Revelation 21:26

From the tradition of En. liii. 1 and Ps. Sol. 17:34 35 (where the Gentile nations seek Jerusalem φέροντες δῶρα … καὶ ἰδεῖν τὴν δόξαν κυρίου, ἣν ἐδόξασεν αὐτὴν ὁ θεός); cf. Apoc. Bar. lxviii. 5. The idea of 24 and 26 is of course literally inconsistent with those of Revelation 19:17 f. and Revelation 20:12 f., since on the new earth there were no residents except the risen saints. Both ideas were current in rabbinic eschatology (Gfrörer, ii. 238 f.), but the Apocalypse is entirely free from any such complacent estimate of Gentile outsiders (cf. En. xc. 30). The discrepancy here, as in Revelation 22:5, is imaginary. These details are simply poetical and imaginative, inserted from the older symbolism, in which they were quite appropriate, in order by their archaic and pictorial fulness to fill out the sketch of the future city. They have no allegorical significance.