Cities

The biblical city is more than a settlement. It is a walled, gated, governed place, with a name, a function, and often a history of conflict. Scripture tracks cities from the first builder east of Eden, through the fortified strongholds of Canaan and Judah, the chariot and store depots of the kings, the priestly suburbs and refuge towns set apart by Yahweh, and the prophets' judgments on Tyre and Jerusalem, ending in the heavenly city whose builder is God.

The First Builders

The first city in Scripture is Cain's: "And Cain had sex with his wife; and she became pregnant, and gave birth to Enoch: and he built a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch" (Gen 4:17). Soon after the flood, Nimrod's kingdom in Shinar gives the canon its first cluster of named cities, "Babel, Erech, and Accad" (Gen 10:10), and his expansion northward founds "Nineveh, and Rehoboth-ir, and Calah" with "Resen between Nineveh and Calah (the same is the great city)" (Gen 10:11-12). The next generation pursues the same impulse on the plain of Shinar: "Come, let us build us a city, and a tower, whose top [may reach] to heaven, and let us make us a name; or else we will be scattered abroad on the face of the whole earth" (Gen 11:4). City-building is, from the first, an attempt to gather, to name, and to resist scattering.

Fortified Cities

Once Israel reaches Canaan, the dominant adjective for a city is fortified. The spies report from Hebron that "the cities are fortified, [and] very great: and moreover we saw the sons of Anak there" (Nu 13:28), and Moses recasts the same impression at the Jordan: "cities great and fortified up to heaven" (De 9:1). The Reubenite and Gadite settlement east of the Jordan rests on the same logic — "our little ones will dwell in the fortified cities because of the inhabitants of the land" (Nu 32:17), among them "Beth-nimrah, and Beth-haran: fortified cities, and folds for sheep" (Nu 32:36). After conquest the description is reversed onto the Amorite kings: "All these were cities fortified with high walls, gates, and bars; besides the unwalled towns a great many" (De 3:5). When Joshua's slaughter is at its height, "the remnant which remained of them had entered into the fortified cities" (Jos 10:20).

The Judean kings inherit this vocabulary. Asa "built fortified cities in Judah; for the land was quiet, and he had no war in those years, because Yahweh had given him rest" (2Ch 14:6). Jehoshaphat "placed forces in all the fortified cities of Judah" (2Ch 17:2) and "set judges in the land throughout all the fortified cities of Judah, city by city" (2Ch 19:5). Jehoshaphat in turn "gave them great gifts, of silver, and of gold, and of precious things, with fortified cities in Judah: but the kingdom he gave to Jehoram, because he was the firstborn" (2Ch 21:3). Manasseh, after his repentance, "put valiant captains in all the fortified cities of Judah" (2Ch 33:14). The Maccabean revolt closes the canon's fortification record: Simon "built up the strongholds of Judea, fortifying them with high towers, and great walls, and gates, and bars" (1Ma 13:33), and at his height "provided food for the cities, and appointed that they should be furnished with weapons of defense" (1Ma 14:10).

Royal, Treasure, and Chariot Cities

Scripture also classes cities by their function under a king. There is the royal city — the seat of a sovereign. Joab takes "the royal city" of Rabbah of the sons of Ammon (2Sa 12:26), and David asks Achish, "why should your slave dwell in the royal city with you?" (1Sa 27:5). There are store-cities, depots for grain and supply. Joseph "gathered up all the food of the seven years which were in the land of Egypt, and laid up the food in the cities" (Gen 41:48); Pharaoh's slave-masters force Israel to "build for Pharaoh store-cities, Pithom and Raamses" (Ex 1:11); Solomon has "all the store-cities that Solomon had, and the cities for his chariots, and the cities for his horsemen" (1Ki 9:19), and "built Tadmor in the wilderness, and all the store-cities, which he built in Hamath" (2Ch 8:4). And there are chariot cities: "Solomon gathered chariots and horsemen: and he had a thousand and four hundred chariots, and twelve thousand horsemen, that he placed in the chariot cities, and with the king at Jerusalem" (2Ch 1:14).

