Satan’s desire was always to turn the “pruning” of circumcision into an ax laid at the root of the tree of Israel.

A handful of treatments of the “massacre of the innocents” by Herod the Great see this bloodshed as the first of the New Covenant’s martyrs. But these miss the point of Matthew’s use of the word “fulfilled,” rendering it as good as meaningless. This massacre was the harbinger of the end of the old era and its promises. It said nothing about the promises of the new.

There is no way that this is the first of a series of new incidents, that is, Christian martyrdoms. Either this event simply continues the murders of offspring found throughout the Old Testament, or it brings them to an end. As my friend observes, suffering would now be different, but of course I would take this a little further than he would, concerning the significance of the sacraments.¹See my previous post, Feed My Lambs. Suffering would no longer be racial, tribal or genealogical, but voluntary. Killing Jews is genocide. Killing Christians is like killing Communists or capitalists. Its intention is not to wipe out a despised people but an intolerable “ideology.” The sons murdered in Matthew 2 were physical sons, sons of Abraham according to the flesh. Martyrs however are Sons of God.²See Provoking the Dragon.

New King on the Block

The era of Christ and His apostles was a period of transition, an overlap between the Old Covenant and the New. It was much like the time between the anointing of David and the death of Saul. Seen in this light, the parallels are remarkable. Just as the anointing of David was an irreversible divine decree, so was the life of Christ. And the Herods’ reaction was much the same as that of Saul. The sword of the Lord in the hand of a king maddened by jealousy was always a Covenant Sanction from the hand of God (1 Samuel 16:14). Saul would have seen both David, and later Jonathan, slain, had not the people restrained him. He employed an Edomite to slay the priests of God. The Herods were Edomites, and for the Herods, there was no restraint. Herod the Great murdered his own family as well as many rabbis. Like Pharaoh, the Herodian dynasty was the bloody hand of Cain. Sadly, the Jews failed to see that the “greatest builder in Jewish history”³Ken Spino, Crash Course In Jewish History. had built a Cainite city upon cursed ground.

 The Mutilation

The massacre if infants at the command of Herod the Great makes perfect sense as a sign of the imminent end of the Old Covenant, a Covenant which began with a barren womb and a barren Land. These infants sons — one from each woman, due to the directive concerning the age of the boys — were all Isaacs cut off because the end of the circumcision was nigh.

Circumcision was a genealogical “pruning,” bearing the curse upon Land and Womb in Genesis 3 for all nations that there might be a priestly nation, a people fruitful in righteousness. Satan’s desire was always to turn the “pruning” of circumcision into an ax laid at the root of the tree of Israel (Matthew 3:10, Luke 3:9), not a circumcision but a castration, a mutilation.⁴See New Covenant Virility 1 and 2.

The prophets condemned Israel’s shepherds when they became wolves, trading and tearing the sheep instead of leading them, shedding the blood of their own people while they perverted or ignored the substitutionary nature of the blood of the sacrifices. A cultic expression of this national self-mutilation was the worship of the priests of Baal, who cut themselves and threw themselves onto the altar on Mount Carmel. God would never accept human blood, at least not until truly blameless human blood was shed. This is why Paul refers to the Circumcision as the Mutilation, and wishes they would go the whole way and castrate themselves.

Ramah and Rachel

None of this is difficult to understand, but what is the reason for Matthew’s reference to Ramah and Rachel? Most commentators focus on Rachel, but the mention of Ramah is also significant, and its meaning is discovered in the “Covenant-literary” structure of of the text.⁵See also Matthew’s Literary Artistry.

In this passage, Ramah occurs at Ascension, which corresponds to the Bronze Altar (the Land) and the Table (the Firstfruits). For Israel, the foundational Ascension was the offering of Isaac on Mount Moriah. Her subsequent idolatry led her into the practice of false worship on the high places and child sacrifice in the pit, the Valley of Hinnom (Ge henna in Greek).

Failure to repent of false worship led to the slaughter and slavery of the children of Israel by Assyria and Babylon. The Lord protected Ramah and the other towns of the kingdom of Judah (Judah and Benjamin) from the Assyrians (Isaiah 10:24,27-29), but the continued corruption of Judah led to invasions by the Babylonians. It is believed that there was a prison camp at Ramah where the people of Judah were held before being carried into exile. This may be the background for Jeremiah’s mention of this town in 31:15. Jeremiah himself was imprisoned there for a time (Jeremiah 40:1).

What is the connection between Ramah and Rachel? Ramah was a town in the allotment of Benjamin, son of Rachel. He was the last son born to Jacob and his name means “son of my right hand.” Benjamin and Ramah thus symbolised an end to the immediate Succession of Israel, pointing to the cutting off of “the last son.”

Joseph’s brothers “slew” him, and Joseph tested them in return with the “slaying” of Benjamin, Rachel’s only other son, whom they presumed to be the only son of Rachel still alive. Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt and all Israel suffered in slavery. Just so, Israel’s child sacrifices in the Valley of Hinnom led to that valley being filled with the bodies of the idolaters. In the first century, this massacre not only of the sons of the flesh but also of Israel’s sons of the Spirit (Abraham’s true sons) would lead to a final filling of Ge henna, this time not at the hands of Babylon (the first empire) but Rome (the last). The circumcision intended as mercy for Israel on behalf of all nations (to avoid another flood) was twisted into a kingdom of bloodshed, a land filled with violence (Genesis 6:11).

You and Your Children

This “head-and-body” multiplication of judgment helps us to make sense of the words of Jesus, who not only knew of the massacre of the innocents and His own miraculous rescue, but also what was in store for all the Jews who rejected Him. It is Jesus Himself, as the suffering prophet on the way to His death, who tells the “Rachels” weeping for Him to weep for their own children.

This is the context of Peter’s words to the Jews on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2, a text upon which rests almost all the supposed weight of arguments for paedosacraments. However, even a cursory reading by a one-eyed, uneducated, blithering ignoramus like me reveals its context to be entirely Jewish, with not-so-subtle references to the treatment of Joseph by his brothers.

Brothers,… Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.

This clearly has nothing whatsoever to say about the children of Christians. This text is the Reformed equivalent of Haeckel’s fraudulent embryo diagrams. Although its abuse is so easily exposed, it remains in the textbooks because the cupboard is otherwise bare. Despite clear, concise and convincing arguments from myself and others, paedobaptists simply close their eyes and recite “You and your children” like some magic mantra. The irony is that Dispensationalists would likely understand this text perfectly!

Wait a minute, I hear. What about “those who are afar off”? Firstly, Peter was addressing all the house of Israel, and as is common in Scripture, but commonly overlooked, his literary architecture is triune, an oratory reference to the Tabernacle:

You (Word, Most Holy – Fathers)
Your children (Sacrament, Holy Place – Sons)
Those afar off (Government, Court – Spirit)

I suppose this is easy to dispute, but as it was with Moses’ supposed “murder” of the Egyptian, the true crime is identified through God’s righteous judgment upon it and the corresponding atonement. Those who rejected Peter’s warning to this last generation of the children of Abraham according to the flesh were cut off; the fathers, the sons, and even those far off. Not only were the Jews trapped in their own city, clever Titus waited until Passover before he besieged the city, so that Jerusalem would be filled with Jews from all over the empire, “those afar off.” In the final act, six thousand Jewish women and children were slain in one stroke when part of Herod’s Temple complex collapsed at the end of the Jewish war. And the best of the young men, the Josephs, were sold into slavery in Egypt. This “cutting off” brought an end to the Circumcision, the era of “sons,” and the inauguration of the age of the Spirit.

Conclusion

Circumcision was about pruning that there might be more fruit. Baptism is a celebration of the firstfruits of the Spirit, a public testimony. Good fruit makes the cultivation or non-cultivation of the tree irrelevant. To turn baptism into merely another sign of cultivation misses the point entirely at best, and at worst puts our children under a curse. The sign of the end of Christendom  and its carnal sacraments comes with a massacre of infants of untold proportions. The answer is certainly not more paedosacraments.

Why was the unique sacrificial rite in Genesis 15 required, and what did it signify? Was it simply a self-maledictory oath on the Lord’s behalf, or was there something deeper going on?

The Oath

The theory that the Lord was taking the curse upon Himself is based on Hebrews 6:13-14:

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.”

Peter Golding writes:

A self-maledictory oath is the most likely explanation of the incident recorded in Genesis 15 where, at God’s instigation, Abraham takes a heifer, a she-goat and a ram and divides them in the midst, laying each piece one against another. The lamp of fire which passed between the pieces belongs to the same order as the burning bush (Exod 13:21) and the pillar of ire (13:21). It is a symbol of the presence of God, represented here as “cutting a covenant” with Abraham–in other words, God invoking upon himself the covenant curses if his promises should fail.¹Peter Golding, Covenant Theology, 72.

