Daily Devotional For February 15, 2025
I know your affliction and your poverty, nevertheless you are rich. I also know the blasphemy of those who call themselves Jews. They are not real Jews, they are the synagogue of Satan. Rev 2:9.
It appears from the text that the church’s relationship with the Jews of Smyrna was at risk.1 This was a perilous matter for the church. By the Second Century everyone was expected to venerate the emperor except the Jews. Jews were exempted out of respect for the antiquity of their religion. Since early Christians were usually identified as Jewish, they were often protected from unnecessary persecution.
The Jews themselves, on the other hand, had reason to be cautious about this arrangement. 25 years earlier Jewish apocalyptic excitement had provoked the Romans to destroy Jerusalem and its temple, leaving behind thousands of dead. It was loud and clear that Jewish status in the empire could be revoked at a moment’s notice if Christian talk of the Messiah created Roman suspicion against the Jews.
At the time Revelation was written, the Jewish community was in some difficulty with the local leaders of Smyrna. When Christian Jews talks about Jesus the Messiah and the end of the world, it could only make things even more difficult. So the word “blasphemy” in our text should be understood in terms of “slander.” Historical records suggest that the following scenario may have occurred a number of times in first-century Smyrna.
Let’s say Jason was a Christian member of the synagogue. Theudas, a non-Christian Jewish neighbor, never liked Jason. His “crazy ideas” embarrassed the Jews among their pagan neighbors. One day Theudas discovers that Jason’s goats have escaped their enclosure again and his prized rhododendrons had been munched on and trampled. In a fit of anger he “informs” the local authorities that Jason was an enemy of the emperor and the state but stayed “under the radar” by masquerading as a Jew. He gives evidence of Jason’s “un-Jewish” ideas.
Roman authorities at that time would rarely seek out Christians, but when faced with a specific charge they would have to investigate. It would not do to have potential revolutionaries multiplying undetected. Interviewing Jason’s neighbors it was not hard to discover that he was a “no-show” at civic events. If the Jewish community did not like him and supported Theudas’ contention that Jason was not a real Jew, execution was the likely fate.
With events like this occurring, it is understandable that Christians would begin to think that Jews like Theudas were not real Jews, but tools of Satan.
Lord, show Your presence to all Christians who face slander and persecution in today’s world. Show me ways that I can encourage and support them.
1 Keener, 114-117.