Revelation 1:9

I John, who &c. Better and more simply, 1 John your brother and partaker with you (for the condescending choice of titles, cf. 1 Peter 5:1) in the tribulation and kingdom and patience in Jesus. The collocation of the latter words is peculiar, and it is not very clear why "the kingdom" should be placed between "the tribulation" and "patience." Alford refers to Acts 14:22 for the association of the kingdom with the tribulation.

was Had come there, found myself there. Here and in the next verse he avoids, perhaps intentionally, the use of the word for continuous and absolute "being:" see note on Revelation 1:4.

Patmos One of the Sporades, the south-eastern group of the islands of the Aegean. According to the tradition, as given by Victorinus, he was condemned to work in the mineswhich, if trustworthy, must mean marble quarries, as there are no mines, strictly speaking, in the island. Christians were sent to the mines (Roman Christians to those of Sardinia) at least as early as the reign of Commodus (Hipp. Ref. Haer. IX. 12), and this was much the commonest punishment during the Diocletian persecution in which Victorinus suffered himself. In St John's time it was commoner to put Christians to death; but the tradition is probably right; -deportation," confinement without hard labour on a lonely island was then and afterwards reserved for offenders of higher secular rank.

for the word, &c. See note on Revelation 1:2. Comparing Revelation 6:9 and Revelation 20:4, it is hardly doubtful that these words support the traditional view, that he was banished there for being a Christian; that they do not mean, as else they might, that he had gone to the island to preach the Gospel, or (by special revelation or otherwise) had withdrawn there to await this vision.