Now a river went out of Eden to water the garden, and from there it parted and became four riverheads. The name of the first is Pishon; it is the one which skirts the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold. And the gold of that land is good. Bdellium and the onyx stone are there. The name of the second river is Gihon; it is the one which goes around the whole land of Cush. The name of the third river is Hiddekel; it is the one which goes toward the east of Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates.  (Genesis 2:10-14)

After the Herod and Shylock post, I had one complaint that the Worship as Commerce tag didn’t really do what it said on the tin, so I hope to capture it (briefly?) here. Now, where to start? As James Jordan explains, the idea begins in Eden.

“Eden is the land of food, and the outlying lands are lands of other raw materials. The Bible conceives of commerce between these lands, so that those of Adam’s descendants who lived in Eden would have to engage in trade with those who had moved downstream to Havilah. In this way, precious stones would be brought from Havilah back to Eden to adorn the sanctuary. When Israel came out of Egypt, she sojourned in the land of Havilah while the Tabernacle and the High Priest’s garments were made (Genesis 25:18). Here in this land of rocks were made many items of gold and onyx. Indeed, the only reference in the Bible to the onyx stone, outside of Genesis 2, is in connection with the High Priest’s garments. The shoulder stones of the “ephod” were made of onyx, and had the names of the twelve tribes put upon them (Exodus 25:7; 28:9-12).” [1]

When the worship of God is both central and elevated, the priests of God carry the Spirit to the nations. In return, the nations bring to Eden the gold and precious stones of the surrounding lands. Because of Solomon’s request for wisdom instead of wealth, the Lord honoured his selflessness, his godly rule, with wealth from the surrounding nations. The kings of the world brought their glory into the Temple. As Israel’s kings continually disobeyed the Lord, the wealth was stolen away. The Lord was like a thief in the night. The gold shields stolen by Egyptian invaders were replaced with bronze ones. Nebuchadnezzar made Judah a vassal kingdom and taxed it the way Solomon and Rehoboam had taxed the tribes. Finally he took everything.

But this “wealth for wisdom” is not only typological. God is not against wealth per se. He wants a church that is glorious both inwardly and outwardly. It is when the church becomes a shell, as Judah did, a false witness with false whiteness, that God cuts it back to Adams in animal skins. [2] The letters to the Asian churches in Revelation 2-3 recapitulate Old Testament history, [3] which makes Herod’s Judah parallel with Laodicea. Well, not so much a parallel as the same sin but fully grown.

For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realising that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked.

First century Adam pretended that he was independent of God, that he had life in himself and did not need Jesus, the Tree of Life. Eating from the “Greek” Tree of Wisdom had left him wretched, pitiable, poor, blind and naked—the state of first century Jewish worship. What does Jesus say?

I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich…

In Revelation, worship is symbolised as a commercial transaction. Jesus’ advice here echoes His words in Isaiah 55:1-3, calling on Israel to buy from Him kingdom wine and milk without money.

The Black Horse

This also explains the rider on the Black Horse, who starves the Old Covenant worship but leaves the New apostolic worship unharmed. Moses brought manna, Alpha food, but this old priesthood would be starved to the point of cannibalisation and then death (Zechariah 11:7-9). John would decrease while Jesus increased. The Old Covenant worship, pictured as a commercial transaction in grains, became an expensive exercise. Like the half-ephahs of grain in the hands of the woman suspected of adultery, (Numbers 5) it would be weighed in the balances, offered on the altar and become lean and barren. Jesus made wine. The oil (Spirit) and the wine (blood), the Omega food of the New Covenant, would be given “without price”.

The Beast

In Ezekiel, the King of Tyre is a compromised High Priest, an Adam covered in gemstones. In Daniel 6, the kingdom of Belshazzar is weighed in the balances. The handwriting on the wall is commercial language. In Zechariah 5, the wicked woman in the ephah basket is a counterfeit of the Ark of the Covenant, a box covered in lead instead of gold. Finally, it explains the mark of the beast. Summarising Jordan’s interpretation:

“…no one can buy or sell unless he has the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of its name.”

