The City · The Symbolism of Scripture
The City
The first city in the Bible is built by a murderer and named after his son; the last comes down out of heaven. And the Hebrew word for a city means a place kept by a watch: which is why the last thing said about the last one is that its gates never shut, because there is no night there.
What It Stands For
a place kept by a watch
The Hebrew îr (H5892) is defined in the lexicon as a city — a place guarded by waking or a watch. That is worth holding on to, because it means the Bible’s word for a city is not primarily about size, streets or trade. It is about somebody staying awake so that everyone else can sleep. A city is a wall, and a wall is only as good as the man on it.
And Cain had relations with his wife, and she conceived and gave birth to Enoch. Then Cain built a city and named it after his son Enoch.Three verses after being told he will be a fugitive and a vagabond, Cain builds the first city in the Bible.
Those who looked for the heavenly city chose, while on earth, to dwell in tabernacles; but Cain, as one that minded not that city, built himself one on earth.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Genesis 4:17
Now, it is recorded of Cain that he built a city, while Abel, as though he were merely a pilgrim on earth, built none. For the true city of the saints is in heaven, though here on earth it produces citizens in whom it wanders as on a pilgrimage through time looking for the kingdom of eternity.
Augustine of Hippo· City of God 15.1, 426Latin, fifth century
Genesis 4:17
Augustine built a very long book on this one observation, and the observation itself is small and checkable: Cain builds; Abel builds nothing.Jamieson, Fausset & Brown notice the same thing from the New Testament end, reading Hebrews 11:
Worldly Enoch, son of the murderer Cain, was the first to build his city here: the godly patriarchs waited for their city hereafter
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Hebrews 11:10
Two Building Sites
the comparison Scripture keeps making, cell by cell
| The question | The city men build | The city God builds |
|---|---|---|
| Who builds it | Cain, after the murder: and he names it after his son.Genesis 4:17 | God. “Whose builder and maker is God.”Hebrews 11:10 |
| The stated motive | “Let us make us a name, lest we be scattered.”Genesis 11:4 | “He hath prepared for them a city.”Hebrews 11:16 |
| What it is founded on | Brick and slime, on a plain: the chapter says so twice.Genesis 11:3 | Foundations. Twelve of them, each with a name on it.Revelation 21:14 |
| Who keeps it | Its own people, behind their own wall.Genesis 11:4 | “God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved.”Psalm 46:5 |
| How it ends | Scattered: the exact thing it was built to prevent.Genesis 11:8 | Gates never shut, “for there shall be no night there.”Revelation 21:25 |
“Come,” they said, “let us build for ourselves a city with a tower that reaches to the heavens, that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of all the earth.”The only building project in Scripture that states its own motives in its own sentence.
JFB are careful here in a way worth copying, because the passage is easy to over-read. Building is not the sin.
a tower whose top may reach unto heaven--a common figurative expression for great height (De 1:28; 9:1-6). lest we be scattered--To build a city and a town was no crime; but to do this to defeat the counsels of heaven by attempting to prevent emigration was foolish, wicked, and j
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Genesis 11:4
That they might unite in one glorious empire, they resolve to build this city and tower, to be the metropolis of their kingdom and the
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Genesis 11:4
For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.A man in a tent, waiting for a city. The contrast the writer chooses is foundations.
He looked for a city which hath foundations - Whereas a tent has none. Whose builder and former is God - Of which God is the sole contriver, former, and finisher.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Wesleyan
Hebrews 11:10
Wesley’s four words do the work of a page. Abraham owned no city and was promised one; what he actually lived in was the one structure that cannot have a foundation.
What Makes a City Safe
Psalm 46, Isaiah 26: and it is never the wall
God is within her; she will not be moved. God will help her when morning dawns.Not 'God defends her': God is IN her. The safety is a location.
In that day this song will be sung in the land of Judah: We have a strong city; salvation is established as its walls and ramparts.Isaiah names the walls and bulwarks, and the name he gives them is salvation.
God is in the midst of her. His help is therefore sure and near. Is she besieged, then he is himself besieged within her, and we may be certain that he will break forth upon his adversaries. How near is the Lord to the distresses of his saints, since he sojourns in their midst!
