When Moses is given the Ten Commandments they are written on two tablets:

And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. (Deuteronomy 4:13)

Why are the Ten Commandments written on two tablets? Was one tablet not big enough for God’s handwriting? Or did God give Moses two copies of the Law, one tablet being a duplicate of the other?

Two Witnesses

Firstly, we must understand that God always requires the testimony of at least two legal witnesses.

On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. (Deuteronomy 17:6)

The book of Deuteronomy itself is a “second testimony” of the Law (deutero-nomos meaning “second law”), repeating what was given to the Israel whose bodies fell in the wilderness.

A legal case will fail if the testimony of the witnesses does not corroborate, as was the case in the trial of Jesus. It seems the Father and the Son were two witnesses against the tower of Babel. The angel of the Lord sent two angels as witnesses into Sodom. And Israel herself saw her unfaithful spies slain, leaving only two faithful witnesses of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb.

The Ten Words are referred to as a “testimony”:

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. (Exodus 32:15)

So the tablets of the Law are “two witnesses” with a corroborated testimony, and we should notice that even these two tablets were given twice due to Israel’s idolatry. The tablets themselves suffered a “death and resurrection”, the second set being a prefigurement of every future “new covenant,” including the one predicted by Jeremiah and fulfilled in Ezra/Nehemiah and Haggai/Zechariah.

Because the tablets of the Law agreed, those who swore to keep the Law could be punished, excommunicated, or executed for breaking it.

A Complementarian Covenant

Ray Sutton attempts to fit the ten words to the five-fold Covenant pattern found everywhere in the Torah, as outlined in his groundbreaking book, That You May Prosper (p. 214).

Although numbers 1 and 5 seem to fit the Covenant pattern very well, Sutton has to go to great lengths to make the others relate to it. Also, his book sees the Covenant process as a linear progression, rather than a “there and back again,” as the Bible Matrix shows. With the matrix in mind, we can see this twofold “head and body” progression in the Ten Words.

Being very familiar with the “above, beside, below” movement of the Bible Matrix (also found in James Jordan’s excellent essay on slavery), when I came across another possibility for the arrangement of the Ten Words, even though it made no reference to the Covenant structure or the Bible Matrix, I could see immediately that it corresponded very well.

The alternate arrangement is by Moshe Kline, a Jewish scholar who follows the “scroll” division of the commandments (as did Augustine). This means that our first two are combined into one, and our last is divided into two. This sounds strange until we realize that not only are the Ten Words a double witness, they are an Adam and an Eve horizontally, and God, Mankind and the Future vertically.

If we read the laws as the warp and weft in fabric, we have “Adamic” laws as 1 3 5 7 9 (odd numbers) and “Evian” laws as 2 4 6 8 10 (even numbers). multiples of two – the Bride always “multiplies”

So, the structure works from above to beside to below (from God, through fellow man, down to offspring, that is, past to present to future), and it follows the fivefold Covenant pattern:

You might notice that this is also a slightly truncated version of the Creation Week, since the “mediating veils” are removed. There is no “removal of sin” at Passover (Day 2) or Atonement (Day 6), which things correspond to Circumcision and Baptism. Adam and Eve are entirely naked before heaven at every point. Not only this, but they have unobstructed access to the Garden (Transcendence) and the World (Succession) from the Land.

Ten Fingers

The Ten Words were written with the FINGER of God. Ten Words is ten fingers, two human hands, instruments of righteousness or unrighteousness. When Jesus broke bread, He would have used all ten fingers to tear it, picturing His imminent death under the curse of the Law. We should remember this whenever we break bread.

“And Moses threw the tablets out of his hands…” (Exodus 32:19)

The theft in the Garden of Eden was carried out with two hands, the hand of Eve and then the hand of Adam, five fingers each. If the Adam/Eve, priest/people idea is strange, it is simply an expression of the totus Christus in Man and Woman at every level, from the Sanctuary to the Household to the Nations.

Also, the High Priest made two approaches to the Most Holy on the Day of Atonement, once for the priesthood and once for the people. This is recapitulated in Daniel 7, which predicts Jesus’ ascension into the glory cloud as “head,” then four decades later returning “in like manner” for the sacrificial “body,” the firstfruits martyrs.

We also see this in Abraham, who entered the land to sacrifice Isaac (firstfruits/priesthood) and then again to bury Sarah (offspring/people).

When the sin of any culture is fullgrown, it is thus “ten fingered” (priesthood and kingdom corrupted) it has become military, a swarm (the fullness of Day 5). God sends prophets (Day 5/Trumpets), and then acts through mediators (Day 6/Atonement/Sanctions) to save a remnant, and secure for them the future, historical continuity (Day 7/Succession).

Filthy Lucre

Finally, if this arrangement of the Ten Words is correct, it should be reflected through correspondence with other events. The first is the correspondence between theft and lying in Prophetic Ministry, which was condemned by Paul in Titus 1, and appears to be rampant today. We can see this combination in the “ministry” of Gehazi (2 Kings 4), who sought to misrepresent the generosity of Israel’s God to the faithful through his sly words to Naaman, the believing Gentile.

Peter Leithart helpfully highlights another two cases, without corresponding this “unusual” combination to either the Ten Words or to Adam’s sin. He writes:

Zechariah 5:3-4 threatens a curse to those who steal and those who swear falsely. It’s a somewhat unusual combination. Perhaps the implied scenario is this: A thief steals, he is questioned about his theft, and he swears falsely that he did not steal. His theft is compounded by an oath declaring his innocence. He steals goods, and then robs the name of God by a lie.

The ultimate source of this threat, though, goes back to a specific incident in Israel’s history. Jericho was under the ban, which meant that all living things were slaughtered and all plunder was given to Yahweh. Achan, the “troubler of Israel,” stole some of the consecrated goods and hid them in his tent. Yahweh accuses him of “stealing” and “deceit” (Joshua 7:11). Because of his sacrilege, Israel is defeated before Ai, changing the psychological dynamics of the conquest against Israel. Before they got beaten at Ai, the Canaanites’ hearts were melting (2:9); after Ai, Israelite hearts became water (7:5).

No wonder Zechariah takes this combination of sins so seriously: Until the troublers are purged, Israel will flee in fright before their enemies.

Ten Tests

The last example I will present is James Jordan’s list of the ten tests which Israel failed before that generation was doomed to die in the wilderness (from the notes for his lectures on the book of Numbers). It seems to fit very well, typologically speaking:

Two Copies?

Meredith Kline argues that the “tables” were actually two copies of the same law (The Structure of Biblical Authority, pp. 117-120.) This is based on the assumption that the Mosaic Covenant is either a divine “answer” to Ancient Near East suzerainty treaties, or their inspiration, and still closely related. Dr. Meshulam Margaliot writes:

To get at the peshat, or simple meaning, we must take account of the historical context in which the Ten Commandments were given. According to Ex. 19, this was done in the course of establishing a covenant–a berit–between the Lord and Israel. Hence, we are dealing with the text of a covenant, a type of contract between two (or more) parties. For obvious reasons, it is customary for every written contract or agreement to be issued in duplicate, each party receiving a complete copy of the agreement, contract, or covenant.

