Revelation 8:1

Revelation 8:1. The opening of the seals is resumed in almost exactly the same strain as before in chap. 6. When the seventh seal was opened there followed a silence in heaven. This silence is generally supposed to relate to the cessation either of the songs of praise spoken of in chap. 7, or of the trials of the Church, which is now to enjoy a blessed period of rest. Both interpretations are unsatisfactory: the first, because, having returned to the subject of chap. 6, we have now nothing to do with chap. 7, and because it is hardly possible to imagine that the Seer would represent the songs of the heavenly host as interrupted even for a moment; the second, because the silence took place ‘in heaven,' and cannot represent the rest of the Church on earth. We suggest that the ‘silence' alluded to refers only to the cessation of the ‘lightnings and voices and thunders' of chap. Revelation 4:5. These are the accompaniments of the Almighty's throne in that aspect of it with which St. John has especially to do (comp. chap. 6:1). They probably did not pause while the seals were opening. Now they cease; and the meaning is that there is a pause in the judgments of God before a second and higher manifestation of them takes place.

This interpretation may find support in what appears to be the meaning of the words half an hour, words which are neither to be literally understood, nor to be regarded as expressing only a short space of time without having been suggested by any definite idea in the writer's mind. Omitting all reference to the views of others, it seems to us that three considerations may be noted; first, that the word ‘hour,' though here part of a compound word, can hardly be separated from the ‘hour' so often spoken of by our Lord ‘This is your hour, and the power of darkness;' ‘The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified;' ‘Father, save me from this hour, but for this cause came I unto this hour' (Luke 22:53; John 12:23; John 12:27); secondly, that the idea embodied in the ‘half' of anything is that of the thing interrupted or broken, as in three and a half the half of seven; thirdly, that St. John is frequently in the habit of marking a pause before any great step in the further development of the history which he gives is taken. We see this last trait of his mode of thought on different occasions in the Fourth Gospel, and a marked illustration of it is afforded in Revelation 20. Keeping these points in view, the silence of half an hour may well be understood to mean that the hour of judgment is interrupted or broken. In other words, judgment is not yet completed, and we must pause in order to prepare for that unfolding of it which is yet to come.