A handful of cities are designated by trade rather than by king. Tyre, "that dwell at the entry of the sea, that are the merchant of the peoples to many isles" (Eze 27:3), is the prime instance; Isaiah's word against her opens, "He has stretched out his hand over the sea, he has shaken the kingdoms: Yahweh has given commandment concerning Canaan, to destroy its strongholds" (Isa 23:11).

Cities of Refuge and Priestly Suburbs

Within the conquest allotment, six cities are set aside for an entirely different purpose. Yahweh tells Moses, "And if a man does not lie in wait, but God delivers [him] into his hand; then I will appoint you a place where he will flee" (Ex 21:13). Moses translates this into a tribal arrangement: the cities given to the Levites "will be the six cities of refuge, which you⁺ will give for the manslayer to flee to: and besides them you⁺ will give forty and two cities" (Nu 35:6). Deuteronomy presses the system on Israel before the Jordan crossing — three cities first ("that the manslayer might flee there, who slays his fellow man unawares, and did not hate him in time past; and that fleeing to one of these cities he might live," De 4:42), and then a road system: "You will prepare for yourself the way, and divide the borders of your land, which Yahweh your God causes you to inherit, into three parts, that every manslayer may flee there" (De 19:3). Joshua executes the command: "Speak to the sons of Israel, saying, Assign for yourselves the cities of refuge, of which I spoke to you⁺ by Moses" (Jos 20:2), and the legal scope is then made universal — "These were the appointed cities for all the sons of Israel, and for the stranger who sojourns among them, that whoever strikes any soul unintentionally might flee there, and not die by the hand of the avenger of blood, until he stands before the congregation" (Jos 20:9). The Chronicler, listing the Kohathite allotment, gives "the cities of refuge, Shechem in the hill-country of Ephraim with its suburbs; Gezer also with its suburbs" (1Ch 6:67).

The cities of refuge sit inside a wider Levitical pattern. The forty-eight cities given to the Levites come with measured pasturage: "the suburbs will be for their cattle, and for their substance, and for all their beasts. And the suburbs of the cities, which you⁺ will give to the Levites, will be from the wall of the city and outward a thousand cubits round about" (Nu 35:3-4), measured "two thousand cubits" on each of the four sides "the city being in the midst" (Nu 35:5).

Gates, Elders, and the Government of the City

The city's gate is its courtroom and forum. Ephron "was sitting in the midst of the sons of Heth … even of all who went in at the gate of his city" (Gen 23:10), and Hamor and Shechem "came to the gate of their city, and communed with the men of their city" (Gen 34:20). Mosaic law assumes this: "Judges and officers you will make for yourself in all your gates" (De 16:18); a stubborn son is brought "to the elders of his city, and to the gate of his place" (De 21:19); a slandered bride's parents take the tokens of her virginity "to the elders of the city in the gate" (De 22:15); the manslayer at a city of refuge "will stand at the entrance of the gate of the city, and declare his cause in the ears of the elders of that city" (Jos 20:4). Boaz transacts the kinsman-redeemer suit at the gate of Bethlehem (Ru 4:1). Absalom corrupts the same institution: he "rose up early, and stood beside the way of the gate," intercepting suits brought to the king (2Sa 15:2). At Samaria the kings hold court "in an open place at the entrance of the gate" (1Ki 22:10). Wisdom takes her stand there too: "She cries in the most noisy places; At the entrance of the gates, In the city, she utters her words" (Pr 1:21); and the prophets warn against perverting it — "Don't rob the poor, because he is poor; Neither oppress the afflicted in the gate" (Pr 22:22), "execute the judgment of truth and peace in your⁺ gates" (Zec 8:16).

