Jerusalem
No city carries more of the Bible’s weight. Jerusalem enters the story early as Salem, whose priest-king Melchizedek blessed Abraham (Genesis 14:18; Hebrews 7). David took it from the Jebusites and made it his capital; Solomon built the temple on its ridge; prophets wept over it, exiles longed for it, and pilgrims climbed to it singing the Psalms of Ascent. By Jesus’ day it was a city of perhaps 60,000 that swelled to several times that at Passover.
The Gospels move toward Jerusalem like water running downhill. Jesus was presented in its temple as an infant, taught there at twelve, cleansed its courts, wept over its coming ruin – “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets” (Matthew 23:37) – and entered it on a donkey to shouts of Hosanna. Within the week the city crucified him outside its wall; within three days the tomb nearby was empty. Luke’s second volume opens in the same city: the Spirit fell at Pentecost, the church was born, and “the word of God increased” from Jerusalem outward to Judea, Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8).
Jesus’ prophecy came true within a generation: Rome destroyed city and temple in AD 70. Yet the New Testament will not let the name end there – it closes with “the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God” (Revelation 21:2).
In the New Testament
- Passion Week: entry, teaching, crucifixion, resurrection (Matthew 21-28 and parallels)
- Jesus weeps over the city and foretells its fall (Luke 19:41-44; 21:20-24)
- Pentecost and the first church (Acts 2-7)
- The Jerusalem council on the Gentiles (Acts 15)
- Paul’s arrest in the temple (Acts 21-23)
- The new Jerusalem to come (Revelation 21)