Revelation Chapter 1 verse 15 Holy Bible
and his feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and his voice as the voice of many waters.
read chapter 1 in ASV
And his feet like polished brass, as if it had been burned in a fire; and his voice was as the sound of great waters.
read chapter 1 in BBE
and his feet like fine brass, as burning in a furnace; and his voice as the voice of many waters;
read chapter 1 in DARBY
And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.
read chapter 1 in KJV
read chapter 1 in WBT
His feet were like burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace. His voice was like the voice of many waters.
read chapter 1 in WEB
and his feet like to fine brass, as in a furnace having been fired, and his voice as a sound of many waters,
read chapter 1 in YLT
Pulpit Commentary
Pulpit CommentaryVerse 15. - Fine brass. This may stand as a translation of χαλκολίβανος, a word which occurs here and in Revelation 2:18 only, and the second half of which has never been satisfactorily explained. It may have been a local technical term in use among the metalworkers of Ephesus (Acts 19:24; 2 Timothy 4:14). The Rhemish Version renders it "latten." In what follows, the Revised Version is to be preferred: "as if it had been refined in a furnace; and his voice as the voice of many waters." It is tempting to think that "the roar of the sea is in the ears of the lonely man in Patmos;" but the image seems rather to be that of the sound of many cataracts (comp. Ezekiel 1:24; Ezekiel 43:2; Daniel 10:6). There is singularly little of the scenery of Patmos in the Apocalypse.
Ellicott's Commentary
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers(15) His feet like unto fine brass.--The feet, like the feet of the ministering priests of Israel, were bare, and appeared like chalcolibanus (fine brass). The exact meaning of this word (used only here) is not certain. The most trustworthy authors incline to take it as a hybrid word, half Greek, half Hebrew--chalcos, brass, and laban, white, to whiten--and understand it to signify brass which has attained in the furnace a white heat. "Such technical words were likely enough to be current in a population like that of Ephesus, consisting largely of workers in metal, some of whom--if we may judge from the case of Alexander the coppersmith (Acts 19:34; 2Timothy 4:14)--were, without doubt, Jews. I believe the word in question to have belonged to this technical vocabulary. It is at any rate used by St. John as familiar and intelligible to those for whom he wrote" (Prof. Plumptre in the Epistles to Seven Churches, in loco).His voice as the sound (better, voice, as the same word--phone--is used twice, and translated first "voice" and then "sound" in our English version) of many waters.--Daniel described the voice of the Ancient of Days as the voice of a multitude (Daniel 10:6); but the voice of the multitude was in earlier Hebrew writings compared to the sound of the waves of the sea, which the voice of the Lord alone could subdue (Psalm 65:7; Psalm 93:4). This image the Evangelist adopts to describe the voice of Christ--strong and majestic, amid the Babel-sounds of earth. That voice, whose word stilled the sea, sounds as the waves of the sea, which St. John heard Him rebuke. . . .
