“A defiled Nazirite is an Adam or an Eve who has failed at holy war and thus cannot enter into God’s rest.”

Since I rave on about structure so much (and how wrong it is that we moderns regard it as merely an ornamental option rather than as the label on the tin) the fractalicious* Covenant structure of Numbers 6 should give us some clues as to what the Nazirite vow actually was in the big picture.

Firstly, Numbers 6 is the fifth step in the first cycle of the book of Numbers. This means it is “bridal.” Coming after the “jealous inspection” (Testing) it has to do with judicial maturity, a mustering of the bride, terrible as an army with banners, ready for purification on the Day of Atonement (see The Beauty of Numbers 1-7).

Repeated structure is what ties every part of the Bible to every other part. Since every part has the same shape, all parts speak to and comment on each other. You may not be familiar with some of the allusions below, but trust me, it works like clockwork. I could explain every line, but you can get that from the Bible Matrix books. The structure is a threefold cord of the Creation Week/Tabernacle Furniture, the Annual Feasts, and the pattern of Dominion. Hopefully there are enough notes to get you through it. I do have a detailed commentary on the structure of the Torah (similar to the work on Numbers) planned for next year. I’ll probably have to blog my way through it to trick myself into getting it done!

Anyhow, Bible commentators haggle over hermeneutics but the Bible is a woven cloth. Everything new alludes to everything before. There are no hermeneutical rules. Again. There are no hermeneutical rules. There are living connections and structure is what holds them together. So, our interpretation of the Nazirite vow refers to all previous Scripture, and with the benefit of hindsight, we can also see how it plays out in later Scripture, using this “cross-eyed exegesis” (alignment and comparison of patterns).

TRANSCENDENCE – Creation (Genesis)

As in Genesis, the entire event begins with a word from God. As usual, the first stanza is a microcosm of the whole, the first “soundwave” from the mouth of God, to be reiterated in God’s man and then God’s people, with a view to ministry to the nations. In this first pattern, notice that “Israel,” the man of God, appears at Day 6.

HIERARCHY – Priesthood in the Desert (Exodus)

The Hierarchy section is threefold and seems to be divided into the three domains corrupted in early Genesis. Even more interesting is the play on the triune nature of fruit as an image of Man, with its seed, its flesh and its glorious “clothing.” (See Seed, Flesh and Skin concerning the “uncircumcised fruit” in Lev. 19).

Vinegar is made from wine but considered to be a condiment. “Strong drink” is actually beer, hence its place on the Table here, as a grain derivative. Israel used beer for the drink offerings in the wilderness until they reached the vineyards of Canaan. I like the reference to Jew and Gentile at Booths as fresh (moist) and dried. The abstinence of the Nazirite was priestly, a deliberate refusal of “kingly” or kingdom foods.

The third level (the Gentile courts) references the entire fruit, which in Noah’s day was a world ripe for judgment. Skin refers to covering for sin. The entire world was covered. Here, the “seeds” are at Trumpets as military sons, and the skin is the covering at Atonement.

ETHICS – Priestly Law (Leviticus)

I love how the Nazirite’s hair is the “firstfruits” in this passage. The glory of hair is a godly crop upon the Covenant head. This should also make us think of the crown of thorns upon Jesus’ head, wearing the curse of a Land that did not bring forth the fruit God wanted. (Unless of course we are unable to make such connections because we were taught the Bible by intellectuals — as most pastors are — and not by farmers, who know a thing or two.)

Division corresponds to Passover. At this point, in many instances, God turns up and the Man falls face down as if dead. The Nazirite is thus a kind of temporary “firstborn,” symbolically inside the house of God — on the Table — wherever he or she goes.

This is the “social” step. In Adam’s pattern it was his marriage to Eve and the promise of children. In the Ten Words, it is the commandment with a promise, concerning living long in the land.

Check out the reference to oil and head at the centre. That is the “Pentecost” step – flame on head, a human torch. Again, the last line is a cutting off from glory. The entire point of the Nazirite vow seems to be a refusal to grab the glory of God’s rest.

Just as Trumpets concerns the offering of Israel’s military sons to God, so here the Nazirite brings his or her offering, ready for cleansing.

Notice that this cycle of stanzas is not complete, and thus even the final cycle is not complete. A defiled Nazirite is an Adam or an Eve who has failed at holy war and thus cannot enter into God’s rest.

SANCTIONS – Covenant Body (Numbers)

The Sanctions/Oath section follows the matrix pattern but appears to highlight its “Covenant renewal” strand. Again, this stanza prefigures the structure of this entire section.

Here it is animals and food that stand in for the holy warrior. Notice that this again refers to Abel and Cain. Cain’s sin was not what he offered, but simply the fact that he pushed in before Abel and made his kingly offering first, a veiled insult to God, a proclamation that nothing really happened in the Garden, that men can rule without any obedience to God. Notice that the offerings with oil come at Pentecost and Trumpets. Oil is the Spirit given after the blood has been shed. Of course, animals and food are a reference to the curse upon Land and womb in Genesis 3.

The priest, previously anointed with blood and oil, can ascend before God with the offering, winged as an angel-servant. Note that, as James Jordan points out, burnt offering is a mistranslation. The ascension offering is a reference, always, to Isaac, the priestly firstfruits. It makes sense that this is followed by the offering of a ram. The unleavened bread is in an odd place here, perhaps referring to the purity of the bride. The old history has been cut off and she is now resurrected in purity.

The centrepoint is the shaving of the head. Notice the “consecrated head” is in the place of both the Golden Table and the Incense Altar, that is, the firstfruits Adam and the Eve. And the theme of this “Pentecostal” stanza (Ethics 2) is fire.

The presentation of the bride as a chaste virgin means that the holy war is over. The warrior went into the wilderness with the head of Adam and returned with the glorious hair of Eve. Every Nazirite went out a Tabernacle (covered in skin) and came back a glorious bridal Temple. Every Nazirite was thus a forming and a filling, a complete house. Notice that the angels who cast down their crowns in the Revelation are following this rite. They had finished their holy war as ministers of the Old Covenant and were offering the glory of their heads to God in completion of their vows. Their roles would be filled by an ascended “Firstfruits” Church just before the destruction of Jerusalem, the harlot.

Sanctions often concerns the Covenant vow. Once again, step 7 is missing because it involves wine and rest. I love how “in exact accordance” communicates the “eye and tooth” of the Law at the centre. The stanza begins and ends with “the law of the Nazirite.” Notice to use of “above” at Ascension and “as he can afford” at the Firstfruits tithe.

SUCCESSION – The Future (Deuteronomy)

So, what was a Nazirite?

The Nazirite vow was a means of extending the guarding role of the priesthood to an Israelite — either male or female — for the purpose of holy war. It was a sort of “priestly knighthood.”

The vow is a miniature of Israel’s sojourn in the wilderness – an emptying and a humbling followed by a filling and a glorification. The “Covenant head” is empty and comes back with “bridal hair.” The grapes of Canaan are refused until the vow is complete and the Land is taken. The idea goes back to the two trees in the Garden: the second tree temporarily forbidden for the sake of the humbling of Adam and the glorification of the Bride. Phil 2:5-11 also follows this pattern of emptying and filling.

Also, notice that no wine is drunk before God between Melchizedek’s blessing of Abraham and the Last Supper (the Greater Melchizedek). The entire period of the Abrahamic Covenant was a priestly humbling, a temporary abstinence from kingly food for the maturation and qualification of humanity for Adamic rule.

The closest thing under the New Covenant is believer’s baptism (which is also for both men and women — the role of the Nazirite was priestly action in the outer courts of the house, that is, the nations). Believers abstain from “kingdom privileges” (food, alcohol, sex) temporarily for the sake of priestly war (1 Corinthians 7:5).

___________________________________

* fractalicious – A holy mixture of something that is tasty with something that can be infinitely zoomed in, like bread and wine that is still fresh after two thousand years, or The Magic Pudding.

