Charles Ellicott Commentary Revelation 7

And after these things... Better, And after this I saw four angels standing at the four corners of the earth, holding fast the four winds of the earth, so that a wind might not blow upon the earth, nor upon the sea, nor upon any tree.

In the sixth seal the winds had blown and had shaken violently the fig tree, causing its untimely figs to drop off. The untimely or winter figs represented those whose religious life was unequal to the strain of trial, and who failed in the crisis to which they were exposed. But is all the fruit shaken off? No; Christ had said that if a man does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch; but that those who abided in Him, purged by their trials, would bring forth more fruit, and the fruit which these bore was not a fruit easily shaken off, but fruit that should remain (John 15:6; John 15:5; John 15:16).

They would not be like winter figs, easily torn from the boughs, for their strength was in God. Before the stormy winds of manifold trials had blown, they had been sealed with the seal of the living God. This is the scene which is brought before us in this chapter. In it, the care of God, who restrains the winds from violence so that they should not shake the immature fruit too soon, the tokens by which the sealed are known, and the meaning of their sealing are set forth.

The chapter, in fact, answers the solemn question of the last chapter: Who is able to stand? The winds are clearly emblems of days of trouble or judgment. As the winds sweep away the chaff and clear the atmosphere, so do judgments try the ungodly, who are like the chaff which the wind drives away. The storm of God’s judgments shakes the mountains and the wilderness, and strips the oaks of the forest (Compare to Psalm 29).

These winds of judgment are ready to blow from all quarters (four corners of the earth), but they are restrained until the servants of God are sealed. For passages where winds are used as emblems of judgment, see especially Jeremiah 49:36-37, Upon Elam I will bring the four winds from the four quarters of heaven. And I will bring evil upon them, even My fierce anger, saith the Lord.

Compare also Daniel 7:2, I saw in my vision by night, and, behold, the four winds of the heaven strove upon the great sea. But those tempests would not arise or shake a single leaf until the securing of God’s servants was accomplished.

And I saw another angel...—Translate: And I saw another angel going up from the rising of the sun, having a seal of the living God, and he was crying with a great voice to the four angels to whom it was given to injure the earth and the sea, saying, Do not injure the earth, nor the sea, nor the trees, until we have sealed the servants of our God upon their foreheads.

The angels appear as carrying out the purposes of God. This angel rises into view from the door of the dawn. In the midst of the dark symptoms of coming storm and judgment, a light springs up for the righteous and joyful gladness for those who are true-hearted: they need not be afraid of evil news, whose hearts stand firm, believing in the Lord.

This angel carries a seal of the living God. The seal is the emblem of security. The seal was placed on our Lord’s sepulchre to keep the tomb safe from invasion; the king’s seal was, in the same way, placed on the stone that was laid at the mouth of the den in which Daniel was imprisoned: the king sealed it with his own signet (Daniel 6:17). The entrusting of the seal into the hands of others was the token that royal authority had been for the time delegated to man. So Jezebel wrote letters in Ahab’s name, and sealed them with his seal (1 Kings 21:8). Esther obtained the use of the king’s seal to protect her countrymen from the mischief devised by Haman: for the writing which is written in the king’s name, and sealed with the king’s ring, may no man reverse (Esther 8:8).

There is also a seal of the living God. St. Paul tells us that this seal bears two legends. The foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, ‘The Lord knoweth them that are his,’ and, ‘Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity’ (2 Timothy 2:19). On the one side, it is dependence on and communion with God; on the other side, it is holiness of life. The sealed are found in Christ, not having their own righteousness, but the righteousness that is of God by faith (Philippians 3:9). For this is the righteousness that will endure to the end, and that is found in them who are sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance (Ephesians 1:13–14). God’s image and superscription is impressed on them; just as afterwards we are told of all the servants of God, His name shall be in their foreheads (Revelation 22:4).

