Ruben Zimmermann, «Nuptial Imagery in the Revelation of John», Vol. 84 (2003) 153-183
In this article is argued that the nuptial imagery of the Book of Revelation is not limited to chapters 19 and 21 but rather runs throughout the book. While the imagery is certainly most pronounced in the final part of the book, it also appears in the letters to the churches (bridal wreath in Rev 2,10; 3,11), in the scene depicting the 144,000 as virgins (Rev 14,4-5), and is encountered again in Rev 18,23 (silencing of the voice of bridegroom and bride) and Rev 22,17 (summons of the bride) at the end of the book. Thus the wedding metaphors can be seen as one of the structural patterns of Revelation as a whole directly in contrast to the metaphors of fornication.
Inscriptions to Mega/lh Tu/xh as a city goddess as, for example were found in Bostra, the provincial capital of Arabia (after 106 A.D.)46 complete this picture. The combination of motifs of woman and city can at the least be seen as a fixed image that influenced all of antiquity and was well-known to the author and his readers not only through the adopted tradition of scripture.
Below, we will be interested in the concrete linguistic tradition according to which Jerusalem/Zion is personified as a female figure. According to O.H. Steck47, the focus of the relational figurations can be differentiated into two aspects. In the one, Zion is depicted in relation to people/inhabitants, expressed above all in metaphors of children, sons, daughters and childlessness. In the other, the female images serve to more closely determine God’s relationship to Zion. Here we find the terms "daughter" next to "wife", "bride" and its counterpart "forsaken one" or "widow". Zion/Jerusalem is described as "queen" vis à vis JHWH (cf. Isa 62,3; Micah 4,9; Zeph 3,15.17; Ps 146,10). Certainly both aspects remain closely connected. This has to do with the fact that Zion is enacted, i.e. in Isa 50,1; 51,22; 54,1.4-8(10); 62,4; Ezek 16,8-14, as the wife of JHWH while the relation to God, however, also reflects the relationship of the people to JHWH. In the image of a disordered or successful/promised marital union, the historically experienced relation to God is in each case thematized in the example of the city of God. The fornication48, forsakenness, widowhood of Jerusalem etc. thus stand for the presently experienced or retrospectively interpreted experience of exile, while a successful relationship (betrothal, young love) is depicted in memory or the promise of the return to Zion. While in Hos, Jer and Lam, adultery and unfaithfulness are categorized into a context of guilt, the hopeful perspective dominates above all in Isaiah. Here the catastrophes of