This common explanation does highlight the truth that the fulfilment of the promises rested upon the faithfulness of God rather than Israel, the God who would keep raising Israel from the dead, by grace alone, until they were all fulfilled (Zechariah 4:6). It also understands that the curse was borne by Yahweh Himself in Christ. Yahweh took the Oath and Yahweh would Himself bear its Sanctions. However, it neglects to explain the requirement for animal sacrifices at this point, which are very specific, looking backwards to Noah and forwards to Leviticus. The curse upon sin was always borne by blameless animal substitutes after the sin, but what was the sin in this instance? Why were animal sacrifices required now?

The Ascension

James Jordan explains that the answer is not found in the later (historically-speaking) Covenant oaths but in events found earlier in Genesis. The reason for the animals slain in the Land is discovered in the animals slain in the Garden.

When Adam sinned he was sentenced to die. God killed an animal to provide covering for him, but still he had to leave the Garden. A boundary was set around the Garden that he might not cross on pain of death, for cherubim with flaming sword that turned in all directions were set at the eastern gate of the Garden to guard it. For Adam to get back into the Garden, he would have to ascend past the barrier, through sword and fire. Only then could he serve as God’s palace-servant again. In Leviticus 1, the animal will pass through sword and fire, bringing the adam back into a symbolic Garden.

From this every Israelite knew that it was God and not any adam who would kill the “animal” to provide covering. When the Israelite slaughtered his Nearbringing, he knew that he was only acting a role designed to affirm his faith in what God would someday do.

Two events in the life of Abraham must also be remembered. When God made the covenant with Abram in Genesis 15, five animals were divided (the same five that are brought near in Leviticus; contrast Noah’s offering of all “clean” animals), and God’s smoky presence passed between the parts of the animals. God said that this event linked Abram to the land, from which he had been estranged (the famine in Genesis 12, the weakness of the land in Genesis 13, the wars all over the land in Genesis 14), though that linkage would not take hold for several generations to come. Thus, the two parts of the animals represented Abram and the land. Abram and the land were dead to each other, rent asunder. But now God’s presence would knit them together. Thus, when God’s glory passes between the parts of the animals, it signifies putting them back together again in a new way. In Leviticus 1, putting the sectioned parts of the animal into the Communion Site (traditionally “altar”) signifies the same thing: resurrection, reunification with God and the world, and glorification.²James B. Jordan, Introduction to the Ascensions, Biblical Horizons 143.

The Mediators

While this is extremely helpful, I think it still fails to explain the need for the sacrifices. Much more needs to be made of the link between the barrenness of Sarai and the barrenness of Canaan as expressions of the curses in Genesis 3. Fruitfulness of the land and the womb are the results of faithfulness to God. But Abraham was not unfaithful. Adam’s sin eventually led to the destruction of “all flesh” in a global flood. What was being established in Abraham and Sarah was a microcosmic model of the world, a Social Land surrounded by a Social Sea. As Jordan describes above, Abraham’s estrangement from Canaan follows a familiar threefold pattern, but it is expressed in local events rather than global ones:

In these three trials, Abraham is proven as a priest, a king and a prophet, dealing faithfully and wisely in all three domains. ³Abraham’s behaviour concerning Sarai in Egypt is misinterpreted as a faithless deception, rather than outcrafting the serpent. See James B. Jordan, Primeval Saints, for more discussion. As a result, he is made a father in God’s image, that the seed promised to Adam and Eve might be preserved, and also that his offspring might serve as mediators for the nations even before that seed should arrive to spare the world another Physical annihilation. The Abrahamic Covenant is the heavenly rainbow expressed upon the earth, a local “earth” that would suffer on behalf of all the earth.⁴For more discussion, see Cosmic Language.

Thus, when the Lord tells Abraham that the sins of the Amorites are not yet fully grown, not yet ripe for judgment, we might understand this in regard to all the surrounding nations. The first “Social flood” which Canaan would suffer was the invasion of the tribes of Jacob, four centuries in the future. It is my belief that the animals did not represent a divide between Abraham and the Land, but a divide between Abraham and the nations. These sacrifices were Abraham’s mediation on behalf of those living in Canaan, to whom he had preached the Gospel, proclaiming the name of the Lord (Genesis 12:8; 13:4; 26:25; Acts 2:21; Romans 10:13; cf. Joel 2:32). This is because Genesis 15 not only follows the fivefold Covenant pattern, recapitulating the Creation week, it also recapitulates the history of the world from Adam to Noah:

Now, it must be said here that Israel’s failure to enter the Land ruined the pattern, and a new “washing” was required in the Jordan. But the correspondences do explain the need for substitutionary sacrifices. Ascension also corresponds to Leviticus (the Levites were a kind of Firstfruits who possessed no “Day 3″ Land, since they were its holy “fruits”).

The House

This brings us to an explanation of the five clean animals required by God. They prefigure the Tabernacle, which was itself a microcosmic house that served as a substitute for the sins of Israel and the nations. As the Tabernacle was cruciform, I believe these animals were laid out in a cruciform pattern, but with a very significant deficiency.

Abram had been in the Land for three years, so the animals were three years old, a kind of Firstfruits, flesh and blood as bread and wine. This represents a divided week, the failure of Adam at the center of the sevenfold Testing process, where he seized kingdom without prior priestly submission to God. Thus, these animals represent every fundamental element of the Tabernacle except for the Lampstand, the symbol of God’s domain over Israel, which would serve to enlighten the Gentiles of His kingdom over all nations. The reason it is missing here is that in Abram, Adam’s race was being divided into priests and kings, Jew from Gentile, bread from wine, that the sin of intermarriage might not eliminate a faithful representation of God’s mercy expressed in animal sacrifices, preserving the promise of the Messiah. Thus, this “cutting in half” is not only found in each animal, but in the entire bloody architecture. This “divided man” was the reason the Aaronic priests were bloodied and oiled only on their right ear, thumb and big toe. And it is the reason that wine was never consumed by men in God’s presence until Christ came to reinstitute a better “order of Melchizedek.” On the cross, He would make of the two halves “one new Adam,” bloodied and oiled on both sides to tear down the wall of circumcision and reunite the halves in a priesthood of all nations. So the animals do not represent Abraham and the Land, but prefigure the worship to be established in the priesthood of Aaron.

A heifer three years old

The heifer I have positioned in the place of the Bronze Altar, since it corresponds to the face of the Ox. The heifer represents the earth, in this case, the actual four-cornered Land with its horns representing the witness of blood, faithful worship which would keep “the Sea” at bay. In this case, the animal is female, presumably because the word “eretz” (Land) is feminine, the Creational “womb” so to speak. A heifer is a cow that has not borne a calf, or has borne only one calf. The sacrifice on this Altar is Adamic, however.

A female goat three years old

The female goat represents the Altar of Incense. This also had four horns, but they were the prophetic winds of heaven. The blood from the Bronze “Adamic” Altar of death was daubed on this fragrant “Evian” Altar of resurrection, its savour speaking of the burial spices on the raised body in place of the stink of death. We see the bloody Bronze Altar and the fragrant Incense Altar in Esau and Jacob, outside and inside the tent, with a reference to goat skin thrown in for good measure as Jacob presents himself before the “throne” of his father.

A ram three years old

The ram is the Firstfruits of the Firstfruits (just as the Levites gave a tenth to God of the tenth of Israel). This represents the Table of Showbread, which corresponds to Firstfruits in the Tabernacle pattern. Isaac was the firstfruits of the barren womb of Sarah. Just as the firstfruits of the Land were lifted up, so the firstfruits of the womb were lifted up on Mount Moriah, but substituted with a ram.

A turtledove and a young pigeon

The inclusion of black birds and white birds should remind us of the ark of Noah, physical representations of judgment/assessment, dividing between light and darkness over the waters. These would be represented in the Urim and Thummim in the ephod of the High Priest.⁶See “Return of the Raven” in Sweet Counsel. Yet, here the birds are multiplied. There is more than one black bird, representing the general curse of death, and there are two white birds, representing the Covenant blessing upon the faithful who seek covering under the shed blood. The dove and the pigeon were not cut in half, but instead their necks were broken. They represent the “Head” of this cruciform architecture, and the Head cannot be divided, or crushed, only temporarily separated from the Body. The same thing is observed in Jesus’ graveclothes (John 20:7). Since the dove is the wild animal and the pigeon its domesticated cousin, I believe these represent Land and World, the Spirit’s work in both Jew and Gentile, one with the Law and one without (Romans 3). The “sign of Jonah” (Jonah means dove) is the death of Israel through baptism/submersion for the sake of the nations, the Land for the Sea.