This was also the practice in the ancient Near East. The most famous example of two copies of a diplomatic agreement between two kingdoms is the treaty containing the pact made between the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite King Hattusilis III, c. 1270 B.C.E. The Egyptian copy was found in Egypt, and the Hittite one in the capital of the Hittites, in eastern Turkey. The contents of both copies are identical.

It would be reasonable for the pact made at Sinai to be issued in two copies, one for the Lord, and one for the Israelites. This practice explains why one tablet did not suffice, rather two were needed.

I believe, as Kline does, that the Lord’s Covenants were the inspiration for the pagan treaties, not other way around, not least because the same Covenant structure can be traced back to Genesis 1. However, the explanation of the need for two copies does not suffice, since in Israel’s case, both copies were kept in the Ark of the Testimony. Israel’s “copy” was the hearing of the graven words. Based on the “complementarian” structure of the Ten Words outlined above, it would seem that each tablet contained only five commandments each, because the Covenant was not merely an expression of unitarian (vertical) authority between heaven and earth (or between Egypt and the Hittites). God’s Covenants are Trinitarian, with not merely an above and a below but a “beside.” They include the relationship between Church and State, the horizontal “marriage” between priesthood and people.

Moreover, Moshe Kline argues:

that the division in the Masoretic Text (MT), which appears in the Torah scrolls read in synagogues, should be preferred because it leads to a reading that integrates all ten Words in a coherent document.

The document itself consists of five consecutive pairs of Words organized hierarchically, from the first pair, which focuses on God, to the last pair, which is limited to subjective human experience, “Do not covet.” Once this internal structure is recognized, it leads to seeing a new arrangement of the Words on the two stone tablets.

They should be seen as written in pairs across the two tablets, the first Word on one and the second Word on the other, the third on the first, etc. Thus one tablet contains the “odd” Words and the other the “evens.” This arrangement may be the literal meaning of the otherwise difficult verse in Exodus 32:15, “לחת כתבים משני עבריהם, מזה ומזה הם כתבים”, “(the writing was) written across both tablets; (alternately), on one and (then) the other, were they written.”

What is the conclusion here? That the Ten Words work not only from heaven down to earth (vertically) but also horizontally, between priesthood (Adam) and people (Eve), the left hand and the right hand. This means that their architecture aligns with the four “points” of the Tabernacle furnitures, leaving out only the Incense Altar in the centre. The Tablets taken together are a cruciform instrument of death, the curse upon Adam and Eve. The missing element, the Incense Altar, is a fragrant symbol of the resurrection, Word and Response, both vertically and horizontally, united at last in the bosom of Christ.

or Marriage is a Glory Box, a Hope Chest

In 1 Peter 3:7, the apostle writes:

Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered.

The phrase “according to knowledge” (gnosis) is rendered “in an understanding way” in the NKJV and ESV. But is the exhortation for the husband to understand his wife, or to understand the source of his authority as her husband?

I believe the “Covenant literary” structure not only answers this question, but reveals the sentence to be an Edenic gem. [1] Firstly, it recapitulates the totus Christus pattern found throughout the Scriptures:

The references to the Red Sea and the Jordan allude to this pattern in Israel’s journey from Egypt to Canaan, but we can trace it right back to the first Man and Woman.

Of course, this is not what happened, but based upon countless later patterns, we can accurately reconstruct it. (I know some will be skeptical, but there are many hundreds of examples. Trust me.)

Genesis 2 is a recapitulation of Genesis 1, with Day 7 being the “future” of Adam’s race benefiting from his continuing mediation. That is about as far as we can speculate, but my point here is that Genesis 2 is also a forming and a filling. The first part concerns Adam as priestly “head” and the second concerns Eve as his (bone and flesh) “body.” Having a “people” in the mother of all living moves Adam from priesthood to kingdom (hence the true kingdom did not arrive until Pentecost).

The goal was for Adam to testify on God’s behalf before the serpent, receive the Spirit of God through his obedience, and share that Spirit with Eve, who would sing the kind of head-crushing song we hear from Bible women, songs that sound so strange to modern ears. This third stage is prophetic. Adam has spoken. Eve has sung in response. Now that they are of one mind, understanding the mind of God, His purpose in their testing, they are both wise as serpents and harmless as doves. They become God’s voice, mediating between heaven and earth.

Peter’s Literary Brilliance

We are now in a position to appreciate Peter’s brief statement. Because it echoes a pattern built into the rest of the Bible, these few words contain unfathomable depths. Not only is a marriage a “new Covenant,” it is a new Creation, a new Tabernacle within which God is pleased to dwell as long as its priesthood is faithful. If the husband’s priestly office is not fulfilled, he will not have true kingdom.

This sevenfold process is not only an architectural pattern, it also reveals why there are no “priestesses” under either the Old Covenant or the New. Any authority which Woman has is derived from the accountability of the Man. [3]

Viewed as a chain/process of Covenant authority, line 3 would mean “according to the doctrine/wisdom” given to Adam as mediator. Adam received the Law before the construction of Eve. He was to minister to her in the light of that Law, which is what he failed to do.

The architecture reveals the use of the word “vessel” to be priestly. “Weaker” can mean weakness either physically or morally. In relation to the Law, it may refer to the desire of women for male headship, that is, “leadership by example.” If Adam will not lead her, another spirit will lead her into harlotry. As Christ sends His Spirit to gather the Church, so the Adam’s self-sacrifice “constructs” or edifies Eve. The husband’s meekness towards God results in the wife’s meekness towards her husband, reversing the curse of tyranny in Genesis 3:16.

The earthen “vessel without strength” at 3 requires filling at 4, is fragrant at 5, and presented chaste to God at 6. Adam’s role, as mediator with a heavenly commission, is to take flesh, open its eyes and open its mouth. What God did for Adam physically, so Adam is to do for Eve legally. The woman begins as a possession but Adam, the regent, is to lead her to the role of co-regent. We see this in the difference between the Ten Words in Exodus and Deuteronomy, and in the process of Esther becoming more than simply another bride. [4] Of course, we see it in the difference between the Old Covenant and New Covenant brides, expressed in baptism (robe of office) being given to “both men and women,” women allowed into the Sanctuary, and the inclusion of women as Covenant witnesses, “prophetesses,” beginning after the resurrection. The true empowerment of Woman can only ever come through the submission of Man to God.

The Architecture of Sex

Human sexuality is an expression of the Trinity. It is an architecture also found in the Tabernacle. The Most Holy Place is the authority of the Father (the Ark), the Holy Place is the priestly submission (Table), kingly authority (Lampstand) and prophetic witness (Incense) of the Son. Finally, the courts of the nations are the gathering of the Bride by the Spirit (Eve is the multiplier). The pattern throughout the Bible is:

This is also the pattern of the entire Bible, as well as the deep structure of the book of Revelation. It is also hinted at in the search for a bride for Isaac, and in many other narratives.

