A river down the main street

Where we are

The last chapter. The city has been measured, its wall described, its gates named for the tribes and its foundations for the apostles, and it has been said to contain no temple. Today's verses are the interior of the city, and they are the last piece of vision in the Christian canon.

What happens

"The angel showed me the river of life-giving water, sparkling like crystal, flowing from the throne of Theos and of the Lamb down the middle of the street. On either side of the river grew the tree of life that produces fruit twelve times a year, once each month; the leaves of the trees serve as medicine for the nations. Nothing accursed will be found there anymore. The throne of Theos and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will look upon his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Night will be no more, nor will they need light from lamp or sun, for the Lord Theos shall give them light, and they shall reign forever and ever."

What to notice

The city's plumbing is the first thing described, and it is public. Potamon hydatos zōēs … en mesō tēs plateias autēs — a river of living water down the middle of its plateia. Plateia is the broad street, the main thoroughfare — the same noun Revelation 11:8 used for the street where the two witnesses' corpses lay. The last vision puts a river where a city puts its high street.

The grammar of the tree is famously impossible and worth not tidying. Enteuthen kai ekeithen xylon zōēs — "on this side and on that, the tree of life." Xylon is singular. A single tree cannot be on both banks, and translations resolve it in three ways: one tree straddling the river, a species growing along both sides, or an avenue of trees. The Greek simply says both things at once, and Ezekiel 47:12 — the source — has trees plural on both banks.

The fruiting schedule is an agricultural impossibility stated as a calendar. Poioun karpous dōdeka, kata mēna hekaston apodidoun ton karpon autou — twelve fruits, yielding its fruit each month. There is no hungry gap. In a subsistence economy the months between the last stores and the first harvest are the dangerous ones, and the vision's specific promise is that there are none.

And the leaves are for outsiders. Ta phylla tou xylou eis therapeian tōn ethnōn — "the leaves of the tree for the therapeia of the nations." Therapeia is treatment, medical attention, care — the noun behind therapy, and its verb is what Jesus does to the sick. The nations, in a book that has spent twenty-one chapters describing their deception and judgement, are here the patients. The city's landscaping is a pharmacy for people outside it.

Kai pan katathema ouk estai eti — "and there will no longer be any katathema." The noun is the cousin of Tuesday's anathēma: both from anatithēmi/katatithēmi, to set down or set up before a god. Anathēma was the votive gift hanging in Herod's temple; katathema is the thing devoted to destruction — a curse. Deuteronomy's cherem, the ban, is what stands behind it. The city has no ban in it, which is a considerable claim about a place with gates.

Then the seeing. Kai opsontai to prosōpon autou — "and they will see his face." Exodus 33:20 is explicit that no one can: lo yir'ani ha-adam va-chai, a person cannot see me and live. The last chapter of the Bible reverses the one thing Moses was refused. And to onoma autou epi tōn metōpōn autōn, his name on their foreheads — the mark from Monday's reading, arriving at its destination.

And the last negative closes a circuit this week opened. Kai nyx ouk estai eti, kai ouk echousin chreian phōtos lychnou — "and night will be no more, and they have no need of lamplight." On Thursday, the sentence on Babylon included phōs lychnou ou mē phanē en soi eti, "the light of a lamp will never shine in you again." Two cities, two verses about lamplight — one has lost it and one has outgrown the need.