” of 1:5. This is the only time a human voice answers “I come quickly”.

Apocalypses did not usually end with a blessing like this, but letters did, and Paul’s close the same way. The book that opened with “Grace be unto you” (1:4) ends as a letter to the churches. Manuscripts vary over the recipients: “with all”, “with the saints”, or, as here, “with you all”.