Zion & Jerusalem · The Symbolism of Scripture
Zion & Jerusalem
One fortified hill, widened by the Bible until it can carry the whole people of God — without ever letting go of the hill.
What This Page Is
the picture, not the city
Jerusalem is a real place with a real history — sieges, temples, kings, walls that have been dug up and dated. This page carries what the Bible does with the name. The city itself is a separate study, and neither one replaces the other.
One Hill, Widening
A fortified hill
“David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David”
2 Samuel 5:7The whole city
“the joy of the whole earth, is mount Zion… the city of the great King”
Psalm 48:2The place God chose
“For the Lord hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation”
Psalm 132:13A birthplace for foreigners
“This and that man was born in her: and the highest himself shall establish her”
Psalm 87:5Where the nations come
“out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem”
Isaiah 2:3Somewhere believers have already arrived
“ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God”
Hebrews 12:22
Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion (that is, the City of David).Everything the word will later carry starts here, in a sentence about a military objective.
Mount Zion literally denoted the Southern hill in Jerusalem, on which a part of the city was built. That part of the city was made by David and his successors the residence of the court, and soon the name Zion, was given familiarly to the whole city. Jerusalem was the center of religion in the land; the place where the temple stood, and where the worship of God was celebrated, and where God dwelt by a visible symbol, and it became the type and emblem of the holy abode where He dwells in heaven.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Hebrews 12:22
Barnes gives the whole migration in one paragraph, and every stage of it is ordinary: the hill was where the king lived, so the hill’s name got used for the town; the town was where the temple was, so the town’s name got used for the worship. The widening is not mystical. It is how names work, and God used it.
Is Mount Zion - The term used here would seem to denote the whole city, Jerusalem, as it often does. Mount Zion was the most conspicuous object in the city, the residence of the king, and for a long time, until the temple was built, the place where the ark reposed, and where the worship of God was celebrated, and hence, the term came to be used to denote the whole city.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Psalm 48:2
The joy of the whole earth - Commentators have been greatly puzzled to show in what sense Zion, or the temple, could be said to be the joy of the whole earth. If we take the earth here for the habitable globe, there is no sense in which it ever was the joy of the whole earth; but If we take כל הארץ col haarets, as signifying the whole of this land, (and it has no other meaning), the assertion is plain and easy to be understood, for the temple was considered the ornament and glory of the whole land of Judea.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Psalm 48:2
Clarke is doing something useful and unglamorous — refusing to let a phrase mean more than the Hebrew will bear. The whole earthin that verse is, he argues, the whole of that land. And on the odd phrase “the sides of the north”, Chrysostom supplies a military rather than a mystical explanation: “For what reason, tell me, does he now mention the north and describe to us the location of the place? Because from that quarter war generally broke out with the invasion of savages, and generally the inspired authors mention it, calling it "from the north," and speak in terms of a cauldron boiling from that direction.”
A Line That Has to Be Held
Isaiah 2:3, and what a Gentile reader may not do with it
And many peoples will come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.Note the direction of travel: nations go UP to it, and the word comes OUT from it. Both named places are named.
If the curse foretold against Israel has been literally fulfilled, so shall the promised blessing be literal. We Gentiles must not, while giving them the curse, deny them their peculiar blessing by spiritualizing it.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown· Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, 1871Scottish, nineteenth century
Isaiah 2:3
That is a nineteenth-century Protestant commentary saying it, and it is the sentence this page is built around. If the curse was literal, the blessing is literal. A reader may not take one at face value and spiritualise the other away. The widening of Zion is real and it is an expansion, not a transfer. Nothing on this page should be read as the church taking Israel’s place, because that is not what the widening does.
What can this law proceeding from Zion, which is different from what was made law by Moses in the desert at Mount Sinai, be but the word of the gospel through our Savior Jesus Christ which proceeds from Zion through all the nations? For clearly it was in Jerusalem and Mount Zion, where our Savior and Lord lived and taught, that the law of the new covenant originated and from which it proceeded to all people.
Eusebius of Caesarea· Proof of the Gospel 1.4, 339Palestinian, fourth century
Isaiah 2:3
Eusebius makes the geographical point that keeps the verse anchored: whatever went out to the nations went out from that ground — from a city on a hill in Judea, where a man had lived and taught.
A Birthplace for People Born Elsewhere
Psalm 87, and who keeps the roll
And it will be said of Zion: “This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High Himself will establish her.”Read the earlier verses of the psalm first: the names listed are Rahab, Babylon, Philistia, Tyre and Ethiopia.
