Sheer happiness characterizes the
city, a happiness unadulterated by tears, pain, or death—elements in the old
creation that have peculiar poignancy for those facing persecution to the death
by the beast (21:4; cf. 7:12-17 above all, but also 2:13; 6:9-11; 11:1-13;
12:1-13:18; 14:13). Let us pay more attention to the absolute security of the
new Jerusalem, however, the City is perched on a mountain so huge and high that
no invading army could possibly gain a foothold on it (21:10). The city-wall is
so thick and high—144 cubits thick and naturally as high as the city itself, it
would appear, since 144 cubits would not at all be high in comparison with the
city’s height of 12,000 stadia—the city-wall is so thick and high that no
invading army could breach or scale it even if they were able to gain a foothold
on the mountain (21:12a). Standing guard at each gate is an angel, more than a
match for any invader (21:12b). Twelve mammoth stones interspersed between the
gates support the wall (21:14a). John is not describing an eternally secure
place. He is describing eternally secure peoples. Neither Satan nor demons nor
beast nor false prophet nor evil men will be able to touch the city of God,
which is his saints. To troubled saints John promises total absence of anxiety
over persecution such as looms on the horizon of the old earth.
The huge dimensions of the city do
not mean that it has to be large to hold all the saints so much as they mean
that all the saints, whom the city represents, will amount to an astronomically
high number. Twelve thousand stadia long, wide, and high (21;16) the city is
reminiscent of the twelve thousand from each of the twelve tribes of Israel,
especially since the cubical shape of the city makes twelve edges of twelve
thousand stadia each, coming to a total of 144,000, just as in the case of the
Israelites (7:1-8; 14:1-5). In ch. 7 John heard about Israelites but when he
actually saw them they turned out to be an innumerable company of the redeemed
from all nations, tribes, and languages (vv. 9-17) just as he had earlier heard
about a lion but saw it to be a lamb (ch. 5). So also the multiplied twelve
thousands of stadia, though numbered, represent the innumerability of the
saints. Sufferers naturally tend to think of themselves as few, often as lone.
John aims to lift the suffering saints out of their sense of isolation by
pointing to the immense number of the redeemed. (Robert Gundry, “The New
Jerusalem: People as Place, Not Place for People,” in The Old Is Better: New
Testament Essays in Support of Traditional Interpretations [Wissenschaftliche
Untersuchungen Zum Neuen Testament 178; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005; repr.,
Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2010], 404)
Further Reading
Revelation 21:14—Evidence against LDS Ecclesiology?