Revelation 21:7

These boons (Revelation 21:3-7), however, are reserved for the loyal; the third (son of God) was a title applied to Augustus and the emperors generally throughout the Greek and Roman world. κληρονομήσει (here only in Apoc.) in general sense = “enter into possession of,” “partake of”. (“This place” of bliss “is prepared for the righteous who endure every kind of attack in their lives from those who afflict their souls … for them this place is prepared as an eternal inheritance,” Slav. En. ix.). This is the sole allusion, and a purely incidental one, to that central conception of the messianic bliss as a κληρονομία, which bulks so prominently in apocalypses like Fourth Esdras and is employed in a cosmic sense by Paul as lordship over the whole creation (see Bacon, Biblical and Semitic Studies, Yale Univ. 1902, pp. 240 f.). The solitary allusion to sonship expresses the close relation to God for which this writer elsewhere prefers to use the metaphor of priesthood. Partly owing to the bent of his mind, partly owing to the stern circumstances of his age, he (like Clem. Rom.) allows the majesty and mystery of God to overshadow that simple and close confidence which Jesus inculcated towards the Father (Titius, 13, 14), as also the direct love of God for his people (only in Revelation 3:9; Revelation 3:19; Revelation 20:9).