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It should be noticed, perhaps, that some commentators (e. g. Eichhorn) regard xvqiazy nuέog here as designating the paschal day, on the evening of which the early Christians were wont to assemble, and wait and worship until very late, with the hope and expectation of Christ's coming; see Jerome on Matt. xxiv. But this usage is plainly one of later origin; for no early writing mentions this day as having any special preeminence.

Meɣáky, applied to voice, of course means loud. -ós cúlaiyyos heightens the description. It was not merely an ordinary loud human voice, but loud as that of a trumpet. It is almost needless to remark, that the loudness only is the point of comparison here, not the quality of the trumpet's voice, much less the inarticulate nature of it; as the sequel shows. Λεγούσης in grammatical construction agrees with σάλ ayyos. Nor is the meaning difficult; for a loud voice as of a trumpet speaking, is a voice speaking trumpet-like. Eichhorn (as usual) has here corrected the author's Greek, and substituted λéyovoav. It does not need the critic's aid. One reason why a trumpet is here designated as the object of comparison, is the frequent use made of this instrument on occasions of great moment; see in Ex. 19: 19. 20: 18. Ps. 47: 5. Zech. 9: 14. 1 Cor. 15: 52. 1 Thess. 4: 16.

(11) Saying: What thou seest write in a book, and send to the seven churches, to Ephesus, and to Smyrna, and to Pergamus, and to Thyatira, and to Sardis, and to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea.

"O hinais does not mean simply, what thou at the present moment seest; for the present tense, both participle and verb, is often employed in a diffusive sense (if I may so speak), and comprehends what is to come, as being connected with the present. So we may here translate : Quod visurus es; for so the sense of the passage, in connection with the sequel, clearly demands it to be understood.

Els piẞhior-we say copied INTO a book, but written IN a book; and in accordance with the latter phrase, is the usual idiom of the Greek rezoaμμérov ev to ßißhio. But in John 8: 6, 8, (if the genuineness be allowed), we have two cases of yoager eis; showing at least, a resemblance in minutiae between the Gospel and the Apocalypse, for the idiom is found nowhere else in the New Testament. Inscribe in librum, we might translate the phrase, i. e. engrave it upon a roll or parchment. mon on and over the continent of Europe, in respect to the observance of the Lord's day.

I have only to add, that such a day, commemorative of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and set apart for holy spiritual exercises, was peculiarly appropriate to the visions of God. The Saviour appears to John in his glory, as risen from the dead, (comp. Rev. 1: 5, 18). The day and the vision both proclaim the fact of his resurrection.

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-After Léyovoa, at the beginning of the verse, the vulgate text inserts ἐγώ εἰμι τὸ 4 καὶ τὸ Ω, ὁ πρῶτος καὶ ὁ ἔσχατος· καὶ; which, for good reason, has been omitted in the critical editions. The weight of authority is plainly against it.

Ταῖς ἑπτὰ ἐκκλησίαις-The vulgate here omits ἑπτά; as Ewald thinks, with good reason. But he has founded his argument on the supposition, that John wrote the Apocalypse for all the churches in Asia. Yet, while I allow the correctness of such a supposition in a qualified sense, I still do not see why he might not dedicate the whole work to the seven churches, and by sending it to them, publish it in this way to the world. The sending it to the seven churches does not denote that the book was not a matter of general concern, but only that some things in it were specially appropriate to them; and this consists well with the admission of έztú into the text. Again, the vulgate inserts tais iv Asia after ixxanoiais, which is not sustained by the Codices, and is not here necessary to the sense.

EPHESUS was the capital of proconsular Asia, and was then the largest and most magnificent city in all that region. It lay upon the river Cayster, at the head of a large bay, and about half-way between Miletus on the south and Smyrna on the north. In ancient times it had an immense trade; and the splendid temple of Diana there (Acts 19: 34-36) was one of the wonders of the world. It was burnt down by Herostratus; but soon it was still more superbly rebuilt. Many Jews resided there; and there Paul laboured more than two years, Acts 18: 18 seq. 19: 10 seq. A great and flourishing church was founded there by this apostle; and with that church the apostle John, according to the voice of all antiquity, had a most intimate connection. At Ephesus, it would seem, was his home, after he left Palestine. There are, at the present time, but some half a dozen miserable huts on the spot of the ancient city, belonging to squalid Greek peasants; and the Turks name the place Ayasaluc. Such is the end of the most strenuous efforts of man to establish and render perpetual worldly splendour and magnificence. It is even difficult now to ascertain with certainty, where the temple of Diana stood; a building 425 feet long, 200 broad, 70 feet high, and with 127 marble pillars. The candlestick has indeed been removed out of its place (Rev. 2: 5), and all the glory of the splendid metropolis extinguished.

