Revelation 1:5

who is These words are probably inserted in the A. V. and R. V. by way of marking the fact that "the faithful Witness" is in the nominative, not in apposition to the name "Jesus Christ." But whether this has the same object as the anacoluthon of the previous verse a sort of reverence that forbids the divine Name to be "governed" by any other word is more doubtful: the general usage of the book appears to ignore the classical rule of apposition.

the faithful witness See 1 Timothy 6:13: Jesus Christ was in His Death much more than a martyr, but He was also the perfect type and example of martyrdom. Observe His own words in John 18:37 to which perhaps St Paul l. c. is referring. Here as in the next clause, see below, the languagerecalls Psalms 89:37, perhaps too Isaiah 55:4.

first begotten of the dead Explained by St Paul in Colossians 1:18, where He is called "the First-born" (the word is the same) "fromthe dead." The sense of "first-born" or "first-begotten" is "first to enter life," without any fanciful image of death as the womb of earth. The thought in Romans 1:4 is similar.

prince of the kings of the earth A reminiscence (hardly to be called a quotation) of Psalms 89:27, "I will make Him My First-born, higher than the kings of the earth."

that loved Read, that loveth. "It is His ever-abiding character, that He loveth His own, John 13:1 " (Alford).

washed us The balance of evidence is in favour of the reading "loosed us:" the preposition "in" might easily, in a Hebraistic book like this, be used of an instrument, where we should say "by," or "with." So we should probably render "redeemed us from our sins by His own Blood" the Blood of Christ being conceived as the price of our redemption, as in 1 Peter 1:18-19 not, as in Revelation 7:14; Revelation 22:14 (according to the preferable reading), and perhaps in St John's 1 John 1:7, as the cleansing fountain foretold in Zechariah 13:1. If therefore we ask "whenChrist thus freed us," the answer must be, at His Passion, not at our conversion or baptism.