March 31, 2014

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THE BLESSING AND ITS SOURCE

Revelation 1:4—6 (contd)

JOHN begins by sending them the blessing of God.
He sends them grace, and this means all the undeserved gifts of the wondrous love of God. He sends them peace, which R. H. Charles describes in his commentary as ‘the harmony restored between God and man through Christ’. But there are two extraordinary things in this greeting.
(1) John sends blessings from him who is and who was and who is to come. That is in itself a common title for God. In Exodus 3:14, the word of God to Moses is: ‘I am who I am.’ The Jewish Rabbis explained that by saying that God meant: ‘I was; I still am; and in the future I will be.’ The Greeks spoke of ‘Zeus who was, Zeus who is, and Zeus who will be.’ The Orphic worshippers, who followed one of the mystery religions, said: ‘Zeus is the first and Zeus is the last; Zeus is the head and Zeus is the middle; and from Zeus all things come.’ This is what in Hebrews so beautifully became: ‘Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever’ (Hebrews 13:8).
But, to get the full meaning of this, we must look at it in the Greek, for John breaks free of the rules of grammar to show his reverence for God. We translate the first phrase as from him who is; but that is not what the Greek says. A Greek noun is in the nominative case when it is the subject of a sentence, but when it is governed by a preposition it changes its case and its form. It is the same in English. He is the subject of a sentence; him is the object. When John says that the blessing comes from him who is, he should have put him who is in the genitive case after the preposition; but quite ungrammatically he leaves it in the nominative. It is as if we said in English from he who is, refusing to change he into him. John has such an immense reverence for God that he refuses to alter the form of his name even when the rules of grammar demand it.
John is not finished with his amazing use of language. The second phrase is from him who was. Literally, John says from the he was. The point is that who was would be in Greek a participle. The odd thing is that the verb eimi (to be) has no past participle. Instead, there is used the participle genomenos from the verb gignomai, which means not only to be but also to become. Becoming implies change, and John utterly refuses to apply any word to God that will imply any change; and so he uses a Greek phrase that is grammatically impossible and that had never been used before.
In the terrible days in which he was writing, John set his heart on the changelessness of God and used defiance of grammar to underline his faith.

Barclay, W. (2004). The Revelation of John (3rd ed. fully rev. and updated., Vol. 1, pp. 34—36). Louisville, KY; London: Westminster John Knox Press.

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