SMYRNA lies at the head of a bay that puts far up into the main land, and is a very ancient city, situated near the river Meles, and one of the reputed birth places of Homer, thence sometimes named Melesigenes. Its excellent harbour has rendered it, from time immemorial, one of the most commercial places in hither Asia. Its population is now variously estimated, from 120,000 to 160,000, consisting of Greeks, Turks, Ar

menians, Jews, and Europeans. The rigid system of supervision and oppression, established by the Turks, has almost extinguished the development of any religion there except the Mohammedan. The Turkish name of the place is Ismir, i. e. the old name abridged.

PERGAMUS is in the southern part of Mysia; which also constituted a part of Aeolis, so named from the settlement of the Aeolian Greeks there after the fall of Troy. It was on the banks of the river Caicus, and at the time when the Apocalypse was written was the metropolis of that part of Asia which was held by the Romans. When Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, was defeated by the Romish power in Asia, Eumenes, a king of the region in and around Pergamus, (in which city he dwelt), aided them in their contest, and was rewarded by them with an enlargement of his dominions. Here Eumenes established a famous library, as a kind of rival to that of Ptolemy at Alexandria. It consisted of some 200,000 volumes. The last of the Attalian race of kings (Attalus III.), being childless, left this kingdom, by his last will, to the Romans (B. C. 133). It is an old tradition, that when Ptolemy refused Eumenes the privilege of exporting papyrus from Egypt for the use of his library, the latter invented parchment (called nɛoyauŋvý from the place of its invention) as a substitute. Pompey (some sixty years. B. C.) gave the whole of the library at Pergamus to Cleopatra of Egypt, and it was transported thither, and perished with the library at Alexandria, by order of the Mohammedan Caliph. The kingdom of which Pergamus was the capital, lasted about 152 years. This city is still a considerable one, inhabited principally by Turks, but containing also about 3000 nominal Christians. Its present name is Pergamo.

THYATIRA lies near the borders of Lydia and Mysia, but more usually it is reckoned to the former. It is about a day's journey south of Pergamus, and about the same distance east of Elaca on the sea-coast. It is now called Akhisar (White Castle), and contains a population of nearly 30,000, of whom 3000 are said to be nominal Christians. In the Apocalypse the name is neuter plural (várɛa), and so in many Greek writers; but the Latins and some of the Greeks employed the feminine singular to designate it. That it was a considerable place in the time of John, there can be no room to doubt.

SARDIS (plur. Σάρδεις, sometimes Σάρδις in Greek authors), now Surt, was the capital of Lydia, and stood at the foot of mount Tmolus, on the banks of the river Pactolus famous for it golden sands. Here the celebrated Croesus lived and reigned, who was proverbially so rich, and who was captured by Cyrus A. C. 548. It was a very large and rich city under the Romans. In the reign of Tiberius, however, it suffered greatly by an earthquake; but it appears to have been speedily rebuilt. Tiberius himself contributed liberally for this purpose. It is now a

scene of ruins, there being only a few mud huts there, inhabited by Turks and Greeks.*

PHILADELPHIA is south-east of Sardis in Lydia, and on the small river Cogamus. Once it was a large and powerful city. At the time when the Ottomans overran all the region around, this city held out for more than eighty years against them. Finally Bajazet obliged it to yield. It is still a considerable place; and there are more than twenty churches here, although not Christians enough now to fill more than two or three of them. A recent traveller (Emerson ut supra) gives a glowing account of the scenery in and around the city. It is at present called Allah Shehr.

LAODICEA, in the south-west part of Phrygia, at a small distance from Colossae and Hierapolis, is situated near the junction of the two small rivers Asopus and Caprus (which soon fall into the Lycus), on a plain washed at its edges by each. The ruins now extant of many

* A recent traveller, who lodged there for a night, has given a description of the scene by moonlight at a midnight hour, which I cannot forbear to transcribe. "Every object was as distinct as in a northern twilight; the snowy summit of the mountain [Tmolus], the long sweep of the valley, and the flashing current of the river [Pactolus]. 1 strolled along towards the banks of the Pactolus, and seated myself by the side of the half exhausted stream.

