Revelation 22:7

Here as elsewhere it is irrelevant to ask, who is the speaker? Angels are the envoys and mouthpieces of God here as in the O.T., and therefore entitled to speak in his name or in that of Christ. “The Oriental mind hardly distinguishes between an ancient personage and one who appears in his power and spirit” (A. B. Davidson on Ezekiel 34:23). In 4 Esd. 5:31 40 the angel is also addressed as if he were the Lord the angelic personality evidently fading into the divine, as here, and the writer being equally unconscious of any incongruity in the representation (cf. Zechariah 3:1-4). As the “showing” of the ἅ δ. γ. ἐν τ. is (Revelation 1:1) an ἀποκ. of Jesus, he (or a word of his) naturally breaks in (7 a). τηρῶν κ. τ. λ., an apocalyptic form of emphasis. Cf. e.g., Slav. En. xlvii. 1 3 and xxxvi. (“tell thou thy sons and all thy household before Me, that they may listen to what is spoken to them by thee … and let them always keep my commandments, and begin to read and understand the books written out by thee”). All apocalypses were meant to be transmitted to mankind, but the usual method of delivery is complicated (cf. En. lxxxii. 1, 2; Slav. En. xxxiii. 9, xlvii. 2, 3, etc.).