The order of the list of these animals expresses a priestly ascension. It works from the earth/Adam, to Eve, to Eve’s firstborn, to the promise of a combined Jew-Gentile priesthood in heaven, a reinstitution of a “Melchizedekian” or Noahic order in heaven through a grafting process, the cultivated field given new longevity through the grafting in of the wild branches (as we observe in the inclusion of Rahab, Ruth, etc.)

The serpent and the tree

So, what of the missing Lampstand? Moses sees it in the wilderness, and hears the words of Yahweh. In the structure of Genesis 15, that role is usurped by the serpentine Pharaoh of Egypt, representing lawlessness, a wisdom which is not of God. It is no accident that the Lord of the burning bush gives Moses three “serpentine” signs.⁷See Sweet Counsel, 147.

In the greater picture, the Lampstand is the Day of Pentecost, the coming of true kingdom. The animals represent Adam, laid out as a lifeless, empty body awaiting breath from heaven. The five animals form the house, and the fire, in this case a smoking fire pot (the “clouds” or hosts of Israel’s armies) and a blazing torch (the fiery “head” or Captain, Joshua/Jesus) come to fill it. The Head and Body are burnt separately but united by fire in the Ascension offering in Leviticus 1, which recapitulates the Creation Week. Moreover, this new Israel was circumcised outside Jericho before cutting off “all flesh” in that city as a firstfruits to God. If you know your matrix icons, you might notice that the flaming sword icon is positioned at the Laver, not only the site of circumcision but also the spring of Eden, the womb and the Land. In all cultures except the most degenerate, this is the part of the human body which is covered. The architecture of Eden is represented in our bodies as earthly Tabernacles.

The Inheritance

This Covenant with Abraham was entirely fulfilled.

Thus the Lord gave to Israel all the land that he swore to give to their fathers. And they took possession of it, and they settled there. And theLord gave them rest on every side just as he had sworn to their fathers. Not one of all their enemies had withstood them, for the Lord had given all their enemies into their hands. Not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the house of Israel had failed; all came to pass. (Joshua 21:43-45)

Since this was, in my thinking, a Covenant which sheltered the Canaanites temporarily, they were accountable to God when Israel returned with Joshua. There are no genocides in the Bible. There are only Covenant Oaths and the resulting Sanctions. Sacrificial blood was offered at the Oath, and if that substitutionary blood was “trampled underfoot,” the human blood would be shed. This is exactly the process we see from the death of Christ to the destruction of Jerusalem, the tearing of the Temple veil to the end of Judaism in AD70, and it is the context of Hebrews 10:29.

So, the conquest of Canaan fulfilled the symbolic sequence in Genesis 15. Yet the Lord works in fractals. He keeps moving the goal posts, just as He did with Adam and Abraham, from the Garden, to the Land, to the World. The Triune pattern is measured out in every part of the Scriptures, including sacred architecture. But there is one facet of Israel’s inheriting the Land which has been overlooked as far as I know, and once again it must be understood in the context of the Noahic priesthood.

Because Ham attempted to steal an inheritance from Noah,⁸See Out of His Belly. his son Canaan would serve Shem as a slave. Yet this is not what occurred during Israel’s sojourn in Egypt after the death of Joseph. Shem was in slavery “in the Land of Ham.” (Egypt is referred to as “the land of Ham” in Psalms 78:51; 105:23, 27; 106: 22; 1 Chron. 4:40.) Not only this, but the divide between priests and kings, first expressed in Cain’s hatred for Abel, is present here in the fact that the Egyptians despised shepherds, requiring the Hebrews to dwell on their own (Genesis 46:34). This fulfills the distance between the serpent and ram in the Abrahamic “Tabernacle.”

While the “seed,” the house of Jacob, was “dying” in Egypt that it might be multiplied as a great harvest, the oak trees planted and wells dug in Canaan by the patriarchs were also bearing fruit, along with the houses and vineyards of the Canaanites. The cursed womb had born a nation in the “grave,” while the cursed Land now promised an abundance (Numbers 13:24). Shem would inherit everything from Ham, but only through a process of death and resurrection. Shem had to die in the Land of Ham (the father) and be resurrected to inherit the Land of Canaan (the son).

Circumcision was tied to the Abrahamic promises concerning the Land and the womb. These ended at the baptism of Christ, the first sign of the dove, a Noahic Jew-Gentile immersion which cut off Canaan forever, and promised instead a heavenly country, a blessing for all nations. But then, Abraham knew that all along (Hebrews 11:16). The rainbow was back in the heavens.

After describing to an older Christian friend what happened in Jerusalem during the Jewish war, he replied, “Why have I never been taught this?”

Without their Covenant context and historical bearings, the pointy words of Jesus become so “generalized” that they seem inconsequential. In the wisdom of God, the tragic events of AD70 were recorded that we might understand the consequences of ignoring Jesus. They nail the New Testament Scriptures to the ground.

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For as in those days before the flood
they were eating and drinking,
marrying and giving in marriage,
until the day when Noah entered the ark…
(Matthew 24:38)

The Oath/Sanctions section of the Revelation seems to have three parts. The judgment begins in the house of God (Temple bowls – Garden), then follows the revelation of the “mystery” of the Woman and the kings of the Land, and finally the judgment reaches out to the borders of the World (the oikoumene). This corresponds not only with the Garden, Land, World architecture of the nations in Genesis 1-10, it brings an end to the “intermarriage,” the compromise of the Priestly people with idolatrous kings. It is fitting that the third part of this judgment (chapters 18-19) culminates in a Red Wedding.

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For seizing the devoted plunder of Jericho, Achan was stoned to death and burned with fire, along with his children, livestock, and all his possessions. This judgment appears to contradict Deuteronomy 24:16, which forbids the punishment of children for the sins of their fathers.

It seems that the solution is architectural. Here’s an excerpt from the forthcoming Sweet Counsel:

. . . . .

Achan’s sin threatened the Covenant Oath taken by a new generation of Israelites and their possession of the promised inheritance. The golden tongue (Head) and Babylonian robe (Body) were false Word and stolen Government, with the rebellious Man unwilling to be the obedient Sacrament.

Tongue Lashing

The Lord’s intention in every case is that the Word from heaven might purify the Mediator (or priesthood), and that this Mediator/priesthood might then speak this Word to purify the nations.

WORD: angels, (Heaven) – Most Holy Place
SACRAMENT: Jews (Land) – Holy Place
GOVERNMENT: Gentiles (Sea) – Temple Courts

At the center of the Bible Matrix (Step 4), the fiery tongue of the Law executes the Sanctions upon Israel and purifies her, as we see in the book of Numbers.
At Step 6, it is the fiery tongues of the newly-purified, newly robed (baptized) members of Israel executing the Sanctions upon the nations, as we see in the book of Joshua. As with all prophets, all mediators, Israel gets tongue-lashed in the wilderness, then Israel becomes the tongue-lasher in the Land. [1]

This explains the apparent contradiction between the judicial stoning of Achan, his family and his livestock, and Deuteronomy 24:16, which prohibited the execution of Israel’s children for the sins of their fathers. Achan’s punishment was an echo of the ban upon the first city of the Gentiles rather than the Covenant Sanctions upon Israel. He was not being “tongue-lashed” as an Israelite but as a Gentile. He had not coveted his neighbor’s house and contents (Exodus 20:17), but that which belonged to God (Joshua 22:20). [2] He was condemned as a Canaanite, but also as part of Jericho, the “Firstfruits” of the Land, a whole burnt (ascension) offering in which “all flesh” was cut off.

ADAM
WORD: God (Father)
SACRAMENT: Man images God (Son)
GOVERNMENT: Animals submit to Man (Spirit)

ACHAN
WORD: Achan as his own “captain” (tongue and robe)
SACRAMENT: Achan’s offspring in the Land
GOVERNMENT: Achan’s livestock as wild beasts

Through unbelief, Achan put his entire house outside of Israel and under the ban. Through faith, Rahab saved everyone in her house, an event which resembled Israel’s Passover. The house of Achan bore the judgment of the house of Rahab, and was buried under a pile of stones.

These two houses represented two brothers, Perez and Zerah, the sons which Tamar bore to Judah. Rahab married into the Messianic line of Perez, and the cutting off of Achan’s family ended the line of Zerah.

