Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Revelation 4:6 - 4:6
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Of glass (ὑαλίνη)
Rev., glassy, which describes the appearance not the material. The adjective, and the kindred noun ὕαλος glass occur only in Revelation. The etymology is uncertain; some maintaining an Egyptian origin, and others referring it to the Greek ὕω to rain, with the original signification of rain-drop. Originally, some kind of clear, transparent stone. Herodotus says that the Ethiopians place their dead bodies “in a crystal pillar which has been hollowed out to receive them, crystal being dug up in great abundance in their country, and of a kind very easy to work. You may see the corpse through the pillar within which it lies; and it neither gives out any unpleasant odor, nor is it in any respect unseemly: yet there is no part that is not as plainly visible as if the body were bare” (iii., 24). Glass is known to have been made in Egypt at least 3,800 years ago. The monuments show that the same glass bottles were used then as in later times; and glass blowing is represented in the paintings in the tombs. The Egyptians possessed the art of coloring it, and of introducing gold between two layers of glass. The ruins of glass-furnaces are still to be seen at the Natron Lakes. The glass of Egypt was long famous. It was much used at Rome for ornamental purposes, and a glass window has been discovered at Pompeii: Pliny speaks of glass being malleable.
Crystal
Compare Eze 1:22; Job 37:18; Exo 24:10. The word is used in classical Greek for ice. Thucydides, describing the attempt of the Plataeans to break out from their city when besieged by the Peloponnesians and Boeotians, relates their climbing over the wall and crossing the ditch, but only after a hard struggle; “for the ice (κρύσταλλος) in it was not frozen hard enough to bear” (iii., 23). Crystal, regarded as a mineral, was originally held to be only pure water congealed, by great length of time, into ice harder than common. Hence it was believed that it could be produced only in regions of perpetual ice.
In the midst of - round about
Commonly explained as one in the midst of each of the four sides of the throne. “At the extremities of two diameters passing through the center of the round throne” (Milligan).
Beasts (ζῶα)
Rev., living creatures. Alford aptly remarks that beasts is the most unfortunate word that could be imagined. Beast is θηρίον. Ζῶον emphasizes the vital element, θηρίον the bestial.
Full of eyes before and behind
The four living beings are mainly identical with the cherubim of Eze 1:5-10; 10:5-20; Isa 6:2, Isa 6:3; though with some differences of detail. For instance, Ezekiel's cherubim have four wings, while the six described here belong to the seraphim of Isaiah. So also the Trisagion (thrice holy) is from Isaiah. In Ezekiel's vision each living being has all four faces, whereas here, each of the four has one.
“There came close after them four animals,
Incoronate each one with verdant leaf,
Plumed with six wings was every one of them,
The plumage full of eyes; the eyes of Argus
If they were living would be such as these.
Reader I to trace their forms no more I waste
My rhymes; for other spendings press me so,
That I in this cannot be prodigal.
But read Ezekiel who depicteth them
As he beheld them from the region cold
Coming with cloud, with whirlwind, and with fire;
And such as thou shalt find them in his pages,
Such were they here; saving that in their plumage
John is with me, and differeth from him.”
Dante, “Purgatorio,” xxix., 92-105.