Revelation 7:15 - Ellicott's Commentary On The Whole Bible

Therefore are they before the throne... — Better, On this account are they before the throne of God — i.e., because they so washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. (Comp. Revelation 22:14, where a well-supported reading is, “Blessed are they that wash their robes, that they may have right to the tree of life,” &c.) They are before the throne: they are like Him, for they see Him as He is (1 John 3:2), and serve Him day and night in His temple, and He that sitteth upon the throne shall tabernacle over them. The life is not simply one of joy or safety, it is one also of service. (Comp. Revelation 22:3.) Those who were made priests to God here carry on their service in His temple; yet it is to be remembered that this can only be figurative language, for in the heavenly city there is no temple (Revelation 21:22). It serves to teach us that the servant will find his fitting work of service there as well as here. He that sitteth upon the throne shall tabernacle over them. It is worth noticing how persistently St. John keeps up the phrase, “He that sitteth upon the throne” (Revelation 4:2; Revelation 5:1; Revelation 5:7; Revelation 5:13; Revelation 7:10). Tabernacle, or dwell as in a tent: The rendering “shall dwell” among them does not do justice to this word, and at the same time obscures the allusion which the seer has in his mind. The allusion is to the Shechinah, the symbol of the Divine Presence, which rested over the mercy seat. “The idea that the Shechinah, the σκηνή; (skéné), the glory which betokened the Divine Presence in the Holy of Holies, and which was wanting to the sacred temple, would be restored once more in Messiah’s days was a cherished hope of the Jewish doctors during and after the Apostolic ages.” The expected and wished-for glory would be seen among God’s saints. God’s tabernacle shall be with them (Revelation 21:3), and with them so as to stretch over them: He will tabernacle over (or, upon) them. With this we may compare St. Paul’s expression in 2 Corinthians 12:9 (“that the power of Christ may tabernacle” — “rest” in the English version — “upon me”), where Professor Lightfoot (whose words have just been quoted) thinks that there is a similar reference to the symbol of the Divine Presence in the Holy of Holies. (Comp. Isaiah 4:5-6; Ezekiel 37:27; and John 1:14.) There seems also to be a carrying on of the imagery derived from the Feast of Tabernacles: as there were the palm branches of the harvest joy, so there will be the booth, or tabernacle, of God’s presence among them. He shall be their pavilion, their shelter. “There shall be a tabernacle for a shadow in the day-time from the heat, and for a place of refuge and for a covert from storm and from rain.”