Wahyu 3:18-22

3:18 take my advice ¹  and buy gold from me refined by fire so you can become rich! Buy from me ²  white clothing so you can be clothed and your shameful nakedness ³  will not be exposed, and buy eye salve ⁴  to put on your eyes so you can see! 3:19 All those ⁵  I love, I rebuke and discipline. So be earnest and repent! 3:20 Listen! ⁶  I am standing at the door and knocking! If anyone hears my voice and opens the door I will come into his home ⁷  and share a meal with him, and he with me. 3:21 I will grant the one ⁸  who conquers ⁹  permission ¹⁰  to sit with me on my throne, just as I too conquered ¹¹  and sat down with my Father on his throne. 3:22 The one who has an ear had better hear what the Spirit says to the churches.’”

[3:18]  ¹ tn Grk “I counsel you to buy.”

[3:18]  ² tn Grk “rich, and.” Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation, repeating the words “Buy from me” to make the connection clear for the English reader.

[3:18]  ³ tn Grk “the shame of the nakedness of you,” which has been translated as an attributed genitive like καινότητι ζωῆς (kainothti zwh") in Rom 6:4 (ExSyn 89-90).

[3:18]  ⁴ sn The city of Laodicea had a famous medical school and exported a powder (called a “Phrygian powder”) that was widely used as an eye salve. It was applied to the eyes in the form of a paste the consistency of dough (the Greek term for the salve here, κολλούριον, kollourion [Latin collyrium], is a diminutive form of the word for a long roll of bread).

[3:19]  ⁵ tn The Greek pronoun ὅσος (Josos) means “as many as” and can be translated “All those” or “Everyone.”

[3:20]  ⁶ tn Grk “Behold.”

[3:20]  ⁷ tn Grk “come in to him.”

[3:20]  sn The expression in Greek does not mean entrance into the person, as is popularly taken, but entrance into a room or building toward the person. See ExSyn 380-82. Some interpreters understand the door here to be the door to the Laodicean church, and thus a collective or corporate image rather than an individual one.

[3:21]  ⁸ tn Grk “The one who conquers, to him I will grant.”

[3:21]  ⁹ tn Or “who is victorious”; traditionally, “who overcomes.”

[3:21]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “I will give [grant] to him.”

[3:21]  ¹¹ tn Or “have been victorious”; traditionally, “have overcome.”