Tool Alpha
Echoes of Revelation
Revelation never quotes the Old Testament outright, yet no New Testament book refers to it more. See both texts side by side, why they don’t match, and what John does with them.
Revelation 21:10, carried in the Spirit to a great, high mountain
John is taken to a high mountain to see the city, as Ezekiel was taken to a very high mountain to see the temple of the future.
Revelation 21:10, in every translation this tool compares.
A guide who starts the tour from the same hilltop as the first explorer tells you whose map you are following. Ezekiel 40 begins his long vision of the future temple. God's hand sets him on a towering peak, and he sees something like a city. John too is carried by the Spirit up a vast, lofty mountain. From there he sees the holy city. Everything he sees next, Beale says, is Ezekiel's vision, read again.
A prophet carried by God's Spirit to a very high mountain, where he sees a city. The Greek of Ezekiel 40:2 has oros hypselon sphodra, a very high mountain, and a city-like building opposite. John has oros mega kai hypselon. Ezekiel 43:5 has the Spirit taking the prophet up.
Ezekiel saw a temple, with a city beside it. John sees only a city, and later says it has no temple. He moves from Ezekiel's hand of the Lord to his own phrase in the Spirit. In Ezekiel the mountain is in the land of Israel; in John the city comes down from heaven.
By borrowing the opening of Ezekiel 40, John tells the reader how to read the rest of chapter 21. The city is the fulfillment of Ezekiel's temple, with its gates, walls and measurements. The same angel scene opened the vision of Babylon in 17:1-3. The prostitute was seen from a wilderness; the bride is seen from a mountain.
Not a new setting for a vision. The great high mountain is where Ezekiel stood to see his temple (40:2). John is taken to the same kind of place to see the city.
Beale says 21:10 combines Ezekiel 43:5, the Spirit took me up, with 40:1-2, where the Lord's hand sets the prophet on a towering peak, and that the combination shows beyond doubt that the vision that follows is Ezekiel 40-48's future temple. The Greek of Ezekiel 40:2 reads etheke me ep' orous hypselou sphodra, kai ep' autou hos oikodome poleos: a towering peak, with something like a city built on it. Revelation reads apenenken me en pneumati epi oros mega kai hypselon. Beale also links John's repeated in the Spirit to Ezekiel's commissions (2:2; 3:12, 14; 11:1; 43:5). He gathers other Old Testament texts that set the end-time city on a high mountain: Isaiah 2:2-3, Micah 4:1-2, Psalm 48:2, and Ezekiel 28:14, where Eden itself is a mountain. Keener says the image is rooted in Ezekiel 40:2. The grade is drawn here: the setting and wording match Ezekiel's opening, and Beale calls the link certain.
Heiser asks why a high mountain, when Zion is not tall. His answer is the cosmic mountain, the place where God dwells, and the first cosmic mountain was Eden, called a mountain in Ezekiel 28. With Beale and McDonough he cites the combination of Ezekiel 43:5 and 40:1-2. John wants readers to think of Ezekiel's temple vision, he says, though he describes a city and a new creation. That works only if you think of the cosmic mountain, not a building project.
The sources agree on Ezekiel 40:2. The ESV Study Bible notes that in Ezekiel this mountain vision comes right after the defeat of Gog and Magog, as in Revelation. The NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible adds Isaiah 2:2-3 and contrasts this mountain with the seven hills Babylon sits on.
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-passages\/revelation-21-9-27\/","n":"Revelation 21:9-27, the city of gold and twelve stones","s":"An angel carries John to a high mountain to show him the bride, the holy city Jerusalem, shining with God's glory, with twelve gates named for Israel's tribes and twelve foundations named for the Lamb's apostles. The city is a cube of pure gold, its foundations set with twelve precious stones and its gates each a single pearl; it has no temple, since God and the Lamb are its temple, and its gates never shut as the nations bring their glory into it.","r":"Revelation 21:9-27"}
- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 21:9-10
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 21:10
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:10
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:10
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:10
- CSB Study Bible, cross-references on Revelation 21:10
- Septuagint, Ezekiel 40:2 and 43:5, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 21:10
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 21-22: The New Heaven and the New Earth, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
