Revelation 2:16

The church as a whole must repent of her too tolerant attitude to these errorists, but the threatened visitation is directed against the errorists themselves in the shape of some physical malady or mortal sickness, according to the current belief in early Christianity (cf. on 1Co 5:4-5; 1 Corinthians 5:13; 1 Corinthians 11:30, Everling: die paul. Angelologie, etc., 20 f.). Grotius refers the threat to the prophetic order (“prophetas suscitabo in ecclesia”). But the ethnic conscience generally regarded pestilence or any physical calamity as a punishment inflicted by the god for some offence against his ritual or some breach of morals. In the Hexateuch, the sword opposes (Numbers 22:23; Numbers 22:31) and finally slays (Numbers 31:8) Balaam. The run of thought in the verse is that if the church does not repent, i.e., if she does not act on her own initiative and expel the wrongdoers (in the hope of them ultimately coming to a better mind, 1 Corinthians 5:4-5), she must submit to having them cut out of her, and thus being irretrievably lost by death. The church is responsible for her erring members, and the exercise of discipline is viewed as a duty to them as well as to herself and God. Weak laxity is false kindness, the prophet implies; it merely exposes offenders to an alternative far more dreadful than discipline itself. The sword, Viet, remarks on Revelation 1:16, is used to punish deserters as well as to win victory for the faithful. For instrumental ἐν in the pre-Christian vernacular, see Tebtunis Papyri vol. 1. (p. 86) ἐν μαχαίρῃ - αις.