Ezekiel 40:2

Hebrew Bible

1 In the twenty-fifth year of our exile, at the beginning of the year, on the tenth day of the month, in the fourteenth year after the city was struck down, on this very day, the hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me there. 2 By divine visions he brought me to the land of Israel and placed me on a very high mountain, and on it was a structure like a city, to the south. 3 When he brought me there, I saw a man whose appearance was like bronze, with a linen cord and a measuring stick in his hand. He was standing in the gateway. 4 The man said to me, “Son of man, watch closely, listen carefully, and pay attention to everything I show you, for you have been brought here so that I can show it to you. Tell the house of Israel everything you see.” 5 I saw a wall all around the outside of the temple. In the man’s hand was a measuring stick 10½ feet long. He measured the thickness of the wall as 10½ feet and its height as 10½ feet.

Revelation 21:10

New Testament

9 Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven final plagues came and spoke to me, saying, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb!” 10 So he took me away in the Spirit to a huge, majestic mountain and showed me the holy city, Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God. 11 The city possesses the glory of God; its brilliance is like a precious jewel, like a stone of crystal-clear jasper. 12 It has a massive, high wall with twelve gates, with twelve angels at the gates, and the names of the twelve tribes of the nation of Israel are written on the gates. 13 There are three gates on the east side, three gates on the north side, three gates on the south side, and three gates on the west side. 14 The wall of the city has twelve foundations, and on them are the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

 Notes and References

"... The description of the New Jerusalem is a remarkable weaving together of many strands of Old Testament tradition into a coherent and richly evocative image of a place in which people live in the immediate presence of God. It can be considered in its three aspects: place, people, presence of God ... The 'great high mountain' (21:10) to which the city descends has a long mythological ancestry as well as its immediate derivation from Ezekiel 40:2. It is the cosmic mountain where heaven and earth meet, where the gods dwelt, where sacred cities were built with temples at their heart. Paradise was on 'the holy mountain of God' (Ezekiel 28:14). Mount Zion on which Jerusalem and the temple stood was not in reality so very high, but was mythologically a very high mountain (Ezekiel 40:2): 'his holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of all the earth' (Psalm 48:2). As God's dwelling, the seat of his rule, 'the city of the great King', it was impregnable (Psalm 48). Even if God's throne was in heaven. Mount Zion was his footstool (Psalm 99) ..."

Bauckham, Richard The Theology of the Book of Revelation (pp. 132-133) Cambridge University Press, 1993

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