Revelation 22:6

EPILOGUE FOUR ATTESTATIONS TO THE TRUTH OF THIS DIVINE APOCALYPSE, Revelation 22:6-19.

1. By the ANGEL briefly reiterating the divine endorsement, Revelation 22:6.

6. He The interpreting angel of Revelation 22:1, reaffirming the words of God, Revelation 21:5.

These sayings The utterances and revelations of this book. He who was commissioned agent pronounces that the apocalypse by him delivered is both a genuine revelation and a truthful doctrine. As a mere instrument his testimony is brief, modest, and subordinate to God’s.

2. By JOHN, recapitulating the fact of God’s sending his revealing angel, and his own over-reverence to the angel, Revelation 22:6-9.

6. And That John’s own words commence here is evident from the fact that he really repeats at this close the words by him uttered at the commencement of the Apocalypse, Revelation 1:1; Revelation 1:3. John’s words are introduced with the Hebraistically repeated and, as in Revelation 22:10; Revelation 22:12; Revelation 22:17.

The usual method of commentators is to make this whole verse (Revelation 22:6) the words of the angel; to make John here re-perform in literal act his over-reverence in Revelation 19:10, and to make the angel resume at Revelation 22:10 and continue to Revelation 22:15. This is in many ways objectionable. It makes John mechanically and stolidly re-commit an already corrected blunder. It makes the angel speak at full length the words of God in his own person, as if he himself were God; an inadmissible assumption, inaccurately supported by Dusterdieck by the precedent of Revelation 11:3, where he incorrectly assumes that “my” is uttered by the angel in the name of God.

We make John’s words begin in Revelation 22:6, adding an implied saying, in italics, at the close of that verse. John thus narrates in Revelation 22:6-7 God’s sending the revealing angel to him and the promise of quickly coming; and in 8 and 9 he reiterates how over-gratefully he received this angelic communication. Ahus saw and heard in Revelation 22:8 is antithetical to sent to show in Revelation 22:6, so that the thought of the sending by God is transmitted down to Revelation 22:10, where he refers to God of Revelation 22:6. The entire of Revelation 22:10-15 is then spoken by God.

Holy prophets Preferable reading, of the spirits of the holy prophets; that is, of their spirits as instruments of his revealing work. By this solemn phrase John places his apocalypse on the same high level with the Old Testament, as conscious that it takes equal rank in the sacred canon. He is aware that he is making New Testament. Note, Revelation 22:19.