English 
Chinese 
Dutch 
Arabic 
Spanish 
Portuguese 
Russian 
French 
Italian 
German 
Japanese Zion is a hill in Jerusalem, and it began as a fortress: “David took the strong hold of Zion: the same is the city of David” (2 Samuel 5:7). As the Bible goes on, the name grows until it means the whole city, the people of God and the place where God dwells. In the New Testament it is the city of God in heaven.
The Bible speaks the name with longing. The exiles in Babylon wept at the memory of it, as the psalm recalls, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion,” while their captors demanded, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion” (Psalm 137:1, 3). Centuries later the same name is a welcome that is already ours. A letter to Christians tells them they have arrived: “But ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem” (Hebrews 12:22).
Where does the word Zion come from?
Nobody knows for certain where the name comes from. In Hebrew it is Tsiyyon, צִיּוֹן, pronounced tsee-YONE. The Encyclopaedia Judaica says plainly, “The origin of the name is uncertain,” and lists what scholars have suggested: “a rock, stronghold,” “a dry place,” or “running water,” from the Hurrian word ṣeya. Strong’s concordance ties it to tsiyyun, a marker or signpost. By the count of the Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon the name appears 154 times in the Hebrew Bible, and it comes seven times in the Greek New Testament.
Greek spelled it Siōn, which is why the King James Version prints Sion in the New Testament. Zion and Sion are one and the same name.
Where is Mount Zion?
The first Zion was a ridge on the south-east side of Jerusalem. The Jebusites held it, and they taunted David that he would never get in: “Except thou take away the blind and the lame, thou shalt not come in hither” (2 Samuel 5:6). He took it all the same, and he “dwelt in the fort, and called it the city of David” (2 Samuel 5:9). The Brown-Driver-Briggs lexicon places it on the southern part of the eastern hill, apart from the hill where the Temple was built. That is why 1 Kings can tell us that when the Temple was finished, Solomon had the ark brought up “out of the city of David, which is Zion” (1 Kings 8:1).
Over the centuries the name moved, and the place people call Mount Zion today is on another hill altogether. Here is how its meaning shifted:
| When | What Zion meant | Where it is said |
|---|---|---|
| David’s reign | The Jebusite fortress on the south-east ridge, the City of David | 2 Samuel 5:7; 1 Kings 8:1 |
| The psalms and prophets | The Temple hill and the whole city of Jerusalem | Psalm 132:13; Isaiah 2:3 |
| The Maccabean period | The Temple Mount, where Nicanor “went up into mount Sion” and the priests showed him the sacrifices | 1 Maccabees 7:33, in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles |
| The time of Josephus | David’s stronghold, placed in the upper city | Josephus, Jewish War 5.137 |
| The Byzantine era to today | The hill just south of the Old City | The Bordeaux pilgrim, AD 333 |
On today’s Mount Zion stands the Cenacle, the room remembered as the place of the Last Supper, which the Franciscans rebuilt in 1342, and beside it the building known as David’s Tomb. A synagogue there was linked with David by the fourth century, and by the tenth his grave was placed there, probably because Scripture says David “was buried in the city of David” (1 Kings 2:10). Even the scholars have changed their minds about which hill is which. Thayer’s Greek lexicon of 1889 still put Zion on the south-western hill, though it noted that “many now would identify it with the eastern hill.” There is more on the city as a whole in Jerusalem in the Bible.
Why did God choose Zion?
The one reason Scripture gives is that God wanted to dwell among his people there: “For the LORD hath chosen Zion; he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest for ever: here will I dwell; for I have desired it” (Psalm 132:13–14). He chose it because he desired it, and another psalm speaks of the same love: “The LORD loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob. Glorious things are spoken of thee, O city of God” (Psalm 87:2–3).
So Zion became the place the pilgrims climbed toward, and the psalm says of them on the road, “They go from strength to strength, every one of them in Zion appeareth before God” (Psalm 84:7). God set his king there, “upon my holy hill of Zion” (Psalm 2:6), and from there his light went out: “Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God hath shined” (Psalm 50:2).
In time the name came to mean the people as well as the place. God tells Isaiah to “say unto Zion, Thou art my people” (Isaiah 51:16), and Lamentations mourns “the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold” (Lamentations 4:2). Isaiah saw that small hill raised above all others, with the nations streaming to it and saying, “Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD” (Isaiah 2:3). The promise given on one little hill was for the whole earth.
Who is the daughter of Zion?
The daughter of Zion is Zion herself, the city and its people pictured as a daughter, and the Encyclopaedia Judaica says the phrase “referred to the city and its inhabitants.” Some modern Bibles leave out the “of”, and the New International Version reads “Daughter Zion.”
The prophets call her by that name in grief and in joy. When the land lies in ruin, “the daughter of Zion is left as a cottage in a vineyard, as a lodge in a garden of cucumbers, as a besieged city” (Isaiah 1:8). In hope, Zechariah calls to her, “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion; shout, O daughter of Jerusalem: behold, thy King cometh unto thee: he is just, and having salvation; lowly, and riding upon an ass” (Zechariah 9:9). Matthew saw that promise kept on the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem: “Tell ye the daughter of Sion, Behold, thy King cometh unto thee, meek, and sitting upon an ass” (Matthew 21:5). The story of that day is told in the significance of the triumphal entry.
How does the New Testament use Zion?
The New Testament writers take up the old meanings of Zion. Peter finds Christ in Isaiah’s promise of a stone laid in Zion: “Behold, I lay in Sion a chief corner stone, elect, precious: and he that believeth on him shall not be confounded” (1 Peter 2:6). Paul, writing of Israel, quotes the prophet: “There shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob” (Romans 11:26). And in John’s vision “a Lamb stood on the mount Sion” (Revelation 14:1).
Hebrews goes furthest, and lifts Zion into heaven. Christians, it says, have come “unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,” and to “the general assembly and church of the firstborn,” and “to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant” (Hebrews 12:22–24). At the end of Revelation the holy city comes down, “new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven,” and a voice says, “Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them” (Revelation 21:2–3). In Psalm 132 God promised to dwell with his people on one hill, and in Revelation that promise is made for all.
What does Zion mean to Jewish people?
In Jewish life Zion is still a living word. Rabbi Baruch Davidson, a Chabad teacher, explains that the Hebrew Tzion “can be translated as ‘indication’ or ‘marking,’” and that the word refers to “a specific mountain near or in Jerusalem, the holy city itself, or to the entirety of the Holy Land,” and, “metonymically, to the Jewish people.” He calls “daughter of Zion” “a title of endearment that G-d uses about Jerusalem and the Jewish people,” and he passes on a teaching of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The Jewish people are called Tzion, “marked,” the Rebbe taught, because they are distinguished by the study of Torah and the keeping of the commandments, and so “are not lost among the rest of the world, and always return to their Owner.” The word Zionism comes from it. Since 1948 David’s Tomb on Mount Zion has been a synagogue and a place of Jewish pilgrimage.
Christians read the promises to Zion about Israel’s future in more than one way, and that question has a page of its own, Israel’s role in the end times. Whichever way we read them, Christians and Jews can pray together with the psalmist, “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee” (Psalm 122:6).
Is Zion a name in the Bible?
No one in the Bible is called Zion; it is always a place, and through the place a people. So a child named Zion today carries the name of the hill God chose for his dwelling.
The hill is still there, and the call Isaiah heard is still open to every nation, and to us: “Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, to the house of the God of Jacob; and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk in his paths” (Isaiah 2:3).
Leave a Reply