The LORD will record in the register of the peoples: “This one was born in Zion.” SelahAnd the administrative detail that makes it concrete. Somebody is writing this down.
And of Zion it shall be said - In respect to Zion; or, in honor of Zion. People shall regard it as a privilege to have been born in Zion. They shall speak of such a birth as a marked and honored distinction. This and that man, etc. Designating them, or pointing them out, as having been born there. Those in a crowd, those passing along, those brought in any way to notice, will be spoken of in reference to their birth in Zion, and will be treated with a degree of favor and esteem, arising from their birth there corresponding to what those receive who are born in Egypt, Babylon, or Tyre. They will not be shunned and avoided on account of their birth as if it were ignoble, but they will be honored for it.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Psalm 87:5
The psalm does not say the foreigners are welcomed. It says they are registered as natives. Barnes catches the social force of it — a birth that would have been held against a man is instead an honour. And the list is not a soft one: these are the empires that had besieged, deported and enslaved.
I will be mindful of Rahab and Babylon among those who know me. She who once was in the breadth of sins, afterward ascended into the remembrance of God. Will a man say to Zion, and a man is born in her? I speak to you a wondrous thing, but a true one. Our Zion, in which at times there are foreigners, and Tyre, and the Ethiopian
Jerome· Homily 18, on Psalm 86, 420Latin, fifth century
Psalm 87:5
For the LORD has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His home:The reason the place matters, and it is not a property of the place.
For the Lord hath chosen Zion - He has selected it as the place where he will abide; the seat of his religion. This is a new plea or argument, and shows that the psalm had reference to Zion or Jerusalem, as then in danger, or as having been in danger.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Psalm 132:13
Where It Points
a completed tense, and a man weeping at the actual city
Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to myriads of angelsThe verb is the whole argument of the chapter: not that they will arrive, but that they have.
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.And Paul, who says two verses earlier that he is speaking an allegory, names a Jerusalem above.
But ye - Who believe in Christ. Are come - The apostle does not here speak of their coming to the church militant, but of that glorious privilege of New Testament believers, their communion with the church triumphant. But this is far more apparent to the eyes of celestial spirits than to ours which are yet veiled.
John Wesley· Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament, 1755Methodist
Hebrews 12:22
It cannot be literally meant here that they had come to the Mount Zion in Jerusalem, for that was as true of the whole Jewish people as of those whom the apostle addressed, but it must mean that they had come to the Mount Zion of which the holy city was an emblem; to the glorious mount which is revealed as the dwelling-place of God, of angels, of saints.
Albert Barnes· Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments, 1851Presbyterian
Hebrews 12:22
Barnes is careful in exactly the place carelessness is expensive. He does not say the earthly Zion has been replaced; he says the letter is talking about a different Zion, of which the first was the emblem — which is an addition to the picture, not a subtraction from it.
Galatians 4:26, and two commentators keeping the claim smallwhat 'Jerusalem which is above' does and does not assert
This Sarah was a type and figure of; she answered to, and agreed with this; which is to be understood, not of the church triumphant in heaven, but of the Gospel church state under the administration of the new covenant; and that, not as in the latter day glory, when the new Jerusalem shall descend from God out of heaven, but as it then was in the apostle's time, and has been since.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament, 1748Particular Baptist
Galatians 4:26
The apostle still follows the Jewish allegory, showing not only how the story of Hagar and Sarah, Ishmael and Isaac, was allegorized, but pointing out also that even Jerusalem was the subject of allegory; for it was a maxim among the rabbins, that whatsoever was in the earth, the same was also found in heaven for there is no matter, howsoever small, in this world, that has not something similar to it in the spiritual world.
Adam Clarke· Commentary on the Bible, 1832Wesleyan
Galatians 4:26
Clarke’s note is worth having because it removes the strangeness. Paul is not inventing a device; he is using a figure that was already current among the rabbis: that what is here has its counterpart above. The phrase is a Jewish one, used by a Jewish writer, to a mixed church.
As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over itNot the heavenly one. The one with houses in it, that He could see from where He was sitting.
and said, “If only you had known on this day what would bring you peace! But now it is hidden from your eyes.And the sentence breaks off unfinished: the grammar of somebody who cannot get the words out.
Probably, it was when he was coming down the descent of the hill from the mount of Olives, where he had a full view of the city, the large extent of it, and the many stately structures in it, and his eye affected his heart, and his heart his eye again. What a tender spirit Christ was of; we never read that he laughed, but we often find him in tears.