Interestingly, we can also see the triune architecture in

Man and Woman (Genesis 1 – physical attributes)
Husband and Wife (Genesis 2 – social offices)
Father and Mother (Genesis 3 – historical continuity)

The evolutionary assumptions of modernism first deconstructed our understanding of man and woman as physical images of God (temples for His Spirit), mostly for the purpose of freedom from Moses (as some have testified). Without recognition of the authority of God, the purpose of “male and female” became arbitrary. Sex (gender) was reduced to the physiological, flesh without a divine commission. Western males and females were rendered naked, and bereft of hope.

This rejection of heavenly authority then led to the deconstruction of marriage, which had previously integrated Western culture, giving it a backbone and rendering it upright. “Husband and wife” as offices before God also became meaningless. Marriage ceased to be seen as sacrificial ministry, and the house was eventually left desolate. False gods were welcomed in, which led to adultery and then further perversion.

Our now spineless culture is at the stage where Father and Mother are also being deconstructed, through a man-made narcissistic version of marriage — love of the same rather than “the other.” Since male and female are no longer gifts from God, and husband and wife are no longer a means of exercising those gifts, Father and Mother are now also meaningless. We are left with Human, Partner and Parent. This is the social outcome of the rejection of the heaven-and-earth, head-and-body divide. There is no authority, no submission and thus no ministry.

According to Knowledge

I hope you noticed the allusions to the pattern of events in the New Testament. It is also the pattern of events in the apostate churches around us today. In both cases, the Word of God was well-known.

This tragic deconstruction is a threefold process of sin reaching its full maturity in our culture, with each step being the product (usually after a generation, around 40 years) of the previous sin. [5] God is tearing down the house in three stages, so He gets the glory.

Romans 1 outlines this process for us. Three times, God says He “gave them up” to what they desired, because they would not listen. The next step for our rebellious culture is a quick decline. We have sacrificed our historical continuity on the altar of unbridled desire. Atheists have taken the inheritance of 2000 years of Christianity and blown it all, like Hollywood brats, in a few decades. Say goodbye to Western Culture, with all its heavenly blessings.

Ideas have consequences, and the desire to be “in control” of nature, like gods, leads to nature being empowered by God to cut us off. Abortion, sterility, sexual perversion, social disintegration (and the mental illness that follows) and an epidemic of sexual diseases, are the outcomes of the dogma of Darwinism. It is highly ironic that Darwinism turned out to be an exercise of the right to extinction.

Empowered by the knowledge of God, the family is the spring of good culture. Rejection of that knowledge results in a poisoned spring, and God will put a stop to the bitterness. His judgment is entirely just. Our sin is not simply a “wandering astray.” It is high-handed rebellion from a culture with more knowledge of God than any before. Worse, those with a perverse desire relabel it as a “call” from God. The Spirit departs. The song is silenced. The Land and the womb are rendered barren.

The fact that many intelligent Christians fail to understand the importance of Genesis 1-3 quite amazes me. [6] It turns out that those early chapters are also the key to understanding the New Testament, as the pattern is replayed in individuals, families, churches and states.

It seems Peter, by the Spirit, was fully aware of the inescapable sacredness of marriage. As in Eden, marriage is itself a “glory box,” a hope chest filled with promises for the future. But today it is a marriage made in heaven, that between Christ and the Church, and Jesus will never forsake us to the serpent as Adam forsook Eve. He ministers to us “according to knowledge.”

Photo: Medieval Marriage Chest.

________________________________
[1] So much for Peter being an ignorant fisherman. See Uneducated Fishermen? Nuh-uh.
[2] Chart from Bible Matrix, p. 76.
[3] See The Throne of Eve.
[4] See Esther and the Ten Words.
[5] See God Gave Them Up.
[6] See When the Grid Goes Down.

In John 16:7-11, we read:

Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Helper will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you. And when he comes, he will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment: concerning sin, because they do not believe in me; concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father, and you will see me no longer; concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.

What does it mean for the Spirit to “convict the world in regard to righteousness?” And what is the causal connection with Jesus going to the Father?

The phrase “sin, righteousness and judgment” refers to a threefold legal process found throughout the Bible. By Covenant, God chooses and qualifies His representatives.

The threefold legal process relates to the Creation Week because it moves from a “forming” to a “filling” and then to a “future.”

The Covenant pattern itself is fivefold:

TRANSCENDENCE (who’s the boss?)
…..HIERARCHY (whom has He put in charge?)
……….ETHICS (what are we to do?)
…..SANCTIONS (what will we get?)
SUCCESSION (when is He coming back?)

However, this pattern contains the “forming, filling, future” structure of the Creation week:

Transcendence and Hierarchy are the “forming,” as uncreated authority is delegated to a representative. Yahweh is the cause and His representative is the effect.

Ethics and Sanctions are the “filling” of the Covenant. Here, the Laws are the cause and the blessings/curses are the effect.

In each case, as cause becomes effect, “word” becomes flesh. The forming concerns the establishing of the legal parties and the filling concerns the expression of their relationship. It is a “head” and a “body.”

Finally, Succession concerns the “future.” Those who understood that the Ethics were intended for good and not evil (as Joseph did, and Adam didn’t), are given greater authority, just as Jesus promised.

The “forming, filling, future” process found not only within the entire Covenant pattern, but “fractally” within the Ethics step on its own.

The Law is given; the Law is opened; the Law is received. These three steps are the revelation of the Ethics of the Covenant as the beginning of a New Creation.

Aligned with the Bible Matrix, you can see that the Law is given at Ascension (Moses on the mountain as Firstfruits), the Law is opened at Testing (Pentecost), and the legal witness by (or against) Israel is received at Maturity (Trumpets).

This threefold process is seen typologically in a number of key ways.

Firstly, it is seen in the “three-decker” primeval world: the Garden Sanctuary (Adam), the Land (Abel/Seth), and the World (Noah).

Secondly, it is inherent in the three-decker architecture of the Tabernacle: the Most Holy contained the Laws of Moses (conviction of sin); the Holy Place contained furniture which imaged the blameless nearbringing sacrifice (blood/Table + fire/Lampstand + smoke/Incense altar = righteousness); the Court (blood and water = judgment). This construct is a miniature of the primeval world.

Thirdly, it is seen in the threefold offices of priest, king and prophet, which correspond to the three furnitures in the Holy Place. The priest makes offerings for sin against the Law (forming a holy place), the king models and upholds righteousness in the light of the Law (filling the place with light), and the prophet speaks of coming judgment (the two-edged “binary” future).

Priest: God’s face is against Adam until blameless blood is shed (Showbread/Ascension).

King: God’s face shines upon Adam (Lampstand/Testing).

Prophet: As a priest-king, Adam speaks as God’s face (Incense Altar/Maturity).

