And she shall be lifted up and dwell in her place,
From Benjamin’s gate unto the gate of the first place,
Unto the corner gate,
And from the tower of Hananeel unto the king’s wine presses.”
It is of little profit to understand the exact location of the places mentioned in this verse; there is some difficulty in doing that. The prophecy shows that in that day when the Lord has appeared there will be a great change in the surface of Palestine. Everything will become a plain. Now it is a land of mountains and hills. But then the hills and mountains will be lowered and become a plain. Jerusalem, however, is lifted up, and is seen shining in her earthly splendor and in it the magnificent temple. In the midst of the millennial Jerusalem in the earth will be another high place, still higher than the city. It is the glorious Mount Zion. “But in the latter days it shall be that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and it shall be exalted above the hills” (Micah iv: 1). Upon this high place the glory will rest. Thus it will be seen and cover the earth as the waters cover the deep. “And the Lord will create over the whole habitation of Mount Zion and over her assemblies a cloud and smoke by day, and the shining of the flaming fire by night; for over all the glory shall be spread a canopy” (Isaiah iv: 5). From that high and glorious place in the earth the communications and intercourse between the heavenlies and the earth will perhaps take place, it will be the ladder upon which the angels of God ascend and descend upon the Son of Man.
Verse 11. “And they shall dwell therein,
And there shall be no more curse,
But Jerusalem shall dwell safely.”
The happiness of the Jerusalem in the earth. The curse is entirely removed. While now Jerusalem is one of the most miserable places in the earth, desolate and forsaken, and during the tribulation it will be the place of misery, sin, and curse, it will become the most blessed place in the Millennium. The Lord will show forth there His great lovingkindness, and all the blessings we have reviewed in the visions of Zechariah will all be fulfilled. “There shall be no more thence an infant of days nor an old man that hath not filled his days; for the child shall die an hundred years old, and the sinner being an hundred years old shall be accursed. And they shall build houses and inhabit them, and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit thereof. They shall not build and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat; for as the days of a tree shall be the days of My people and My chosen people shall long enjoy the work of their hands. They shall not labor in vain, nor bring forth for calamity; for they are the seed of the blessed of the Lord and their offspring with them. And it shall come to pass that before they call I will answer, and while they are yet speaking I will hear. The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and dust shall be the serpent’s meat. They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, saith the Lord” (Isaiah lxv). But that wonderful city in the earth, the city of Jerusalem, in all her blessing, joy, peace, prosperity, praise, and worship, is but a faint type of that still more glorious Jerusalem which is then above. The new Jerusalem, our glorious home, dear reader (if you are in Christ), is then in the air, and at the end of the thousand years it will come down and find its eternal resting-place in the new earth.
Verses 12-15. “And this shall be the plague