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Summary
- Kimberly is not in the Bible. It comes from Kimberley in South Africa, named after Lord Kimberley, which rose to prominence through diamonds and the Boer War.
- It became a given name in the mid-twentieth century. It is a place, not a virtue.
- Scripture’s use of precious stones is the high priest’s breastpiece: twelve stones engraved with the names of the tribes, worn over the heart whenever he entered the Holy Place (Exodus 28:29). The value is never the point.
- Revelation ends with a city whose foundations are precious stones and whose streets are gold, because nobody there needs them for anything else.
- The Kimberley fields were worked in brutal, racially ordered conditions, and the war that followed cost enormous numbers of lives. That is not a reflection on anyone called Kimberly, but a page that skipped it would be sanding the edges off.
Bibliography (Click to show)
Sources: Behind the Name entry for Kimberly (from the city of Kimberley in South Africa, named after Lord Kimberley, 1826-1902; prominent during the Boer War; used as a given name since the mid-twentieth century); Scripture from the NIV via BibleGateway (Exodus 28:17-29; Revelation 21:19-21; Amos 5:11-12; James 5:4).
