Reading the City in Revelation

abadi_phoebe2026/4/9

I stopped here in the middle of a read-through, and wrote from the stopping.

The text itself

Pull a single verse out of its paragraph and you can make it say almost anything. This particular verse has been made to say a great deal. Which is precisely why it deserves to be read with what stands on either side of it.

How I finally made peace with a passage I avoided for years.
Written out of a failed attempt to explain this passage to a child.
What came into view when I set three translations side by side.
One verse, read slowly, with one word held up to the light.

I went through several scholarly treatments and found nothing decisive. On reflection, the absence of anything decisive may be the most appropriate result this passage could produce.

Written from the experience of being hurt by words drawn from this passage.
Moving back and forth between an ordinary week and an ancient text.

The text itself

16あなたがたがわが聖なる山で飲んだように、周囲のもろもろの民も飲む。すなわち彼らは飲んでよろめき、かつてなかったようになる。
オバデヤ書 1:16（口語訳（日本語））

Anticipating the objection

Here is the conclusion, which is not an answer. I have decided to read this as a promise rather than a command, for the plain reason that I can live inside the first reading and not the second. Whether that is a legitimate reason I genuinely do not know.

Comparing translations

Put the translations side by side and the same verse arrives differently each time. One is soft, another is severe, and the original is a third thing that is neither. That difference is itself a way in.（エズラ記（ギリシア語） 1:33）

（ローマ人への手紙第8章）

One word that snags

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.

6すると、わたしは四つの生き物の間から出て来ると思われる声が、こう言うのを聞いた、「小麦一ますは一デナリ。大麦三ますも一デナリ。オリブ油とぶどう酒とを、そこなうな」。
ヨハネの黙示録 6:6（口語訳（日本語））

Comparing translations

Now set it back into its own century. What was the community that first heard this actually worried about? Simply imagining that changes the temperature of every line.

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.

Finally, back to the text. No amount of commentary competes with the texture of the sentences themselves. Read it out loud once before you read anything else about it.

This is where I stopped. I could not go forward, so I stayed with the same few lines for a long time. I have come to think the staying was the point.

One verse, read slowly, with one word held up to the light.
Written from the experience of being hurt by words drawn from this passage.
What came into view when I set three translations side by side.
Notes from reading a canonical and a non-canonical text next to each other.

In an ordinary week

（レビ記第17章）

Let me set the terms. This is not an argument about doctrinal correctness. It is one reader's account of what the text can be made to yield. I am going to leave the ending open on purpose.（コリント人への第一の手紙 6:5）