God Makes His Dwelling with Humanity

“New” is kainos, new in kind and quality, not neos, merely recent. Isaiah 65:17 is the promise behind it: “For, behold, I create new heavens and a new earth: and the former shall not be remembered, nor come into mind”. 2 Peter 3:13 had taught the churches to look for the same.

“Adorned” is kekosmemenen, from kosmeo, the root of the English “cosmetic”. Isaiah 52:1 had called, “put on thy beautiful garments, O Jerusalem, the holy city”. Paul spoke of “Jerusalem which is above” as the mother of believers (Galatians 4:26); here that city comes down.

The promise gathers Leviticus 26:11–12, “I will set my tabernacle among you … and will be your God, and ye shall be my people”, and Ezekiel 37:27. Some important copies read “they shall be his peoples”, plural, widening the old covenant formula to many nations.

Isaiah 65:19 said of the new Jerusalem, “the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in her, nor the voice of crying”, and Isaiah 35:10 that “sorrow and sighing shall flee away”. “The former things” is ta prota, the first things, the phrase of Isaiah 43:18, “Remember ye not the former things”.

For the first time since 1:8 the one on the throne plainly speaks. “I make” is present tense, “I am making”: the renewing is under way. Isaiah 43:19 has “Behold, I will do a new thing”, and Paul, “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

“It is done” is plural in the best Greek text, gegonan, “they are done”: the words just spoken have come to pass. The offer quotes Isaiah 55:1: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money”. “Freely” is dorean, as a gift, without charge.

The last clause is the promise God made to David about his heir: “I will be his father, and he shall be my son” (2 Samuel 7:14). The royal promise is now extended to every overcomer, answering the seven promises made to the victor in the letters of chapters 2 and 3.

“Fearful” is deiloi, cowards, the word Jesus used to his disciples in the storm, “Why are ye so fearful?” (Mark 4:40). “Abominable” are those polluted with the abominations that filled Babylon’s cup (17:4). “All liars” stands last, and lying will be named again in 21:27 and 22:15.

“The bride, the Lamb’s wife”: in Jewish custom a betrothed woman was already called a wife, as Joseph is told to take “Mary thy wife” before the wedding (Matthew 1:20; compare Deuteronomy 22:24). The marriage announced in 19:7 has come.

Ezekiel was brought “in the visions of God” and set “upon a very high mountain, by which was as the frame of a city on the south” (Ezekiel 40:2). Isaiah 2:2 had promised that the mountain of the LORD’s house would be established in the top of the mountains.

“Light” is phoster, a light-giver, the word of the Greek Genesis 1:14 for the lights set in the firmament: the city itself gives light. Isaiah 60:1 is the call behind it: “Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD is risen upon thee”.

Ezekiel’s city had twelve gates named for the tribes, three on each side (Ezekiel 48:31–34). The angels at the gates stand where Isaiah 62:6 set watchmen: “I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never hold their peace day nor night”.

The order is east, north, south, west, unlike Ezekiel’s north, east, south, west or the camp of Numbers 2. East comes first, the direction of the sunrise and of the glory’s entry into the temple (Ezekiel 43:2). The spread of gates makes the city open on every side.

Paul describes the household of God as “built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone” (Ephesians 2:20). Hebrews 11:10 says Abraham “looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God”.

In 11:1 John himself was handed the reed and told to measure; here the angel measures. Zechariah 2:1–5 has a man set out with a line to measure Jerusalem, only to be told the city will be unwalled, for “I … will be unto her a wall of fire round about”.

Herodotus says ancient Babylon was built foursquare, 120 stades on each side (1.178); the new Jerusalem is foursquare too, and a hundred times larger. Twelve thousand furlongs is roughly 1,400 miles, and the city is that high as well as that long and broad.

A hundred and forty-four cubits is about 216 feet, tiny beside a city 1,400 miles high, which is why readers ask whether it is the wall’s height or its thickness. “The measure of a man” is the ordinary human cubit, as Og’s bed was measured “after the cubit of a man” (Deuteronomy 3:11).

Tobit 13:16 had pictured the rebuilt Jerusalem “with sapphires and emeralds, and precious stones: thy walls and towers and battlements with pure gold”. “Building” is endomesis, the fabric built into the wall, a rare word. Gold that is clear like glass has no counterpart on earth.

“Garnished” is the same verb as the bride “adorned” in verse 2. Isaiah 54:11 promised afflicted Jerusalem, “I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires”. The ancient sapphire was probably lapis lazuli, deep blue flecked with gold, and chalcedony perhaps a green stone from the mines near Chalcedon.

Sardonyx is banded red and white, chrysolite a golden stone, beryl sea-green, chrysoprasus apple-green, jacinth dark blue, amethyst purple. Most of the twelve match the stones of the high priest’s breastplate, which carried the names of the tribes (Exodus 28:17–21). Ancient names do not map cleanly onto modern minerals.

“Every several gate” is 1611 English for “each gate separately”. A rabbinic saying told of pearls thirty cubits square, hollowed out to make the gates of Jerusalem (Baba Bathra 75a). “Street” is plateia, the broad square, the same word as the street where the witnesses lay dead in 11:8.

Ezekiel’s great closing vision (chapters 40–48) is mostly a temple; John’s city pointedly has none. Jesus had spoken of “the temple of his body” (John 2:21) and told the Samaritan woman the hour was coming when worship would be tied neither to that mountain nor to Jerusalem (John 4:21).

“The light thereof” is lychnos, a lamp: God’s glory is the light, and the Lamb is the lamp that holds and carries it. Psalm 132:17 had said, “I have ordained a lamp for mine anointed”. The Lamb and the lamp are one figure here.

“Of them which are saved” is absent from the earliest copies, which read simply “the nations shall walk”. The kings of the earth are the same kings who committed fornication with Babylon (18:9) and gathered against the rider (19:19); here they bring their glory in rather than carrying wealth away.

Ancient cities shut their gates at dusk against enemies; Rahab spoke of the gate being shut at dark (Joshua 2:5), and Nehemiah ordered Jerusalem’s gates kept closed “until the sun be hot” (Nehemiah 7:3). A city with no night has no hour at which the gates must close.

Isaiah 60:5 had promised Zion that “the forces of the Gentiles shall come unto thee”, their wealth arriving by sea and camel. “They shall bring” has no named subject: whoever enters carries in the best of the nations, not their corruption.

“Defileth” is koinon, common or profane, Peter’s word in his vision: “I have never eaten any thing that is common or unclean” (Acts 10:14). Isaiah 52:1 had promised Jerusalem that “there shall no more come into thee the uncircumcised and the unclean”.