IMAGE: From the movie Kingdom of Heaven. The real knights had all deserted the city, so Balian simply knighted some more. “Rise a knight!” The priest wasn’t happy.

“You are beautiful as Tirzah, my love, lovely as Jerusalem, awesome as an army with banners.” (Songs 6:4)

An online friend recently questioned the repetition found in Numbers 7. The offerings of each tribe are identical, yet each is listed in full. Surely, this was a waste of expensive parchment? Architecture is important to God, no less literary architecture, and it seems to me that the “fullness” of the Offertory in chapter 7 is the result—or the liturgical response, to the military “forming” of Israel in chapter 2.

At the centre of the five-fold Covenant pattern is the Covenant Ethics. As the Covenant is opened, this becomes three-fold (Law Given, Law Opened, Law Received), creating a Covenant Head (Ascension/Firstfruits), and a Covenant Body (Maturity/Trumpets) united by the Spirit, Covenant fire (Pentecost). This expansion of the three-fold Ethics is what gives us the seven-fold patterns: Creation week, Feasts and Dominion.

In Exodus, the instructions for the Tabernacle are given, and then Israel is tested. She sins concerning the golden calf and is forced to drink it. Then the actual construction of the Tabernacle is described. As a “legal unit,” we have the architectural plans given, opened, and received. The absence of Moses was a deliberate strategy to rid Israel of those unworthy of Levitical worship. And as it turned out over forty years, that was all Israel.

Ascension: Tabernacle plans (heaven)
Testing: Image of the beast – fire (Spirit – 3000 slain)
Maturity: Tabernacle constructed (earth)

In fact, Israel’s sin is also a perversion of the three-fold Covenant Ethics:

Ascension: Idolatry – strange altar
Testing: Adultery – strange fire
Maturity: Apostasy – strange worship [1]

These events correspond to:

Ascension: Leviticus – heavenly man
Testing: Numbers (In the Wilderness) – fiery serpents
Maturity: Deuteronomy – earthly bride

So the architectural “events” in Exodus take on flesh in the larger historical picture as the Mosaic Covenant is “opened.” (Exactly the same thing happens to Israel in the first century after Jesus opens the New Covenant scroll, hence the use of the phrase “image of the beast.” In that case, the image was the Herodian Temple. I recommend James Jordan’s Revelation lecture series for this and many other phenomenal observations. See Newspaper Exegesis.)

So, based on these similar structures, which all find their source in the Testing of Adam by the serpent, it seems to me that Numbers 1-9 describe the recapitulation of the Tabernacle in human flesh. Israel is arranged architecturally around the house of God (measuring out) in chapter 2. Then Israel, as a liturgical prefigurement of all nations, submits willingly to a “bringing in.” Both chapters describe all twelve tribes individually. Numbers 2 is delegation (office conferred), Numbers 7 is vindication (office honoured).

Now, what is really interesting is that we have the twelve tribes and the cleansing of the Levites at Step 6. In the Creation week, this is Land animals and Man. In the festal “week,” this is the Day of Coverings, with animals and the Man as Holy Mediators. In the Tabernacle, this was the Bronze Laver, later glorified “bridally” as the great Bronze Sea. The two-tiered combination of twelve tribes and Levites is the Priestly Man walking on the waters, the springs of the Garden of Eden, in dominion over priestly animals (oxen picture priestly submission). [4] None of this architectural significance is apparent without attention to the literary structure, which appears very strange to us if we don’t know what is going on.

In the Temple, twelve oxen carried the Sea “out of the house.” Here, the tribes are themselves a “horned altar,” twelve oxen carrying the plunder of the nations, including platters and basins, into the house as a tribute to their King. The Church of God leads the world (for good and sometimes ill) in generosity to God in worship.

The platters and basins are an initial “sea of nations.” The Laver and Sea pictured the firmament and the crystal sea, something “beaten out” by God as a place for his governors. Israel’s willingness to offer so much is what vindicates her representation of the house of God as a “temple of flesh.”

Furthermore, I’ll wager that this “architecture” is not only a microcosm of the entire process of Dominion (Egypt to Canaan), but it dictates the pattern for the rest of the book of Numbers. If this is the case, there will be a part two. [5]

____________________________________________
[1] We have seen exactly this process in our own culture, and yet it surprises us. See God Gave Them Up.
[2] See The Eighth Letter.
[3] For more on this, see Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key.
[4] See Walking on Water.
[5] Just as the first feast, the weekly Sabbath, set the pattern for the festal year, and Daniel 1 sets the pattern for Daniel 1-6: see Daniel’s Long Shadow.

The Mosaic dietary laws were temporary. Just as a Nazirite made a temporary vow for the purpose of sanctification for holy war, so Israel’s purpose as a nation of holy warriors included certain abstinences prescribed by God. Once the war was over, the prohibitions were removed. “Bridal food” (the Feast of Tabernacles) was back on the menu in the first century.

The Nazirite vow was a symbolic form of death and resurrection, of the bridegroom going into the grave (short hair), slaying the serpents, and emerging from the chamber with His bride (long hair), whom He then presented to the Father. [1] The prohibition on the Tree of Knowledge was a temporary one. It began Adam’s holy war, but he broke the vow, failed to rescue the bride and was expelled from the Lord’s table. [2]

Jesus Himself said He would not drink wine until He drank it in the kingdom, after His holy battle. Although there were personal prefigurements of it (the vinegar, and most likely meals with the disciples after His resurrection included wine), that second “bridal” drinking is history, the wedding supper of the Lamb in AD70.

Christians, as holy warriors, abstain from things for the purpose of intercession — holy war — and then return to the “kingdom blessings.” We fast for others, and we fast for the purpose of holy war against our own members, bodily discipline. [3] But the death is always for the purpose of resurrection. God is a phenomenal foodie. As Robert Farrar Capon wrote, God made onions because He likes them.

So, the claim that a Mosaic diet is healthier has no basis in the Bible. In fact, such a view is the result of imposing the modern worldview upon Scripture, a worldview which denies that every part of Creation has a message for us. James Jordan writes:

…the Old Testament laws are being misused by persons who, with the best of intentions, want to find health hints in the Bible. My hope is that these studies will help redirect the focus of this concern and put matters back into perspective. The food law of the New Covenant is the Lord’s Supper, and sickness and health are indeed tied to its faithful observance (1Cor. 11:30). Sickness and health were related to the dietary laws of Moses for the same reason, but that reason is the Spiritual efficacy of the sacrament, not the biological mechanics of the human body.

The hygienic misuse of these laws arises, as do other misinterpretations, because of the pervasive influence of non-Christian philosophical viewpoints in our culture. It is clear that the laws of clean and unclean in the Bible are symbolic in nature. Peter’s vision in Acts 10 establishes a symbolic connection between the unclean animals and the Gentile nations, an association already set forth in Leviticus 20:22-26. No one denies this, but modern Christians are not accustomed to Biblical symbolism, with the result that full justice is not done to the laws of uncleanness.

Let’s take an example that will show how differently people in the ancient world thought from the way we think today. This story will show us that if we are to understand Biblical symbolism, we shall have to learn to think in Biblical categories, and set aside our modern worldview.

When Jacob returned to the promised land after his sojourn in Mesopotamia, he was met by the Angel of the Lord. God wrestled with him all night, and when the Angel “saw that he had not prevailed against him, he touched the socket of his thigh; so the socket of Jacob’s thigh was dislocated while he wrestled with him” (Gen. 32:25). This dislocation, with Jacob’s subsequent limp, constituted a sign of Jacob’s victory. He had wrestled “with God and with men” and had prevailed (Gen. 32:28). Like a father training his child, so God had wrestled with Jacob for nearly a hundred years, using Esau, Isaac, and Laban as His tools to strengthen His son for service. Now, as a token of His grace, He gave Jacob a limp.