Worship again is signified as commerce. Those without the mark were excluded from the Temple. Acts shows a progression from saints meeting in the Temple to Paul being arrested and the doors being shut (Acts 21:30; Acts 26:21). Christians became outsiders. The Temple was a house of prayer for the Gentiles. The Gentiles were supposed to bring their glory into it willingly, but the Jewish leaders were ripping them off. Their role was supposed to be priestly but they were lording it over the sheep. The money wasn’t the problem. It was the manner of the commerce being conducted. The Jews condemned the harlots and tax collectors, but Herod’s Judah was the biggest harlot and tax collector of all, and an unrepentant one. A godly economy is a shepherd. A beastly economy oppresses and devours like a wolf. It settles for bread.

Jerusalem, not Rome

One of the best arguments against the harlot of Revelation being identified as Jerusalem is the commercial language employed to describe her demise. Jerusalem was certainly at the “navel” of the world, but was she really that rich? Jordan brilliantly observes that the description of her wares in Revelation 18 is simply an expansion of the materials plundered from Egypt, Amalek, and then given willingly by the people of God to build the Tabernacle. Worship is described as commerce. The kings of the “earth” are the Jewish rulers of the Land. The Gentile worshippers are merchants, the proselytes who became twice the children of Gehenna. Jesus turned the Herodian Wall Street into the Wailing Wall.

What is even more crucial is the fact that it follows the seven Tabernacle speeches, which in turn follow the Creation week. The Temple, like Noah’s ark, was the “world-in-a-box”, a new creation. Its destruction removes the “buying and selling” from Judaism forever. [4] The centre of worship was now in Jesus, in heaven. [5] During this current age, all nations are bringing their glory into the kingdom. The strong man is tied up and Jesus, through us, is plundering his house. [6] The nations are His riches for sure, but this is not just their souls. It is also their pocketbooks, their businesses and their economies. All is sacred.

Exchange Rates Today

The idea that amassing wealth destroys the world and oppresses the poor is common in Scripture. It occurs when man seizes kingdom instead of waiting patiently for God’s timing. We look at our resources and think that’s all we have to play with. But based on the Bible, if we have been faithful with them, God has a way of making the cup run over in unforeseen ways. Wealth is not the problem at all. God made Christian nations wealthy. After the Reformation, God made Protestant nations wealthy. But we have followed the path of Solomon, who ended up using oppression to build his kingdom “earlier” than God intended. He turned the kingdom of God into Egypt.

When the Bible says that righteousness exalts a nation, it is talking about the outflow of personal and family government in prosperity and political clout. Europe had it and lost it. Britain had it and lost it. The US has it and is losing it. It seems the nation that faithfully invests by sending out missionaries to serve and die ends up as a world power. The Christian’s refusal to pursue money ends up with greater wealth for all (Matthew 6:32-33). The promise that the meek will inherit the earth (Land) is not just about the hereafter. Like Christ, when we fall into the ground and die to ourselves, there is a greater harvest, and it is not just about winning souls. Jesus died and then the Father gave Him everything, including the cattle on a thousand hills. Dominion follows faith, not coercion. Christians think they have to compromise to gain votes to get into power when all God asks of us is to pray, tithe and wait. The dominion will come, as it always does, when we can be trusted with it.

The gospel is holistic. Saved souls change culture, and history shows that it does not take many souls to do so, usually a few committed, praying people around a table over a few decades. To limit the harvest to pie-in-the-sky is the rankest gnosticism. True worship is directly reflected in economics. Cultus becomes culture. The God who sees worship as a commercial transaction paid our debt, but He still loves and blesses just weights and measures. It is most certainly Jesus in all of life. This project will end when the entire world actually is a Tabernacle for God. [7] This includes our economies.

All this stuff is in JBJordan. You should get into him and put those lesser theologians away for a while. I doubt you’ll want to go back to them after such rich fare.
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[1] James B. Jordan, Through New Eyes: Developing a Biblical View of the World, p. 73. [PDF] For more on onyx and the High Priest, see Gold, Onyx and Bdellium.
[2] See Rags to Robes.
[3] Check out Jordan’s Revelation lectures, and there is a summary in Totus Christus).
[4] See Totus Christus for a full outline. The light of the Lampstand is at the centre, of course. Judah’s sun, moon and stars came crashing down as Jesus predicted. See Thief in the Night. But also, the references to musicians and craftsmen corresponds exactly to those of Tubal-Cain, Jubal and Jabal. Herod’s Temple had become inherently Cainite. See The Significance of Tubal-Cain and The Significance of Jabal and Jubal. On craftsmen, see Unashamed Artisans.
[5] For the Roman Catholic readers, the centre of worship is still Jerusalem (the one above) and not Holy Rome. See Schism or Resurrection?
[6] See Under Your Feet.
[7] See A New Heavens and a New Earth and Blood and Soil.