This token is a true safeguard and talisman; as the sprinkled blood on the lintel protected the house from the destroying angel at the first Passover. It is also a token of those who have not conformed to the evil world; they are like those whom Ezekiel saw in Jerusalem, when the Lord sent the man with the inkhorn to set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done (Ezekiel 9:4).

There has been much misapprehension respecting this act of sealing. It has been said that it implies security, and assures God’s servants of protection in the coming judgments: this is, in a sense, true; but the sealing, as will have been seen by the passages quoted above, is that sealing of the Spirit, that root of heavenly life in the soul, which is the pledge of the soul’s union with God; and the terms of the charter of their protection are, Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good?

In the Bible idea, sin, or moral defilement, is the only real evil: all other things work together for good. The breastplate that turns aside the fiery darts is the breastplate of righteousness: those who, escaping the corruptions that are in the world through lust, become partakers of the divine nature are in consequence victorious over all the evil.

They are not exempt from the vicissitudes and tribulation of life: the winds are let loose to blow, but they are sealed, and they cannot be shaken; for what and who can separate them from the love of Christ? They are sealed by the Holy Spirit; they have an earnest of that Spirit in their hearts (Ephesians 4:30; 2 Corinthians 1:22), and the pledge of His power in their lives.

St. John gives the same twofold test as St. Paul (2 Timothy 2:9):

1. Hereby know we that we dwell in him, and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit (1 John 4:13); and
2. Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments (1 John 2:3).

The sealing is on the forehead: it is God’s mark, but it is where all may see it. By their fruits ye shall know them.

The cry of the angel is, Injure not the sea nor the trees. Doubtless the sea and trees are mentioned as these are the objects that would be most disturbed and injured by a storm of wind. Trees are used as emblems of real and of pretended religionism. The true-hearted in faith are described as trees planted by the waterside, whose fruit does not wither; and it is singular that St. Jude, who pictures the Antinomian teachers of his day under the image of autumn trees (not trees whose fruit withereth, as in English version) without fruit, immediately adds an expression that almost suggests the sudden uprising of a testing storm: the fruitless trees are plucked up by the roots (Jude 1:12).

And I heard the number of them . . . The passage can be translated: And I heard the number of the sealed: there were a hundred and forty and four thousand sealed out of every tribe of the sons of Israel.

These verses suggest two or three questions. What are we to understand by the number twelve thousand from each tribe? Who are these who are drawn from the tribes of Israel? Why is there a change in the order and names of the tribes?

It may help us to achieve clearer thoughts if we take the second of these questions first.

1. Who are these one hundred and forty-four thousand? An answer to this has been partly anticipated in our previous comments, but perhaps a fuller consideration is needed. Some have thought that the sealed ones must be Jewish Christians; that is, they are disposed to take the twelve tribes literally.

   The scope of the previous verses seems decisive against this view. The time of judgment and trial is drawing near; we have seen the tokens of the coming storm in the opening of the sixth seal. Our wish is to know the lot of the saints of God; this chapter answers this wish: they are safe, having the seal of God. Now, to limit the answer to Israelite Christians is to break in abruptly upon the general flow of thought with a bold literalism. The sealed ones are explained to be the servants of God; the description that follows proclaims them to be the Israel of God.

   It would be a strange leap away from the subject to introduce a sudden limitation of thought. Nor is there any necessity for doing so. Israelite and Jewish names are freely adopted by the sacred writers and used in a spiritual sense without any explanation of such usage. The Apostle most emphatically laid down the principle that he is not a Jew which is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh, but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit and not in the letter (Romans 2:28–29); and he applies this principle by affirming that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek (Galatians 3:28).

   The Christian Church absorbs the Jewish Church, inherits her privileges, and adopts, with wider and nobler meaning, her phraseology. She has her Jerusalem, but it is a heavenly Jerusalem (Hebrews 12:22), a Jerusalem from above (Galatians 4:26), a new Jerusalem (Revelation 21:2). To that Jerusalem of God, the true Israel of God—the chosen generation and royal priesthood of every age—turns the eye of faith.