Charles Spurgeon· The Treasury of David, on Psalm 46, 1870Baptist
Psalm 46:5
He was not in one part of the city and cut off from another but "in its midst," surrounding it all, protecting it all equally from the foe.
Theodore of Mopsuestia· Commentary on Psalms 46, 428Antiochene
Psalm 46:5
Spurgeon presses the logic until it turns into something better than comfort: if God is inside the city, then a siege of the city is a siege of God, and that has never gone well for the besieger. Theodore of Mopsuestia catches the strange geometry: a midst that is somehow also a perimeter.
For here we do not have a permanent city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.Written to Hebrew Christians within a few years of Jerusalem's destruction. The line was about to become literal.
The earthly Jerusalem proved to be no "abiding city," having been destroyed shortly after this Epistle was written
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Hebrews 13:14
Where It Points
a city with nothing left to guard against
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.Nobody builds it in the scene. It descends, already prepared, and the comparison is to a bride.
Its gates will never be shut at the end of the day, because there will be no night there.The gates are open: and the reason given is the absence of night, not the absence of enemies.
This is where the Hebrew word pays off. If a city is a place kept by a watch, then a city whose gates are never shut is a city with no watch to keep. Every wall in Scripture was built against the dark, and there is no dark left. Oecumenius, in the sixth century, read the verse the same way:
And its gates he says shall not be shut by day. The meaning is twofold: for either this says that there will be peace and absence of fear, such that there will be no need to keep watch over the city by day
Oecumenius· Commentary on Revelation 21:25, 550Greek, sixth century
Revelation 21:25
Gates are usually shut by night: but in it shall be no night. There shall be continual free ingress into it, so as that all which is blessed and glorious may continually be brought into it.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Reformed
Revelation 21:25
Is the city a place, or a people?the reading, and the honest limit
Revelation 21:2 says the city comes down prepared as a bride adorned for her husband, and 21:9-10 has the angel offer to show John the bride, the Lamb’s wife — and then show him the city. That is a strong reason many readers take the city as the people rather than the architecture, and it is the oldest reading in Christian commentary.
The honest limit: the same chapters give measurements, gates, foundations, streets and a river, and the text never resolves which language governs. Both readings have been held by careful people from the earliest centuries, and this page does not settle it. What is not in doubt is what the passage says the city is for and who provides it.
Theodoret of Cyrus states the practical end of the whole symbol in one sentence: So let us despise things of this life and look forward to those that are stable and permanent.
What Scripture says outright
- Genesis 11:4
The builders state their own motives: a name, and not being scattered. The text does not have to be interpreted here : it is quoted speech.
- Hebrews 11:10
“Whose builder and maker is God.” The architecture of the other city is attributed outright.
- Revelation 21:25
The reason the gates stay open is given in the same verse: for there shall be no night there.
What readers have heard in it
Readings, named as such.
- Genesis 4:17
That city-building is itself Cain’s sin, or that Scripture is against cities as such. It is not: God names a city as His own dwelling, commands cities of refuge, and ends the Bible with one.
- Revelation 21:2
That the New Jerusalem is only the church and not a place, or only a place and not the church. Both readings are ancient; the chapter supplies bridal language and building measurements without reconciling them.
- Genesis 11:4
That the tower was an observatory, a ziggurat to a named god, or an attempt to escape a second flood. Each has been argued from outside evidence; Genesis says only what the builders said.
The Voices
with the work named
Augustine wrote the longest book in Christian antiquity out of one verse of Genesis 4, and the sentence quoted here is the seed of it. Matthew Henry states the same contrast in the terms Hebrews uses : tents against a city: and JFB trace it forward from Cain’s Enoch to the patriarchs. Wesley’s note on Hebrews 11:10 is four words long and unimprovable. Spurgeon takes Psalm 46 past reassurance into logic. Oecumenius, reading Revelation in the sixth century, saw what the open gates mean about the watch.
Where to Go Next
Where the city is the whole scene
Who keeps a city
Where the picture goes on
Its neighbours in the index
The Symbolism of Scripture gathers every picture the Bible thinks in. This one sits with: