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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comRobertson Word Pictures - Revelation 21:16 - 21:16
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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Lieth foursquare (tetragōnos keitai). Present middle indicative of keimai. The predicate adjective is from tetra (Aeolic for tessares four) and gōnos (gōnia corner, Mat 6:5) here only in N.T. As in Eze 48:16, Eze 48:20. It is a tetragon or quadrilateral quadrangle (Rev 21:12.).
The length thereof is as great as the breadth (to mēkos autēs hoson to platos). It is rectangular, both walls and city within. Babylon, according to Herodotus, was a square, each side being 120 stadia. Diodorus Siculus says that Nineveh was also foursquare.
With the reed (tōi kalamōi). Instrumental case (cf. Rev 21:15 for kalamos) and for metreō (aorist active indicative here)
Twelve thousand furlongs (epi stadiōn dōdeka chiliadōn). This use of the genitive stadiōn with epi is probably correct (reading of Aleph P), though A Q have stadious (more usual, but confusing here with chiliadōn). Thucydides and Xenophon use epi with the genitive in a like idiom (in the matter of). It is not clear whether the 1500 miles (12,000 furlongs) is the measurement of each of the four sides or the sum total. Some of the rabbis argued that the walls of the New Jerusalem of Ezekiel would reach to Damascus and the height would be 1500 miles high.
Equal (isa). That is, it is a perfect cube like the Holy of Holies in Solomon’s temple (1Ki 6:19.). This same measurement (platos, mēkos, hupsos) is applied to Christ’s love in Eph 3:18, with bathos (depth) added. It is useless to try to reduce the measurements or to put literal interpretations upon this highly wrought symbolic language. Surely the meaning is that heaven will be large enough for all, as Jesus said (Joh 14:1.) without insisting on the materialistic measurement of a gorgeous apartment house full of inside rooms.