   It is needless to say that this view does not rob the Jew of God’s promises, as has been asserted. It only intensifies those promises by showing the growth of that Church in which the Jew may yet find the truest consummation of his holiest and highest hopes, and into which God is yet able to graft them in again (Romans 11:23, 25-26), and in which he may yet play a part loftier than people dream of.

2. How are we to understand the numbers? Since we cannot adopt the literal interpretation of the tribes of Israel, still less can we admit a literal interpretation of the numbers mentioned here. However, they are not on this ground to be looked upon as meaningless; there is an appropriate symbolism in the numbers of the Apocalypse.

   Twelve is used as the number of those who in every age have been called out to witness for some truth that the world needed. Thus, the twelve tribes of Israel were the appointed witnesses of a pure theology and a pure morality in the days of idolatry and license; and later, the twelve Apostles became the inheritors of a similar, though higher, spiritual work in the world.

   The number twelve, then, stands for a world-witness of divine truth. The fruit of this world-witness is a wide and sustained success: the twelve multiplied by twelve, a thousand-fold—“the native and not degenerate progeny of the Apostles apostolically multiplied” (Mede, quoted by Dr. Currey). The skeleton organization is twelve, the college of the Apostles; the one hundred and forty-four thousand represent the growth into full numbers of the choice ones of God.

3. Does the change in the order and names of the tribes symbolize anything? The alterations are not without significance.

   They are briefly these: The tribe of Dan is omitted, and the name of Ephraim does not appear. However, the number is made up to twelve by two representatives of Joseph: Manasseh, who stands sixth in order, and Joseph (superseding the name but representing the tribe of Ephraim), who is placed eleventh on the list.

   The number twelve is maintained to show that in all changes God’s purposes stand.

   The omission of one tribe and the changed name of another are designed to show that in the Church, as in Israel, the most splendid opportunities may be lost.

   Dan, once a tribe—and not an insignificant one—which had reared its heroes, gradually lapsed into idolatry and immorality, dwindled in numbers and importance, and eventually disappeared, becoming extinct as a tribe. Its omission in this list is a silent but emphatic comment on the sacred warnings: Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall. And, Begin not to say we have Abraham to our father: God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.

   Similarly, Ephraim, as has been suggested by a thoughtful writer, who exalted himself in Israel, is now lost in the greater name of Joseph (Hosea 10:11; Luke 18:14).

   The order of the names is altered. Reuben no longer stands first: Judah has taken the firstborn’s place. Levi, though named, does not occupy the third, the place of his birthright, but the eighth place. Here, again, the changes have their teachings.

   The unstable Reuben, with all his splendid advantages—the firstborn, the excellency of dignity and the excellency of power—failed to hold his own among his brethren. The fatal instability of his character accompanied his history and weakened his otherwise pre-eminent powers. Yet weak and erring, the type of the brilliant and vacillating, he is not an outcast altogether but finds a place, and a high place, among the servants of God.

   Judah, lion-like, resolute, and strong, wins the foremost place. From him springs the true Ruler, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, to unfold the counsels of God and to rule the world with a righteous sceptre.

   Levi’s subordinate position is thought to be due to the fact that the Mosaic ritual and Levitical priesthood are at an end. This may be so.

   The changes are the result of the actual history of the tribes and illustrate how in the Christian Church, as in the Jewish, privileges may be lost, opportunities seized or cast away, and offices and functions used for a time and then laid aside when their work is accomplished. But in all and through all changes, God’s unchanging purpose runs onward to its certain close.

The grouping of the tribes is, as has been pointed out, in the order of closest kinship: “We find not one violent separation of those who are naturally united, where both are truly members of the Israel of God” (Rev. C. H. Waller, Names on Gates of Pearl).