What does this mean? For an explanation we can look to Genesis 3:15, where we are told that the serpent’s head will be crushed, while the heel of the Seed will be bruised. It is possible to trace this imagery through the scripture, and what emerges is that because of sin, all men must suffer some wound. The head wound is for God’s enemies, while a mere foot wound is for His friends. Accordingly, Jacob’s limp was a sign of his victory and salvation, a sign that, with God’s grace, he had crushed the serpents in his life.

Now, would it occur to you or me to draw any culinary conclusions from this episode? Doubtless not. Yet we read in Genesis 32:32, “Therefore, to this day the sons of Israel do not eat the sinew of the hip which is on the socket of the thigh, because He touched the socket of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew of the hip.” Notice what the verse does say:  It does not say that God commanded the Israelites to memorialize this incident by refraining from eating this muscle. Rather, it says that the sons of Israel drew an inference from the event: They inferred that it would be improper to eat this particular muscle.

Does this inference make sense to us?  Does it go along with the way we twentieth-century people think? Clearly not.

My point is that twentieth-century readers are not at home in the worldview of the Bible. We do not understand how people thought and reasoned, because we do not share their presuppositions and outlook. The result is that we are prone to misinterpret the meaning of significant parts of Scripture, and this is particularly true of the Mosaic dietary laws. If we are to understand the real meaning of the Levitical code, we must acquire the mindset of the ancient Israelite, which is the mindset of the Bible. When such passages as Genesis 32:32 begin to make sense to us, we will be in a position to investigate Leviticus 11, but unless we become familiar with the “inner logic” of Genesis 32:32, the other dietary laws in the Bible will continue to be somewhat obscure to us. [4]

______________________________________
[1] See The Fruitful Field.
[2] See Touch Not, Taste Not, Handle Not and The Greatest Consumer.
[3] I have summarised Arthur Wallis’ book on fasting here [PDF]. See also Fasting as Sacrament.
[4] James B. Jordan, Studies in Food and Faith. Document included in the Complete James Jordan set.

“…of the angels He says:
‘Who makes His angels spirits
and His ministers a flame of fire.’”

God is the source of all things, and He identifies Himself as such in His speeches. Every speech is Covenantal, and every preamble within His speeches is a statement of transcendence. “I am the Lord your God.”

After the initial call comes delegation, Covenantal Hierarchy. A man, a Moses, an Abraham, receives the Word with meekness.

We know that angels are God’s messengers, the sent ones. They administered the Old Covenant as our tutors, Satan becoming the first false teacher, the first corrupt ambassador, or, if you will, the first publican.

[This post has been refined and included in Sweet Counsel: Essays to Brighten the Eyes.]

You must be logged in to see the rest of this post.

Join now for a year for $15!

Michael F. Bird recently wrote:

The Jerusalem council achieved a via media by finding in Scripture a justification for the inclusion of Gentiles within the church without requiring circumcision and placing upon Gentiles only the obligation to avoid idol food and sexual immorality. Yet the Jerusalem council also permitted the existence of two parallel theologies: one theology where the Gentiles were uncircumcised equals in a renewed Israel with holiness constituted by the Spirit and another theology where uncircumcised Gentiles were guests in an Israelite remnant that still defined holiness through Torah observance. The Jerusalem council’s decisions seem optimized in a setting where Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians remain in parallel rather than integrated, especially in relation to shared meals. The council did not stipulate the standard of law observance to be upheld for Eucharistic fellowship to ensue.

Bird makes some interesting observations in his post, but two parallel theologies? Is that really what was going on? And does the council’s decision apply to modern observance of the Torah (ie. Messianic Jews)?

Theology is an overused word, for sure. Two theologies almost indicates two ways of understanding God, if not two separate gods. But the mention of Torah observance clarifies Bird’s meaning: the Jerusalem council maintained that Jewish believers approached God in one way, and Gentile believers approached God in another. And both were valid.