You might also notice that a priest deals only in judgment upon animal substitutes, a king judges human lawbreakers, but a prophet proclaims the end for entire nations and empires. Each role is also threefold, with its own level of dealing with sin, righteousness and judgment:

For the obedient Priest, atoning for sin, it is blood (sin), fire (righteousness) and smoke (judgment – God’s favor).

For the wise King, as righteous son, it is the process of hearing the testimony of witnesses, discerning their hearts by the Spirit, and executing a righteous judgment or showing mercy.

For the commissioned Prophet, it is hearing directly from God (faith: “they do not believe in me”); seeing the Sanctions poured out in a vision (obedience: “I go to my Father”) and speaking to the corrupted kings and priests on behalf of the righteous (legal witness: “the satan/prosecutor stands condemned”).

In the New Testament, Jesus paid for sin in the Garden, the “firstfruits” apostles proclaimed His righteousness and resurrection to the kings of the Land (leading to AD70 and the avenging of the blood of Abel), and the Church now carries their doctrine to the entire world, leading to the final judgment. Of course, each of these stages is a “fractal” extension, a “future” outcome of the previous one.

The triune ethical office also aligns typologically with Genesis 1:

Priest: Days 1-3 – FORMING (dividing light from darkness, etc.)

King: Days 4-6 – FILLING (beginning with the governing lights)

Prophet: Day 7 – FUTURE (entering into God’s rest)

We can also see it in Jacob’s vision of the heavenly Babel in Genesis 28:

Forming: And he dreamed, and BEHOLD, there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven (dividing light from darkness, etc.)

Filling: And BEHOLD, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! (beginning with the governing lights)

Future: And BEHOLD, the Lord stood above it and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring. (entering into God’s rest) 

Jesus, as priest, king and prophet, is the entire creation in human form. At the centre of history, He is the Ethics of the Covenant given, opened and received for all humanity.

Finally, the causal connection between Jesus going to the Father and righteousness is that after He fulfilled the priestly office of atoning for sin, He ascended to rule as king in righteousness (Revelation 4-5 shows Him ascending as the “firstfruits lamb” and opening the New Covenant scroll, after which four gospel horsemen ride out into the Land). He did not return with tablets of stone, as did Moses, but instead sent His Spirit. The Spirit “convicted the world of righteousness” through the testimony of the apostles, which remains the primary channel, or “opening” of God’s work today.

Notice that Jesus’ kingdom began at Pentecost, where the tongues of fire correspond to the “seeing” of the Lampstand. Jesus sat at the Father’s right hand, as Joseph was Pharaoh’s right hand man, and Daniel was Nebuchadnezzar’s right hand man, with “all power.” He is the Covenant Head, the “Forming.” Filled with His Spirit, His people are made the “righteousness” of God, men and women who are qualified to speak as prophets.

Genesis 1 tells us that the purpose of the sun, moon and stars is to act as kingly governors of the physical realm. They were created at the centre of the Creation Week (Day 4), before Man, yet Man was not to bow down to them.

And beware lest you raise your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and bow down to them and serve them, things that the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven. (Deuteronomy 4:19)

The reason for this is that although Genesis 1 presents Man as part of the physical order, Genesis 2 moves him beyond this to a social order. When Adam perceives that he is without a mate, he is “bowed down,” physically humbled, that Woman might be constructed. Adam’s order would not be like that of the animals. His rule from its very beginning would be “sacrificial.” Men would not bow to the stars (or to idols) but to each other, because all men are images, reflections, of God. Adam was to subdue the physical order and bring it into submission, and yet submit to other men. The sinful reverse of this is the worship of the physical order (which is yet inherent in the scientism of our own age) and the tyrannical subjugation of our fellow men, which is exactly what happened in Genesis 3. Physical, Social, Ethical.

Under the sun, Solomon sees riches “kept by their owner to his hurt,” as well as toil and oppression. It is all Adamic. Just as the heavenly lights are placed at the centre of the Creation Week, so Testing is at the centre of the process of Adam’s Ethical qualification under Covenant. The idea is that these lights are “the eyes of God,” witnesses to Adam’s obedience or disobedience while the Lord’s silence makes it seem as if He is absent. It was intended that Adam “feel the heat” of the conflict between the Word of the Lord and the Word of the “angel of light.”

Just as these physical lights govern the heavens, so the heavenly lights are used in later scriptures as symbols of Adam and his offspring, kingly governors of the earth. Prophecies concerning the fall of kings often reference the fall of stars from heaven. Physical language is used to describe a social event following an ethical failure. For example, Joseph’s second dream concerned the stars of heaven. In the wilderness, Israel was arranged around the Tabernacle in twelve constellations. And Jesus quoted Isaiah’s prophecy against Babylon to predict the fall of the Herods and the shake-up of Rome (the year of the four emperors).

Covenantally-speaking, the sun and moon have different roles. One emits light (kingly) and the other reflects light (priestly). The Old Covenant took place in the night time. All its festivals were lunar (the word translated “months” is actually “moons.”) The birth of Christ was heralded by a star and the coming of the kingdom of Christ was the dawn.

Israel’s literature also moves from priestly to kingly. Solomon himself moved between his house and the Temple surrounded by golden shields — marching across the sky like the sun — the bridegroom coming from his chamber. So the meaning in Ecclesiastes has to do with priestly “wilderness” toil under God’s authority, and also kingly sight (wisdom) under the light of God’s law.

Interestingly, the inside of the Tabernacle was dark because it was windowless. The only light was the light of the Lampstand, symbolizing the light of God’s Law. But Solomon’s Temple allowed in some natural light, and contained an “Evian multiplication” of Lampstands. Ezekiel’s Temple (picturing the Jew-Gentile social construct set up in Daniel’s time) had many windows. And the New Jerusalem, the Church, is not only all window, the light is coming from within. It is not natural light, but Ethical Light, the light of the Lamb who satisfied the Law so that He might not only govern the physical order but the social order. God’s mind is fully transparent in Christ.

And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. (Revelation 21:23)

Just as Day 4 was the centre of the Creation Week, so Pentecost is the centre of the festal year, and the Lampstand is the centre of the architectural progression of the Tabernacle furniture. The Lampstand pictured the seven lights which could be seen with the naked eye: the sun moon and five planets. The Lampstand dwelling in the body (the Tabernacle: Christ) was fulfilled in humanity at Pentecost, hence the flames over the heads of the saints. The Scriptures speak of God’s people becoming wise, shining like stars (Daniel 12:3). This refers to the saints being governed internally by God’s Spirit, rather than merely external laws. This is kingly maturity, which leads to prophetic witness. At Pentecost, the saints were no longer “under the sun” but equals with their exalted heavenly brother, filled with His Spirit, and possessing the unadulterated light of His holy mind. Those who rejected Pentecost and “blasphemed the Spirit” would “feel the heat” of the curses of the Law under a different kind of outpouring in the Jewish War. Again, “physical” language is used to describe a “social” event. [1]

Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire. And men were scorched with great heat, and they blasphemed the name of God who has power over these plagues; and they did not repent and give Him glory. (Revelation 16:8-9)

Satan was the “shining one” in the Garden, but his “eyes of darkness” have been exposed and it is now the sons of God who shine. Moreover,  as stars no longer “under the sun,” our labor under this New Covenant — serving as God’s eyes [2]– is not in vain.

Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world, holding fast to the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I may be proud that I did not run in vain or labor in vain.” (Philippians 2:14-16)

The slain Firstfruits saints ascended into heaven, and their ethical and social authority became “Creational.”

They shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the sun shall not strike them, nor any scorching heat. (Revelation 7:16)

Those who are faithful “under the sun” are adopted by the Father of lights (James 1:17).

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[1] See Cosmic Language.
[2] See Eye Spy.

For more in biblical symbols, check out James B. Jordan’s Through New Eyes. For more on their use in the Revelation, get his lectures.

“So, perhaps the best conclusion is that John was not looking for encouragement, but giving encouragement. In effect, he was saying, ‘Get on with it, cousin!’”

The nature of the texts of the Bible is just like the spoken words God gave to Adam. A great deal remained unsaid, and Adam was to “read between the lines” based upon God’s revealed character as his Father. However, Adam let somebody else fill in the gaps with some conflicting information about God’s character, somebody who was very likely jealous of Adam’s commission and had an ax to grind (and even here, we are left to fill in the gaps as to Satan’s motive based upon later scriptures!)

The record of John the Baptist’s question to Jesus similarly doesn’t give us all the information. All the texts are written to make us think very hard and very deeply, and to call to mind things we have read in previous texts. Some Christian writers fill in the gaps concerning the reason for John’s question with a view to helping Christians who experience doubt (here’s an example). There are certainly other texts that speak of doubt which could indicate that this was what John was experiencing.

And Jesus said to him, “ ‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.” Immediately the father of the child cried out and said, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:23-24)

But is this what is really going on here? Or is this interpretation one that shows both our ignorance of the Old Testament and of the Bible’s fundamental “Covenant” structure? What if the question asked by John had nothing to do with doubt, but simply his expectations of Jesus based on the roles in the Triune Office? (See The Triune Office.)

Unlike Adam, John would have had no doubts about Jesus’ Divine character. James Jordan observes that John would have seen his cousin at least three times every year at the regular feasts, which John would still have been required to attend even after he moved into the wilderness as an adult to begin his ministry.

John knew that Jesus was the Great Priest because he referred to Him as the lamb of God, who had come to take away the sins of the world. John also knew that Jesus was the Great King because he had then seen Him anointed directly by the Father (in the Old Testament, the prophets who anointed kings were often referred to as “father.” Likewise, Joseph is referred to by Pharaoh as “father.” See Peter Leithart’s book on 1 and 2 Samuel, A Son To Me.) James Jordan suggests that John’s question was about Jesus being the Great Prophet (Deuteronomy 18:15), the one about whom the priests and Levites had questioned John himself (John 1:21). Priests do not do miracles. Neither do kings. Only prophets do miracles, and John was simply wondering if the Triune Office would be fulfilled in a single Adam. Was Jesus doing the kinds of things that prophets like Elijah and Elisha did, things that John himself, as “Elijah,” never did?

And when the men had come to him, they said, “John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, ‘Are you the one who is to come, or shall we look for another?’ ” In that hour he healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind he bestowed sight. And he answered them, “Go and tell John what you have seen and heard: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (Luke 7:20-23)

This also makes sense of the final sentence concerning “offense.” Historically, the prophets were killed because the Covenant-legal message they brought was offensive to the Covenant breakers.

So, perhaps the best conclusion is that John was not looking for encouragement, but giving encouragement. In effect, he was saying, “Get on with it!”

Moving from deduction by logic to literary structure, do we see this conclusion supported in the shape of Luke’s text? I believe we do. (Thanks to Albert Garlando for his initial work on the structure of this passage.)

Covenant structure of Luke 7 – 8

How does Peter see the apocalyptic imagery of Joel in the events of Acts 2?

The first step is to take note of the context of Joel’s prophecy. It is the coming destruction of Jerusalem in 586 BC.

And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. For in Mount Zion and in Jerusalem there shall be those who escape, as the Lord has said, and among the survivors shall be those whom the Lord calls. (Joel 2:32)

Even if we identify the context, it may sound to us as if Joel is still looking forward to the first century events at the end of his predictions. The unfortunate chapter break between 2 and 3 stops us reading further, but if we keep reading without a break, the beginning of chapter 3 makes it clear that Joel is still speaking about the restoration from exile. God would judge all the Canaanite nations, including Israel, who had behaved like a Canaanite. But only Israel would resurface from the “flood” of Babylonian control, while all the Canaanite powers remained scattered forever. And Israel would be vindicated across the world, from India to Ethiopia, in the events of the book of Esther (predicted in Ezekiel 38-39).

This means that the particular “day of judgment” had already passed by the time Peter quoted the prophet, so he is not quoting the prophecy to announce its soon fulfillment. He is, however, announcing a similar destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple, with all that this entails.

The New Testament writers always quote the Old Testament “covenantally,” that is, the way God redeemed and avenged at such-and-such a time is now being repeated. A similar example is the reference in Hebrews to Jeremiah concerning “a new covenant.” In Jeremiah, the new covenant would re-unite Judah and Israel, north and south. By the first century, this was an event long fulfilled. The author of Hebrews is using the previous national “death-and-resurrection” to illustrate the inter-national one which was occurring in his day, that is, not a reunion of Israelite and Israelite into one natural body, but the reunion of Jew and Gentile into one spiritual body.

The second step is to take note of the meaning of the prophetic language. Blood and fire and smoke are potent images but together they speak of a process of transformation, the sacrificial rite. Blood is the natural body upon the altar. Fire transforms it into something new. Joel—and Peter—as prophets of God, are putting the Israel of their respective days on the altar. How is this possible?

These are things that take place on the “Land” (not the “earth”) because the Land throughout the Old Testament is a flat, four-cornered altar. The obedient offering of the firstfruits (such as Isaac) would allow the will of God to be done on earth as it was in heaven. It was an act of faithful gratitude which would allow God to pour out the rest of the harvest as a blessing to true Israel. For the unbelieving, an abundance of blessing would be a chance to fill up their sins and incur a greater judgment.

We see this on Mount Carmel, where Elijah’s holy sacrificial model of Israel (a twelve stone altar) calls down fire from heaven, and the entire mountain becomes a new Sinai, with the false priests slain and God vindicated. The Tabernacle was a model of Sinai, with the Bronze Altar as the raised earth, and the furnitures in the Holy Place signified the sacrificial blood (the Table), the fire (the Lampstand) and the fragrant savory smoke (the Incense Altar). The fragrant smoke was pleasing to God, a “legal witness” that the Law had been satisfied. Blood, fire and clouds of smoke make all Israel “the holy place.”

