Revelation4chapter 4

Revelation 4:1

A door was opened in heaven marks the hinge of the whole book, the seven letters to the things which are now give way to things which must be hereafter, John's own words at 1:19 fulfilled in this verse's grammar. Come up hither summons the seer bodily into the throne room, and the site's futurist reading notes what follows, the word church, so constant through chapters 2 and 3, does not appear again in an earthly setting until chapter 19, an argument from silence rather than a proof, and stated here as the site's own reading among others that find no such significance in the gap.

Revelation 4:2-3

In the spirit again, as at 1:10, John sees a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on the throne, the vision's center from which every later scene in the book takes its bearing. He that sat was to look upon like a jasper and a sardine stone declines to describe a face, giving instead the fire and blood-red brilliance of gemstone light, and a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald recalls Genesis 9's covenant sign, mercy circling judgment even in the throne room's first glimpse.

Revelation 4:4

Four and twenty seats hold four and twenty elders, clothed in white raiment, with crowns of gold, human figures enthroned and crowned rather than the winged creatures of the next verses. Their number and dress draw three readings with holders, the redeemed church under a symbolic twenty-four combining the twelve tribes and twelve apostles, a representative body of Old and New Testament saints together, or an order of angelic elders distinct from the redeemed altogether, and the crowns of gold, stephanoi, victor's crowns rather than diadems of reigning royalty, favor the reading that these are overcomers already rewarded.

Revelation 4:5

Lightnings and thunderings and voices proceeding from the throne echo Sinai's own theophany in Exodus 19:16, the same God who thundered over the giving of the law now thundering over the vision of its consummation. Seven lamps of fire burning before the throne, which are the seven Spirits of God ties this scene to 1:4's greeting and 3:1's title for Christ, the Spirit in his sevenfold fulness now pictured as light kept burning before the throne itself.

Revelation 4:6

A sea of glass like unto crystal stands before the throne, its stillness a picture some hold against the tabernacle's own bronze laver, purity fixed and settled rather than needing constant washing, and its glass-like transparency naming a holiness with nothing hidden beneath it. Four beasts full of eyes before and behind introduces the living creatures under the King James's older sense of the word, translating the Greek zoa, living ones, never the therion, beast, of chapter 13's sea-monster; the eyes speak of unceasing watchfulness, missing nothing that passes before the throne.

Revelation 4:7-8

a lion: The four living creatures, a lion, a calf, a face as a man, and a flying eagle, gather Ezekiel 1:10's cherubim and Isaiah 6:2's seraphim into one throne-room vision, each full of eyes and each with six wings. A patristic tradition running back to Irenaeus reads the four as portraits of the fourfold Gospel, Matthew's royal lion, Mark's serving ox, Luke's human Son of man, John's soaring eagle, a reading held with honour though the text itself assigns them no such application, and their unceasing cry, holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, repeats Isaiah 6:3's own threefold Trisagion before the same throne, day and night without rest.

Revelation 4:9-11

When the living creatures give glory to him that liveth for ever and ever, the twenty-four elders answer in turn, falling down, casting their crowns before the throne, and singing the book's first worthy-hymn, Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power, a hymn to creation answered in chapter 5 by a second hymn to redemption, the Lamb found worthy to open the scroll. For thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created grounds worship in God's own will rather than in any necessity, the creature's existence owed entirely to a pleasure that needed nothing outside itself to be satisfied.