The Temple Measured: The Church Safe While Suffering (Revelation 11:1-2)

Image: The Spoils of Jerusalem, Arch of Titus 

And there was given me a reed like unto a rod: and the angel stood, saying, Rise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. 2But the court which is without the temple leave out, and measure it not; for it is given unto the Gentiles: and the holy city shall they tread under foot forty and two months. (Revelation 11:1-2)

[T]he unmeasured outer court and the “holy city” that it represents, trampled under Gentile feet for forty-two months, provide a contrasting perspective on the same true church that is pictured in the measured sanctuary. In the paradoxical way in which Revelation’s visions so often describe the church, Christ’s holy temple-city is secure and vulnerable: secured from apostasy and divine wrath by the power and grace of the Lamb but vulnerable to attack through persecution by the world’s noncovenant peoples.  Although elsewhere in the Bible the title “the holy city” refers to the physical metropolis that was the capital of Israel and center of Jewish worship, in the book of Revelation “the holy city” is the new Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb (Rev. 21:2; 22:19). Earthly Jerusalem, symbolizing anti-Jesus Judaism, as the site of the Lord’s crucifixion, has become identified with “the great city” (11:8), symbolic of human community that stands in the defiant tradition of Sodom, Egypt, and preeminently Babylon (14:8: 16:9; 17:18). Because a Christ-centered redefinition of the people of God has occurred, the name Jew no longer belongs to anti-Jesus Jews (2:9; 3:9), and pro-Jesus Gentiles have been redeemed and consecrated as God’s kingdom of priests (5:9-10). So also the “holy city” no longer belongs to earthly Jerusalem, which has become just one more expression of the “great city” that slays the saints (11:7-8; 17:6). The holy city is the bride of the Lamb, who will be revealed in beauty, ready for her wedding, at the end of history.

In the interim, however, the holy city will be trampled by the Gentiles, just as the earthly Jerusalem and its temple had been razed and trampled by Roman troops under Titus. The interim here is symbolized as forty-two months, which will be shown in Revelation 12-13 to symbolize the period of the dragon’s virulent but frustrated attempts to destroy the church through deception and violent aggression.

Thus the unmeasured courtyard, given to the Gentiles, and the holy city, trampled by the Gentiles, balance the portrait of the church as the measured sanctuary: though protected from apostasy and God’s wrath, the church is exposed to physical coercion, social contempt, and violence.

Dennis E. Johnson, Triumph of the Lamb: A Commentary on Revelation (pp. 168-169)