Barclay Daily Study Bible (NT)
Revelation 5:2-4
And I saw a strong angel proclaiming in a great voice: "Who is good enough to open the roll, and to loosen its seals?" And there was no one in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth, who was able to open the roll or to look at it; and I was weeping sorely because there was no one who was found to be good enough to open the roll or to see it.
As John looked at God with the roll in his hand, there came a challenge from a strong angel. A strong angel appears again in Revelation 10:1 and Revelation 18:21. In this case the angel had to be strong so that the challenge of his voice might reach throughout the universe. His summons was that anyone worthy of the task should come forward and open the book.
There is no doubt that the book is the record of that which is to happen in the last times. That there was such a book is a common conception in Jewish thought. It is common in the Book of Enoch. Uriel the archangel says to Enoch in the heavenly places: "O Enoch, observe the writing of the heavenly tablets, and read what is written thereon, and mark every individual fact." Enoch goes on: "And I observed everything on the heavenly tablets, and read everything which was written thereon, and understood everything, and read the book of all the deeds of men and of all the children of flesh that will be upon the earth to the remotest generations." (I Enoch 81:1-2). In the same book Enoch has a vision of the Head of Days on the throne of his glory, "and the books of the living were opened before him" (I Enoch 47:3). Enoch declares that he knows the mystery of the holy ones, because "the Lord showed me and informed me, and I have read in the heavenly tables" (I Enoch 106:19). On these tables he saw the history of the generations still to come (I Enoch 107:1). The idea is that God has a book in which the history of time to come is already written.
When we are seeking to interpret this idea, it is well to remember that it is vision and poetry. It would be a great mistake to take it too literally. It does not mean that everything is settled long ago and that we are in the grip of an inescapable fate. What it does mean is that God has a plan for the universe; and that the purpose of God will be in the end worked out.
God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to year:
God is working his purpose out, and the time is drawing near--
Nearer and nearer draws the time--the time that shall surely be,
When the earth shall be filled with the glory of God, as the
waters cover the sea.
In response to the challenge of the angel no one came forward; none was good enough to open the roll. And at this John in his vision fell to weeping sorely. There were two reasons for his tears.
(i) In Revelation 4:1 the voice had made the promise to him: "I will show you what must take place after this." It now looked as if the promise had been frustrated.
(ii) There is a deeper reason for his sorrow. It seemed to him that there was no one in the whole universe to whom God could reveal his mysteries. Here, indeed, was a terrible thing. Long ago Amos had said: "Surely the Lord God does nothing, without revealing his secrets to his servants the prophets" (Amos 3:7). But here was a world so far from God that there was none able to receive his message.
For John that problem was to be triumphantly solved in the emergence of the Lamb. But behind this problem lies a great and a challenging truth. God cannot deliver a message to men unless there be a man fit to receive it. Here is the very essence of the problem of communication. It is the problem of the teacher; he cannot teach truth which his scholars are unable to receive. It is the problem of the preacher; he cannot deliver a message to a congregation totally incapable of comprehending it. It is the eternal problem of love; love cannot tell its truths or give its gifts to those incapable of hearing and receiving. The need of the world is for men and women who will keep themselves sensitive to God. He has a message for the world in every generation; but that message cannot be delivered until there is found a man capable of receiving it. And day by day we either fit or unfit ourselves to receive the message of God.
THE LION OF JUDAH AND THE ROOT OF DAVID (Revelation 5:5)
5:5 And one of the elders said to me: "Stop weeping. Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has won such a victory that he is able to open the book and its seven seals."
We are now approaching one of the most dramatic moments in the Revelation, the emergence of the Lamb in the centre of the scene. Certain things lead up to it.
John has been weeping because there is none to whom God may reveal his secrets. There comes to him one of the elders, acting as the messenger of Christ and saying to him: "Weep not." These words were more than once on the lips of Jesus in the days of his flesh. That is what he said to the widow of Nain when she was mourning her dead son (Luke 7:13); and to Jairus and his family when they were lamenting for their little girl (Luke 8:52). The comforting voice of Christ is still speaking in the heavenly places.
Swete has an interesting comment on this. John was weeping and yet his tears were unnecessary. Human grief often springs from insufficient knowledge. If we had patience to wait and trust, we would see that God has his own solutions for the situations which bring us tears.
The elder tells John that Jesus Christ has won such a victory that he is able to open the book and to loosen the seals. That means three things. It means that because of his victory over death and all the powers of evil and because of his complete obedience to God he is able to know God's secrets; he is able to reveal God's secrets; and it is his privilege and duty to control the things which shall be. Because of what Jesus did, he is the Lord of truth and of history. He is called by two great titles.