There are two kinds of whiteness in the Bible, and an understanding of this explains a great deal. There is the whiteness of covering and the whiteness of uncovering. And, as mentioned, the Bible makes a great deal out of the concept of covering.

Bone Collector

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Touching a corpse made an Israelite unclean. The remains of those slain in battle were marked with lime for two reasons: so that they could be avoided by the clean, and so they could be gathered up and burned to lime by the bone collectors. Jesus said that the righteousness of the Pharisees was like a whitewashed sepulchre. Not only were they full of the ceremonial uncleanness of broken Covenant, their so-called righteousness was actually a mark from God upon them. They would be gathered to their people not by the Father sending His angels to the four corners of the Land, but by the father of lies and his scavengers sent by God to clean the wound.

This image goes right back to Genesis. Like the angels, the Covenant scavengers, though demonic, are also God’s servants. They are the raven of Noah surviving on floating corpses until the water goes down; they are the scavenging dogs that lick up Jezebel’s blood; they are the maggots in misused manna and abandoned grapes (false bread and wine); they are the unclean birds and animals that screech and howl inside the corpse of a defeated Babylon; they are worms inside Herod ‘enthroned’ as a human Gehenna.

The whiteness of the Pharisees was the whiteness of Miriam’s and Gehazi’s skin-plague. It is the whiteness of flesh and bones exposed as unclean to the eyes of God. Satan himself appeared as an angel of light, but like the Pharisees, he was a false lightbearer, a tutor guiding his children the wrong way.

Vindicated by the Redeemer/Avenger

‘To the one who conquers I will give some of the hidden manna, and I will give him a white stone, with a new name written on the stone that no one knows except the one who receives it.’

Jesus says this at the end of the letter to the church in Pergamum. As James Jordan observes, the imagery in the seven letters takes us through Old Covenant history, beginning with Eden, and ending with Herod’s ‘Laodicea’. Pergamum is the church in the wilderness, hence the references to Phinehas’ sword, Balaam and Balak, testing by temptation to sexual immorality and the mighty men (Nicolaitans).

The white stone speaks of a faithful priesthood publicly vindicated, the wilderness manna transfigured into glorious metal by resurrection.

“I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died…”
(John 6:48-49)

The Hebrew word for redeemer is the same as avenger. A kinsman redeemer not only rescued his brother’s widow and inheritance by marriage, but was charged with avenging and vindicating her over her enemies. Like Boaz, he was to bring her in from the wilderness, cover her, and give her ‘a new name’ by adoption (like Ruth). Resurrection always involves a judgment, a division between those who are covered (Ruth) and those who love their widowhood and choose to remain uncovered (barren) and return to the fields of Moab (Orpah). The choice is between the bread of the Covenant and the bread of Moab, Covenant children or the children of Lot’s incest.

Beth-lechem Ephratah (fertile house of bread)

The Revelation is Jesus’ judgment between two women like Ruth and Orpah, and in fact, as the story is expanded it becomes a judgment between two prostitutes. Each has a son, but one is dead and one is alive. The woman who lies is uncovered by the words of wise Solomon as the destroying angel of Passover. She is left barren like Egypt.

There are the harlots and tax collectors who come into the kingdom and take up the Messianic line as Rahab. Then there is Judah herself, the greatest of all tax collectors, riding the Roman beast and saying in her heart “I sit a queen. I am no widow.” She was indeed married, but not to Boaz. She had returned to the incestuous bread of Moab like Orpah, a wicked and adulterous generation who shunned a Bethlehem (House of Bread) restored (after the sins recorded at the end of Judges) and made fruitful again by Greater Boaz.

A false house of bread is a false resurrection, a whited sepulchre. It is bread made glorious with the leprous leaven of the Pharisees. It is a phantom pregnancy, a ‘rising’ that turns out to be a mere breaking of wind. But Jesus as Boaz has His children (Hebrews 2:13).

