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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadCambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges - Revelation 3:21 - 3:21
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
21. ὁ νικῶν. The construction is as in Rev 2:26, Rev 3:12, “He that overcometh, I will give him.” For the sense, compare the former of these passages; but the promise of sharing Christ’s inheritance (Rom 8:17) is even more fully expressed here.
ὡς κἀγὼ ἐνίκησα. See St John’s Gospel, Joh 16:33.
μετὰ τοῦ πατρός μου ἐν τῷ θρόνῳ αὐτοῦ. See Rev 5:6, Rev 7:17. In the Jewish Cabbala (of which the oldest parts are ascribed to a date little later than St John, and perhaps embody still older traditions, though it received its present form quite late in the middle ages) we hear of Metatron, apparently a Greek word Hebraised for “Next to the Throne,” or perhaps “in the midst of the Throne,” a sort of mediator between God and the world, who is identified with the four Living Creatures of Ezekiel’s vision. The Cabbala as it now exists has more affinity with Gnostic mythology than with scriptural or Catholic Christianity: but it is deserving of notice, as the outcome of tendencies in Jewish thought that might have developed, or found their satisfaction in the Gospel. St John’s Lamb “in the midst of the Throne” is perhaps just as far comparable with the Cabbalistic Metatron, as his doctrine of the personal “Word of God” is with Philo’s. It is hardly wise to ask whether “MyThrone” and “His Throne” are quite identical: for the doctrine that the faithful stand to Christ in the same relation as He to the Father, see St John’s Gospel, Joh 17:21-23, and 1Co 3:23; 1Co 11:3.