Revelation 1:18

I am he Literally, I am the First and the Last, and He that liveth; and I was dead and am alive.

l am alive The words "was" and "am" are emphatic contrasting His temporal and temporary death with His eternal life: see on Revelation 1:4.

Amen Should be omitted.

of hell and of death Read, of death and of hell. "Hell" is Hades, the receptacle of the dead: usually personified in this book, as indeed is death, Revelation 6:8; Revelation 20:13-14. But here they are rather conceived as places, prisons wherein the dead are confined, and from which Christ can deliver them. We read of "the gates of death" in Psalms 9:13; Job 38:17, and "the gates of hell" in Isaiah 38:10; Matthew 16:18.