Galatians 4:26

ἡ ἄνω Ἱερ. The Psalms and Prophets attest the enthusiastic devotion of Israelites to the city of Jerusalem. Since the temple of God and the palace of the house of David were within its walls, it was at once the holy city round which clustered the religious feelings of Israel, and the city of the great king, of whom the royal house of David were representatives (cf. Psalms 48). The events of the captivity and restoration associated it still more intimately with the national fortunes and aspirations of Israel. Hence both Isaiah and Ezekiel invested it with ideal glory in their prophetic anticipations of the Messianic kingdom. Their visions of its future destiny looked forward to its becoming the centre of a world-wide worship: there the great King of all the earth would manifest His presence, and thither would flow all nations, offering their homage and bearing due tribute of gifts and sacrifices. But the Hebrew ideal scarcely rose above imaginations of an earthly city and a temple on the mountains of Israel. It was the function of Christian inspiration to spiritualise this conception, to eliminate its local association with the typical temple on earth, and to substitute a heavenly for an earthly city. The Apocalypse bears witness to the process of transition. Though it adheres closely to the vision of Ezekiel, and continues to employ material imagery for expressing the dazzling brightness and intense purity of the temple-city, yet the New Jerusalem is now seen coming down from heaven to a new earth; in place of earthly light it is illuminated by the light which emanates from the throne of God and of the Lamb; and material images are interpreted as symbols of moral beauty and spiritual holiness. The Epistle to the Hebrews views the heavenly Jerusalem from another side. Whereas the Apocalypse depicts its buildings, streets and rivers, the Epistle describes the throng of angels, the assembly of the first-born, the spirits of departed saints that are gathered there round the throne of God, and contrasts the awful majesty of the living God with the material terrors of Sinai. This Epistle presents the contrast between the earthly and the heavenly Jerusalem, and between the covenants of Sinai and of Christ in a different aspect. For the Apostle embodies in his conception a purely Greek ideal of a city, the mother and home of freemen. A self-governed body of free citizens, subject to no foreign control, but maintaining justice and order in perfect peace by their own sovereign will, furnishes him with an appropriate type of the heavenly commonwealth, whereof Christians are even now citizens, dwelling in peace together in the unity of Christian brotherhood, and independent of all restraints of law because they themselves do the will of God from the heart.

The Hebrew form Ἱερουσαλήμ is naturally preferred to the Greek in all these passages, because Jerusalem is personified as an ideal city. The stress here laid on the freedom of Christ's disciples recalls the conversation of Christ with the Jews in John 8:32 … but the bondage is there more distinctly associated with actual sin.