To the Church in Smyrna (2:8–11)
8“To the angel of the church in Smyrna write:
These are the words of him who is the First and the Last, who died and came to life again. 9I know your afflictions and your poverty—yet you are rich! I know about the slander of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are a synagogue of Satan. 10Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you life as your victor’s crown.
11Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Those who are victorious will not be hurt at all by the second death.
John’s second letter is directed to the church in Smyrna, a city about fifty miles north of Ephesus at the head of a deep gulf, and therefore with an excellent harbor. In wealth, commercial importance, and splendor, it was one of the foremost cities of Asia Minor. A temple in honor of the emperor Tiberius had been granted the city in 20 CE; hence it had also become a leading site for emperor worship. The origin of the church itself is unknown, but is probably related to Paul’s mission to Ephesus on one of his several stays there. The church in Smyrna is better known to us in the years just beyond John’s time, through the letters of Ignatius of Antioch. On his way to Rome for martyrdom Ignatius had stopped for a short stay in Smyrna, where he also wrote four of his seven preserved letters. The letter he wrote back to the church in Smyrna and to Polycarp, its “bishop,”7 when he traveled further north to Troas, on the same western end of Anatolia (present-day Turkey), serves as the basic source of what little later information we have.
Turning to the present text, as with each of the letters, this one begins with these are the words of him (Christ), who in this case is described by a combination of two phrases taken from the Lord’s own words in 1:17–18. He is the First and the Last, which as noted regarding this phrase in 1:17, is language borrowed from Yahweh’s self-identification in Isaiah 44:6. Thus Christ is presented first of all as the Eternal One, to which is added the most significant event of his incarnation—who died and came to life again. The significance of these appellations for this church can be found in the content of the letter itself, since whatever else a suffering church may need to hear, at the heart of things is the reality of Christ’s resurrection. Indeed it is content such as this that drove the leaders of the early church (the church fathers) to wrestle theologically with this core reality of the Christian faith—that the Eternal One, without beginning or ending, becomes the Incarnate One, who in his incarnation experienced our singular reality of death, but who through his resurrection guaranteed our own future.
In one of the two instances (see Pergamum below) where Christ’s “knowing” the church is not expressed in terms of “your deeds,” his knowledge of the Smyrnan believers is threefold, all of which give expression to the hardship they are currently experiencing because of their faith in him. Thus Christ begins with two words about their suffering: I know your afflictions and your poverty. The Greek word rendered “afflictions” is actually in the singular, and is the basic New Testament word for trials and afflictions of all kinds—although it is of interest that it occurs only three times in the Revelation (here and in vv. 10 and 22). The believers’ “affliction” in this case includes “your poverty,” which is probably related to their being followers of Christ in an intensely proud pagan city, where such anti-idolatrous outsiders as these would be scarcely tolerated. But the living Christ immediately reminds them that their poverty is only of one kind, having to do with material well-being in the present world. In the real world, the one where Christ alone is Lord, their wealthy fellow townspeople are the truly impoverished, as he reminds the believers themselves, yet you are rich!
The third item in the list of Christ’s “knowing” these suffering believers8 has to do with the verbal abuse (slander) they have experienced, especially from the (apparently) privileged Jewish community in their city. Since John is himself a Jew, and given that his fellow Jews do not fare well in his Gospel either, his language regarding them here is especially strong—but not anti-Semitic, as some of his detractors would claim. From the perspective of Christ, crucified and risen, those who belong to the same Jewish worldview that rejected Christ historically are not true Jews; rather they are now to be understood as those who say they are Jews and are not. That much is easy enough to handle; the more difficult clause is the concluding one: but are a synagogue of Satan.9 Although this pronouncement sounds especially harsh when heard by modern ears, it is not intended by John to be derogatory, but to represent the present reality in Smyrna. What seems certain from John’s sentence is that the Jewish community had taken the lead in whatever had happened to bring about the believers’ “afflictions and . . . poverty.” This is anti-Semitic only to those who read the Gospel accounts of Jesus and his disciples, themselves Jews, in a presuppositional way.
The risen Christ’s response to those who are about to suffer for him in Smyrna is not especially encouraging in itself, as the next two sentences make plain. First, he enjoins them, do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer, thus making clear that their suffering was both an inevitable and immediate result of their being followers of the Crucified One. Second, he spells out the nature of their on-the-horizon suffering: the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, language that is full of theological grist, even as it spells out the harsh realities of what awaits these particular believers. Not one to yell “devil” (as in “the devil made me do it”) at every occurrence of evil, John nevertheless recognizes that lying behind the evil that persists in Smyrna is “our ancient foe, who seeks to work us woe.” The nature of the persecution will be imprisonment, whatever that would have meant at that time in such a city; but its ultimate purpose from the divine perspective was to serve as a means “to test you.” That it is said this persecution will last for ten days is to be understood as indicating that it would be for a limited time only.
That the threat was a real one, full of imminent danger, is made certain by the final admonition: Be faithful, even to the point of death. As we know from the letters of both Ignatius and Polycarp, these were not idle warnings for the Smyrnan believers. Already toward the end of the first Christian century John recognized that the warnings of Jesus regarding his disciples were moving toward their fulfillment in this sector of the Empire in the province of Asia. While this is easy for us to see from hindsight, John was “in the Spirit” (1:10), which made it possible for him to see with foresight. So the Lord urges faithfulness on them, because the ultimate result of such faithfulness comes from him: I will give you life as your victor’s crown—thus reflecting the warfare imagery that permeates the whole of the Revelation. From one perspective this might seem like a strange thing to say to those who were currently alive, but in fact it is written from the perspective of what was about to happen to them. And since Christ had identified himself as the one “who died and came to life again,” their “victor’s crown” was his to give!
The letter then concludes with the same admonition found in the preceding letter, and in all the subsequent ones: Whoever has ears, let them hear what the Spirit says to the churches. Also as before, the final promise is expressed in language appropriate to the content of the letter itself. As always, those who are victorious is a reference to God’s people, now based on Christ’s triumph noted at the outset (“who died and came to life again”). In this case they are promised they will not be hurt at all by the second death, a reference to the eschatological future of those who have rejected Christ, which is spelled out in plain terms in 20:14 (“the lake of fire is the second death”). As always in this book, this is a promise intended for all its readers who remain faithful to Christ.
To the Church in Pergamum (2:12–17)
12“To the angel of the church in Pergamum write:
These are the words of him who has the sharp, double-edged sword. 13I know where you live—where Satan has his throne. Yet you remain true to my name. You did not renounce your faith in me, even in the days of Antipas, my faithful witness, who was put to death in