_________________________________________
[1] See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key, 195, for a diagram which demonstrates how the fivefold Torah relates to the sevenfold Dominion pattern.
[2] In the Ten Words, the commands against theft and false witness (the sins of Achan) are followed by the two commands against coveting (house and contents), which together align with the Feast of Booths (ministry to the Gentiles), and the Covenant Succession of Israel. See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key, 63. and also The Guild of Thieves.
[3] This reversal resembles the twofold “blessing and cursing” of Jericho and Israel by Elisha, and also the reversal of the fates of Naaman and Gehazi.

ART: Joshua, Achan Stoned, Maciejowski Bible (illuminated manuscript).

or Where Kenneth Gentry Is Wrong on the Revelation

Part 1 here.

I’ve been meaning to write this post since I wrote Part 1 (over two years ago). A friend’s recent question concerning Kenneth Gentry’s lectures on the Revelation encouraged me to bite the bullet and bust a gut and get it done. The question is this: Is the Revelation to be interpreted in the light of Josephus’ Jewish War, or in the light of the Bible itself?

Just as the Tabernacle rebuilt by David included Gentile worshipers, the reinstitution of worship in Israel after the exile likewise required the inclusion of Gentile sponsors. We saw in Esther in Ezekiel’s Temple that the oikoumene was a Jew-Gentile social architecture, with the city of Jerusalem itself serving as a kind of holy altar within a larger temple. [1] Just as the four-horned altar served as an image of the (symbolically) four-cornered Land (not earth; see The Earth Is Flat), so now the entire city was referred to as “holy,” and the genealogy of every Jew was considered “priestly.” This upgrade in holiness of what was once common was the result of Israel’s exile, a death-and-resurrection which purged her of idol worship. So, what could go wrong?

Of course, these new blessings could and would be twisted into curses. The holy city itself and the genealogy of every Jew would become Israel’s new gods.

This is the situation into which the Messiah was born. The outcome of this idolatry was the requirement for a new death-and-resurrection. In Israel’s place, Christ initiated it, and Israel followed Him through the process over the next generation. Like the bronze altar outside the Tabernacle, the entire city itself would be considered “outside the camp,” and even its sides would be splashed with the blood of the atoning sacrifices. As the law decreed, the crimes of the murderers would be atoned for with their own blood.

Consequently, it would be no surprise that the deep structure of the Revelation recapitulates the order of sacrifice. The Revelation is not a description of the Jewish war, though it is part of the outcome. It is a liturgy describing the sacrifice of the priesthood of Israel for the sake of the nations. Herod’s Jerusalem would be offered up in a spectacle of blood, fire and smoke. Any other reading of the final book of the Bible, using, for instance, uninspired second Temple literature, the works of Josephus, or the latest news headlines, to interpret it, is a gross misunderstanding of the purpose of the text.

Ordo Sacrificii sub Apocalypsis

In the book of Leviticus, the simple process of the whole burnt offering (“the ascension” [3]) blooms like a flower, revealing myriad parts with different purposes. Yet each of these remains a process of transformation, one whose pattern can be traced back to Genesis 1.

Creation – Day 1 – Called (Sabbath – “on the Lord’s Day”)

What is the correspondence between the choosing of the blameless animal and Day 1? The baptism of Jesus is a great help. The dove hovers over the water and identifies the Lamb from hundreds of His repentant brothers. We see a similar process at the anointing of David, the shepherd. In the Revelation, it is the vision of the glorified Jesus, the one who has already ascended.

Division – Day 2 – Sanctified (Passover)

In biblical terms, sanctification is not a growth in holiness but a setting apart. In sacrificial terms, it is the delegation of a purpose, much as one might set apart food for a special event. Thus, sanctification has more to do with election than the kind of practical holiness which the word brings to mind today. In Genesis 1, this is the parting of the waters. In Exodus, it is the parting of the Red Sea to set Israel apart from Egypt. In Galatians, Paul combines these two images in his use of Hagar and Sarah as symbols of Egypt’s river and Canaan’s rain, the waters below and the waters above (see The Shape of Galatians, pp. 155-165). In the Revelation, it is the Division of the New Israel, represented by the seven churches, from the Old Israel, the city of Jerusalem who now embodies the worst traits of Egypt, Sodom and Babylon, and worse, flaunts these in God’s face through her continued sacrifices, following the murder of Christ and most of His apostles. Jesus calls these new “sons of God” out of Egypt and “passes over” them, “trimming the wick” on each lampstand. He cuts off the leaven of the Pharisees in each church before He cuts off “Egypt” altogether (see The Eighth Letter and Living Menora).

Ascension – Day 3 – Presented (Firstfruits)

The Passover sacrifice could be a lamb or a kid, but the Firstfruits animal offering was a lamb. Revelation 4-5 reveal the Lamb, ascended to heaven as the firstfruits from the dead, representing all who believe. Since the work of Day 3 was twofold, Land and fruits, Altar and Table, Christ is the connection between the earth (His grave in Israel) and the heavens. Instead of grain and fruit plants, Christ is flesh and blood, bread and wine, offered upon the Table.

Christ opens the scroll, which ends His ministry in the Garden, and sends the four Gospel witnesses into the Land (or, in Tabernacle terms, moves the action from the Most Holy into the Holy Place). The seven seals follow the same sevenfold pattern in microcosm.

Testing – Day 4 – Purified (Pentecost)

Just as Christ is the Head of the sacrifice (offered without being washed), chapter 7 reveals the firstfruits Body: 144,000 believing Jews. Note that the Body is washed (v. 14). These are the sheep which Peter was to feed for the slaughter. The process of “counting” alludes to the book of Numbers. Only the men were counted, because men are sacrificial “heads,” hence circumcision for Israelite males. But there are Gentiles as well, yet these are not counted. They are numberless. Peter’s haul of fish was counted, an offering from the sea presented upon the “altar” on the beach (a fire of burning coals). The fact that these Gentile “human sacrifices” are not counted means the Covenant is moving from earth to heaven, from the Cainite ground to the “Abel” (hebel) clouds of heaven. This is a new heavens and earth, a new creation, and the description of the end of their suffering aptly follows the order of the Creation week (see Saved From The Green Horse). The centre of this promise concerns the striking and scorching heat of the sun, which leads into chapter 8. This is a description of the holy fire from heaven, the Spirit of God descending upon both Jews and Gentiles from the Day of Pentecost onward. From heaven’s point of view, salvation was a call to become a human sacrifice, since Christ has made us “acceptable” to God (in sacrificial terms). We no longer need animal substitutes.

Maturity – Day 5 – Transformed (Trumpets)

This is where our concept of “sanctification” comes in. It is spiritual maturity, so in biblical terms a better word for it might be transformation. The flesh has been consumed and is now fragrant clouds, able to pass through locked doors (as we see in John and Acts), following the High Priest who entered through the torn veil in clouds of incense on the Day of Atonement.

New Israel – Good Trumpets

Maturity corresponds to the Feast of Trumpets (see above), describing in “Mosaic” terminology the witness of the Apostles leading up to the destruction of the  Temple and its now obsolete – and corrupted – worship. The seven trumpets follow the same sevenfold “creation-through-sacrifice” pattern. As the Feast of Trumpets, they muster the troops of Israel. However, as is described by Paul in Romans, there were now two Israels. The Judiastic Israelites are described as Egyptian/Babylonian locusts, and the saints are described as human Tabernacles, temples of the Spirit.

In chapter 10, a part of the New Covenant authority is delegated to John, a son of thunder, who, as the Last Apostle, will speak the final words of judgment upon the rulers of the Land (“kings of the earth”). For a description of the angel, see The Church As Colossus and The Last Trumpet.

The two witnesses are the Law of Moses and the Testimony of the Prophets embodied in the Apostolic Witness as the testimony of Jesus, hence Moses and Elijah deferring to Christ at His transfiguration, and the Father vindicating Christ as He did at His baptism. Just as that act ended Christ’s personal testimony to Israel, so these two witnesses end the Apostolic testimony to Israel. Both Head and Body have now spoken and been slain.

What is interesting here is that the Word began in the Garden, worked its way out through the Land to the World. Here we have three pictures of the testimony of the Firstfruits Church, which reverse the order: A great army crossing the Euphrates into the Land (World), the witness of John as seven “Sinaitic” thunders (Land), and the Law and Prophets as two cherubim (Garden). These symbols follow the High Priest as He makes His way from the court, through the Holy Place and into the Most Holy, just as He does in Leviticus. So the final verse of this section referring to the Ark of God in His temple should be no surprise if we have a handle on sacred architecture. The blood of the human sacrifices is being offered by Christ as the “washed Body” (Leviticus 1:9 – supporting baptism by full immersion of the body). However, this brings a new fire from heaven, one which will be administered by the Roman armies.