This AD30-AD70 era of “overlap” was the fulfilment of the Old Covenant order, with the Hebrews/Jews as a priestly nation mediating for the Gentiles. There were two tables: Passover for the mediators alone, and Tabernacles for Jews and Gentiles as one body (with 70 bulls sacrificed for the 70 nations in Genesis 10). [1] Salvation came to the Jews first because they were in the Holy Place, and the Gentiles were in the outer court. The “sons of God” set the Covenant table and invite the “daughters of men” to eat at it.

The only reason the Jews could still observe the Torah, and why Paul could take a Nazirite vow, was that the Temple was still standing. Observing Torah might have been valid when the Jerusalem council met, but as these early decades of the church rolled on, the door of the new age was opening wider and wider, and the light of the church era was eradicating the shadows of the old order. [2]

The Revelation illustrates this process of increase/decrease in a number of ways—in symbols. One of the most striking is the Black Horse, announcing that the Old Covenant grains were wasting away while the New Covenant oil and wine were in abundant supply. The Green Horse (the Levitical sword) finished it off.

Another is the symbol of “buying and selling.” [3] In Acts, the Jewish Christians are meeting in the Temple, but by the end of the process they were locked out. The Jewish polity unwittingly locked the Pentecostal glory of God out of His own house. It was left unprotected, which brought about its desolation.

Like rusty trainer wheels, Torah observance was a decayed, torn veil that soon passed away, despite the desperate post-mortem stitching of the Herodians and the zealots. And as Paul stitched Jew and Gentile together across the empire over the next decades, Torah observance also decayed. By the end, it was only the hardliners who remained, and God called them together to Jerusalem for a feast in which they themselves were the meat on the table for the Gentiles they despised.

The “parallel theologies” were the fulfilment of the Old Covenant two-feast order, but this bipolarity was temporary. [4] The book of Hebrews trumpets the end of the division of Adam begun in Abraham. [5]

Salvation was certainly of the Jews, but that Abrahamic blood was now in heaven. The blood no longer mattered. Only Spirit now mattered.

The wise decision of the Jerusalem Council cannot be applied to anyone beyond AD70, when James’ temporary “Tabernacle of David” (the firstfruits church) was consumed by the true Temple of Solomon. We live in a permanent house.

“Beloved, now are we the sons of God.”

__________________________________
[1] See Eat Local and Die for the only way this applies today.
[2] See The End of Shadows.
[3] See Worship As Commerce.
[4] See Three Babylons.
[5] See The End of Judaism.

On Day 3 we have grain and fruit plants. They are the promise of bread and wine at God’s Sabbath table on Day 7.

The third elected judge was Deborah. Her song calls for a warrior like the sun. The seventh elected judge was Samson, “Sunrise.”

One theme of Day 7 is the Great Prophet, a man who has been tried and found faithful and included in the council of God. He has passed under the seven eyes of the Law (Day 4) and is now God’s Law incarnate, a lamb (bread and wine) with seven eyes.

Samson, the fallen bridegroom, lost his eyes. He was put to work grinding grain in a mill. There’s the bread. What was the wine? Samson’s blood. The wine of communion is a dose of death. It is a cup of judgment. Blind Samson, now humbled, became the flaming eyes of God among the Philistine rulers (the heavenly lights). Like Christ, in his death he put to an open shame the principalities and powers that had mocked him for sport. Christ was also perfected through suffering, but Samson’s story is more about the bride.

Samson prefigures not so much the crucifixion of Christ, but the suffering of Christ “filled up” in the firstfruits church. The Jews were blinded that the Gentiles might believe. Those Jews who were provoked to jealousy and did believe were humbled in the wilderness, excluded from the heritage they had boasted in, the things Paul called dung.

From the Revelation it seems that a remnant of converted Jews were slain in the besieged city before it fell. They were the true Nazirites, the warrior bride. [1] They brought down the pillars of Herod’s Temple and in death became founding pillars in a New Jerusalem.