In the first century, the death of Christ was the offering of blood. Pentecost was the “holy fire” coming down from heaven, and the testimony of the apostles to an apostate Jerusalem and to the surrounding Gentiles was the savory smoke, after which came God’s blessings and curses upon the Jews for all time in AD70. In the Jewish war, as on Carmel, the liturgical model of Christian worship brought down the “days of vengeance.” Jerusalem herself was laid upon the altar, the entire Land covered in blood “up to the horses’ bridles.” Just as Israel was surrendered by God to Babylon due to her harlotries, idolatries, sorceries and abominations, so she would be left unprotected to be desolated by Rome, whom God would bring against her. At Pentecost, the glory of God did not fill the Temple but the faithful. As the faithful were gradually expelled from the Temple over the following decades, the presence of God was also expelled, which left it unprotected against invasion and plunder by Gentiles. The liturgical blood, fire and smoke of the New Covenant Israel resulted in literal blood, fire and smoke for old Israel.

The book of Revelation is strange to us because it is a sacrificial liturgy. It is the final sacrifice of the Old Testament: Israel herself. The believers ascended as smoke (the ascension offering in Leviticus 1, the true Isaacs, sons of Abraham by faith) and the unbelievers were swallowed by the Land, descending into the earthen Altar, as ashes, Adamic dust, like the false priests, the sons of Korah. The Altar was then split in two (symbolically under the feet of Christ) and the ashes poured out. All these allusions help us to understand what is going on. To refuse to understand the Bible on its own terms (with its constant sacrificial/liturgical models) is to refuse to take it as it was intended.

Finally, there are those who believe that the apocalyptic language in Peter’s quotation is still unfulfilled. They state that because Israel rejected the Spirit the full pouring out was postponed until “the last days” of Israel which are still future. Incredibly, these teachers overlook the destruction of Jerusalem as an important event in Covenant history. Not only this, but they fail to see that this is another death-and-resurrection of Israel, who emerges from the flames once again renewed, but this time as the Christian Church. There is no Israel besides the Church. So, how should we then understand the phrase “the last days” in Peter’s quotation? The New Testament documents are legal documents written by legal witnesses, giving testimony about a coming judgment. Following the pattern of the Old Testament prophets, they are preaching to cause a moral response in the audience of their day. So although we can apply their warnings in certain ways today, their warnings are obviously concerning the last days of the Old Covenant, not the last days of the New. The failure of most of evangelicalism to notice this is why the New Testament has little grip on reality in the lives of modern believers. The fulfillment of the warnings in the judgment of God, in Christ, is either overlooked or erased entirely from our understanding of the birth of the Church.

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ART: St Peter Preaching at Pentecost, sculpture by Christopher Slatoff.

What is the referent of “body of Christ” in 1 Corinthians 11:29?

“For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment on himself.”

Is it the members of the Church, as Doug Wilson supposes?

A few years ago, when one of my grandsons first came to the table (he was one year old), he was beside himself. His parents had taught him a basic catechism with signs because he could not really talk. He answered the question “Are you baptized?” by patting his own head. I was administering the Supper, and he was sitting in the front row with his parents and grandmother. When he got his bread, he held it up to show me. Now all this could be dismissed simply as a grandkid doing a cute thing, not really understanding it. But he also turned and pattern his mother’s head and his grandmother’s head. We are all baptized. He was discerning the body. To the extent he understood the Supper, he was discerning the body. To the extent that he did not understand the Supper (as the rest of us do not either), he was learning, just as we are. [1]

Why do paedobaptists always play the “cute” card? Is it not obvious that the corollary to “We are all baptized” is that Christianity is tribal and/or hereditary? That discussion is for another day. I just thought this was a great quote to illustrate what is often understood by this verse. But then what is the meaning of the verse? Its Covenant structure might shed some light on it.

It should be clear from this structure that the Communion table, a place of the kind of self-examination which leads to repentance and faith, is not for infants. It is not intended for the training up of children, except by observation. The “bread” they require first is the hearing of the Gospel. But the main point here is that the context of “discerning the body” is not about figuring out who is in and who is out.

The Lord’s supper is a combination of Israel’s Levitical priesthood eating the sacrifices before God, and Israel vowing to keep the conditions of the Covenant. Before the Mosaic Covenant, all sacrifices were whole burnt offerings. God ate the lot, as a consuming fire. The Noahic priests did not eat with God. To do so required a greater ceremonial cleanliness, a blameless people with “Levitically spotless skin,” as living sacrifices.

Moreover, Israel’s priests only ate before God, they never drank with Him. Between the first Melchizedek bringing bread and wine to Abraham (to vindicate him as a priest-king) and the last Melchizedek bringing bread and wine to Abraham’s children (the disciples), the wine was always to be tipped out as an offering. [2] The symbolism of the cup is tied to the jealous inspection of the bride in Numbers 5. In the big picture, the true priest-king was Christ, the only one who could rightly drink wine before God as a qualified Adam, the true Son of God.

So the distinction here, the “discernment” of the body is not the gathered saints but the act of judging rightly between sacred food and common food, between the house of God and the homes we live in, between the priestly table and the kingly table. When we eat at home, our food is not the body of Christ, and our wine is not the blood of the New Covenant. This is only the case when the saints gather together for self-examination, worship and Covenant renewal.

He whose god is his belly does not discern the Table as the flesh and blood of Christ but merely as food and drink. His outflow is not sacrificial blood and a river of living water but the filth of the bowels of King Eglon of Sodom. Those who discern what the bread and the wine actually are in God’s eyes will rightly discern themselves. Those who see  the Son of God on the Table, judging Jesus as righteous and themselves as unrighteous will, by eating and drinking, humble themselves and exalt the Saviour. His pure words are intended for our hearts, not our bellies (Mark 7:19). For those who love this world, Jesus’ pure words are Ehud’s left-handed (priestly) blade.

For Israel, this discernment was related to the difference between Passover and Tabernacles. At Passover, Israel was set apart for purification. At Booths/Tabernacles, a purified Israel was called to minister to, to “feed” the other nations. [3] For the Christian, this is the difference between the Lord’s table and the love feast. We examine ourselves, eat with God, and will then eat with the unconverted with the right heart, ministering out of God’s abundance.

So much for the basic argument. As always, the identification of the Covenant structure gives us even more information.

It is helpful to note that divisions in the assembly are often instigated by God for the purpose of purifying the church, as painful as this may be. It is not always simple, but in this case, gluttony exposed the swine.

At the Levitical step, we have saints acting like the sons of Eli, who treated the house of the Lord as if it were their own house, and the food of God as their own food. They exalted themselves instead of humbling themselves as God’s butlers, His faithful servants.

At the centre of the passage, Jesus is under the curse of the Law, drinking the cup in the place of the adulterous Bride. Even now He was covering their disobedience through His own death, just as He was still covering the sin of the Jewish leaders who were yet celebrating Passover and building the Temple in kingly (“Cainite”) disobedience to the Gospel.