Matthew Henry· Commentary on the Whole Bible, 1710Nonconformist
Luke 19:41
Of Jerusalem; being now nearer, and in a situation to take a full view of it, he lift up his eyes, and looking wistfully on it, and beholding the grandeur and magnificence of it, the number of the houses, and the stately structures in it, and knowing what calamities, in a few years, would come upon it; with which being affected, as man, he looked upon it, and wept over it; touched with a tender concern for it, his natural passions moved, and tears fell plentifully from his eyes.
John Gill· Exposition of the New Testament, 1748Particular Baptist
Luke 19:41
This is where the symbol has to be handled carefully, and Cyril of Alexandria handles it right:
For Christ had compassion upon the Jews, who wills that all men should be saved. Which had not been plain to us, were it not revealed by a certain mark of His humanity. For tears poured forth are the tokens of sorrow.
Cyril of Alexandria· Catena Aurea (Aquinas), on Luke 19:41, 444Alexandrian, fifth century
Luke 19:41
The tears are for that city and those people, and Cyril says so. A great deal has been built on this scene in the other direction — as though the weeping were a farewell. Luke gives it as grief, and Matthew Henry’s observation is the one to leave with: we never read that He laughed, but we often find Him in tears.
What Scripture says outright
- 2 Samuel 5:7
Zion is identified as a specific fortress, and equated with the city of David in the same sentence.
- Psalm 132:13
The reason for the place’s standing is stated as a choice and a desire, not a quality of the location.
- Psalm 87:6
The LORD keeps a register, and the entry recorded against a man is where he was born.
- Hebrews 12:22
The tense is completed, ye are come — and the destination is named as a mountain and a city.
What readers have heard in it
Readings, named as readings.
- Hebrews 12:22
That the church has replaced Israel as Zion. The letter names an arrival, not a substitution, and Jamieson, Fausset and Brown warn against exactly this move on Isaiah 2:3.
- Psalm 48:2
That “the sides of the north” carries a hidden meaning. Chrysostom explains it from the invasion routes; others have allegorised it, and the psalm itself does not say.
- Luke 19:41
That the weeping is a farewell to a rejected people. Cyril reads it as compassion for them, and Luke reports it as grief without a verdict attached.
Its Presentation Through Scripture
the name, widening in order
Nevertheless, David captured the fortress of Zion (that is, the City of David).
The smallest possible beginning: a fortress inside a town, taken in a single sentence.
Beautiful in loftiness, the joy of all the earth, like the peaks of Zaphon is Mount Zion, the city of the great King.
The name has already stretched to cover the city, and it is being described in the language of a capital.
For the LORD has chosen Zion; He has desired it for His home:
And the reason it matters at all: not location, not defensibility. A choice, with a stated desire behind it.
And it will be said of Zion: “This one and that one were born in her, and the Most High Himself will establish her.”
The most surprising verse in the whole symbol: people from elsewhere are counted as born there.
The LORD will record in the register of the peoples: “This one was born in Zion.” Selah
And who keeps the register. The LORD writes up the people, and the entry against each name is a birthplace.
And many peoples will come and say: “Come, let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob. He will teach us His ways so that we may walk in His paths.” For the law will go forth from Zion, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem.
The traffic goes both ways: nations come up to it, and the word goes out from it.
As Jesus approached Jerusalem and saw the city, He wept over it
And in the middle of all of it, a man on the hill opposite, looking at the actual city and weeping.
But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother.
A Jerusalem above, named as free: and Paul says he is working an allegory as he does it.
Instead, you have come to Mount Zion, to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem. You have come to myriads of angels
The tense is the thing: ye ARE COME. Not shall come. It is reported as something already done.
The Voices
with the work named
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown give this page its guard, and it is worth noticing who is saying it: a mainstream nineteenth-century commentary telling Gentile readers that they may not keep Israel’s curse literal and spiritualise her blessing away. Albert Barnes does the patient work: the migration of the name, the social force of Psalm 87, and the careful distinction at Hebrews 12:22 that adds without subtracting.
Adam Clarke refuses to let Psalm 48 mean more than the Hebrew allows, and explains where Paul’s “Jerusalem above” comes from. Chrysostom gives the north its military background. And Cyril of Alexandria says the plain thing about the tears on the Mount of Olives that a good deal of later writing avoided saying.
Where to Go Next
The question this page keeps in view
The city that comes down
Nearby in the index
Its neighbours in the index
The Symbolism of Scripture gathers every picture the Bible thinks in. This one sits with: