The New Jerusalem

When the final vision opens, an angel takes a golden reed to measure the holy city (Rev 21:15). The measure is startling: the city lies foursquare, and "the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal" — twelve thousand furlongs on every axis (Rev 21:16). It is a perfect cube.

That shape is not incidental. The only cube in the earlier Scriptures is the innermost sanctuary of Solomon's temple, the Holy of Holies, which measured twenty cubits in length, breadth, and height (1 Kgs 6:20). Edersheim notes the same cubic form of the Most Holy Place in The Temple: Its Ministry and Services. The New Jerusalem takes that shape and expands it to hold a people: the whole city is one vast Holy of Holies.

This is why there is no temple within it. "I saw no temple therein: for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it" (Rev 21:22). In the old order a curtain kept all but the high priest out of the cube, and him only once a year. In the city the barrier is gone — nothing is left outside the presence. The wall measures 144 cubits (Rev 21:17), twelve squared: even the masonry is counted in the number of God's people.

Everything in the city is measured in twelves. There are twelve gates, each a single pearl, three to a side, bearing the names of the twelve tribes of Israel and guarded by twelve angels (Rev 21:12-13, 21). Beneath the wall are twelve foundations carrying the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb (Rev 21:14). Israel is the way in; the apostolic witness is what the city stands on — the covenant people and the church built into one structure.

The twelve foundations are garnished with twelve precious stones (Rev 21:19-20): jasper, sapphire, chalcedony, emerald, sardonyx, sardius, chrysolite, beryl, topaz, chrysoprasus, jacinth, and amethyst. The tree of life bears twelve manner of fruits (Rev 22:2); the wall is 144 cubits, twelve times twelve; the city itself is 12,000 furlongs a side.

Whether the 12,000 furlongs — roughly 1,380 miles — is a literal magnitude or a symbolic figure is contested, but both readings agree the weight rests on the number, not the mileage. Twelve is the count of the people of God, and it is written into every dimension. The city is not measured in feet so much as in tribes and apostles.

The last two chapters of Scripture deliberately reopen its first. "He shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb. In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life" (Rev 22:1-2). The river recalls the one that went out of Eden (Gen 2:10); the tree is the one from which Adam was barred, its way kept by cherubim and a flaming sword (Gen 3:24). Now it stands open again, bearing fruit every month, its leaves for the healing of the nations.

The reversal is exact. Genesis 3:17 laid a curse on the ground; Revelation 22:3 declares "there shall be no more curse" — the Greek katathema, the accursed thing, undone. In the garden the man hid from God's presence (Gen 3:8); in the city "the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them" (Rev 21:3). There is no sun or moon, "for the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamb is the light thereof" (Rev 21:23).

Scripture closes where it began, but transformed: the garden has become a city, and the exile is over.