The “Sanctions” part of the passage reinforces the idea that the Lord’s Supper is for the regular public renewal of the public profession of faith made by each saint at his or her baptism. Baptism puts the saint into the resurrection body, as one who has been slain by the Gospel and now possesses new life by the Spirit. The Table is the place of self-discipline for God’s knights, who judge themselves that they may not be judged, something which is insane to expect from a one-year-old unless one has an erroneous tradition to protect.

Notice that those who will not discipline themselves are disciplined by the Lord. This is exactly what we see in the letters to the seven churches in Asia, as Jesus “passes over” them on His way to destroy Pharaoh/Herod. He comes to tend His garden, the children of God (spiritual, not physical children), to feed them with righteousness and holiness. Those whom He finally removes (as He threatens to do in Revelation 2 and 3), are judged that the church might be preserved from being entirely “snuffed out.”

The final section, like the first, mentions the gathering (Booths). The Table is the place where the saints sit as elohim, heavenly rulers, those who are purified and are now fit to sit enthroned with Christ in heavenly places as His elders, His court, His advisors, and judge the wicked and advocate for the helpless by their prayers. The Lord’s Table is for the maintenance of the two-edged sword of the Gospel in our lives. It is a place of death and life, where we eat and drink Jesus, the priest-king, and then become life-giving food for the world.

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[1] Doug Wilson, in his foreword for The Case for Covenant Communion, edited by Gregg Strawbridge.
[2] See “The Forbidden Feast” in God’s Kitchen for more discussion and a diagram.
[3] See “Eat Local and Die” in God’s Kitchen for more discussion.

ART: The Death of Eglon via Sarah Louise 

An online acquaintance asked: “There’s a hermeneutical method that’s been used on this site called ‘systematic typology’. What is it? How does one apply it? Are there contexts where it is considered to be a particularly good or particularly bad fit? Where can one go to learn more about it? And where does it come from? (Who developed it, and based on what?)

What is it?

Firstly, this is a term I’ve given to a process which I didn’t invent. The name is simply to get people thinking, to get across to the modern thinker that there is a very definite internal logic to the symbolism of the Bible.

Just as systematic theology identifies and isolates similar ideas, so systematic typology identifies similar symbols but does not isolate them. Rather it notices their use at similar points in repeated literary and historical structures or processes or architectures.

How does one apply it?

In two ways: firstly, we must learn the Bible’s symbol language; secondly, we must notice that these symbols are used in a repeated structure, which helps not only to identify them, but also to show how different symbols are used to communicate similar themes. The repeated structure is what allows us to make and verify the typological connections between the events described. It also reveals when the Bible’s typology is being abused. An abuse is like a wrong note in a familiar tune.

The most basic event-structure is the Creation narrative in Genesis 1, and it is the chord from which the entire Bible “symphony” flows. When you see a passage that recapitulates the Creation Week, there are some very valid things you can draw from the text that aren’t actually written in it. An example would be Ezekiel’s use of the Creation pattern as he liturgically “de-creates” the Temple and Israel in his early chapters. The allusion is structural, and a familiarity with the symbols used in each step allows us not only to identify the structure but to pick up when the prophet is deliberately inverting something or changing it to make a point. Another example which comes to mind is Isaiah is working his way through the Tabernacle furniture in one of his prophecies. When he gets to the Incense Altar, he says that Israel’s sacrifices are a stench in God’s nostrils. If we know what he is doing structurally, suddenly the passage is opened to us.

The basic structures we must learn are the Creation Week, Israel’s festal calendar, the Tabernacle, the Covenant pattern, and the resulting process of maturity and dominion. All of these align with each other.

If this all sounds too complicated, it’s not. It’s something you already do if you are into literature or even popular culture. It’s no different than figuring out when a modern movie is a retelling of a Shakespearian play. I think Western writers have the Bible’s shape so ingrained in their thinking that they use it unconsciously – the recent James Bond movie Skyfall, for instance, has a liturgical shape.

Are there contexts where it is considered to be a particularly good or particularly bad fit?

Because the Bible is so consistent in a) its use of symbols and b) their placement in a consistent order, I have found this process useful in all of Scripture. In fact, it answers a great many theological debates. I believe the documentary hypothesis was an error, but only because its proponents did not have the necessary understanding of the Bible’s structure. What appears disordered to us is actually a very careful order. A few months ago, I worked through the book of Numbers. “Systematic typology” explained its structure at three or four levels (sevenfold within sevenfold etc.) and recently worked through Ephesians, which contains exactly the same patterns. What is really interesting is that the structure reveals many of Paul’s allusions and they are stunning. For instance, in one passage he works through Israel’s feasts, and basically makes the Gentile Church the new Firstfruits, that is, a new Levitical priesthood. This would have been shocking to first century Jews who must have been familiar with the “liturgical” structure of the Torah.

Where can one go to learn more about it?

The first thing to do is to learn the Bible’s symbol language. If you read the Scriptures regularly, you will find that when things are pointed out, you already sort of knew them. The best place to start is James B. Jordan’s book, Through New Eyes which is available on amazon.com, or you can download a free PDF from www.biblicalhorizons.com. The site also has a “manifesto” on symbolism, and there is much help in the introduction to his commentary on Judges which you will also find in PDF. He speaks about identifying repeated themes and roles. It surprised me how important Genesis 1-3 is for interpreting the rest of the Bible. The roles of Adam, Eve and serpent keep recurring. For instance, Judges is a book about head-crushing. Jordan also has many Bible lectures, available from www.wordmp3.com Please note, he takes a little while to get used to, but he will teach you to think like a Hebrew, that is, visually. He is American, but recently gave some introductory lectures in London and they are available for free here.

My work has been to “systematize” Jordan’s thinking, giving it some terminology and laying out the structures visually. Once you are more familiar with the symbol language, the architecture, and its source in Genesis, you might like to move on to my ‘Bible matrix’ books, which explain each pattern and how it is used. You will see that each Bible text is a microcosm of the whole.

Genesis 1 is the Bible Matrix. As it matures throughout the Scriptures, the identification of this pattern unlocks the books of Moses, Israel’s history, the structure of Jesus’ ministry and the book of Revelation. If the Bible is truly God’s Word, should we expect anything less? It also has staggering implications concerning the identity, purpose and future of Christianity—and these implications are thoroughly, joyously liberating.

And where does it come from? (Who developed it, and based on what?)

Quite a number of theologians have identified the Creation Week as deep structure in many Scriptures. Jordan noticed its similarity to the Covenant pattern (the suzerainty treaty) What I have done, being a visual thinker, is to diagram these and lay them out a little more plainly. So this process is not new. But it is not a haphazard or occasional ornamental literary flourish. It is a carefully integrated weave, and I have found that it often answers questions of variant readings (the structure often shows that a phrase in question is required to keep it complete).

What this boils down to is learning not only the symbols as “musical notes” but also the tunes which they keep repeating. This includes the sacred architecture, which begins in the Garden, works through the Tabernacle and Temple and is finally expressed “in flesh” in the Christian Church. I am confident that this process works because it has never failed. It is remarkably consistent, incredibly intricate, and yet all based on a relatively simple formula.

