Apocalypse Revealed # 904
904. 21:15 And he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its wall. This symbolically means that to people who possess the goodness of love, the Lord grants a faculty for understanding and knowing the nature of the Lord's New Church as regards its doctrine and its introductory truths, and as regards the Word from which they are drawn.
He who spoke with me symbolizes the Lord speaking from heaven, because it was an angel speaking, one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls mentioned in verse 9, who means the Lord speaking from heaven (no. 895). A reed symbolizes a power or ability springing from the goodness of love - a reed symbolizing power or ability (no. 485), and gold the goodness of love (nos. 211, 726). To measure means, symbolically, to learn the character of a thing, thus to understand and know it (no. 486). The city, the holy Jerusalem, symbolizes the church in respect to its doctrine (nos. 879, 880). Its gates symbolize concepts of truth and goodness from the Word's literal sense, which are truths and goods owing to the spiritual life in them (no. 899). And the wall symbolizes the Word in its literal sense from which the doctrine and concepts come (no. 898).
It is apparent from this that "he who talked with me had a gold reed to measure the city, its gates, and its wall," symbolically means that to people who possess the goodness of love, the Lord grants a faculty for understanding and knowing the nature of the Lord's New Church as regards its doctrine and its introductory truths, and as regards the Word from which they are drawn.
[2] These symbolic meanings cannot be seen at all in the literal sense, for one sees in it only that an angel speaking with John had a gold reed with which to measure the city and its gates and wall. But even so, that these words contain another meaning, a spiritual meaning, is clearly apparent from the fact that the city Jerusalem does not mean a real city, but the church. Consequently everything said about Jerusalem as a city symbolizes such things as have to do with the church, and everything having to do with the church is, in itself, spiritual.
Such a spiritual meaning is present also in what is said in chapter 11 above, where we are told the following:
I was given a reed like a measuring rod. And the angel stood by, saying, "Rise and measure the temple of God, the altar, and those who worship there." (Revelation 11:1)
A similar spiritual meaning is present, too, in everything that the angel measured with a reed in Ezekiel 40; 41; 42; 43; 44; 45; 46; 47; 48. Also in these verses in Zechariah:
I raised my eyes and looked, and behold, a man with a measuring line in his hand. So I said, "Where are you going?" And he said to me, "To measure Jerusalem, to see what its width is and what its length." (Zechariah 2:1-2)
Indeed, such a spiritual meaning is present in everything connected with the Tabernacle and in everything connected with the Temple in Jerusalem, whose measurements we are told, and also in the measurements themselves. And yet nothing of this can be seen in the literal sense.
Ezekiel 4
1
You also, son of man, take a tile, and lay it before yourself, and portray on it a city, even Jerusalem:
2
and lay siege against it, and build forts against it, and cast up a mound against it; set camps also against it, and plant battering rams against it all around.
3
Take for yourself an iron pan, and set it for a wall of iron between you and the city: and set your face toward it, and it shall be besieged, and you shall lay siege against it. This shall be a sign to the house of Israel.
4
Moreover lie on your left side, and lay the iniquity of the house of Israel on it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on it, you shall bear their iniquity.
5
For I have appointed the years of their iniquity to be to you a number of days, even three hundred ninety days: so you shall bear the iniquity of the house of Israel.
6
Again, when you have accomplished these, you shall lie on your right side, and shall bear the iniquity of the house of Judah: forty days, each day for a year, have I appointed it to you.
7
You shall set your face toward the siege of Jerusalem, with your arm uncovered; and you shall prophesy against it.
8
Behold, I lay bands on you, and you shall not turn you from one side to the other, until you have accomplished the days of your siege.
9
Take for yourself also wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentils, and millet, and spelt, and put them in one vessel, and make bread of it; [according to] the number of the days that you shall lie on your side, even three hundred ninety days, you shall eat of it.
10
Your food which you shall eat shall be by weight, twenty shekels a day: from time to time you shall eat it.
11
You shall drink water by measure, the sixth part of a hin: from time to time you shall drink.
12
You shall eat it as barley cakes, and you shall bake it in their sight with dung that comes out of man.
13
Yahweh said, Even thus shall the children of Israel eat their bread unclean, among the nations where I will drive them.
14
Then I said, Ah Lord Yahweh! behold, my soul has not been polluted; for from my youth up even until now have I not eaten of that which dies of itself, or is torn of animals; neither came there abominable flesh into my mouth.
15
Then he said to me, Behold, I have given you cow's dung for man's dung, and you shall prepare your bread thereon.
16
Moreover he said to me, Son of man, behold, I will break the staff of bread in Jerusalem: and they shall eat bread by weight, and with fearfulness; and they shall drink water by measure, and in dismay:
17
that they may want bread and water, and be dismayed one with another, and pine away in their iniquity.