(i) He is the Lion of Judah. This title goes back to Jacob's final blessing of his sons before his death. In that blessing he calls Judah "a lion's whelp" (Genesis 49:9). If Judah himself is a lion's whelp, it is fitting to call the greatest member of the tribe of Judah The Lion of Judah. In the books written between the Testaments this became a messianic title. 2 Esdras speaks of the figure of a lion and says: "This is the Anointed One, that is, the Messiah" (Esther 12:31). The strength of the lion and his undoubted place as king of beasts make him a fitting emblem of the all-powerful Messiah whom the Jews awaited.
(ii) He is the Root of David. This title goes back to Isaiah's prophecy that there will come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse and a root of Jesse who shall be an ensign to the people (Isaiah 11:1; Isaiah 11:10). Jesse was the father of David, and this means that Jesus Christ was the Son of David, the promised Messiah.
So, here we have two great titles which are particularly Jewish. They have their origin in the pictures of the coming Messiah; and they lay it down that Jesus Christ triumphantly performed the work of the Messiah and is, therefore, able to know and to reveal the secrets of God, and to preside over the working out of his purposes in the events of history.
THE LAMB (Revelation 5:6)
5:6 And I saw a Lamb standing in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders. It still bore the marks of having been slain. It had seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God despatched to all the earth
Here is the supreme moment of this vision--the emergence of the Lamb in the scene of heaven. It is possible to think of this scene in two ways. Either we may think of the four living creatures forming a circle around the throne and the twenty-four elders forming a wider circle with a larger circumference, with the Lamb standing between the inner circle of the four living creatures and the outer circle of the twenty-four elders; or, much more likely, the Lamb is the centre of the whole scene.
The Lamb is one of the great characteristic ideas of the Revelation in which Jesus Christ is so called no fewer than twenty-nine times. The word he uses for Lamb is not used of Jesus Christ anywhere else in the New Testament. John the Baptist pointed to him as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29; John 1:36). Peter speaks of the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1:19). In Isaiah 53:7, in the chapter so dear to Jesus and to the early Church, we read of the lamb brought to the slaughter. But in all these cases the word is amnos (G286), whereas the word that the Revelation uses is arnion (G721). This is the word that Jeremiah uses, when he says: "I was like a gentle lamb that is led to the slaughter" (Jeremiah 11:19). By using arnion (G721) and using it so often, John wishes us to see that this is a new conception which he is bringing to men.
(i) The Lamb still bears the marks of having been slain. There we have the picture of the sacrifice of Christ, still visible in the heavenly places. Even in the heavenly places Jesus Christ is the one who loved us and gave himself for us.
(ii) There is another side to this. This same Lamb, with the marks of sacrifice still on it, is the Lamb with the seven horns and the seven eyes.
(a) The seven horns stand for omnipotence. In the Old Testament the horn stands for two things.
First, it stands for sheer power. In the blessing of Moses the horns of Joseph are like the horns of a wild ox and with them he will push the people together to the ends of the earth (Deuteronomy 33:17). Zedekiah, the prophet, made iron horns as a sign of promised triumph over the Syrians (1 Kings 22:11). The wicked is warned not to lift up his horn (Psalms 75:4). Zechariah sees the vision of the four horns which stand for the nations who have scattered Israel (Zechariah 1:18).
Second, it stands for honour. It is the confidence of the Psalmist that in the favour of God our horn shall be exalted (Psalms 89:17). The good man's horn shall be exalted with honour (Psalms 112:9). God exalts the horn of his people (Psalms 148:14).
We must add still another strand to this picture. In the time between the Testaments the great heroes of Israel were the Maccabees; they were the great warriors who were the liberators of the nations; and they are represented as horned lambs (I Enoch 90:9).
Here is the great paradox; the Lamb bears the sacrificial wounds upon it; but at the same time it is clothed with the very might of God which can now shatter its enemies. The Lamb has seven horns; the number seven stands for perfection; the power of the Lamb is perfect, beyond withstanding.
(b) The Lamb has seven eyes, and the eyes are the Spirits which are despatched into all the earth. The picture comes from Zechariah. There the prophet sees the seven lamps which are "the eyes of the Lord, which range through the whole earth" (Zechariah 4:10). It is an eerie picture; but quite clearly it stands for the omniscience of God. In an almost crude way it says that there is no place on earth which is not under the eye of God.
Here is a tremendous picture of Christ. He is the fulfilment of all the hopes and dreams of Israel, for he is the Lion of Judah and the Root of David. He is the one whose sacrifice availed for men, and who still bears the marks of it in the heavenly places. But the tragedy has turned to triumph and the shame to glory; and he is the one whose all-conquering might none can withstand and whose all-seeing eye none can escape.
Few passages of Scripture show at one and the same time what Swete called "the majesty and the meekness" of Jesus Christ and in the one picture combine the humiliation of his death and the glory of his risen life.
MUSIC IN HEAVEN (Revelation 5:7-14)