Big White Stones

At the centre of the Creation matrix that runs right through the Bible is the wilderness. It is the burning bush, the Lampstand eyes of God’s Law judging–threshing–His people. The annual feasts follow the same pattern. In that case it is the harvest of Pentecost and its tongues of fire.

The wilderness is God’s threshing floor. It is the place where Boaz covers Ruth as the foundation for a later Temple. And the grinding of the millstone is a euphemism for sex.1  The Old Testament helps us make sense of Revelation 18. Not only would Judah’s Temple no longer enjoy the light of the lampstand filled with olive oil (the Spirit), the fruitfulness of the millstone would be taken away. No more bread.

The face of the unfaithful Old Covenant ‘baker’ would be uncovered as the bread in white baskets was eaten by ravens under the Covenant curse. He would be executed by Jesus as Pharaoh. The cupbearer was resurrected from the ‘tomb’, but the baker was not. The Old Covenant priesthood was exposed, but the New Covenant oil and wine would not be harmed.

Jesus as wise Solomon built His new house on the rock of obedience. The Herods ignored Jesus’ warnings for forty wilderness years and built a great and glorious house–on sand. Even in Jesus’ day, long before its completion, the disciples admired it. At the end of the Restoration Covenant, it was the ultimate form of Zerubbabel’s white capstone, covered in gold and white marble. When it reflected the early morning or afternoon sun, people had to avert their eyes from its brightness. It should have been a house for Eve built upon the sacrificial obedience of Adam, but it was a pretense, a covering of leaves. Jesus saw its future.

Then a mighty angel took up a stone like a great millstone and threw it into the sea, saying, “So will Babylon the great city be thrown down with violence, and will be found no more.”

Herod’s house of bread was submerged under the Gentile sea, a big white stone sinking to the bottom like Pharaoh’s armies. It was not Ezra’s Resurrection Temple as he had hoped. Zerubbabel’s white stone, the Restoration Temple, had been the outcome of a priestly people who put their pagan wives away. But Herod’s kingdom was built on the intermarriage of red Edomite clay and Roman iron–sex with the beast in the wilderness. It was not a capstone but a gravestone.

After the end of the Roman siege, not one stone of this white house remained upon another. Roman soldiers tore up the masonry to retrieve the gold that melted in the fires and ran into the cracks. As the Man of Sin, the Herods had spoken as though they were God, sitting in Moses’ and Solomon’s seat of judgment where they ought not. But their house was left desolate, uncovered and eaten by scavenging maggots. As anti-Christ, Herod was the living dead instead of the dead living–the manna of disobedience. It was not another restoration of Ezra’s Temple. It was the whiteness of a false resurrection, a leprous house that would be torn down.

And he shall break down the house, the stones of it, and the timber thereof, and all the mortar of the house; and he shall carry them forth out of the city into an unclean place. (Lev. 14:45)

Herod’s house pretended to be the top of the mountain of God, but it was filled with corpses like the Valley of Hinnom, covered with bones like the altar of Jeroboam, unclean and outside the true city of God.

Jezebel was indeed thrown down, and all that the dogs left were her head, hands and feet, a cruciform memorial for the bone collectors. The angel had said, “He is not here. He is risen” and the apostles and prophets rejoiced. Now the angel said, “She is not here. She is eaten,” and the apostles and prophets rejoiced again (2 Kings 9:37; Rev. 18:20). Her whited bones remain as a memorial to the leaven of the Pharisees, a faith that is a collection of unclean bones. Only the breath of Jesus can resurrect a Jew from the dust.

But there were two lime-washed pillars that Joshua set up as a memorial to his church’s river crossing. At the church’s crossing of the crystal sea into the promised heavenly country, Herod’s Temple was the second pillar. What was the first?

___________________________________

1. Samson’s adultery condemned him to a symbolic harlotry, pushing the millstone, grinding grain in the house of a foreign god. But his repentance made him ‘fruitful’ again, and the once adulterous and barren ‘warrior-bride’ rejoiced to see the destruction of that house.

WHITSTON-5

Zechariah’s night visions move God’s furniture around. As we saw, the instructions for the Tabernacle furniture align it with the Creation Week. And the Creation Week corresponds with the seven Feasts. Zechariah’s visions follow the Creation and Feast patterns, but the Tabernacle furniture has been shifted around all over the place.

