Revelation 2:8

The title from Revelation 1:17-18, with special reference to Revelation 2:10 and its situation, also to the promise of Revelation 2:11. The Smyrniote Christians, in peril of death, are addressed and encouraged by One who himself has died and risen to life. He is familiar [Revelation 2:9] with the rough brake and briars through which faith must struggle to win its crown, and this familiarity is as usual put forward as the first element of encouragement. The other notes of help are (i.) the unapproachable wealth of a devoted life, (ii.) the justice of their claim in spite of their opponents' prestige and pretensions, (iii.) the providential limit assigned to their trial, and (iv.) its ample reward, besides the fact that Christ does not conceal from them the worst. πτωχ. Contrast R. Jochanan's aphorism: “Whosoever fulfils the Torah in poverty will at length fulfil it in wealth; and whosoever neglects the Torah in wealth, will at length neglect it in poverty” (Pirke Aboth, iv. 13). The subsequent allusion to Jews acquires fresh point from a comparison with (Chagigah, 9 b) another contemporary rabbi's comment on Isaiah 48:10 : “this means that the Holy One sought for all good qualities to give to Israel, and found only poverty”. Ἰουδ. Does the prophet resent (see on this, von Dobschütz, Texte u. Unters. xi. 1. 35 f.) the Jewish claim to the title of God's people, declaring in so many words (as Matthew 21:43), that Judaism, so far as it is genuine, is now inside the church, and that the Jewish nation has forfeited its privilege and is now a pseudo-church (Harnack, H. D. i. 177 179)? If the passage does not breathe this common antipathy, the calumnies may be supposed to have taken the form of taunts upon the Christian delusion of believing that a Palestinian peasant and criminal was messiah, or of slanders upon Christian morals and motives (reff.), or of malicious, anonymous accusations laid before the Roman authorities with reference to revolutionary designs on the part of the churches. “Les Orientaux prennent d'ordinaire la religion comme un prétexte de taquineries” (Renan). Judaism was strong at Smyrna, and its hostility to the Christians (see Otto's notes on Just. Dial. xvi. 11, xxxv., etc.) would not be lessened by the accession of converts from the old faith to the new (Ign. ad Smyrn. i. 2, describes the saints and faithful folk of Christ εἴτε ἐν Ἰουδαίοις εἴτε ἐν ἔθνεσιν); the reasons for such social animosity and interference are analysed in Jowett's note on 1 Thessalonians 3:13, in E. G. Hardy's Christianity and the Roman Government, pp. 45 53, and in Ramsay's Seven Letters, 272 f. At the martyrdom of Polykarp in Smyrna, some years after the Apocalypse was written (as later still at the death of Pionius, 250 A.D.) the Jews made themselves conspicuous by denouncing him with the pagan mob before the Asiarch (ἀκατασχέτῳ θυμῷ καὶ μεγάλῃ φωνῇ), eagerly assisting to heap faggots on his pile (προθύμως, ὡς ἔθος αὐτοῖς), and helping to prevent the Christians from obtaining the martyr's body (ὑποβαλλόντων καὶ ἐνισχυόντων τῶν Ἰουδαίων : Mart. Polyk. xii., xvii.). The name of “Jew,” ancient and honourable, is claimed (καὶ οὐκ εἰσί) for believers in Jesus the messiah, who constitute the real people of God with a legitimate claim to the privileges and titles of the O.T. community. “Now by our faith we have become more than those who seemed to have God” (2 Clem. ii. 3). συν. σατ. a bitter retort to the contemporary claims of Judaism with its σ. τοῦ κυρίου (cf. Numbers 16:3; Numbers 20:4, Ps. Sol. 17:18, σ. ὁσίων). The allusion here is to Jewish, in Revelation 2:13 (throne of S.) to pagan, and in Revelation 2:24 (depths of S.) to heretical, antagonism.