Old Israel – Bad Trumpets

Following the pattern of Psalm 1, Maturity has both blessings (the Apostolic witness) and curses (the response of the rulers of the Land). This dual witness is the “Deuteronomy” of the book of Revelation (read Deuteronomy 28). In their warnings, the Firstfruits Church not only “filled up” (multiplied into an abundance, as Brides do) the sufferings of Christ, but also provoked unbelieving Israelites to harden their hearts like Pharaoh did, and to “fill up” their sins. Paul describes this Jew-Gentile ministry and the imminent judgement of Jerusalem:

For you, brothers, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. For you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all mankind by hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved—so as always to fill up the measure of their sins. But God’s wrath has come upon them at last! (1 Thessalonians 2:14-16)

I hope it is becoming plain how erroneous is most exposition of the Revelation, including that by many preterists. Throwing proof texts at each other is like arguing about jigsaw pieces without reference to the picture on the box, which is found in the Torah.

Anyhow, from Revelation 12, the pattern of the Trumpets (Maturity) is repeated. It begins with a negative Pentecost. Just as David received the Spirit and Saul received an evil spirit from the Lord, so false Israel became demonic after the “enlightening” of Pentecost (Hebrews 6:4). Satan was kicked out of his “legal” role in heaven and took up residence on the earth, or more specifically, on the Land, in the Temple of the Herods (the source of the Edenic “springs” described in the final chapters of Ezekiel). So, that’s the Herodian Garden corrupted. Notice it begins with the Woman and the Herodian Dragon, a clear reference to Genesis as the beginning of this legal pattern.

Next, he spewed this corrupted (“bitter” Wormwood) river into the Land, and the false Church sucked it right up. This was the false doctrine which the apostles had to battle against, referred to over and over again in the epistles (so much for the attempts over the centuries to identify this false doctrine as anything but anti-Christian Judaism).

Satan’s final attempt to kill the Bride was to turn to the World for aid, so he called upon the Sea Beast, Rome (see Three Strikes, Binding and Loosing, and Serpents and Dragons). AD64 saw not only the completion of Herod’s Temple (proving Jesus to be a false prophet) but also the burning of Rome, the first time Roman authorities recognised Christianity as separate from Judaism. Satan’s ploy was to attack this strange new Jew-Gentile Body with a Jew-Gentile counterfeit, just as Herod and Pilate became “friends” after the trial of Christ.

After a description of this false worship and its false kingdom (presented as an Aaronic golden calf, the image of a beast), the “transformed” sacrifices are seen as “holy smoke” on the mountain with Christ, Head and Body now united. Their flesh and blood was “harvested” as bread and wine. Like the blood of Abel, it cried from the ground and calls upon God for vindication and vengeance. However, unlike the first murder, this vengeance would not be delayed. The blood of all the prophets from Abel onwards would be avenged upon that generation. The Land is described as an altar overflowing with blood “as high as a horse’s bridle.”

Conquest – Day 6 – Vindicated (Atonement)

Jerusalem had been surrounded by saints with Gospel “Trumpets”, but the final day had come. As it was with Jericho, the firstfruits of the Land, “all flesh” would be cut off in Jerusalem, as the firstfruits of the World. The entire city would be cut around, or circumcised. This brings us to the seven bowls of wrath, which correspond to the seven sprinklings of blood from the hand of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement. However, on this day, the Roman general Titus would step over the Body of the apostate High Priest (see End of the Abrahamic Rift and Jesus’ Caesars).

What is the source of the seven bowls? Only the structure of the text reveals this (which means exegetes with little or no poetic sense will write this observation off as speculation). Interestingly, it is the Lampstand, the light of the Law now available by the Spirit (see Seven Bowls of Wrath). The Spirit would no longer strive with old Israel. For a sample of the beauty of the “de-Creation” described under the image of these Temple bowls, see #41 in 50 Failed Predictions part 9. For a complete rundown, see James B. Jordan’s The Vindication of Jesus Christ.

Chapters 17-19 describe the separation of the harlot and the bride, corresponding to Hagar and Sarah (Israel as Egypt versus Abraham’s “heavenly Canaan”), and also the two prostitutes whose hearts were discerned by Solomon. Since this entire pattern recapitulates the Testing of Adam in the Garden, the Father is discerning the heart of the Bride (Numbers 5) whom Christ has presented to Him as a chaste virgin. Not only are her eyes open (Luke 24:31; Acts 9:8,18), but she is liberated by the obedience of her Adam.

Glorification – Day 7 – Sent (Booths)

The final section of the Revelation is also sevenfold. It describes the ministry of the now-enthroned Firstfruits Church in heaven during this current period (see For A Thousand Years and Altar of the Abyss – 7). The sacrificial process enacted in the Garden and re-enacted in the Land would now be recapitulated throughout the World through the testimony of saints from every nation.

I hope to write a complete “Shape of the Revelation” some time soon, but will wait for Peter Leithart’s 2015 commentary because he will no doubt present many insights I can rip off include! In the mean time, get a hold of James B. Jordan’s Revelation lecture series.

But I hope you can see that the Revelation is not a symbolic account of the Jewish War, as important as understanding that history might be. Of course, I do recommend Kenneth Gentry’s Before Jerusalem Fell, which is extremely helpful when it comes to dating the book and establishing its purpose in the biblical canon.

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[1] For an introduction to this subject, see Peter J. Leithart’s The Four: A Survey of the Gospels. For a more in-depth study, see James B. Jordan’s The Handwriting on the Wall: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel. And you can search for “oikoumene” here on the blog.
[2] See Peter J. Leithart, Skinned and Cut, Biblical Horizons No. 35 (March 1992)

ART: A souped up version of the original cover artwork for David Chilton’s The Days of Vengeance. Chilton makes a similar error to Gentry, but is still well worth a read for his many insights.

God loves His architecture. The first chapter of the Bible is architecture. The books of Moses and the book of Revelation are filled with architecture, and the same floorplan underlies every book in between. Most Christians don’t understand the Bible’s architecture and modern Christians not only do not understand it, they do not care for it. But God loves His architecture. To love the Bible one must love its architecture. To understand the Bible, one must let the architecture inform one’s understanding.

Regarding the “architectural” relationship between the family and the Church, Peter Leithart writes:

Christian political thought has historically gotten off on the wrong foot through misinterpretation of Genesis 1-2. Adam and Eve are taken as “family,” and hence the family becomes a “natural” institution. Families band together and soon there are cities and kingdoms, also natural institutions.

Augustine says this, and so, following him, does Isidore. And everyone of course follows Augustine and Isidore.

The church comes later, a top layer on nature, the supernatural society.

But the garden is not “home” but sanctuary; Adam and Eve are not “family” but worshiping community, created and placed in the place of God’s presence and offered the fruit of the tree of life.

There is no more natural society than the church.

Any discussion of the nature of Church, family and state must be founded upon the architecture which informs all Scripture. These three institutions correspond to the Garden, Land and World, a three-level “Creational” Tabernacle. I agree with most of what Dr Leithart says above, but the floorplan of the primeval world leads us in reality to a different conclusion than the one he reaches.

Dr Leithart leaves out Genesis 3, which is a grand mistake. Genesis 1 moves from the Creation of the World to the filling of the Land. Genesis 2 takes Adam from the Land to the Garden. Genesis 3 concerns Adam’s Ethical qualification. To take possession of the promised Land and the World, he must first take dominion of the Garden. Dr Leithart knows the architecture, but his claim that the Church is “natural” is misinformed by his erroneous view of baptism. Adam’s life did not begin in the Garden but in the Land. He was “lifted up” into the Garden as the initial Firstfruits. In the Garden, he would receive a “super-nature,” that is, an office. He would be enthroned over the animals officially, then divided, and given the role of protecting and leading his wife.

Dr Leithart also leaves out Genesis 4 and 5, which are crucial for understanding the complete architecture. Why is this? Because Genesis 1-5 give us the complete Covenant structure.

