The harlot of Revelation 17 is dressed like a priest – robes of blue and scarlet, precious stones, an inscription on her head. So is the bride of Revelation 21: She is a city adorned with precious stones with streets of gold.
Why would a female city be dressed like a priest? Because both cities are priestly cities – the old Jerusalem named Babylon, and the new Jerusalem that comes out of heaven.
But we might, as one of my students, Fraser Martens, suggested, ask the question inside out: Why would a priest be dressed like a bride? And the answer is that the priest represents the bride in her approach to Israel, offering bridal food on the altar, doing the house-cleaning, offering her advice to Yahweh in prayer. Every sacrificial feast is a marriage supper.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Restoring Man at Notre Dame
It is fascinating to be an outsider on the inside of an institution going through times of…
Deliver Us from Evil
In a recent New York Times article entitled “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery…
Natural Law Needs Revelation
Natural law theory teaches that God embedded a teleological moral order in the world, such that things…
