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REVELATION OF ST. JOHN THE DIVINE - Chapter 21 - Verse 17

Verse 17. And he measured the wall thereof. In respect to its height. Of course, its length corresponded with the extent of the city.

An hundred and forty and four cubits. This would be, reckoning the cubit at eighteen inches, two hundred and sixteen feet. This is less than the height of the walls of Babylon, which Herodotus says were three hundred and fifty feet high. See Introduction to Isa 13:1. As the walls of a city are designed to protect it from external foes, the height mentioned here gives all proper ideas of security; and we are to conceive of the city itself as towering immensely above the walls. Its glory, therefore, would not be obscured by the wall that was thrown around it for defence.

According to the measure of a man. The measure usually employed by men. This seems to be added in order to prevent any mistake as to the size of the city. It is an angel who makes the measurement, and without this explanation it might perhaps be supposed that he used some measure not in common use among men, so that, after all, it would be impossible to form any definite idea of the size of the city.

That is, of the angel. That is, "which is the measure employed by the angel." It was, indeed, an angel who measured the city, but the measure which he employed was that in common use among men.

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