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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 21:12-13, twelve gates with the names of the tribes
The city's twelve gates, three on each side and each named for a tribe of Israel, come from Ezekiel's city in Ezekiel 48:30-35.
Revelation 21:12-13, in every translation this tool compares.
A school that names each of its doors after its founders tells every pupil whose story they walk into. Ezekiel's vision ends with a city that has twelve gates, three on each side. Each gate carries the name of one of Israel's tribes. John's city has the same twelve gates and the same names. He adds an angel at every gate. And in verse 14 he writes the names of Jesus' twelve apostles on the foundations.
Twelve gates, three facing each direction, each one carrying a tribe's name. The Greek of Ezekiel 48:31 has the gates of the city by the names of the tribes of Israel; John has names written on them of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel.
Ezekiel lists the gates starting from the north; John goes east, north, south, west, an order Beale traces to the measuring in Ezekiel 42:15-19. Ezekiel has no angels at the gates; John has twelve. Ezekiel's city sits beside a temple; John's city has none. John also adds the apostles on the foundations, which Ezekiel could not have.
Beale reads the tribes and apostles together as one people of God, the true Israel, made of Jews and Gentiles in Christ. The apostles are the foundation and the tribes are the gates. Beale calls that a reversal: Israel's promises reach their goal in Christ. Heiser makes the same point: one people of God, as in Eden.
Not Ezekiel's gates alone. John keeps Ezekiel's twelve gates named for Israel's tribes and adds twelve foundations bearing the apostles' names.
Ezekiel 48:31-34 in Greek reads hai pylai tes poleos ep' onomasi phylon tou Israel, gates named for Israel's tribes, three to the north, three to the east, three to the south and three to the west. Revelation 21:12 reads onomata epigegrammena, ha estin ton dodeka phylon huion Israel. Beale says Ezekiel's many temple gates (chapter 40) and the twelve city gates of 48:31-34 are merged into one set around one city-temple. He links the angels to the watchmen on Jerusalem's walls in Isaiah 62:6, as Mounce and Sweet suggest, and to the cherubim at Eden's gate in Genesis 3:24, though Fekkes doubts the Isaiah link. Keener notes that the Temple Scroll from Qumran also puts the tribes on twelve gates of the new temple, and that 1 Enoch ties twelve heavenly gates to the zodiac, while John ties his to the tribes. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible and the NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible both cite Ezekiel 48. The grade is drawn here: twelve gates named for the tribes, three to a side, is Ezekiel's picture alone.
Heiser, reading Keener, notes that the gates bear the twelve tribes as in Ezekiel 48:31-34, an element of Ezekiel's temple prophecy now used of a city. The foundations carry the apostles. He sees how easily something given to the tribes is applied to the apostles: Israel and the church, one circumcision-neutral people of God.
Beale reads the twelve tribes on the gates as the whole redeemed church. The CSB Study Bible thinks the gates and foundations imply that Israel and the church keep distinct covenant promises forever. The ESV Study Bible reads the pairing as the unity of Old Testament and New Testament believers.
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- G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (New International Greek Testament Commentary), comment on 21:12-13 and 21:14
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Revelation 21:12-13
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:12
- ESV Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:12-14
- NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:12
- CSB Study Bible, note on Revelation 21:11b-14, 21
- Septuagint, Ezekiel 48:31, Interlinear Greek-English Septuagint
- SBL Greek New Testament (MorphGNT), Revelation 21:12
- Michael S. Heiser, Revelation 21-22: The New Heaven and the New Earth, video lecture (Naked Bible Revelation series)