Now, you will probably ask how eight visions can align with seven days or seven feasts. The answer is that it takes the two visions in chapter 5 to reflect the Day of Atonement. Thus:

Sabbath – Day 1
The post-captivity church is seen as still being in the grave, the Abyss, literally, “the deep” (translated badly as glen or valley)

Passover – Day 2
 The horned incense altar is reconstructed, symbolising Israel’s new eldership and worship. Usually, the incense altar is at Day 5, but here, it is this altar’s renewal that re-establishes the nation as a mediator – a Holy Place firmament – between God and the nations. This aligns with Day 2.

Firstfruits – Day 3
This feast is the Ascension of Joseph, Moses, Daniel and Christ to the right hand of God to open the mystery scroll, the Law. A command is given to the people to flee the Babylon of their hearts, which lifts Jerusalem as a new “earth” (Land) out of the Gentile sea. This New Jerusalem would be too large to enclose with walls. Her influence would extend throughout the empire. The empire was the New Canaan, resurrected after the Babylonian “flood.”

Pentecost – Day 4
The serpent/Destroying Angel stands before the throne rightly accusing the disgraced priesthood of being unclean. In a re-enactment of Passover, Israel is covered. (Note that this vision is the Passover of the feast pattern that covers the entire book of Zechariah. But as the centre of the night visions, it is the crux, the thesis, the main point of transition at midnight that allows a new day to dawn.)

As in many previous patterns, the serpent is defeated at the central point of the visions. Step 4 is the wilderness at the centre of the New Creation Matrix. Which brings us to the white stone with seven eyes.

Trumpets – Day 5
The Lampstand is always at the central point, as the eyes of God’s Law watching over His Showbread tribes, both guarding and inspecting them. But in these visions, the Lampstand signifies the witness of God’s people. At Ascension the Tabernacle is built. It is tested by Law at Pentecost and most often torn apart.

At Step 5 it is a Lampstand reconstructed. It is the next generation in the wilderness, now trained as an army, or the Tabernacle of David after the Ark’s sojourn. The angel says, however, that the conquest will not be by military might in this New Israel, but by the Spirit. The Lampstand has been moved to accent its role as the symbol of this new Israel now that the Ark was gone. The head of the sacrifice had ascended to govern heaven (Ark – Adam-light) and the body would now “ascend” to govern the Land (Lampstand – Eve-lights).

It is important to notice that Revelation also places its two olive-tree witnesses at Trumpets — the apostles, filled with the Spirit, mustering an army of witnesses before Judah was finally cut in two on her last Day of Atonement.

Atonement – Day 6
Zechariah sees a flying Covenant scroll, the ascended Ark as the first goat, speaking curses upon Israel’s hidden sins. He sees the Ark’s evil twin exiled as the second goat to Shinar (Babylon) and set on a false throne.

Tabernacles – Day 7
With a New Covenant carried out in the Lord’s court – legally – the swift horses ride out between the bronze pillar/mountains into a New Land.

Now, all this was to be able to understand the significance of the stone in Zechariah 4. The stone has “holy to the Lord”, the seven eyes of the Law, written upon it at the Pentecost victory over the serpent (Zech. 3). The angel then says that Zerubbabel will bring forth the capstone to public acclamation. Not being High Priest, Zechariah could only see inside the Holy Place in his visions (unlike Ezekiel), but even the events concerning Joshua in the Holy Place were hidden from the eyes of this resurrected nation. So, we have seven-eyed stone, a capstone and the “set apart” stone (mistranslated as plumbline because it might be the metal we call tin). Are any of these three items related?

Meredith Kline seems to think so. (See Glory in Our Midst, p. 158-159).

But Mark Jauhiainen doesn’t think so. In his The Use of Zechariah in Revelation, on p. 83 he says basically that any connection is an assumption, and that the seven eyes in Zech. 4 refer to the Lampstand (seven spirits), not the stone. So the stone can’t be linked with the white stone in Revelation 2. (I have to say this gentlemen spends a lot of time telling us what things are not, but then cannot tell us what they are! I think literary structure helps us a lot to make links where he sees none.)

