Apocalipsis 21

VBL · Chapter 21/22

1Entonces vi un nuevo cielo y una nueva tierra. El primer cielo y la primera tierra habían desaparecido, y el mar ya no existía más.

2Y vi la santa ciudad, Nueva Jerusalén, descendiendo desde el cielo de Dios, preparada como una novia, embellecida para su esposo.

3Escuché una voz fuerte que salía del trono y decía: “Ahora la casa de Dios está con los seres humanos y él vivirá con ellos. Ellos serán su pueblo. Dios mismo estará con ellos como su Dios.

4El enjugará toda lágrima de sus ojos, y la muerte no volverá a ocurrir. Y nunca más habrá lamento, llanto, o dolor, porque el mundo anterior ya nunca más existirá”.

5El que está sentado en el trono dijo: “¡Todas las cosas las estoy haciendo nuevas!” Y me dijo: “Escribe esto, porque estas palabras son fieles y verdaderas”.

6Entonces me dijo: “¡Todo está hecho! Yo soy el Alfa y la Omega, el principio y el fin. A todo el que tenga sed le daré gratuitamente agua de la fuente de agua de vida.

7Los que sean victoriosos heredarán todas estas cosas, y yo seré su Dios, y ellos serán mis hijos.

8Pero los cobardes, los que no confían en mí, los que hacen cosas aborrecibles, los asesinos, los que comenten inmoralidad sexual, los que practican hechicería, los que adoran ídolos, los mentirosos, tienen su lugar escogido en el lago que arde con fuego y azufre. Esta es la segunda muerte”.

9Uno de los siete ángeles que tenía las siete copas con las siete plagas, vino y me habló. Me dijo: “Ven conmigo. Te mostraré a la novia, a la esposa del Cordero”.

10Y me llevó en el Espíritu a la cima de una montaña muy alta. Ahí me mostró la ciudad santa, Jerusalén, descendiendo del cielo de Dios,

11brillando con la gloria de la presencia de Dios. La luz resplandecía como una piedra preciosa, un jaspe, transparente y brillante.

12Y el muro de la ciudad era alto y grueso, con doce puertas, protegidas por doce ángeles. Sobre las puertas estaban escritos los nombres de las doce tribus de Israel.

13Y había tres puertas en el Este, tres puertas en el Norte, tres puertas en el Sur, y tres puertas en el Oeste.

14El muro de la ciudad tenía doce fundamentos, y sobre ellos estaban inscritos los nombres de los doce apóstoles del Cordero.

15El ángel que me habló tenía una vara de medir para medir la ciudad, sus puertas, y su muro.

16La ciudad era cuadrada. La longitud era la misma que la anchura. Midió la ciudad con una vara, y era de 12:000 estadios. La longitud, la anchura y la altura, eran iguales.

17Entonces midió el muro y era de codos de grosor en medida humana, que era la medida que usaba el ángel.

18El muro estaba hecho de jaspe. Y la ciudad estaba hecha de oro puro, que parecía de vidrio.

19Los fundamentos del muro de la ciudad estaban decorados con todo tipo de piedras preciosas. El primero era de jaspe, el segundo de zafiro, el tercero de calcedonia, el cuarto de esmeralda,

20el quinto de sardónice, el sexto de cornalina, el séptimo de crisólito, el octavo de berilo, el noveno de topacio, el décimo de crisópraso, el undécimo de jacinto, y el duodécimo de amatista.

21Las doce puertas estaban hechas de perlas, cada una hecha de una sola perla. La calle principal estaba hecha de oro puro, transparente como el vidrio.

22Y no vi Templo allí, porque el Señor Dios Todo poderoso, y el Cordero, son su Templo.

23La ciudad no necesita del sol o de la luna que brillen allí porque la gloria de Dios da la luz, pues el Cordero es su lámpara.

24Las naciones caminarán por su luz y los reyes de la tierra traerán su gloria a la ciudad.

25Las puertas de la ciudad no serán cerradas durante el día (allí no habrá noche).

26Y la honra y la gloria de las naciones serán traídas a la ciudad.

27Nada impuro entrará allí, ni ninguno que adore ídolos o diga mentiras, sino solo aquellos que están escritos en el libro de la vida del Cordero.

📖 Chapter study

Summary

John sees a new heaven and a new earth, with the New Jerusalem coming down from heaven like a bride prepared for her husband, where God will dwell with humanity and wipe away every tear, putting an end to death, mourning, and pain. The city is described with magnificent dimensions and materials, symbolizing perfection and glory.

Explanation

The promise that God 'will wipe away every tear from their eyes' and that there will be 'no more death, nor mourning, nor crying, nor pain' (21:4) is one of the most comforting passages in the entire Bible, directly answering the suffering that permeates much of the book of Revelation up to this point. The city's symmetrical, enormous measurements (a perfect cube of roughly 2,200 kilometers on each side) should not be read as literal architecture but as symbolic language of absolute perfection, since a perfect cube also describes the shape of the Most Holy Place in Solomon's temple (1 Kings 6:20), suggesting that the whole city now becomes a most holy place of divine presence. The absence of a temple in the city ('its temple is the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb,' 21:22) marks the climax of the entire biblical journey, from Eden to this point: God's presence finally dwelling openly and without barriers with humanity. Today's practical application is that all present pain and loss have a concrete future hope of complete restoration promised by God.

