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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Revelation 5:1 - 5:1
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
In (ἐπί)
Lit., on. The book or roll lay upon the open hand.
A Book (βιβλίον)
See on Mat 19:7; see on Mar 10:4; see on Luk 4:17. Compare Eze 2:9; Jer 36:2; Zec 5:1, Zec 5:2.
Within and on the back side (ἔσωθεν καὶ ὄπισθεν)
Compare Eze 2:10. Indicating the completeness of the divine counsels contained in the book. Rolls written on both sides were called opistographi. Pliny the younger says that his uncle, the elder Pliny, left him an hundred and sixty commentaries, most minutely written, and written on the back, by which this number is multiplied. Juvenal, inveighing against the poetasters who are declaiming their rubbish on all sides, says: “Shall that one then have recited to me his comedies, and this his elegies with impunity? Shall huge 'Telephus' with impunity have consumed a whole day; or - with the margin to the end of the book already filled - 'Orestes,' written on the very back, and yet not concluded?” (i., 3-6).
Sealed (κατεσφραγισμένον)
Only here in the New Testament. The preposition κατά denotes sealed down. So Rev., close sealed. The roll is wound round a staff and fastened down to it with the seven seals. The unrolling of the parchment is nowhere indicated in the vision. Commentators have puzzled themselves to explain the arrangement of the seals, so as to admit of the unrolling of a portion with the opening of each seal. Düsterdieck remarks that, With an incomparably more beautiful and powerful representation, the contents of the roll are successively symbolized by the vision which follows upon the opening of each seal. “The contents of the book leap forth in plastic symbols from the loosened seal.” Milligan explains the seven seals as one seal, comparing the seven churches and the seven spirits as signifying one church and one spirit, and doubts if the number seven has here any mystical meaning. Others, as Alford, claim that the completeness of the divine purposes is indicated by the perfect number seven.