What he misses, I think, is that in Revelation 4, the “seven eyes” of the Lampstand are suddenly reflected in the seven eyes of the Lamb of God. And the Lamb of God is in place of the un-mentioned Table of Showbread (John describes everything but the Table). So, where Israel failed to reflect God’s Law as the perfect Adam, the Lamb succeeded. There are now seven eyes in both the south and north, the ruler and the ruled. The Lamb has the seven spirits of God (the eyes of the Law), and also the seven horns of authority, weapons to carry out His judgment so that He might be vindicated upon His unrepentant murderers.

So, to tie this all together, the white stone is the heavenly bread given at Ascension (Israel received manna directly after the Passover/Red Sea) and broken in the wilderness. Manna was the colour of bdellium, and the stone in Zerrubabel’s hands is bedil the root of which means to divide or separate. The stone is set apart, divided, and seeing as the word has a definite article (habbedil) it makes sense if it refers to the capstone 3 verses prior.

If all this does actually hang together, we have a piece of faithful wilderness bread that is now a sanctified, shiny stone engraved with seven eyes, brought out in public (through a split mountain) and lifted up as part of a new public witness to complete the new Temple.

Are you getting my drift?

WHITSTON2

“…the political task of Christians is to be the church rather than to transform the world”–Stanley Hauerwas, Resident Aliens.

This presents a false dichotomy. When Gideon and David were faithful, God went ahead of them and defeated their enemies. Would it be fair to assume that Hauerwas is just saying that political activism is getting the cart before the horse? If so, then I agree with him. When the church is faithful, the blessings of God transform the world around her.

In his lectures on worship, James Jordan notes that the religions of the world offer life, knowledge and glory. For Israel, these three were locked away in the Ark as the hidden manna, the Law and Aaron’s rod that budded. These three are from God manward.

Then, the Holy Place responds to the Most Holy with the Showbread (life), the Incense (prayer in response to God’s words), and the glory of the blossoming almond tree, the Lampstand. These are from man Godward.

With the coming of Christ, the Ark was opened to the church. In our worship we receive these three as Word, Sacrament and Government. As we live these out through the week, the very culture around us is transformed. The church’s “culture of the Book” has resulted in unprecedented literacy. Her self-sacrifice has built hospitals, orphanages, and given western culture a conscience that extends to foreign aid. Her government has been the foundation for welfare, social justice and government accountability. The faithful church measures out heaven’s government on earth and the world is transformed.

All this was basic stuff for the Reformers. How far have we fallen that we need theologians like Hauerwas to spell out the basics for us again in such simple terms? We are like Ezekiel’s house of Israel, trying to maintain an abused and worn out authority while God is starting from scratch, sending us prophets in Adam’s animal skins. WEPOW

“How is the land, is it fat or lean? Are there trees in it or not? Make an effort then to get some of the fruit of the land.” Now the time was the time of the first ripe grapes… Then they came to the valley of Eshcol and from there cut down a branch with a single cluster of grapes; and they carried it on a pole between two men. (from Numbers 13)

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. (1 Corinthians 15:20)

The Tabernacle is an architectural model of the world. Each of the seven speeches of the Lord (Exodus 25-31) is introduced with a variant of the phrase “Then Yahweh spoke to Moses, saying.” The seven speeches follow the pattern of the seven days of the Creation week, and also the seven feasts in Leviticus 23.

The Table of Showbread corresponds to both the grain and fruit created on Day 3, the Feast of Firstfruits and to the Asension of Moses.

This pattern began in the garden, when after Adam’s “Red Sea” death and resurrection, he was united to his bride by Covenant. He “ascended” as covenant head of a new family, with God’s one Law.

On the table in the Holy Place were twelve loaves of bread and jugs of beer (from grain), and later, wine. Like the manna and the grapes of Eshcol, these were a promise of rest and rule with God on a future Sabbath as priest and king. Here is the last supper. As with Adam and Moses, this initial promise of wine was followed by exposure to the serpent for testing under the Law – Pentecost.

Just as the marriage covenant of Adam and Eve at Firstfruits is really a betrothal of their united marriage to God on Day 7, so this Table of Israel was a promise of future glory to the whole world at the final Sabbath feast, Tabernacles.

To use Doug Wilson’s phrase, human marriage is “manifest glory.” It is a Day 3 picture of the Day 7 rest to come at the union of heaven and earth.