Revelation 5:7Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

And the Lord said: "All things have been delivered to Me by My Father" (Mt 11:27). Clearly this is the Father who made all things, for He did not deliver to Him what belonged to another, but His own. In "all things" nothing is excluded. Therefore He is the Judge of the living and the dead. He has the key of David, "who opens and no one shall shut, who shuts and no one opens." For no one in heaven, or on earth, or under the earth could open the Father's book and look into it, except the Lamb who was slain and redeemed us by His blood. From Him who created all things by His Word and ordered them by His Wisdom, He received authority over all things when "the Word became flesh" (Jn 1:14). Thus, as the Word of God had rule in heaven, so He might also have rule on earth.

Here He opens and removes the seals from the Old Testament, which He had formerly sealed. Moses the lawgiver knew that this had to remain sealed and hidden until the coming of His Passion. Therefore he veiled his face and spoke so to the people. He indicated that the words of the proclamation were hidden until the coming of the time of Christ. For when he read the Law itself to the people, he took wool soaked in the blood of a calf and in water, and sprinkled all the people. He prophesied: "Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord has made with you" (Ex 24:8). We should therefore notice that an attentive person will gather the common proclamation into one whole. It is not enough for it to be called Law, since it is also called covenant.

It is fittingly said here that He "took the book," that is, the power of all God's works. He took it "from the right hand of Him who sat on the throne," that is, He received all things from God the Father, as He Himself said: "All that the Father has is Mine" (Jn 16:15). He took this book when, rising from the dead, He revealed to the world the mystery of the Trinity, hidden from the ages.

The Son of Man, as it is said, received the book from the palm of God, that is, the very dispensation established by the Father and by Himself. For both, with Their Spirit, abide upon the throne. By this right hand we must understand the happiness of victory, not a bodily right hand. It is not as though He received the book from some other right hand of the Father, since the Father and the Son are one, and the Son Himself is the right hand of the Father. Yet He who said, "Take heart; I have overcome the world" (Jn 16:33), always conquers through His own. And since He made His Church victorious, He is said to have received the book from Her.

All creation, enslaved by man to vanity, groans and longs for its liberation (cf. Rom 8:19-22). At the opening of this mysterious book it hopes to receive news of the defeat of the universal enemy, corruption and death. The harps are the melodious hymnody of their souls. The bowls full of incense signify their holy life. Souls that have been freed from attachment to earthly things and have cleaved to heavenly things will become kings, for they truly reign over themselves and over all beings. They will become priests who unceasingly offer sacrifices of praise. They reign not only in heaven. Their kingdom begins even during life on earth.

Saint Andrew of Caesarea understands the sealed book as the mysterious decrees of the wise providence of God concerning the salvation of mankind. By the opening of the seals he understands the fulfillment of the divine decrees by the Only-begotten Son of God, the Savior of humanity, who gave Himself as a Lamb to be slain.