Symbols and structure cannot be divorced. Very often, the particular placement of a symbol within a structure is what reveals its meaning. So structural analysis is crucial. This is why I find the sole reliance on word studies so frustrating. That is only part of what needs to be done. What the word is is important, but just as important is where it is in the phrase and where the phrase is in the passage. If you want to see this in action, check out my recent work on Ephesians. Note that it might seem incomprehensible until you learn the basic tools. But it will give you an idea of how the text is constructed.

Jon Ericson asked this question on the Biblical Hermeneutics site:

To what extent is Psalm 51:4 poetic exaggeration?

The context of Psalm 51 is clear:

To the choirmaster. A psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.

These events are described in 2nd Samuel 11–12. In summary, David essentially murdered Uriah the Hittite in order to cover up an affair with Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife. So this verse causes me trouble:

Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you may be justified in your words
and blameless in your judgment.
—Psalm 51:4 (ESV)

David did sin against God, but it seems a stretch to say that he sinned against God only. Surely he sinned against at least Uriah, the soldiers who died with him (and their families), Bathsheba, his current wives, and even his unborn child. In addition, he probably sinned against Joab too by abusing his authority to settle a personal matter.

The logical connector “so that” seems out of place. Whatever connection there might be between a person sinning against God and God being blameless in judgment, I can’t see how justice could be the purpose or explanation of sin.

Is there some way to understand this Psalm that resolves this conundrum? What am I missing?

The best answer (I believe) comes from Qoheleth-Tech:

Not a Hyperbolic Expression

The Text of Psalm 51:4:

לְךָ לְבַדְּךָ ׀ חָטָאתִי וְהָרַע בְּעֵינֶיךָ עָשִׂיתִי
לְמַעַן תִּצְדַּק בְּדָבְרֶךָ תִּזְכֶּה בְשָׁפְטֶֽךָ׃

Explanation

1) “Against you alone” (לְךָ לְבַדְּךָ): This is a prayer of David for repentance (a penitential psalm), and while he sinned against many others in the affair with Bathsheba, this is just not where he handles them (possible reasons are many). He says it is “in your [God's] eyes [בְּעֵינֶיךָ] that I have done this” , further indicating that this is a personal prayer (which was later set to music). Interestingly, having looked at most of the “so that” (לְמַעַן ) phrases in the canon to this point, I found at least two where a sin condition was “so that” God would be glorified; and both are instances where enemies are hardened or defeated (Ex.10:1, Dt.2:30). If anything can be drawn from that syntactical similarity, it would be that David see himself who has been completely undone, so that God can be shown victorious (LXX) in his judgements. In any case, this is how he uses the preposition “so that” (לְמַעַן).

2) We should not read the verse with an emphasis on purpose as if David’s purpose in sinning was so God would be glorified (cf. Rom.3:5-8). Rather, it is the second part of the verse which dictates the first: it was all against Him alone, “(so) that” God will be victorious. The purpose of this verse in the Psalm is to declare that God will be victorious/justified in His judgement of David’s sins. The second line of the verse is the point. In this sense, it is the purpose of the preceding verse. To understand this better, read the second line first. Try and think of it again with the second line first.

Interpretation

In this penitential prayer, there is no sin to be reserved, as if it was not against God, it was all against God. Every bit of it. God is just in judgement in all of it. The same portion against Uriah, was also against God. David must answer to God above all.

Likewise (as is evident in this Psalm) when God pardons David’s sins, he washes away all of David’s sins – there is no sacrifice to Bathsheba. David’s forgiveness was entirely with God. Whatever else was needed for the personal restoration/reconciliation with those against whom he sinned would also be in primary obedience to God.

The Nephilim (“great” or “amazing”) were the first “mighty men” of the Bible. They were the result of the intermarriage between the priestly sons of Seth and the rebellious Cainite kings. The text gives us a split genealogy after the murder of Abel, priests serving God outside the garden, and Cain’s false kingdom (Cain went and built a “fortress” to protect himself). So, humanity was divided into two camps: those who served God as their king and those who rebelled against Him.

The sin of the sons “of God” (God was their authority) was marrying daughters “of men” (man as authority), and we know this is what it is talking about because it happens over and over throughout Bible history. These women were unconverted. Marrying such women was forbidden in the Mosaic Law, especially for kings. This sin eventually brought about Solomon’s apostasy, which destroyed Israel under a Babylonian “flood.” His failure led to a splitting of the kingdom, and Omri in the northern kingdom also attempted to co-opt Judah through intermarriage. Ezra and Nehemiah deal with such intermarriage as well. Unconverted women and their children were to be expelled, to save Israel from another judgment.

Finally, Jesus said that His generation would soon be destroyed for such “marrying and giving in marriage,” as it was in the days of Noah. In the first century, the compromisers were the “rulers of the Land,” the Herods and their high priesthood, through their dependance on the state power of Rome. Rather than being an obedient priesthood, humbling themselves and being exalted by God, they exalted themselves and were finally abased.

There is nothing wrong with intermarriage as long as the move is towards God. God loves holy hybrids (just look at some of His angels!) Rahab and Ruth are prime examples. In the first century, this holy intermarriage was the union of Jews and Gentiles in Christ, pictured for many centuries in the Feast of Booths. They too were united, but by the Spirit through priestly obedience. This is true kingdom. Once united, nothing would be withheld from them.

But why were these men in Genesis 6 called “mighty,” the supervillains of the day?

James Jordan has a must-read article on this, aligning the intermarriage with events in our own day. [1] In summary, what he calls “the Enoch factor” is the habit of the unrighteous initially achieving more, culturally-speaking, than the righteous, because they are willing to resort to slavery and robbery (like Pharaoh, and Rehoboam). But this kind of kingdom is short-lived. It springs up quickly but fades because it has no true integrity. Paganism, left to itself, is unsustainable. The only way paganism can continue is by co-opting the strength and integrity of a righteous culture. This is exactly what has happened in western culture. This is what Jordan calls the “Nephilim factor.” The sanctimonious atheism we see today has no moral capital of its own. It has to borrow, or steal, everything from Christianity, including science, and then relabel this cultural integrity as the product of human reason. What results is a culture of great strength and technical ability, all the blessings of God co-opted, stolen by a corporate Adam. [2]

The serpent offered Adam a kingdom without priestly obedience first. “You shall be like God.” The Nephilim were simply a race of men who were “like god” (Genesis 3:4-5) in a bad way — “mighty men.” (Notice that David and Boaz were also “mighty men,” but in a good way.) The Nephilim were the fulfilment of this satanic offer, a race of Cains, a sin that was now full grown (as James writes to first century Jews) and ripe for judgment.

So forget the angels, and the aliens. It was the integrity of the Church co-opted and corrupted by a secular state with Messianic pretensions. [3]

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[1] James B. Jordan, The Case Against Western Civilization.
[2] See also How To Be Really Evil.
[3] If the West Wing TV series was renamed “The Messiah Complex,” it would suddenly become the most brilliant satire ever.