Another excellent book on the same subject is The Meaning of the City by Jacques Ellul (Eerdmans, 1970). His major thesis is that God first tolerated and then appropriated man’s creation of the city, beginning with the institution of the cities of sanctuary and eventually to be culminated in the New Jerusalem.
One random quote from the book: “God did not adopt an original means to reveal himself [in the Bible]. No, he expressed his revelation in the forms and modes invented by man for his own affairs. And this is also the meaning of God’s decision to take over for himself man’s invention of the city. God does not reject this world of revolt and death, he does not annihilate it in the abyss of fire. Rather he adopts it. That is, he takes charge of it.”
Another excellent book on the same subject is The Meaning of the City by Jacques Ellul (Eerdmans, 1970). His major thesis is that God first tolerated and then appropriated man’s creation of the city, beginning with the institution of the cities of sanctuary and eventually to be culminated in the New Jerusalem.
One random quote from the book: “God did not adopt an original means to reveal himself [in the Bible]. No, he expressed his revelation in the forms and modes invented by man for his own affairs. And this is also the meaning of God’s decision to take over for himself man’s invention of the city. God does not reject this world of revolt and death, he does not annihilate it in the abyss of fire. Rather he adopts it. That is, he takes charge of it.”
Ellul’s “commentary” (not a traditional commentary) on Ecclesiastes was stimulating while I was writing my own commentary.