The action moves from the natural gifts (Being) to a delegated office (Knowing) and the beginning of rule (Doing). These are Physical, Social and Ethical. But from the Ethical we move back out into the Social and Physical as ministers of the Spirit. In Genesis 3, the promised blessings upon the Land and womb are limited, but not withheld, by curses. Instead of holding a “super-natural” office, a robe from heaven covering the body, Adam’s clothing is earthly. The events in the Garden are not natural at all. They took nature and cut it into pieces. Like Adam’s body, the family, the corporate body, was intended to be nature clothed in “super” nature, Spirit-filled and covered in righteousness, held together by a greater bond, based upon faithfulness in the Garden. Instead, it remained natural. Failure to shed blood in the Garden led to bloodshed in the Land. This is “family” allowed to remain natural because the Church remains natural.

This is where the wheels fall off Dr Leithart’s conclusion. His ecclesiology is natural with a pretense of the supernatural. He believes that baptism is somehow capable of infusing the natural with the Spirit, rather than cutting it up with the Word, placing it on the Altar, incinerating it, and transforming it into something “beyond death.” A Christian baby is thus a baby Christian. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is Cainite thinking, because despite its high view of the Garden, it actually exalts the Land over the Garden. It seizes the promises without reference to the Ethical requirements of God.

There were no children in the Sanctuary. It was the children who were at stake in the Sanctuary. [1] The path from World to Land to Garden and back out again is the path of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement (and the shape of the book of Leviticus). [2] He temporarily laid aside his glory for the sake of the nations that he might take it up again in a greater way, with a greater office, a greater Body. The entire purpose of Adam’s qualification was to make him a mediator for his children before God (as we see in the case of Job). The Garden was never a “natural” place in that sense, and neither is it today. It is the Most Holy Place, the place of death and resurrection. This is why circumcision was all about the removal of the curse upon the Land and the womb. It had to do with the promises in Genesis 2 which were forfeited in Genesis 3. Baptism is about Sanctuary access, which is why the coming of Baptism entailed the blood of all the prophets from Abel to Zechariah being avenged upon the Land. This is why the fivefold pattern above can be overlaid perfectly upon the events of the first century, with the Ascension of Christ as a new Hierarchy (AD30), and the first resurrection, the Ascension of the Firstfruits Church, at Sanctions (AD70). The Church is indeed central, as Dr Leithart observes, but it is by no means “natural.” The Church is where the natural, “all flesh,” dies. The natural ties that bind us (blood) are not “sacralized” and exalted in the Garden. It is the place where Adam and Eve are qualified for the promise of Land and offspring. Land and offspring are not welcome in the Garden, only their representatives.

The Bible’s teaching on baptism cannot be separated from its architecture. Paedobaptism and baptismal regeneration are an erroneous paradigm which conflate the natural with the supernatural. The Bible never puts these together but “in series,” as in the process of sacrifice, given to us to teach us about death and resurrection. Any house which confuses circumcision with baptism calls Cain a Christian because he was “born” a Christian. It is office without qualification. The sword will never depart from such a house. Presbyterians will continue to cut each other to ribbons, and condemn and alienate baptized unbelievers as apostates, because this problem cannot be solved without submission to biblical baptism.

The church indeed comes later, a top layer on nature, the supernatural society. Baptism is for those qualified to be Shepherd-Kings and Queens. Dr Leithart’s baptism is not for mature sword-bearers, the guardians, but for the children under the sword, the guarded. He gets off on the right foot but then wanders into the wilderness by exalting family in a more subtle way.

“Why is the Lord bringing us into this land, to fall by the sword? Our wives and our little ones will become a prey. Would it not be better for us to go back to Egypt?” (Numbers 14:3)

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[1] Jesus’ words concerning the “little ones” are misunderstood when viewed with paedobaptistic expectations. His point is that He is a better king than Herod, being the true Shepherd, the Priest-King. Baptism is not for the infants but for the ones who protect and lead them, the ones who “put on Christ” as a robe. To claim otherwise is to do violence to the architecture of the Bible and the world.
[2] See Leviticus As Literature.

ART: Léon Spilliaert, White Robes, 1904

“A stone would be rejected by builders because it was ‘unhewn,’ like an Altar stone. But priestly submission was the only possible foundation for the perfectly chiseled stones of Israel’s temples, including the one still taking shape as Jesus spoke these words.”

Matthew 16-25: ETHICS

The third cycle moves us from the “Exodus” of Jesus and His ministry to the threshing of Israel under His new Law. His growing influence among the people (Hierarchy) brings Him into conflict with the authorities (Ethics).

The Covenant “macrostructure” is as follows (click the link for the previous blog posts):

The Ethics phase of the Covenant concerns the “rules” and the rulers, so Matthew’s arrangement turns from the people of Israel to their leaders. The priest-kings of Israel were to embody, to incarnate, the Law of God. In Jesus’ day, both Church and State behaved like Gentile priests and kings. They maintained a form of religion, but only as a means of tyranny over the people.

Matthew 16-17:13: A New Kingdom – Creation (Sabbath)

“Then the Pharisees and Sadducees came, and testing Him asked that He would show them a sign from heaven.”

As the Ethics section is the center of the Covenant pattern, so Testing is the center of the Bible Matrix (maturity) pattern. This is the point where the serpent attempts to hijack the offspring of Eve by twisting and contradicting the words of God. The players in this case, of course, are God incarnate as Adam, the people of Israel as Eve, listening intently for the outcome, and the religious rulers as the brood of serpents. Matthew is beginning the final testament by setting up the symbols with which John will end it.

The first stanza begins with the questioning of Jesus’ authority. He informs them that He Himself will be the sign, beginning the age of the New Covenant where the signs are not the external workings of the Spirit, but His work in human flesh. (It is noteworthy that the sign of Jonah is mentioned at Conquest, which corresponds to baptism.)

The “Exodus” stanza returns to the subject of the miraculous feedings in desolate places. Jesus’ use of leaven to describe the doctrines of Jerusalem’s religious rulers, which would soon be “cleansed from the house” in an empire-wide Passover, first in the priesthood (AD30) and then in the kingdom (AD70). Aptly, the mention of leaven appears at Passover and Atonement, the tearing of the Veil and the tearing of the Temple and city. The two feedings appear in this stanza as two legal (prophetic) witnesses, the first priestly (twelve “table” baskets as Firstfruits [Genesis 37:5-8]), the second kingly (seven “field” baskets as Pentecost [Genesis 37:9-11]). Jesus used this dual process to cleanse His followers of the “Egyptian” leaven, to exile the old spirit (the fifth element) and prepare a clean house (four corners) for the new.

At Ascension, the new Law is given to Peter, the “binding and loosing” of sacrificial witness, the process of “bowing the heavens” that the will of God might be done on earth as it is in heaven. Like Adam, he is given a promise of dominion. [1] At Testing, blessed Peter is now cursed Peter. He is again like Adam, with his mind set on the things of man (Adam). At Maturity, Jesus reveals that the only way to eternal life is a willing death as a legal witness to His resurrection. He includes the promise that some would still be alive when the “first resurrection” arrived around the time of the Roman siege.

The structure aligns the “shining robe” of Jesus with Sanctions, just as it did with the vindication of the Word of the Father at His baptism. In gaming terms, we might say Jesus had now arrived at the next level, and the Father speaks again as a second witness. The words of Jesus now supersede those of the Law and the Prophets.

Moses’ body was hidden in the earth. Elijah’s body was hidden in heaven. Standing between these two legal witnesses, “after six days” (see also Exodus 24:15-16), Jesus mediates between heaven and earth as a better Adam. The cloud on the mountain is a reference to Sinai, where both Moses and Elijah saw the glory of the Lord. Finally, instead of a “great commission” appearing at the Glorification/Succession step, Jesus keeps the Veil closed. From this point on, His work is to confront the serpent, and with “the legs of Eden” (Jachin and Boaz), His footfall measures out a path to the grave.

This first cycle in the Ethics section is the vindication of Jesus as the true ruler of Israel.

Matthew 17:14-19:15 – The Innocents: Division (Passover)

The overarching theme of Passover in this second Ethical cycle answers many questions about the meaning of Jesus’ cryptic statements and the authorial intentions of Matthew in its arrangement. We have two coordinates here: Passover and Ethics, the death of the firstborn and the “governing lights.” Who was it who combined these two symbols in the first century like no other? Herod the Great, in the slaughter of the innocents. After some meditation, I believe the subject here is the exposure of the true nature of a kingdom in its treatment of children. [2] Of course, this theme can be traced back to Eden, where the serpent attacked “the mother of all living.”

The cycle begins with a demonic attempt to destroy a beloved son. He is (literally) “moonstruck,” which pertains to the darkness of night. Jesus predicts His own “Passover” death for the first time, after which comes the strange account of a “Land” tribute from the Sea, indeed, from “the first fish.” Jesus refers to the kings of the nations and their sons, another Passover allusion at this “Day 3″ step.

