Verses 11-12
11, 12. Hitherto the Church, or Zion, has been a lone female, afflicted, or insulted; tossed with tempest, unprotected, jostled about, furious storms driving in upon her; but now, instead of ruined walls and torn-up pavements, a blessed spiritual vision is the medium in which she is to be seen. The stones of Zion shall be laid in solid gems of variegated colours, and of a strength and quality most precious and most enduring. The Hebrew mind revelled in figures of this kind to exhibit the future Church in her splendour, permanence, and power. Both in the apocryphal book of Tobit, (chap. Isaiah 13:16-17,) and especially in Revelation 21:18-27, the whole resources of rhetoric in this line of figures, descriptive of the glories of Zion or the New Jerusalem, seem worked to exhaustion. Beauty, preciousness, solidity, are characteristics after which the whole heart and understanding are put upon the strain to describe.
Thy windows Here so called because light is transmitted through them. The lexicons give other definitions, such as battlements, pinnacles, and the like; implying, however, some relation to the sun, as if the material they were made of was transparent, and so admitted the light.
Sapphires Gems translucently blue, and in foundations beautifully offsetting the azure of the sky.
Agates, the same as rubies; and carbuncles, the same as glittering gems.
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