^22:10Then²⁶ he said to me, “Do not seal up the words of the prophecy contained in this book, because the time is near. ^22:11The evildoer must continue to do evil,²⁷ and the one who is morally filthy²⁸ must continue to be filthy. The²⁹ one who is righteous must continue to act righteously, and the one who is holy must continue to be holy.”

^22:12(Look! I am coming soon,

and my reward is with me to pay³⁰ each one according to what he has done!

^22:13I am the Alpha and the Omega,

the first and the last,

the beginning and the end!)³¹

^22:14Blessed are those who wash their robes so they can have access³² to the tree of life and can enter into the city by the gates. ^22:15Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers³³ and the sexually immoral, and the murderers, and the idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood!³⁴

^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!”³⁵^22:17And 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.

^22:18I 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 described³⁶ in this book. ^22:19And if anyone takes away from the words of this book of prophecy, God will take away his share in the tree of life³⁷ and in the holy city that are described in this book.

^22:20The one who testifies to these things says, “Yes, I am coming soon!” Amen! Come, Lord Jesus! ^22:21The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all.³⁸

Read in Logos

Revelation 22:12: “Behold, I am coming soon, bringing my recompense with me, to repay everyone for what he has done.”

Footnotes

26 Here καί (kai) has been translated as “then” to indicate the implied sequence of events within the vision.
27 Grk “must do evil still.”
28 For this translation see L&N 88.258; the term refers to living in moral filth.
29 Grk “filthy, and the.” This is a continuation of the previous sentence in Greek, but because of the length and complexity of the construction a new sentence was started in the translation.
30 The Greek term may be translated either “pay” or “pay back” and has something of a double meaning here. However, because of the mention of “wages” (“reward,” another wordplay with two meanings) in the previous clause, the translation “pay” for ἀποδοῦναι (apodounai) was used here.
31 These lines are parenthetical, forming an aside to the narrative. The speaker here is the Lord Jesus Christ himself rather than the narrator.
32 Grk “so that there will be to them authority over the tree of life.”
33 On the term φάρμακοι (pharmakoi) see L&N 53.101.
34 Or “lying,” “deceit.”
35 On this expression πρωϊνός states, “early, belonging to the morning ὁ ἀστὴρ ὁ πρ. the morning star, Venus Rv 2:28; 22:16.”
36 Grk “written.”
37 The , on which the 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 for the last six verses of Revelation. So he translated the Latin back into Greek at this point. As a result he created seventeen textual variants which were not in any Greek . 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 , 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 ; 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 translators. (This textual problem is not discussed in .)
38 Most (א 𝔐) read “amen” (ἀμήν, amēn) after “all” (πάντων, pantōn). It is, however, not found in other important (A 1006 1841 ). 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.