At the center of the cycle is an amazing construct which it seems must be taken as a whole, and also within this structure, to be understood. The disciples wish to be kings like the Gentiles, a sin common for Israel throughout her history. But a true king is not one who uses gods to rule, but one who submits to God as the Son submits to the Father.

He said to me, ‘It is Solomon your son who shall build my house and my courts, for I have chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father. (1 Chronicles 28:6)

The Torah makes a distinction between sins of “wandering” and sins which are “high-handed” or presumptuous (Numbers 15:22–31). High-handed sins would not be covered because they were committed with full knowledge of the truth, not in darkness but in the light. Paul condemns such people (Romans 1:18). The rulers whom God lifts up are to be shepherds, and their people look to them as children look to their parents. In the crucifixion of Christ, the Jewish rulers led the people astray for their own gain and would be held accountable. Jesus’ use of the word “millstone” is distinctly Pentecostal, having to do with the harvest, and also subtly a reference to harlotry. Jerusalem was a prostitute willing to drink the blood of her own children. Eve was led astray, but the sin of Jerusalem, sitting as a queen, in the slaughter of her earthly sons (Matthew 2) and her heavenly sons (the apostles and prophets) was high-handed. Jesus final words upon her would most likely have been, “Do not forgive them, Father. They know exactly what they are doing.”

The “dismemberment” advice from Jesus seems out of place at step 5, but its position reveals its purpose. If your two hands, your two feet and your two eyes do not agree as sets of “two witnesses,” the kingly one in each case (most likely the right hand, foot or eye) should be cut off. The purpose of circumcision was to “cut corporate Adam in two,” a priestly side and a kingly side, to divide him that he might be conquered (see also Leviticus 14:14). This process begins in the dividing of the animals in Genesis 15, a “Passover” which would be fulfilled in the slaughter of every man, woman, child and animal in Jericho, the Firstfruits of the Land. For the Church, Jerusalem was now Jericho. The Herodian hand, foot and eye would be “circumcised” from the priestly body.

The “children guarded by the host of heaven” is another sentence which makes more sense in the light of a Passover theme. The irony, of course, it that Jesus told the women of Jerusalem to weep for their children. They would all be destroyed because their kings would harden their hearts like Pharaoh (Romans 1:17-18).

At Sanctions, we have an allusion to the merciless rule of Lamech, who took vengeance on a young man who struck him. “If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold, then Lamech’s is seventy-sevenfold.” Again, the underlying reference is to the Cainite rule of the Herods, who thought nothing of having multiple wives and slaughtering their own family members to maintain their rule. The rulers of the new kingdom would be mediators, channels, for the forgiveness of God, Abels instead of Cains.

So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matthew 18:35)

The Herodian theme shines a new light on the Pharisees “test” concerning divorce. The final story in this section is the perfect combination of Ethics and Succession. John was beheaded for his preaching against the sin of Herod Antipas in marrying his brother Herod Philip I’s former wife, Herodias. Antipas was the Herod to whom Jesus was sent by Pilate. Perhaps the intent of the Pharisees here was to get Jesus into trouble with the king. The Succession motif also makes sense of Jesus’ comments concerning celibacy as a gift given by God only to some, which included Himself and Paul. The New Testament has almost nothing to say about natural fertility, where it is a major theme in the Old Testament. The Gospels and Epistles only speak of spiritual fruit, and spiritual sons, since the Seed had come. [4]

The section ends beautifully, with a picture of Jesus as the true king, a shepherd, the one who, as the blood on the doorposts, protects the little ones, and as the Angel of the Lord, captain of His hosts, also sees the face of His Father in heaven. [5] It would be Jesus who would send the Roman armies to wipe the Herodian succession off the face of the earth. [6] As in Egypt, the blood of the innocents would be avenged. Aptly, this final stanza puts the “laying of Jesus’ hands on them” at Passover and Atonement. His hands were not the hands of the Herods, which would be cut off for their satanic crimes.

Matthew 19:16-20:34 – Priest-Kings: Ascension (Firstfruits)

The subtle railing against the kings of the Land (rendered incorrectly as “rulers of the earth” in the Revelation) continues in the third cycle, which concerns the exaltation and receiving of the Covenant Mission by the blameless son.

Ethics “opens” into Ascension, Testing and Maturity, that is, the giving, opening and reception of the Law. Here, Jesus gives a new Law to this “ruler of the Land.” He had obeyed all the laws of Moses and received the earthly riches promised for such obedience. But Jesus fills him in on what Abraham and all the saints understood: the Land of Canaan was only a picture, a type (Hebrews 11:13-16). Thus, Jesus moves the goal posts to a better inheritance, an invisible one. This leads to a discussion of the nature of this new “Hierarchy.” It breaks all the old ties and forges new ones in the Spirit. It exalts the humble (the “last”) and humbles the exalted (“the first”).

The vineyard at step 3 corresponds to the grape haul of Israel before their failure to enter into God’s rest, the earthly Canaan, inheriting the houses and vineyards of the Canaanites. It “opens” the comments of Jesus to the young ruler concerning the first and the last. This “inequality” is exactly the nature of the inheritance of the Land expressed in the Jubilee, where the allotments (outside the cities only) returned to their original owners. It is at the Ascension step of the book of Revelation in which Jesus is given, not tablets of the law, but a scroll which allows Him to claim His inheritance, the nations. All the lands are now His, returning to their original owner.

At Testing, Jesus foretells His death for the third time (Creation, Division, Ascension). At Maturity, we have a division of the twelve disciples similar to that of the twelve spies sent into Canaan by Moses. Jesus makes it plain that communion with Him is the prophetic “cup of staggering” given by God to adulterous rulers to bring them down (Numbers 5, Isaiah 51, Jeremiah 25, Daniel 5, Zechariah 12, Luke 22:42; Revelation 14:10; 17:4; 18:6). The door to Jesus’ throne is a cross.

Two blind men stand in for the “twin goats” at Atonement, so the reference to Jericho is significant. It seems there is no step 7 in this cycle, which alludes to the book of Leviticus, the book of Ascension. The Levites, lifted up above the Land, had no earthly inheritance, no Canaanite Succession. As the Firstfruits, their country was heavenly from the beginning.

Matthew 21 – Seven Seals: Testing (Pentecost)

At the center of the “kingdom” section is this “kingdom” cycle.

Jesus comes in peace (on a donkey) at Sabbath, and then “passes over” a symbolic firmament of cloaks and branches. At Ascension, Jesus comes to inspect the “house” for “leprosy” (Leviticus 14), and at Testing, He places a curse upon a tree cloaked in fig leaves to hide its failure to produce righteous fruit. His reference to throwing a mountain into the sea is not to mountains in general, but to “this” mountain, the exalted Zion which Jesus would uncover and transform into a flaming Sinai before He threw it down into the Sea of the nations (Revelation 8:8).

The rulers question Jesus’ prophetic authority at Trumpets, and He doles out a “first and last” Covenant Sanctions at Atonement, where the blessings fall upon the wandering but repentant prostitutes and tax collectors (including Matthew), and the curses are stored up for Jerusalem, the city which masked her own whorings and avarice with a pretense of Covenant faithfulness.

The deep meaning of the parable of the tenants becomes clear when its position at Succession (concerning inheritance) is identified. Jesus was their inheritance all along, the only offspring which mattered, yet they rejected His messengers first and Himself last. The mixture of “vineyard”and “house” symbols is perhaps another reference to the possession of Canaan. A stone would be rejected by builders because it was “unhewn,” like an Altar stone. But priestly submission was the only possible foundation for the perfectly chiseled stones of Israel’s temples, including the one still taking shape as Jesus spoke these words. This pattern can be traced back through the altars of Elijah and Moses, and the pillow of Jacob, to the murder of Abel and the city of Cain. The blood of all the prophets, God’s lambs, would soon be avenged upon the bloodthirsty kings who built their temples and cities on the murder of God’s faithful. Those who stumbled at submitting to God would eventually be “ground to powder,” that is, scattered like Adamic dust.

Matthew 22 – The New Law: Maturity (Trumpets)

The Trumpets cycle puts Jesus at the beginning and the end, with the Pharisees as the bloody doors, and the Sadducees as the serpents at the center.

It is interesting that the stanza of the Sadducees (who did not believe in resurrection) is entirely earthly and carnal in its first half, and entirely heavenly in its second half. The contrast is between the Law of Moses and the Law of Christ, or rather, Old Covenant Israel under angelic guardians as children (circumcision), and New Covenant Israel as authorized ev-angelic guardians (baptism).

