Revelation 22:13-21

22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega,

the first and the last,

the beginning and the end!) ¹ 

22:14 Blessed are those who wash their robes so they can have access ²  to the tree of life and can enter into the city by the gates. 22:15 Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers ³  and the sexually immoral, and the murderers, and the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood! ⁴ 

22:16 “I, Jesus, have sent my angel to testify to you about these things for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star!” ⁵  22:17 And the Spirit and the bride say, “Come!” And let the one who hears say: “Come!” And let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wants it take the water of life free of charge.

22:18 I testify to the one who hears the words of the prophecy contained in this book: If anyone adds to them, God will add to him the plagues described ⁶  in this book. 22:19 And if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life ⁷  and in the holy city that are described in this book.

22:20 The one who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! 22:21 The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all. ⁸ 

¹ sn These lines are parenthetical, forming an aside to the narrative. The speaker here is the Lord Jesus Christ himself rather than the narrator.

² tn Grk “so that there will be to them authority over the tree of life.”

³ tn On the term φάρμακοι (farmakoi) see L&N 53.101.

⁴ tn Or “lying,” “deceit.”

⁵ tn On this expression BDAG 892 s.v. πρωϊνός states, “early, belonging to the morning ὁ ἀστὴρ ὁ πρ. the morning star, Venus Rv 2:28; 22:16.”

⁶ tn Grk “written.”

⁷ tc The Textus Receptus, on which the KJV rests, reads “the book” of life (ἀπὸ βίβλου, apo biblou) instead of “the tree” of life. When the Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus translated the NT he had access to no Greek mss for the last six verses of Revelation. So he translated the Latin Vulgate back into Greek at this point. As a result he created seventeen textual variants which were not in any Greek mss. The most notorious of these is this reading. It is thus decidedly inauthentic, while “the tree” of life, found in the best and virtually all Greek mss, is clearly authentic. The confusion was most likely due to an intra-Latin switch: The form of the word for “tree” in Latin in this passage is ligno; the word for “book” is libro. The two-letter difference accounts for an accidental alteration in some Latin mss; that “book of life” as well as “tree of life” is a common expression in the Apocalypse probably accounts for why this was not noticed by Erasmus or the KJV translators. (This textual problem is not discussed in NA²⁷.)

⁸ tc Most mss (א Ï) read “amen” (ἀμήν, amhn) after “all” (πάντων, pantwn). It is, however, not found in other important mss (A 1006 1841 pc). It is easier to account for its addition than its omission from the text if original. Such a conclusion is routinely added by scribes to NT books because a few of these books originally had such an ending (cf. Rom 16:27; Gal 6:18; Jude 25). A majority of Greek witnesses have the concluding ἀμήν in every NT book except Acts, James, and 3 John (and even in these books, ἀμήν is found in some witnesses). It is thus a predictable variant.