Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Revelation 3:17 - 3:17
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
I am rich (hoti plousios eimi). Recitative hoti like quotation marks before direct quotation. Old adjective from ploutos, riches, wealth. Laodicea was a wealthy city and the church “carried the pride of wealth into its spiritual life” (Swete).
Have gotten riches (peploutēka). Perfect active indicative of plouteō, old verb from ploutos, used here of imagined spiritual riches which the church did not possess, just the opposite of church in Smyrna (poor in wealth, rich in grace). This church was in a rich city and was rich in pride and conceit, but poor in grace and ignorant of its spiritual poverty (ouk oidas, knowest not).
The wretched one (ho talaipōros). Old adjective from tlaō, to endure, and pōros, a callus, afflicted, in N.T. only here and Rom 7:24. Note the one article in the predicate with all these five adjectives unifying the picture of sharp emphasis on “thou” (su), “thou that boastest.”
Miserable (eleeinos). Pitiable as in 1Co 15:19.
Poor (ptōchos). See Rev 2:9 for spiritual poverty. Perhaps some local example of self-complacency is in mind.
Blind (tuphlos). Spiritual blindness as often (Mat 23:17), and note “eye-salve” in Rev 3:18.
Naked (gumnos). “The figure completes the picture of actual poverty” (Beckwith). See Rev 3:15, Rev 3:16.