Matthew 23 – The Seven Woes: Conquest (Atonement)

Jesus’ blessings upon the humble of Israel in Matthew 5 are turned upside down here in His woes upon those who exalted themselves against God. Although there are seven woes, they are cleverly limited to “six days” (with two woes at Ascension for Land and fruits, Altar and Table). The reference to cleaning the inside comes at Pentecost, the day when the external Law becomes an internal principle, a change of nature. The architectural motif helps us to make sense of Jesus’ lament concerning His desire to shelter Jerusalem as the true Temple. His “wings” are the four corners of His Israelite robe, His own obedience to the Law signified by the blue tassels, the four life-giving rivers of Eden.

Since the book of Revelation uses identical structures, these seven woes correspond to the seven bowls of wrath poured out upon the city, an ironic reversal of the seven sprinklings of blood from the finger of the High Priest on the Day of Coverings. For her rejection of the Spirit of Christ, Jerusalem would be uncovered, her internal uncleanness exposed. As the writer of Hebrews puts it, that day was approaching.

Matthew 24-25 – End of the Age: Glorification (Booths)

This brings us to the most perplexing section of Matthew’s Gospel. Its placement in this Ethics cycle (at Succession) means it is about the cutting off of the lawless ones (Matthew 7:23; 23:28; 24:12). Paul also covers the lawlessness of Israel’s rulers in 2 Thessalonians 2.

Matthew 24 isn’t such a mystery if we understand its placement after Matthew 23. Commentators struggle with the events it foretells because they don’t take into account the Covenant pattern inherent in all Bible history and literature. Jesus is describing the end of the Old Covenant, and the entry of all the Old Testament saints (and the first century martyrs) into their inheritance, the heavenly country prepared for them by Jesus, as He promised.

Ironically, the request for signs of the end comes at the beginning. The Temple, a microcosm of the Creation, would be “de-created.” The position of the desecrating sacrilege at Passover supports James Jordan’s assertion that it was the slaughter of a converted contingent of Jews in the city during the siege. This time it was not the earthly sons of Israel but the heavenly sons. Their “harvest” as grain and grapes is described symbolically in Revelation 14. They had joined Jesus by receiving His body and His blood in communion, and now they really were His body and blood, a Passover which spelled the end of Herodian “Egypt.” The coming of the Son of Adam refers to the events predicted in Daniel 7. Ten is a military number, and here it is the bride as an army with banners. The oil is the Spirit of God, the light of their witness. The accountability for the talents of gold corresponds to the Covenant Sanctions.

As with the Passover cycle earlier, the position of “the final judgment” at Booths/Glorification/Succession sheds great light on its meaning. Booths prefigured Israel’s ultimate purpose as a blessing for all nations, but on the way, those nations would be blessed or cursed depending upon their treatment of Israel. Since Israel was judged for all the righteous blood shed since the murder of Abel, the nations under judgment presumably resembles the list in Genesis 10. These nations are called to account for their “shelter” of the brothers of Jesus, the humble priests who mediated for them before God, and bore the Edenic curses in their place:

The sixfold list has no Rest at the end. Israel himself was the firstborn, the firstfruits with no earthly inheritance. He would be cut off from the earth and taken by God — in Christ. AD70 brought about the release from the grip of corrupted Judaism of the Gospel as a blessing to all nations. It also ended the curse upon the nations for their treatment of “Christ in the sons of Abraham.” The faithless servants were cast into outer darkness and the Jew/Gentile distinction was torn down forever. This judgment is similar to the ones pronounced by the prophets against the Canaanite nations who surrounded Israel and never regained power, never resurfaced, after the “flood” of Babylonian troops.

For those distressed by a first century interpretation of this passage, don’t forget that our God always works in fractals. The events which occurred in the Land prefigure those in the World. Our own history shows the debasement or exaltation of nations which persecute or aid the Church of Christ. They too will be called to account for their shelter of Jesus’ brothers, those who bear the curse for the healing of the nations.

“For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers…” (Hebrews 2:10-11)

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[1] See “Binding and Loosing” in God’s Kitchen, and also Bowing the Heavens.
[2] See “Kids in the Kitchen: Passover in the Motherland” in God’s Kitchen, for a discussion of this theme in the Bible, including the prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk.
[3] See God’s Kitchen, p. 212 for comments on the structure of the father’s speech, and the significance of the fire and water.
[4] See New Covenant Virility – 1.
[5] On how those who use this and similar passages as support for paedobaptism get this text upside down, see Bringing Children to Jesus.
[6] See Provoking the Dragon.
[7] See Healing in His… Tassels?

From the forthcoming Bible Matrix III: The House of God:

As we have seen, The Tabernacle was not only a model of heaven but a microcosm of a new earth, that is, a new Land. Its triune pattern would be measured out fractally in Levites serving god (Priestshood), Israelites worshiping God (Kinghood) and priests and people, left hand and right hand, as a witness to the nations (Prophethood).

Just as with Noah and his family, Israel would not simply be a new Man but a new Mankind, an entire culture, a “Church-State,” ready to be planted and multiplied. So, before this Ethical Garden could be planted in the Physical World, a new society had to be organized to mediate between the two.

Sex and Death

Leviticus is a book all about sex and death, and the nakedness inherent in our beginnings and endings. If we are reading the Bible “cumulatively,” this should make us think of the curses upon the naked Adam and Eve: Adam returning to the dust of the Land over which he sweats, and Eve’s manifold difficulties in producing offspring.

Leviticus takes these curses and expounds upon them in a manner intended to teach us about blamelessness. It is a “liturgical surgery” which deals with the flesh not through cutting and stitching, but through cutting and consumption by knife and fire, the flaming sword between God and men.

Since the spirit of Man was darkened, Levitical Law was Covenant Ethics incarnate in the Social and the Physical, much like the single Law in the Garden regarding the forbidden fruit (seed, flesh and skin). Levitical Law was a “dark saying” designed to bring light, to force men to meditate, and we are still chewing on it. The faithful wrestle and are nourished, and the unfaithful choke and die. Only with a submissive attitude can Adams and Eves discover the hidden intentions of God.

Levitical Law “measured out” the ministry of the Tabernacle in the flesh of Israelites. At various levels of holiness, it made every Israelite a Tabernacle. This means that none of Leviticus is obsolete for the Christian. In fact, it is even more beneficial for us than it was for the children of Israel. Unlike them, we all have the Spirit of God to illuminate these strange laws, which are heavenly truth engraved in earthly materials.

Perfect Skin

In Matthew 5:17-19, Jesus stated that he did not come to abolish the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them. This was not completed until the destruction of the Temple, and with it, the offering of “blameless” animal substitutes.

The Law was fulfilled in Christ, and He is in heaven advocating for us as the Lamb. There’s no need for any atoning sacrifice on earth, nor is there any need for a Jewish priesthood with “blameless skin” or any other physical attributes. The “office” of Israel is now redundant, carried out entirely by Christ on our behalf.

Despite that fact that Leviticus is still useful for instruction and meditation, the Laws themselves have a “built-in obsolescence” as far as practice is concerned.

In Bible Matrix II, we spoke about every Covenant being a “tour of duty,” a commission which has a definite beginning and a definite end, like a harvest cycle. The Levitical Laws were for the Firstfruits, a commission which served to teach the nature of blameslessness until the Blameless Man fulfilled them. As the perfect and final “nearbringing,” His ascension would open heaven and allow God to pour out the blessing of a greater harvest. It should be no surprise that the Levitical Laws contained clues from the very beginning that they were a temporary arrangement.

The first seven chapters describe “private sacrifices,” following the fivefold Covenant pattern. They are a process of consecration, service, and deconsecration, a vow which has a beginning and an end.

Since they follow the Covenant pattern, they are also “cruciform”—a cross-shaped process around a cross-shaped house by a cross-shaped nation…

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ART: Detail of Andy Warhol’s Gold Marilyn (1962) and Electric Chair (Red) (1964). As confused and immoral as he was, Warhol attended mass weekly during his entire life. These confronting works made icons out of sex and death. Like the Levitical Law, they say nothing and yet speak of everything.

or Semina Divina

And Jesus, perceiving in himself that power had gone out from him, immediately turned about in the crowd and said, “Who touched my garments?” (Mark 5:30)

We aren’t told in Genesis 9 what Ham’s intention was when he “uncovered” his father, Noah. Peter Leithart and James Jordan both present some fascinating insights (which differ from each other), but perhaps there is a solution elsewhere in Genesis, which, combined with both these possibilities, offers something new.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in Praxeme: Journal of Systematic Typology.

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