"There are few individuals, who cannot trace on the map of their memory some moments of overpowering emotion, and some scene, which, once dwelt upon, has become its own painter, and left behind it a memorial that time could not efface. I can readily sympathize with the feelings of him who wept at the base of the pyramids; nor were my own less powerful, on that night, when I sat beneath the sky of Asia to gaze upon the ruins of Sardis, from the banks of the golden sanded Pactolus. Beside me were the cliffs of the Acropolis, which, centuries before, the hardy Median scaled, while leading on the conquering Persians, whose tents had covered the very spot on which I was reclining. Before me were the vestiges of what had been the palace of the gorgeous Croesus; within its walls were once congregated the wisest of mankind, Thales, Cleobulus, and Solon. It was here that the wretched father mourned alone the mangled corse of his beloved Atys; it was here that the same humiliated monarch wept at the feet of the Persian boy, who wrung from him his kingdom. Far in the distance were the gigantic tumuli of the Lydian monarchs, Candaules, Halyattys, and Gyges; and around them were spread those very plains, once trodden by the countless hosts of Xerxes when hurrying on to find a sepulchre at Marathon.

"There were more varied and more vivid remembrances associated with the sight of Sardis, than could possibly be attached to any other spot of earth; but all were mingled with a feeling of disgust at the littleness of human glory; all-all had passed away! There were before me the fanes of a dead religion, the tombs of forgotten monarchs, and the palm-tree that waved in the banquet-hall of kings; while the feeling of desolation was doubly heightened by the calm sweet sky above me, which, in its unfading brightness, shone as purely now as when it beamed upon the golden dreams of Croesus."-Emerson's Letters from the Acgean, p. 113 seq.

theatres, temples, etc., show that it was once a large city. The whole rising ground on which the city stood, is one vast tumulus of ruins, abandoned entirely to the owl and the fox. This city was so situated, as to become the battle-ground of contending parties in Asia Minor, first under the Romans, and then under the Turks. It has doubtless suffered also from earthquakes. For centuries, we know not how many, it has been a perfect mass of ruins. In its neighbourhood is a village named Eski-hissar, which has been built up from its ruins, and contains some fifty or sixty people, among whom, (on the visit of a recent traveller there), there were but two nominal Christians. "The name of Christianity," says Emerson (ut sup. p. 101), "is forgotten, and the only sounds that disturb the silence of its desertion, are the tones of the Muezzin, whose voice from the distant village [Eski-hissar] proclaims the ascendancy of Mohammed. Laodicea is even more solitary than Ephesus; for the latter has the prospect of the rolling sea, or of a whitening sail, to enliven its decay; while the former sits in widowed loneliness, its walls are grass-grown, its temples desolate, its very name has perished." A thunder storm gathered on the mountains at a distance, while this traveller was examining the ruins of Laodicea. He retreated to Eski-hissar and waited until the fury of the storm was abated, but set off on his journey again before it had entirely ceased to blow and to rain. "We preferred," says he (p. 102), "hastening on, to a farther delay in that melancholy spot, where everything whispered desolation, and where the very wind that swept impetuously through the valley, sounded like the fiendish laugh of time exulting over the destruction of man and his proudest monuments."

Such has been and are the situation and circumstances of the seven churches of Asia, who are addressed by the Apocalyptist. I have already remarked, that John was probably acquainted with other churches in this region besides those named. The particular reason why he addresses but seven churches, and no more, I have also endeavoured to give in another place; Vol. I. § 13. p. 219 seq. The exegetical problems which have been raised in regard to this matter of seven, by Vitringa and others, are also examined in the same section to which the reader has just been referred.

(12) And I turned to see the voice which spake with me; and when I had turned, I beheld seven golden lamps;

Bléze means primarily to see with one's eyes objects visible to the sense of sight. But it is also employed to denote the perception or notice of the mind; and then it means, as here, to discern, to descry, to perceive, to observe. So in Matt. 15: 31. John 5: 19. 2 Cor. 12: 6. Rom. 7: 23. Heb. 10: 25 al.

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