Revelation 5:8

Revelation 5:8. The four living creatures are mentioned first as being nearest the throne; but all they do at this moment is to fall down before the Lamb. There is no reason to think that they have also harps and golden bowls, or that they join in the song of Revelation 5:9. Such a song is unsuitable to beings which mainly represent the material creation; and ‘the prayers of the saints' are more naturally presented by the twenty-four priestly Elders. The language of the four living creatures is given at Revelation 5:14. In the remainder of Revelation 5:8, therefore, we have to do only with the Elders. (1) Each has a harp, the idea being taken from the Tabernacle and the Temple service. (2) The twenty-four Elders have also golden bowls full of incense; not the ordinary bowls used by the priests in the first or outer apartment of the Tabernacle, but rather that used by the high priest when he went into the Holy of Holies once a year. The Church of Christ is clothed with high-priestly functions, and has access into the immediate presence of God. The incense is the prayers of the saints, that is, of God's suffering saints. The Elders on their thrones are the representatives of the Church triumphant. It is to be noted, on the one hand, that the latter do not pray for themselves, that for themselves they praise; and on the other, that they are not intercessors for the saints on earth, that they but offer to the Lamb the prayers of the saints, of whom they are, as it were, the hand rather than the mouthpiece. Were we, with some commentators, to understand by ‘the saints' those in heaven, it would be difficult to draw a sufficiently clear line of distinction between them and the twenty-four Elders.

The bowls are full (comp. John 2:7; John 19:29; John 21:11). (3) Further still, the twenty-four Elders sing.