Bible Commentaries
Revelation 22

Verses 1-21

9-XXII 5 Vision of the New Jerusalem —John is summoned to see the’ Bride herself, Spouse of the Lamb. A walled city with 12 gates, 3 on each side of her quadrilateral: her height, breadth and depth are equal: her gates are engraved with the names of the 12 tribes of Israel; her foundation-stones with those of the Apostles. Renowed Protestant Scholar J.N.D Kelly in his book "Early Christian Doctrines"

It should be observed that the Old Testament thus admitted as authoritative in the Church was somewhat bulkier and more comprehensive than the twenty-two or twenty-four books of the Hebrew Bible of Palestinian Judaism ... It always included, though with varying degrees of recognition, the so-called Apocryphal or deutero-canonical books. (p. 53)

In the first two centuries at any rate the Church seems to have accepted all, or most of, these additional books as inspired and to have treated them without question as Scripture. Quotations from Wisdom, for example, occur in 1 Clement [3, 4; 27, 5] and Barnabas [6, 7], and from 2 (4) Esdras and Ecclesiasticus in the latter. [12, 1; 19, 9] Polycarp [10, 2] cites Tobit, and the Didache [4, 5] [cites] Ecclesiasticus. Irenaeus refers to [Against Heresies, Book IV, cap. 26, 3; Book IV, cap. 38, 3; Book V, cap. 5, 2; Book V, cap. 35, 1] Wisdom, the History of Susannah, Bel and the Dragon and Baruch. The use made of the Apocrypha by Tertullian, Hippolytus, Cyprian and Clement of Alexandria is too frequent for detailed references to be necessary. (p. 54)

Early Christians has always accepted these books as Scriptures. The Christian community or Churches by the late 300 AD canonized Scripture in the Council of Rome 382 AD, Council of Hippo 392 AD, and Council of Carthage in 396 AD which included the 7 Books more Books.

It was Martin Luther who removed them and place them between the OT and NT has "uninspired". He rejected other books has well, including several NT books.

There is no reason biblically or historically why one should reject these 7 books (as well as the additions of Daniel and Ester).

All these glowed with precious stones; the gates were each ’one pearl’; the city itself and her streets, ’transparent gold’. No temple there, nor light of sun nor moon: God and the Lamb themselves are light and temple. That light will attract all nations—the doors will never be shut day or night—but there will be no night! Yet nothing impure can enter into her. A river of life flows from the Throne—the Grove of Life around it constantly providing fruit and leafage for the healing of the nations.—The City, then (16) is four square, of vast size (see Ez 48:30-35): its height is identical with its sides. If we visualize this, we must see a pyramid, not a cube! And what use would be a wall 144 cubits high round a cube of 12,000 furlongs? Anyhow the numbers merely symbolize vastness and perfection. The Church is universal, and ’invests’ the ’mountain’ of the whole earth. John is probably adapting the shape of a Babylonian ziqqurat, composed of vast superimposed ’platforms’ each smaller than the lower one and having no doubt a shrine on the topmost.

14. The foundations will then be the supporting walls of 12 towering ’storeys’, and not juxtaposed; and the precious stones, an incrustation lending a colour-scheme to the whole uprising mountain-city. The ’storeys’ of ziqqurats were apparently of different colours, like the concentric Persian city-walls.) The gates (12) are named after the tribes of the spiritual Israel; for the sentinel angels, cf.Isaiah 62:6. The foundations are the Apostles (cf.Ephesians 2:20: ’built up on the foundations of the Apostles and Prophets). ’Jasper crystal-clear’ (???sta??????t?; cf. above, ?d????sa) transparent, with light rippling through it? In 4:6, the sea is ’crystalline’, the river in 22:1; and the gold of the streets (21:21) is as clear as glass. Does John want to avoid too hard and metallic a vision? One may compare French colour-verbs ending in -oyer. What is rougeoyant, verdoyant is softer, more mobile, more subile than what is merely red or green: and John’s ’transparent gold’ must have been like a mist illuminated by the sunrise from within. The City is ’like jasper’ (11) but ’having the glory of God’ himself ’like jasper’ in 4:3. The colours of the precious stones appear to be a deep soft green: a very deep blue-green: green like a peacock’s tail or the shifting tints of a pigeon’s throat: then, pure emerald: in the sardonyx white mingles with transparent rose: then comes deep crimson: the next 3 stones re-introduce the softest yellows and gold-green: finally you have the glorious sapphire melting into violet amethyst. The City therefore ascends, terrace by terrace, with translucent golden paths mounting through the Grove of Life, leafy because of the River of Life which comes cascading down from the Throne of God and of the Lamb: it is the Grace-giving Spirit, vivificans. For the jewels, cf. not so much the highpriest’s breastplate (Exodus 27:17-20) as Isaiah 54:11.—’God and the Lamb (on an equality as in 7:9 ff.; 14:4, etc.) are the Temple (perhaps cf.John 2:21) and the Light (21:23). The previous mise en scène of the heavenly temple and its ’furniture’ can now lapse. This Throne is at the summit of the pyramidal mountain-city. Strictly speaking, the ’kings and peoples’ (24-27) need not ’come’ as though there were a world outside the City. The point is that they are there and in that Light (cf. esp. Ps 86 (Vg): ’I will make mention of Rahab ( Egypt) and Babylon as among those that know me: See the Philistines, the Tyrians, the Ethiopic folk—all these were "born there"!’ (That is, find their true selves, lives and citizenship in the ultimate Sion.) 25. Nothing hinders their entry, and whatever good there was among them, they bring with them as to its proper place and source. De tuis donis ac datis. God-created Nature is now fully supernaturalized and better than re-united with him.

