Zechariah 14:10–11

Zechariah 14:10 — The Leveling of the Land and the Exaltation of Jerusalem

The verse opens with a dramatic geographical transformation: "All the land will be made like the Arabah." The Arabah (Hebrew: הָעֲרָבָה, hā-ʿărābāh) is the great rift valley stretching from the Sea of Galilee south through the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba — a flat, desolate, low-lying plain. For the surrounding terrain to be "made like the Arabah" is not a vision of desolation but of radical leveling: every hill, ridge, and valley surrounding Jerusalem will be flattened into an unobstructed plain, so that Jerusalem alone stands elevated above all.

The boundaries given — "from Geba to Rimmon south of Jerusalem" — define the full extent of Judah's settled territory. Geba (modern Jeba) lies approximately six miles northeast of Jerusalem, while Rimmon (likely modern Khirbet Umm er-Ramamim) sits about thirty-five miles to the south, near the edge of the Negev. This north-to-south span represents the entire traditional heartland of the kingdom of Judah. The totality of the landscape is transformed — not just a local hillside but the whole inheritance of the people.

Against this flattened backdrop, Jerusalem "will be lifted up and will dwell in her place." The verb rendered "lifted up" (רָמַה, rāmāh) carries the sense of being raised high, exalted, set upon a prominence. This is the language of enthronement and honor. Far from being razed or abandoned, Jerusalem not only survives but ascends. The phrase "dwell in her place" (תֵּשֵׁב תַּחְתֶּיהָ, literally "sit under herself") conveys an almost paradoxical permanence — the city stays exactly where she is, but now she towers above the leveled plain, her position finally corresponding to her true dignity.

The topographical details that follow — Benjamin's Gate, the First Gate, the Corner Gate, the Tower of Hananel, and the king's wine presses — trace the full circuit of Jerusalem's ancient walls, moving from the northern Benjamin's Gate (facing the territory of Benjamin) westward to the Corner Gate (cf. 2 Kings 14:13), then from the Tower of Hananel in the northeast (cf. Nehemiah 3:1; Jeremiah 31:38) down to the royal wine presses in the south. This is not mere archaeological detail; by naming the city's cardinal boundary points, Zechariah affirms that the restored Jerusalem is recognizably, concretely the same city — not an abstraction, not a replacement, but this Jerusalem, in its full historical and sacred particularity, glorified.

Zechariah 14:11 — Permanent Habitation and the Lifting of the Curse

"Men will dwell therein" stands in stark contrast to the repeated desolations of Jerusalem throughout Israel's history — the Babylonian destruction of 587 BC, the deportations, the abandonment of the Temple mount. That people will permanently dwell there signals the end of the exile dynamic that had defined so much of Israel's story.

The decisive phrase is "there will be no more curse" (וְלֹא תִהְיֶה עוֹד חֵרֶם, wĕ-lōʾ tihyeh ʿôd ḥērem). The word ḥērem carries enormous theological weight in the Hebrew scriptures. It designates something placed under the ban — devoted to destruction, irrevocably handed over to God's judgment (cf. Joshua 6:17–18; Deuteronomy 7:26). Jerusalem had experienced ḥērem in its most horrifying historical form when the Babylonians reduced it to rubble. Zechariah now announces that this condition is permanently revoked. The city that was given over to destruction will never again be given over to destruction.

The verse closes with a summary declaration: "Jerusalem will dwell safely" (יָשְׁבָה יְרוּשָׁלַ͏ִם לָבֶטַח, yāšĕbāh yĕrûšālaim lābeṭaḥ). Lābeṭaḥ — safely, securely, confidently — is the condition of those who rest in God's protective presence (cf. Leviticus 26:5; Psalm 4:8). It is the antithesis of the terror, siege, and flight that characterize the earlier verses of Zechariah 14. Security is not military or political but eschatological: it flows from the permanent, sovereign presence of the LORD who has come to dwell there (cf. Zechariah 14:9).

From within the Catholic interpretive tradition, these verses resonate at multiple levels of the fourfold sense of Scripture — literal, allegorical, moral, and anagogical.

Allegorically, the exaltation of Jerusalem over the leveled plain anticipates the theology of the Church as the New Jerusalem. St. Augustine, in The City of God (Book XX), reads Zechariah's apocalyptic vision as a prophetic figure of the final triumph of the Civitas Dei — the City of God — over the worldly city. The leveling of the surrounding land images the humbling of earthly powers and principalities, while Jerusalem raised up typifies the Church in her eschatological glory. This exaltation is not self-achieved; it is pure gift, pure divine act.

The lifting of the ḥērem (curse) carries profound Christological resonance. St. Paul declares that "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). The definitive removal of the ban over Jerusalem is thus a prophetic type of Christ's atoning work: the one who became ḥērem — condemned, handed over, executed outside the city — removes the ḥērem from all who dwell in Him. The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that Christ's death is the definitive sacrifice that "puts an end to all sacrifice" (CCC §2100), breaking the cycle of destruction and curse once for all.

Anagogically, the image of a city dwelling safely (lābeṭaḥ) with no more curse points directly to the heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation 21–22, where the same vocabulary appears: "No longer will there be any curse" (Revelation 22:3). The Church Fathers — particularly Origen in his Homilies on Ezekiel and Cyril of Alexandria in his commentary on the Twelve Prophets — consistently read the restored Jerusalem of the prophets as a figure of the eschatological community of the redeemed, the Bride of the Lamb.

The specific enumeration of Jerusalem's gates and towers carries moral significance as well. Just as the city's walls are restored gate by gate and tower by tower — each named, each particular — so the restoration of the Church and the soul is concrete and specific, not vague. The Catechism's treatment of eschatological hope (CCC §1042–1050) insists that the final renewal of creation involves not annihilation but transformation of the very material and historical world God created and redeemed.

Contemporary Catholics often experience the Church — and by extension their own spiritual lives — in a state that feels more like ḥērem than exaltation: scandal, division, cultural marginalization, the sense that the holy city is under siege. Zechariah 14:10–11 speaks with startling directness into this experience. The promise is not that Jerusalem will be relocated or replaced, but that this Jerusalem — with all its wounds and particular history — will be lifted up and freed from the curse.

For the Catholic today, this passage is an invitation to resist two temptations: despair (concluding that the Church's desolation is final) and escapism (dreaming of a different, ideal Church untethered from history). The named gates of Jerusalem — Benjamin's, the Corner Gate, Hananel — are the equivalent of our parishes, dioceses, and communities: particular, flawed, historically embedded. It is these that God promises to raise up.

Practically, this passage calls Catholics to cultivate what the tradition names spes — a theological hope that is neither optimism nor wishful thinking, but confident trust in God's sovereign fidelity. It invites active participation in the concrete life of the Church (attending to actual gates, actual towers) rather than disengagement, because it is precisely the particular, named city that God exalts.