For the saints, Jesus’ death as bread and wine was the promise of a greater rest they would enter into. Like Samson’s glorious hair, growing out of a bloodied Covenant head, their strength was made complete in weakness.

_________________________________________
[1] See Power on Her Head.

or New Covenant Stunt Double

Doug Wilson wrote something recently to correct our misunderstanding of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness:

When our Lord was tempted by the devil in the wilderness, He answered with Scripture, as we all know. Three times He was tested, and each time He replied in the words of Deuteronomy. But this is sometimes misunderstood. We tend to think that Jesus was quoting Scripture at the devil, as though the devil ought to start obeying it. But this was not His intent. When the Lord cited the words of Moses, each time it was because He would have been disobeying the text of Scripture if He had followed the suggestion of the tempter.

And this, in its turn, shows us the Lord’s attitude toward Scripture—what He believed the authority of Scripture to be, with regard to Him. We know that Jesus was obedient to the will of God (as seen in His prayer at Gethsemane), but we sometimes miss the fact that Jesus obeyed the Bible. In the wilderness, Jesus was not relying on a hidden, mysterious hot line to the Father that only He had. No, He bowed His head and His heart and refused to do what was wrong, as wrong was determined and settled by the sacred text.

If this is what He did, what should we do? In a moment we will be confessing our sins, and we will also be keying off the words of Deuteronomy. As a people who have neglected to do what God required of us, we acknowledge that righteousness belongs to the Lord, while shame of face belongs to us. And this is entirely determined by our relationship to every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

Jesus Under The Word, www.dougwils.com

As Peter Leithart has discussed, Jesus is Israel.[1] The process is as it was in Joshua 7 concerning Achan. The cloud of nations is whittled down to one nation. The nation is whittled down to a tribe. The tribe is whittled down to one Man. And what does that one man do? He becomes a body-double for everyone else. In particular, in the wilderness, He is Israel. Like Achan, He suffers for the defeat of the whole nation, and takes His entire family with Him to the grave. Like Achan, His death results in a track-jump concerning the Messianic line [2]. But unlike Achan, He brings them back from the grave, too, and incorporates them into the new Messianic line.

Relating the wilderness situation to Eden, it is the Law of the ascended, invisible Moses in the place of Adam here, not Jesus. Eve was faced with two “Lampstands” – a false one (Satan) and a true one that sinfully remained silent (Adam). In one of those weird Old Testament Nazirite-type gender bendings [3], Jesus is in the place of Israel, the bride. Here, she is filled with the Law of Moses. Jesus is not only reversing Adam’s silence but also undertaking this test as Greater Eve, Israel. It is holy war. A Nazirite’s hair is the glory of the bride “filled” with Law at Pentecost — Adam and Eve united against the lie. As both Adam and Eve, Jesus in the wilderness puts the spear through the false union of the couple in the tent. He puts Adam, and Adam’s race, to death by proxy.

For a New Covenant to be made, the Covenant head goes through a “liturgical” death and resurrection as head, and the people of God goes through a historical death and resurrection as body. Among many others, we see this in Moses’ personal exodus, in that of King Manasseh, and of course in that of Christ.

This practice was prefigured in the Tabernacle. We see bridegroom and bride in both beams of the cruciform house. The bull on the altar (Moses) dies under the Law from the lion throne (Ark). The Man on the table (Christ) dies under the Law at Pentecost (Lampstand). In each case, the bridegroom steps in to die for the bride. And of course, as a complete Tabernacle man, the entire structure bears Greater Eve as gems on His bosom (the Altar of Incense). In this, the New Covenant church is now the stunt double for the nations of the world as the pattern is postmillennially reversed, or “un-whittled.” Achan’s death brought victory to the whole of Israel.