XXII 6-21 Epilogue —An Angel assures John that what he has said is trustworthy (and Christ interpolates that he is coming quickly). John, overwhelmed, falls prostrate before the Angel but is checked by him. Our Lord bids John ’publish’ his book: let the sinner sin even worse—the righteous become still holier —nothing can alter the accomplishment of the divine plan. Jesus, Origin and End, Root and Race of David, the bright morning Star, has sent his Angel to bring this testimony. Nothing must be added to this book or subtracted from it.—John attempts to end the book; but the divine and angelic voices, and the voice of the Spirit and of the Bride herself, keep breaking through. Still shaken by his ecstasy, John pronounces the last invocation and the last blessing.—The Epilogue corresponds duly with the opening of the book.

6. The Speaker is presumably the Angel of 21:9. The ’Lord of the spirits of the prophets’ is He who controls their inspiration.

7. ’I come quickly’ is the voice of Christ breaking through.

8. ’Yes! It is I, John, who heard, etc.’: all this concluding part of Apoc has always impressed the present writer as though John were with difficulty coming back to normal consciousness as his ecstasy leaves him. Fragmentary voices, so to say, divine, angelic and human, beat upon one another.

9. The Angel is a fellowservant: the prophets are John’s brothers. Different in nature, they all serve each in his way. 10. The Book is for the public at large—therefore, not unintelligible.

11 ff. Let men proceed as they will— farther from God or nearer to him—God’s response cannot be impeded. 13. Christ applies God’s name to himself: cf. 1:8, 17; 21:6. 14 contains the seventh blessing thus uttered in Apoc.—The Tree of Life, forbidden in ’Genesis’ is here offered to all who choose to enter by the divine doors into a better-thanParadise. A full circle. 16. So too the divine history (David-Christ) reaches its consummation.—The Morning Star shines during this life: the full Sun, hereafter.

17. The cry of the Spirit (cf.Rom 26, 27) is uttered from the heart of the Church even on earth (for she prays, ’Come!’): but this Bride is the New Jerusalem; therefore that City is the whole Church, as in heaven, so on earth. Already she drinks the Living Water.

18-19 show John’s sense of the plenitude of his authority and sanction. 20. Christ approves this— ’Yes! I come quickly!’—the 7th time these words are used. Which of us would notice these ’latent’ uses of the number 7, were we not expecting John to pursue his scheme into its last recesses? The sentence certainly alludes to the Coming of Christ, and not to an imminent return of and visit from the Apostle. 21. Serenity and dignity of this conclusion! John goes back to the work and suffering of each day, but is not separated from the reality and glory of which he had received so transcendent an intimation.

The ’theology’ of the book is complete and clear— God, transcendent yet omnipresent, remains immutable and invisible throughout: the Enthroned is Paramount yet never named. But there are, too, the Word of God, and His Spirit. There is the Incarnation; there are the saving Death and Resurrection; there are the Church and the incorporation of Christian into Christ and that union of which sacramental marriage is St Paul’s chosen symbol: there are Baptism (the ’seal’) and the Eucharist: there is Mary, the mystical Second Eve. But though the Incarnation, the Church, Mary,’ the Sacraments as it were plunge God into human history (after all, St John says ’as if’, ’like’, and so forth so often that we may be forgiven our ’as it were’), St John, starting (as Apocalypists do) from God, tapers down through great enduring principles into the events of his own day, and thereafter rises up once more into what is everlasting—the only true ’society’, the New, the Real Jerusalem. For, into the divine plan Sin has inserted itself: first, the angelic sin-pride in some mysterious form. ’I will not serve!’ This has seeped down into our poor human race, so that men have ever since wished to be self-sufficient and the Son of God incarnate had to say: I am among you as one who serves’. Hence John is more occupied, if I may say so, with the condition of Christians in any period of their existence than with abstract principles. Without the principles, life becomes mere chaos, at the mercy of any tyrant who is strong enough and unscrupulous enough to impose himself upon it. No call, on the one hand, to force any one sentence of the Apocalypse into a materially exact prediction of what is happening in our own day; but every reason for seeing the great truths that John proclaims as operative now. Looking back, I am not sorry that he is so steeped in OT imagery, because not only we have the right to see the OT looking forward to Christ—Christus cogitabatur—but John enables us to hear Christ’s voice singing itself back into all that ancient God-guided history. We live in what is neither merely past, nor present, nor future. Life has become, for us, Christo-centric. We live by no mere abstract philosophy of God and of human nature: nor yet, by any mere system of Ethics detached from doctrine. Christ is our radiating centre: in Him we must live; with him die; with him rise into our immortality. ’Per ipspm, et cum ipso, et in ipso’: by means of him; in company with him; incorporated into him—thus alone do we become what God calls us to be. No need to visualize that, or to try to state it in adequate human terms: when the Seventh Seal was broken, there was silence in heaven.