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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comJamieson Fausset Brown Commentary - Revelation 3:19 - 3:19
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(Job 5:17; Pro 3:11, Pro 3:12; Heb 12:5, Heb 12:6.) So in the case of Manasseh (2Ch 33:11-13).
As many - All. “He scourgeth every son whom He receiveth. And shalt thou be an exception? If excepted from suffering the scourge, thou art excepted from the number of the sons” [Augustine]. This is an encouragement to Laodicea not to despair, but to regard the rebuke as a token for good, if she profit by it.
I love - Greek, “philo,” the love of gratuitous affection, independent of any grounds for esteem in the object loved. But in the case of Philadelphia (Rev 3:9), “I have loved thee” (Greek, “egapesa”) with the love of esteem, founded on the judgment. Compare the note in my English Gnomon of Bengel, Joh 21:15-17.
I rebuke - The “I” in the Greek stands first in the sentence emphatically. I in My dealings, so altogether unlike man’s, in the case of all whom I love, rebuke. The Greek, “elencho,” is the same verb as in Joh 16:8, “(the Holy Ghost) will convince (rebuke unto conviction) the world of sin.”
chasten - “chastise.” The Greek, “paideu,” which in classical Greek means to instruct, in the New Testament means to instruct by chastisement (Heb 12:5, Heb 12:6). David was rebuked unto conviction, when he cried, “I have sinned against the Lord”; the chastening followed when his child was taken from him (2Sa 12:13, 2Sa 12:14). In the divine chastening, the sinner at one and the same time winces under the rod and learns righteousness.
be zealous - habitually. Present tense in the Greek, of a lifelong course of zeal. The opposite of “lukewarm.” The Greek by alliteration marks this: Laodicea had not been “hot” (Greek, “zestos”), she is therefore urged to “be zealous” (Greek, “zeleue”): both are derived from the same verb, Greek, “zeo,” “to boil.”
repent - Greek aorist: of an act to be once for all done, and done at once.