Revelation 6:9

The Fifth Seal, Revelation 6:8-11

9. This series of seven visions, like the other groups of seven throughout the book, is divided into two parts. We have seen (Revelation 2:7; Revelation 2:19) that the messages to the seven Churches were divided into a group of threeand one of four:here the first fourseals are marked off from the last three, and similarly with the four trumpets of chap. 8 from the three that follow in chaps. 9 11: perhaps also, though less clearly, with the vials of chap. 16.

under the altar Here first mentioned; it is a part of the arrangements of the heavenly Temple: see on Revelation 4:6. Are we to understand that its position was that of the goldenaltar within the Holy Place (Exodus 30:1 sqq.) or of the brazenaltar in the open court before the Temple (Exodus 27:1 sqq.)? i.e. is it an altar of incense or of burnt offering? In Revelation 8:3 sqq. we find incense offered at a heavenly golden Altar, and it is not distinguished from this: yet it may be thought that the image here is more suitable to the altar of sacrifice. For at the foot of it the blood of the victims was poured out (Exodus 29:12), and the blood, we are told repeatedly, is the life: then is it not meant that the lives or souls (the words are interchangeable, as Matthew 16:25 sqq.) of the martyrs are poured out at the foot of the heavenly altar, when they sacrificed their lives to God? Probably it ismeant: but we are not to assume without evidence that the altar here is different from that in chap. 8. Admitting that the Israelite tabernacle and Temple were copies of a really subsisting heavenly archetype, it is not certain that they were exact copies in all respects: they might have to be modified to suit material conditions. Just as it was impossible to have a real sea (see on Revelation 4:6) in front of the earthly temple, so it may have been necessary to have on earth an inner and an outer Sanctuary, an altar before each, whereon to present the symbols of those things which in heaven are offered on one.

the souls There is undoubtedly a distinction throughout the N. T. between the words for "soul," the mere principle of natural life and "spirit," the immortal and heavenly part of man: see especially 1 Corinthians 15:44 sqq. Yet it is probably an overstatement of this distinction to say that these are mere lost lives, crying to God for vengeance like Abel's blood (Genesis 4:10), but different from the immortal souls, which have all their wants satisfied, and desire the salvation, not the punishment, of their murderers. They are the "lives" of the slain: their being under the altar is well illustrated by the ceremonial outpouring of the blood, and their cry for vengeance by that of the blood of Abel, but what follows in the next verse is surely addressed to the inmost souls of the saints, not to impersonal abstract "lives."

of them that were slain As the four former verbs correspond to Matthew 24:6-8, so this to ibid. 9. In Enoch xl. 5, a voice (that of "him who presides over every suffering and every wound of the sons of men, the holy Raphael," ib. 9) is heard "blessing the elect One, and the elect who are crucified on account of the Lord of spirits." There is a passage more like this in sense in the same book, xlvii. 2, "In that day shall the holy ones assemble who dwell above the heavens, and with united voice petition, supplicate, praise, laud, and bless the name of the Lord of spirits, on account of the blood of the righteous which has been shed, that the prayer of the righteous may not be intermitted before the Lord of spirits; that for them He would execute judgement, and that His patience may not endure for ever."

for the word of God, and for the testimony Cf. Revelation 1:9; Revelation 20:4.

the testimony which they held For the construction cf. Revelation 12:17 fin. The verb rendered "held" here and "have" there being the same. Some argue from the name of Jesusnot being used here, as in the three places referred to, for describing their testimony, that there are Old Testament martyrs, like those in Hebrews 11 ad fin. But surely theirblood was very amply avenged, and very speedily: of the three great persecutors, Jezebel and Antiochus perished miserably, and Manasseh suffered equal misery, though he repented in time to receive some alleviation of it. We have, however, a Jewish parallel to the thought of this passage in Enoch xxii. 5 sqq., where Enoch hears in heaven the accusing cry of the soul (not, as in Genesis, the blood) of Abel.