Fun facts

  • The dimensions of the New Jerusalem, described as twelve thousand stadia on each side (roughly 2,200 km), forming a perfect cube, deliberately echo the cubic proportions of the Most Holy Place in Solomon's temple (1 Kings 6:20), suggesting that the entire city becomes a most holy place.

Verse-by-verse explanation

  1. Apocalipsis 21:1Throughout the book, the sea represented chaos and danger — it was from there that the beast of chapter 13 came. Saying there is no more sea describes the end of that source of threat, not a claim about literal geography.
  2. Apocalipsis 21:2This scene continues the marriage image already used in chapter 19, now applied to an entire city; ancient readers were used to blending two images like this, a city and a person, without finding it strange.
  3. Apocalipsis 21:3Draws on covenant language used many times in the Old Testament, “they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God,” now described as a permanent, final reality, with no more separation between God and humanity.
  4. Apocalipsis 21:4Repeats almost the same promise of comfort already seen in chapter 7, now explicitly tied to the end of all prior suffering: “the former things are passed away.”
  5. Apocalipsis 21:5God speaks directly for the first time in the book (earlier speeches generally came through angels or voices), making a central declaration: everything is being made new, not replaced by something entirely different.
  6. Apocalipsis 21:6Repeats the title “Alpha and Omega” already used in the greeting of chapter 1, now attached to a concrete promise: water from the fountain of life, freely given, to whoever thirsts.
  7. Apocalipsis 21:7The language of a “son” inheriting everything echoes an ancient promise made to King David in 2 Samuel, applied here to anyone who remains faithful to the end.
  8. Apocalipsis 21:8In direct contrast to the previous promise, this list of rejected behaviors ends in the same lake of fire already mentioned as the “second death,” repeating the pattern of consequence set out in chapter 20.
  9. Apocalipsis 21:9The same kind of angel who showed John the corrupt whore in chapter 17 now shows the complete contrast: the bride, the Lamb's wife, an image that will fill the rest of the chapter.
  10. Apocalipsis 21:10John is carried to a great, high mountain to view the city from above, a panoramic device common in prophetic texts like Ezekiel, who also saw the restored temple from a mountain.
  11. Apocalipsis 21:11Describing the city only through light and precious stones, with no human form, follows the same tradition already seen in chapter 4 of representing God (and now His city) through radiance rather than physical image.
  12. Apocalipsis 21:12Placing the names of the twelve tribes on the gates and the twelve apostles on the foundations visually joins the whole history of God's people, the old covenant and the new, into a single structure.
  13. Apocalipsis 21:13The arrangement of the twelve gates, three on each side, recalls the organized camp of the twelve tribes of Israel around the tabernacle, described in Numbers.
  14. Apocalipsis 21:14Just as the gates carry the names of the twelve tribes (previous verse), the foundations carry the names of the twelve apostles, symbolically joining the Old and New Testaments in the same structure.
  15. Apocalipsis 21:15The golden reed used for measuring draws on the same practice already seen in chapter 11, measuring something as a way of declaring that it belongs to God.
  16. Apocalipsis 21:16A city shaped like a perfect cube recalls the shape of the Most Holy Place in Solomon's temple. Its gigantic, symbolic size, comparable to the whole span of the world known to readers of the time, communicates greatness and perfection, not a literal architectural plan.
  17. Apocalipsis 21:17The measurement of “an hundred and forty and four cubits” repeats the same symbolic number already used for the 144,000 sealed in chapter 7, twelve multiplied by twelve.
  18. Apocalipsis 21:18The combination of jasper and pure gold “like unto clear glass” describes a luminous, transparent city, an image impossible to exist literally, but effective at communicating purity and radiance.
  19. Apocalipsis 21:19This list of twelve stones deliberately echoes the twelve stones of the breastplate worn by the high priest in Exodus 28, linking the foundations of the new city to Israel's ancient priesthood.
  20. Apocalipsis 21:20Continues the list of the twelve precious stones of the foundations, which deliberately echoes the twelve stones of the high priest's breastplate described in Exodus 28.
  21. Apocalipsis 21:21Each gate made of a single giant pearl is another physically impossible image, following the same pattern of symbolic exaggeration used to communicate wealth and perfection, not literal architecture.
  22. Apocalipsis 21:22A striking reversal: instead of a temple, the place where people used to go to draw near to God, it is God's own presence that fills the entire city. The idea is direct access, not the absence of something sacred.
  23. Apocalipsis 21:23The absence of sun and moon, replaced by the glory of God and the Lamb as the source of light, is a reversal of the very creation of the world in Genesis, where sun and moon were created to give light.
  24. Apocalipsis 21:24Nations and kings bringing glory into the city suggests that this final reality somehow includes peoples beyond a single original ethnic or religious group.
  25. Apocalipsis 21:25Gates that never close, because there is no more night, is an image of total security, with no need for protection against nighttime threats.
  26. Apocalipsis 21:26Repeats and reinforces the same idea from verse 24, with nations bringing their honor into the city.
  27. Apocalipsis 21:27Closes the description of the city with the same criterion already used in the final judgment of chapter 20: only those written in the Lamb's book of life have access to this place.

Chapters

Our apps

Our apps →

Bible in Stories

The Bible told as a story, with audio and videos.

📱 Get the app

World in Stories

True stories of humanity that sound made up.

Feito! Pequenas Vitórias

A light daily routine for people who lose track of the day.