This note is interpretation, not translation. The first time John sees Jesus, He is dressed as a priest and standing among lamps. This note sets out what the clothes and the lamps say, and what Hebrews says of Him as high priest.
The high priest’s robe. John sees “someone like a son of man, wearing a robe down to his feet, with a gold band across his chest” (1:13). The green marker is Daniel 10:5–6, the man clothed in linen with a belt of gold. The robe word, podērēs, is found nowhere else in the New Testament, and in the Greek translation of the law it is the high priest’s robe: “these are the garments they shall make: a breastpiece, an ephod, a robe (podērē) …” (Exodus 28:4). It is also the robe God put on Joshua the high priest when his filthy garments were taken away (Zechariah 3:4, in the Greek). The gold band across the chest is worn by the seven messengers too (15:6), so the band alone does not make Him a priest; the robe is the high priest’s.
Among the lamps. He is “among the lampstands” (1:13), and He “walks among the seven gold lampstands” (2:1). In the tabernacle the lampstand stood outside the curtain, and the priest tended it: “Aaron and his sons shall tend it from evening to morning before the LORD” (Exodus 27:21; Leviticus 24:3). The seven lampstands are the seven assemblies (1:20). The priest walks among His assemblies as the priests tended the lamps, and the letters that follow are the tending: what to trim, what to fill, what to keep burning.
The high priest in Hebrews. “We have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God; let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in every way as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:14–15). “You are a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek” (5:6, from Psalm 110:4). “He is able to save completely those who come to God through Him, since He always lives to plead for them” (7:25). “Not by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood, He entered once for all into the holy place, having obtained an eternal redemption” (9:12), “into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us” (9:24). So “we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that He opened for us through the curtain, that is, His flesh” (10:19–20). Zechariah saw a priest on a throne: “he shall bear royal honour, and sit and rule on his throne, and he shall be a priest on his throne” (Zechariah 6:13).
And He made us priests. “To the one who loves us, and who released us from our wrongs at the cost of his own blood, and made us a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father” (1:5–6); “You made them a kingdom, priests serving our God” (5:10). The high priest does not keep the priesthood to Himself. His people come near through Him, and serve.