Near the end of Revelation, after the last judgment, in the section that answers the book's opening horrors with an architecture. One of the seven angels who carried the seven bowls of plague — the same angel who in Revelation 17:1 showed John the great whore — now says "come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb."The two visions are deliberately paired: the same guide, the same invitation, the same verb. A city was shown before. A city is shown now.
What happens
John is carried in spirit to a great high mountain and shown Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from Theos, "having the glory of Theos, its radiance like a most rare jewel, like jasper, clear as crystal." Then the measurements begin. A great high wall. Twelve gates, three to each compass point, with twelve angels at them and the names of the twelve tribes of Israel written on them. And the wall of the city has twelve foundations, "and on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb."
What to notice
Almost nothing is known about Bartholomew. He appears in the four apostolic lists (Matthew 10:3, Mark 3:18, Luke 6:14, Acts 1:13) and nowhere else in the New Testament, and even his name is not a name — bar-Talmai is a patronymic, "son of Talmai." We have his father's name and not his own. The Church gives that man this reading, and what Revelation 21:14 supplies is precisely the one thing that can be said about him: the name is written into the foundation of the wall. Note too what the city has and lacks. It has gates, and the gates are never shut (Revelation 21:25). It has no temple (Revelation 21:22). The whole thing is measured like a sanctuary — Revelation 21:16 makes it a perfect cube, the shape of the inner room in 1 Kings 6:20 — so the city is not a place containing a holy of holies. The city is the holy of holies, and the names of twelve men are load-bearing in it.
An acrostic hymn of praise, the last of the psalms attributed to David and the only one titled tehillah, "praise" — the word that gives the whole book its Hebrew name. Each verse begins with the next letter of the alphabet, which is a way of saying: everything from A to Z, nothing left out.
The selected verses
Psalm 145:10–11."All your works give you thanks, Yahweh, and your faithful ones bless you. They speak of the glory of your reign and tell of your might." Psalm 145:12–13."Making known to the sons of men your mighty deeds and the glorioussplendor of your reign. Your reign is a reign for all ages; your rule endures through every generation." Psalm 145:17–18."Yahweh is just in all his ways and faithful in all his works. Yahweh is near to all who call upon him, to all who call upon him in truth."
What to notice
The Hebrew of Psalm 145:10 is hasidekha yevarekhukha — "your hasidim bless you," the ones bound to you by hesed. The lectionary's "your friends" is not sentimental: it is the covenant word doing relational work. And there is a hole in this psalm. The Masoretic text runs from mem straight to samekh and skips the letter nun — the one verse that should begin with N is missing. It survives in the Septuagint, in the Syriac, and in the Psalms scroll from Qumran cave 11: "Faithful is Yahweh in all his words, and gracious in all his deeds."An alphabet with a letter missing, read on the feast of an apostle whose biography is missing. The gap is old, it is known, and the psalm is still sung as a complete thing.
The fourth day of John's opening week. Andrew has found Simon; Jesus has found Philip; now Philip finds Nathanael. The chapter is a chain of people fetching other people, and the verb keeps repeating: heurēkamen, we have found.
What happens
Philip announces: "We have found the one Moses wrote about in the law, and the prophets — Jesus son of Joseph, from Nazareth." Nathanael's reply is one of the least pious lines in the gospels: "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" Philip does not argue. He says "come and see." Jesus sees Nathanael approaching and says, "Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit." Nathanael asks how he is known. "Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you." Nathanael answers with a full confession — "Rabbi, you are the Son of Theos; you are the King of Israel" — and Jesus tells him that is the small version. "You will see greater things than these. Amen, amen, I say to you: you will see heaven opened and the angels of Theos ascending and descending on the Son of Man."
What to notice
Since roughly the ninth century Nathanael has been identified with Bartholomew, on a structural argument rather than a textual one: the Synoptic lists pair Bartholomew with Philip, and John has Philip bring Nathanael. It is an inference, it is a reasonable one, and it is why this Gospel is read today. But watch what the passage does with Jacob. Jesus calls Nathanael "an Israelite in whom there is no dolos" — no guile. The Septuagint uses that exact word of Jacob at Genesis 27:35, where Isaac tells Esau "your brother came with dolos and took your blessing." Jacob is Israel, and Jacob is the man of guile. So Jesus greets him as an Israelite without the thing that made Israel Israel — and then promises him Jacob's dream. Genesis 28:12, the ladder at Bethel, angels going up and down, with one alteration. In Genesis they ascend and descend on the ladder. Here they ascend and descend on the Son of Man. The place where heaven touches earth has stopped being a place.
How They Fit Together
Readings for a man about whom nothing is recorded
The Church needed readings for a man about whom it has no stories, and the choice is worth watching, because it is not evasive. It faces the problem directly.
The one scene, if the Nathanael identification holds, in which he speaks at all — and his first line is a sneer.
The Gospel is the surprising member of the set. On a feast day the obvious move is to read something creditable; instead we get a man who hears the name of the town and says can anything good come out of Nazareth? — and is called, four verses later, an Israelite without guile. The two are not in tension. The compliment is precisely for the sneer. Nathanael says what he actually thinks. He does not manage his opinion of Nazareth into something more presentable before an important stranger, and Jesus names that as the absence of dolos.
Then set that beside Revelation's wall. A foundation stone does not have to be admirable; it has to be there, in the same place, bearing load. Bartholomew has no recorded miracles, no sayings, no letters. What he has is his name in the fourteenth verse of Revelation 21 and the fact that four independent lists place him among the Twelve. Presence, sustained, is the whole of what the tradition remembers about him — and Revelation 21:14 says presence sustained is what a foundation is.Psalm 145 then puts the missing nun verse in the middle of the day like a small honest admission. The alphabet is not complete. It is sung anyway.
A Question to Sit With
Nathanael was commended for the least diplomatic sentence in the chapter. He did not decide what a promising rabbi would want to hear about Nazareth; he said what he thought, and the reply named that as the absence of guile. Most of my own guile is not deception exactly — it is the smoothing, the presentable version of an opinion I have already privately formed, offered because the room seems to call for it. Where today am I about to hand someone the managed version instead of the real one, and what would it cost me to say the Nazareth sentence out loud?