2022/09/26

58. Jerusalem

"And he [the angel] carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast which was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns" (Revelation 17:3). In the book of Revelation, the author John wrote that he had been in the Spirit four times. The above is the third time. In the first, the author was in the Spirit and heard "a loud voice like a trumpet" (cf. Revelation 1:10). In the second, he was in the Spirit immediately after hearing that same voice (cf. Revelation 4:1-2). This time, however, it was not a "voice" but an angel that engaged the author, who was in the Spirit. That is because, just as the Gospel says that when Jesus, entering into public life, was tempted by Satan in the wilderness, the angels served him, and he was with wild beasts (cf. Mark 1:13), the "wilderness" is the realm of the unconscious, which both men and beasts have, and therefore the company of an angel was necessary. The author writes, "And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. When I saw her I marveled greatly" (Revelation 17:6). The woman who shed the blood of the saints and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus symbolizes the city of Jerusalem. And as written, "The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell" (Revelation 16:19), Jerusalem was, in fact, torn in three in the future as the holy city of all three Abrahamic religions, and this is still true in the 21st century. In Revelation, the following statements about King David, who established Jerusalem as the capital, are suggestively placed. "The holy one, the true one, who has the key of David" (Revelation 3:7); "the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered" (Revelation 5:5); and "I Jesus have sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, the bright morning star" (Revelation 22:16). Here Jesus refers to himself as the root of David because he has done what Solomon could not achieve. God had told David about his son Solomon, "I will be his father, and he shall be my son" (2 Samuel 7:14). However, these words did not come true because Solomon turned away from God. The acute envy of the Jews toward Jesus, who called God his Father, indicates that there was hesitation and contradiction concerning God among them (cf. John 8:31-42). Later, the Song of Solomon, said to have been written by Solomon, was preserved in the Bible for posterity. And the image of marriage typified by it became associated with the relationship between God and his people. The people, who could not establish a parent-child bond with God, likened God to a bridegroom and the people to a bride, imagining the bond with God as a marital bond. Imagining the marriage between God and man in the presence of God, the true parent of man, is the very picture of "a woman sitting on a scarlet beast." On her forehead was written a name of mystery: "Babylon the great, mother of harlots and of earth's abominations" (Revelation 17:5).

Maria K. M.