churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia and Laodicea.”
If one thinks of the Revelation in terms of a majestic drama, then the function of the first chapter is to introduce the reader to the three primary dramatis personae. Thus verses 1–8, which function very much as the preamble to the whole, at the same time introduce the major “player,” Christ himself. The function of the present paragraph is to situate the second “player,” the author John, in his own context, while at the same time introducing his primary readership, who are the third major “player,” and who will then be elaborated in some detail in chapters 2 and 3.
Thus John begins with an extended identification of himself and his present situation, locating himself both relationally and positionally. He first identifies himself as his readers’ brother and companion, which he then elaborates in three ways, held together by a single definite article (the) and each modified by the concluding phrase, that are ours in Jesus. The order of these identifying words is especially noteworthy. First, John is their companion in suffering. Interestingly enough, the Greek word translated “suffering” here is thlipsis, a word that will occur only four more times in the book, three of which have to do with the present plight of believers (in 2:9 and 10 to describe the situation of the church in Smyrna, and in 7:14 to refer to that of the martyrs). This is the word that describes their present situation in the world dominated by the Roman Empire.8 It is a word that also occurs frequently in Paul’s letters to describe the current situation of believers in an otherwise hostile world.
But John is also their “companion” in the kingdom, the word he used to describe believers in the doxology in verse 6. Here is the word that especially reminds them of the “kingdom” greater than that of Rome, since the latter’s rule is only temporal, and thus temporary. Finally, John is also their companion in patient endurance, another word that will recur in the letters to the seven churches (2:2–3; 2:19; 3:10) and will be part of the reminder vis-à-vis emperor worship in 14:12.
Notably, each of these realities (suffering, the kingdom, and endurance) finds its place and significance as ours in Jesus. Thus whatever else may be true of John as a Christian prophet, he is also part of a believing community with whom he shares both the life of the kingdom and the associated hostility from the same Empire that executed their Lord. It is of further interest that this designation of our Lord by his earthly name alone, which will recur at the end of the verse, will appear seven more times in the Revelation,9 and in each instance it has to do with his own “witness,” or “testimony,” as in the rest of the present sentence.
At the same time John also locates himself geographically: I . . . was on the island of Patmos. This is a little piece of land in the Aegean Sea about forty miles southwest of Ephesus. Whether it was otherwise inhabited in John’s day cannot be known, since it is basically a mountain crest jutting up out of the sea, about eight miles long and five miles wide and shaped like an elongated C. John’s presence there suggests that it was probably used by the Romans as a penal colony, whose amenities in John’s day simply cannot be known. It was almost certainly under the political jurisdiction of the province of Asia, and thus of Ephesus. The reason John was a prisoner on Patmos is clear enough—because he was a follower of the risen Christ. His way of putting it is simply to repeat what he says about the present book in verse 2 (q.v.): because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus.
Finally, John locates himself temporally and spiritually, as being in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day. This is the first known instance in written history of the term “the Lord’s Day,” which only by the mid-second century10 is used undoubtedly as a term to refer to Sunday, as the day on which the resurrection took place—or at least the day the tomb was discovered to be empty, since we do not know when the resurrection itself happened. Two items are especially noteworthy here. First, the English possessive “the Lord’s” is not in the Greek genitive (possessive) case, but is rather an adjective coined from the noun “Lord,” and means something like “in honor of” or “pertaining to” the Lord. Although some debate surrounds this word, it should be noted that by the mid-second century this word was used to distinguish Christian from Jewish devotion,11 thus indicating that it had already been in use for a considerable length of time. Given the significance of Sabbath observance for the earliest followers of Jesus, who were Jewish, the only possible explanation for the phenomenon of calling Sunday “the Lord’s Day” is the probability that they held a weekly remembrance of the resurrection.
In this setting John announces, I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet. Whether John intended this to mean that the voice itself sounded like a trumpet, or whether this is merely associative language (the voice had the effect of a trumpet call) cannot be known. But in either case one can be quite certain that this is an echo of the threefold mention of Israel’s hearing “a very loud trumpet” at Sinai (Exodus 19:16/19 and 20:18). Whatever else, John probably intended this to be a wake-up call for the recipients. But sounding “like a trumpet” as it did, it is nonetheless still a “voice,” one that had something to say to John himself.
The content of what the voice says is in effect a command for John to write the document we know as the Revelation; but it comes to him by way of the vision he is about to be given. He is first told to write on a scroll what you see. This is followed by a second command, having to do with its primary destination: send it to the seven churches: to Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. These churches when connected by road make a long, thin horseshoe-shaped semi-circle from Ephesus through Smyrna to Pergamum in the north—still on or close to the Aegean Sea—and then inland in a south-southeasterly direction down to Laodicea, which is about eighty miles east and slightly south of Ephesus. The spiritual conditions of these churches, in light of the coming holocaust, is what will dominate John’s concerns in chapters 2 and 3.
The Dramatis Personae: John’s Vision of Christ (1:12–16)
12I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. And when I turned I saw seven golden lampstands, 13and among the lampstands was someone like a son of man, 12 dressed in a robe reaching down to his feet and with a golden sash around his chest. 14The hair on his head was white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were like blazing fire. 15His feet were like bronze glowing in a furnace, and his voice was like the sound of rushing waters. 16In his right hand he held seven stars, and coming out of his mouth was a sharp, double-edged sword. His face was like the sun shining in all its brilliance.
After describing his response to the booming voice he had heard, John then turned around to look at the figure himself, expressed in abbreviated form: I turned around to see the voice that was speaking to me. What John offers first, however, is the setting: I saw seven golden lampstands,13 which are almost certainly to be understood as the menorah, a lampstand with seven candles burning brightly. The “lampstands” themselves will be identified at the end (v. 20) as the seven churches to be addressed by letter in chapters 2 and 3. But John’s immediate interest is not in the lampstands as such, but in the figure who is standing in the midst of them, whom John will go on to describe by way of elements from Daniel 7 and 10 (plus Ezekiel 1).
The description includes seven particulars (hair, eyes, feet, voice, right hand, mouth, and face), five of which have to do with the head; only the feet and right hand are from elsewhere on the body. The figure, John says, was like14 a son of man, which all of his readers will know from the Gospel narratives is the title Jesus used of himself. But it does not appear here in titular form; rather it is expressed in the precise language of Daniel 7:13, where the mysterious figure (from the perspective of the readers of the
