Greek: Ὁ ἔχων οὖς ἀκουσάτω τί τὸ πνεῦμα λέγει ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις. Τῷ νικῶντι δώσω αὐτῷ φαγεῖν ἐκ τοῦ ξύλου τῆς ζωῆς, ὅ ἐστιν ἐν τῷ παραδείσῳ τοῦ θεοῦ.
Translation (ASV): He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches. To him that overcometh, to him will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the Paradise of God.
Ian Paul (Revelation: An Introduction and Commentary): Just as the opening appellation of Jesus draws from some aspect of the vision in Revelation 1, so these final promises anticipate some aspect of the vision of the New Jerusalem in Revelation 21–22, positioning these messages as suspended between ‘what is’ and ‘what is to come’. The tree of life is an image that Revelation 22:2 draws from Genesis 2:9 and suggests a tree whose fruit gives life when eaten. The term paradise originates from the Persian idea of a walled garden in the king’s palace, but ‘paradise of God’ is consistently used in the Greek Old Testament to refer to ‘the garden of God’ in Genesis 2, reinforcing the link between the New Jerusalem and the Garden of Eden. One of the things achieved by the victory of Jesus, in which his followers are to participate, is the restoration of the good creation of God before the entrance of disobedience into the world.
Jurgen Roloff: According to John, the circle of those who overcome is by no means confined to martyrs, it includes others even though the reality of such overcoming is not clearly expressed in their lives. The content of the promise to those who overcome is portrayed with the image that points to the concluding vision of the book (22:2) and becomes comes completely understandable only in its framework: they may eat of the tree of life in paradise, which returns at the end time (Gen. 2:9; 3:22); thus, they share in the abundance of the salvation of the consummation.
Revelation (Continental Commentary Series) (Kindle Locations 758-761). Kindle Edition.
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