Charles Ellicott Commentary Revelation 22:13

"I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." — Revelation 22:13 (ASV)

I am Alpha . . . — Here , we should render, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. (See Note as above, and compare John 1:1; Isaiah 44:6.) The repetition of these glorious titles is not a mere idle repetition, or designed to give a rhetorical fullness to the peroration of the book: it is closely allied with the preceding thought. The warning has been given that people, by continuing in sin (Revelation 22:11), are inviting against themselves the law by which act ripens to habit, habit makes character, and character forms destiny.

The moral laws set going by sin work thus: Retribution is no dream: it is a terrible fact: it is written large over nature. But the eternal laws of God, though righteously ordered, are not God: the refuge from the eternal laws which we invoke against ourselves by our sin is to be found in the Eternal God: I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. For those hunted by the wickedness of their own doings, God himself provides a refuge: underneath all laws are the everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27). The next verses set the way of refuge and safety before us.