Revelation 1:13

The churches are inseparable from their head and centre Jesus, who moves among the cressets of his temple with the dignity and authority of a high priest. The anarthrous ὑ. ἀ. is the human appearance of the celestial messiah, as in En. xlvi. 1 6 (where the Son of man accompanies God, who, as the Head of Days, had a head “white as wool”) and Asc. Isa. xi. 1. The difficult ὅμοιον is to be explained (with Vit. ii. 127, 223, 227) as = ὡς (Revelation 2:18; Revelation 6:14; Revelation 9:7-8; Revelation 9:11) or οἶον, “something like,” a loose reproduction of the Heb. (“un être semblable à nous, un homme”). The whole passage illustrates the writer's habit of describing an object or person by heaping up qualities without strict regard to natural or grammatical collocation. ποδήρης (sc. χιτὼν or ἐσθής), a long robe reaching to the feet, was an oriental mark of dignity (cf. on Revelation 1:7, and Ezekiel 9:2; Ezekiel 9:11, LXX), denoting high rank or office such as that of Parthian kings or of the Jewish high priest who wore a purple one. High girding (with a belt?) was another mark of lofty position, usually reserved for Jewish priests, though the Iranians frequently appealed to their deities as “high-girt” (i.e., ready for action = cf. Yasht 15:54, 57, “Vaya of the golden girdle, high-up girded, swift moving, as powerful in sovereignty as any absolute sovereign in the world”). The golden buckle or πόρπη was part of the insignia of royalty and its φίλοι (1Ma 10:8-9; 1Ma 11:58). The author thus mixes royal and sacerdotal colours on his palette to heighten the majesty of Christ's appearance. New, golden (as in Iranian eschatology), shining, white are the usual adjectives which he employs throughout the book for the transcendent bliss of the life beyond and its heavenly tenants; “golden” had been used already in Greek as a synonym for precious, excellent, divine.