After this I beheld . . .—Better, After these things I saw, and behold! a great multitude which no one was able to number, out of every nation, and (all) tribes, and peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne, and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, and palm branches in their hands.

A great multitude: We have just had the picture of the sealing of a multitude which could be numbered; now we have the picture of a countless throng. Who are these? Are they the same as the one hundred and forty-four thousand, or are they others? Our answer must be that this vision gives the climax of the previous one. The sealing represented the Passover of the Church: this vision represents its Feast of Tabernacles. The sealing assured us that in the midst of the severe times of testing there would be those who, wearing God’s armor, would come forth unscathed: this vision shows us the fruition of their labor and their rest after conflict. The sealing assured us that God’s hidden ones would be safe in trouble: this tells us that they have come safe out of it—they are those who have come out of the great tribulation (Revelation 7:14).

But how can the numbered of the one vision be the same as the numberless of the next? They are numbered in the first vision, as it is one of the assurances of their safety. In that vision the idea of their security in trial and danger is the main one. The servants of God are safe, for they are sealed and numbered; they are among those sheep of Christ whom He calls by name, whose very hairs are numbered; they are those whose reliance is not on self, but on their Shepherd; and the sealing is the echo of Christ’s words, they shall never perish; they are the servants of God, known by Him and recognised by Him.

But in the next vision, the expanding prospects of the Church and her final repose are shown to us. The idea of victory and peace, not so much safety in danger as freedom from it, is set forth; and then countless multitudes are seen; the numbered are found to be numberless; countless as the sand by the sea and as the stars in heaven, they are yet in the reckoning and knowledge of Him who telleth the number of the stars and calleth them all by their names.

The numbering must not be understood to imply limitation. We have seen that it is a number which symbolizes expansive energy and extensive success; it implies the real security and widespread growth of the Church of God; it has no limits; it gathers from every nation, and people; it welcomes all; where there is neither Jew, nor Greek, barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free; its gates are open all night and all day to every quarter of the world—

“From earth’s wide bounds, from ocean’s farthest coast,
Through gates of pearl stream in the countless host,
Singing to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Alleluia.”

The multitude are clothed with white robes, and carry palm branches in their hands. It has been thought that these are the emblems of victory; they doubtless are tokens of a triumph: it is the sacred rejoicing of the Israel of God. The imagery is drawn from the Feast of Tabernacles: just as the sealing reminded us of the protecting sign on the lintels of the houses of Israel in Egypt, so do these palm branches and songs of joy recall the ceremonies of the later feast.

No imagery would be more natural to the sacred seer, and none more appropriate to his subject. The Feast of Tabernacles commemorated God’s care over them in the wilderness, and their gratitude for the harvest. The people forsook the houses, and dwelt in booths; the streets were full of glad multitudes who carried branches of palm, and olive, and myrtle; everywhere the sounds of rejoicing and singing were heard; there was very great gladness (Exodus 23:16; Leviticus 23:43; Nehemiah 8:14–17). The vision here shows us a far greater feast. “The troubles of the wilderness are ended, the harvest-home of the Church is come,” and God tabernacles (Revelation 7:15) among His servants.

And cried with a loud voice . . .—Better, And they cry with a loud voice, saying, The salvation to our God who sits upon the throne, and to the Lamb.

Their cry, uttered with a loud voice, is the acknowledgment that their salvation—the salvation which they now taste—is due not to themselves, but to their God and to the Lamb.

The salvation here must, I think, be taken in its most comprehensive sense, including every deliverance—from the curse of law, from the power of sin, and from the perils of life.

The explanation in Revelation 7:14 confirms this. (Philippians 3:9.)

This is the voice of rejoicing and salvation which is in the tabernacles of the righteous, when the Lord, who is their strength and song, has become their salvation (Psalms 118:14).

Note the recurrence of the Lamb. They are before the throne and before the Lamb; their salvation is ascribed to God and to the Lamb.