City government beyond the gate falls to district rulers. In Nehemiah's wall-building roster, Rephaiah son of Hur is named "the ruler of half the district of Jerusalem" (Ne 3:9), and the gates themselves are repaired in the same campaign — "The valley gate repaired Hanun, and the inhabitants of Zanoah; they built it, and set up its doors, its bolts, and its bars, and a thousand cubits of the wall to the dung gate" (Ne 3:13). Ben Sira's praise of Nehemiah remembers him as the one "Who raised up our ruins, And healed our breaches, And set up gates and bars" (Sir 49:13). The Maccabees keep the same vocabulary: "Simon built Adiada in Sephela, and fortified it, and set up gates and bars" (1Ma 12:38), and Judas finds the desolated temple with "the gates burned, and shrubs growing up in the courts" (1Ma 4:38), then renews them: "they renewed the gates, and the chambers, and hanged doors on them" (1Ma 4:57).

Cities Under Judgment

The same fortifications that secured Israel are turned against her in the prophets. Jeremiah threatens that the invader will "beat down your fortified cities, in which you trust, with the sword" (Je 5:17), and at the moment of crisis, "Judah mourns, and its gates languish, they sit in black on the ground; and the cry of Jerusalem has gone up" (Je 14:2). Sennacherib executes the threat against Judah: "in the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah, and took them" (2Ki 18:13). Earlier, Jehoash king of Israel takes Jerusalem itself and "broke down the wall of Jerusalem from the gate of Ephraim to the corner gate, four hundred cubits" (2Ki 14:13; cf. 2Ch 25:23). Micah pictures Yahweh against the high places: "I will pluck up your Asherim out of the midst of you; and I will destroy your cities" (Mi 5:14). Even at the level of internal corruption the city is condemned: "Destroy, O Lord, [and] divide their tongue; For I have seen violence and strife in the city" (Ps 55:9). The Maccabean wars show the same brutality from the other side — "they slew every male with the edge of the sword, and he razed the city, and took the spoils of it, and passed through all the city over those who were slain" (1Ma 5:51), and Ptolemais shutting its gates against Jonathan: "those of Ptolemais shut the gates of the city, and took him: and all those who came in with him they slew with the sword" (1Ma 12:48).

Yet the prophets also picture the recovery of cities. Jehoash son of Jehoahaz "took again out of the hand of Benhadad the son of Hazael the cities which he had taken out of the hand of Jehoahaz his father by war. Three times Joash struck him, and recovered the cities of Israel" (2Ki 13:25). Ezekiel's restored temple has its own gate-cycle: "The gate of the inner court that looks toward the east will be shut the six working days; but on the Sabbath day it will be opened, and on the day of the new moon it will be opened" (Eze 46:1).

The Heavenly City

The figural use of "city" runs the same vocabulary upward. Abraham "looked for the city which has the foundations, whose craftsman and builder is God" (Heb 11:10), and the patriarchs as a class "desire a better [country], that is, a heavenly: therefore God is not ashamed of them, to be called their God; for he has prepared for them a city" (Heb 11:16). The author of Hebrews writes to those who "have come to mount Zion, and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to tens of thousands of angels in a festive gathering" (Heb 12:22), and identifies the believer's status against the visible polis: "we do not have a city that stays here, but we seek after [the city] which is to come" (Heb 13:14). The same letter places Jesus' suffering deliberately outside the gate of the earthly city: "Therefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people through his own blood, suffered outside the gate" (Heb 13:12).

The Apocalypse renders this visibly. John sees "the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband," and is taken up "to a mountain great and high" to be shown again "the holy city Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God" (Re 21:2,10). The final blessing names the city's gates as the threshold of life: "Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right [to come] to the tree of life, and may enter in by the gates into the city" (Re 22:14).

The Christian pattern under empire matches the figure. The Epistle to Diognetus argues that Christians "neither dwell in cities of their own, nor use any unusual dialect, nor lead a conspicuous life" (Gr 5:2), but are scattered "through the cities of the world" (Gr 6:2) as a soul through a body — present in every gate, citizen of none.