______________________________
[1] Peter J. Leithart, Jesus As Israel: The Typological Structure of Matthew’s Gospel [PDF].
[2] From Doug Wilson, The Whore Becomes A Virgin Bride: “Rahab did not just marry into Israel. She married into the line of Phares, which had become the royal line because of the apostasy ofAchan. Achan was not just a pillaging foot soldier in the back ranks of Israel. He was a royal prince, and because of his sin, that royal line came to an end. The scarlet cord of election was transferred—from Zerah’s wrist to a prostitute’s window. This is so that we might never forget that everything God gives us is always all of grace, nothing but grace, grace to the uttermost.” (Emphasis added)
[3] See Power on Her Head.

Matthew 1-10 follows the Dominion pattern. After Jesus’ testing in the wilderness, in 4:18-8:13 Jesus called His disciples and began mustering a new holy army – the “next generation”.[1] It was reported to Him that the last Old Covenant Nazirite (holy warrior) was dead. It was time for new warriors. Jesus healed the uncleanness of many, creating a new priesthood. His success in the wilderness as a new Head made possible this new body. Peter Leithart writes:

By my count, there are twelve disfigurements listed in Leviticus 21:18-20 that disqualify a priest from serving at the altar and in the tabernacle: blind, lame, slit, deformed, broken foot, broken hand, hunchback, dwarf, defect of eye, eczema, scabs, crushed testicles. The listed disfigurements point to a disfigured Israel, twelve disfigurements for twelve tribes. And this adds some depth to the fact that Jesus heals many of these disfigurements as He creates a new Israel. [2]

There was not one factor that could possibly make a child of Adam unfit to serve in this new Tabernacle. Everyone could be made an acceptable sacrifice in this new High Priest. Yet, not everyone was chosen.

After this Trumpets section, 8:14 to 9:8 concerns Atonement, so Matthew quotes Isaiah to support his presentation of Christ as High Priest, carrying the sins of Israel:

This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah: “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases.”

After Jesus making the storm tossed sea into a sea of glass (the Laver, the veil), the Atonement symbols continue with demoniacs living among tombs (the Most Holy Place). Jesus symbolically took their nakedness. The demons, as the second goat, were expelled into a herd of unclean beasts (pigs) which attempted to cross the sea but were drowned. These two pictures present Christ as a boat, the ark of Noah that brings resurrection to Greater Eve but condemns the legions of the unclean. [3] He crossed the sea twice perhaps because the High Priest approached the Most Holy twice: once for the priesthood and once for the people.

___________________________________
[1]   The sermon on the mount within this structure of chapters 1-10 is “Deuteronomic.” Jesus “received” the Law from the Father as He ascended from the waters of baptism, and now repeated it to a new Israel to prepare them for conquest.
[2]  Disfigured Israel 
[3] Cobbled together from bits of Totus Christus chapter 26. Read the intro and chapter 1 here (PDF).

An important tenet of James Jordan’s interpretation of the Revelation is that it shows the Old Covenant angelic government vacating the premises and a human government moving in as a new administration – in AD70. This sounds strange to our ears, but I have found that it does play out in many ways, which it should if it is the correct interpretation.

Now, this handover of heavenly government was a gradual process in the first century, but consummated at the marriage feast of the Lamb. But its outworking in history is gradual. Interesting stuff. Here’s some thoughts.

You must be logged in to see the rest of this post.

Join now for a year for $15!

The Nazirite Vow

(Article requested by Drew J.)

This vow in Numbers 6 follows the “inspection of jealousy” in Numbers 5. Mark Horne observed that, just as the woman in Numbers 5 was to be inspected for harlotry with her hair untamed, so the Nazirite (whether male or female) was not to cut his or her hair. A Nazirite is a human picture of the church as a warrior bride. Hair is glory. Hair is the cloud of angels (and now, saints) surrounding the throne of God.

“Therefore the woman ought to have a symbol of authority on her head, because of the angels.” (1 Cor. 11:10)

A woman is the glory of her man. A woman’s hair is a symbol of submission, but also a symbol of her own “cloud of angels” – her godly offspring (See Ezekiel 5 for the children of Israel symbolised as the prophet’s hair, Micah 1:16, Matthew 10:30 and also my comments on Nehemiah and his hair-pulling). In battle, a Nazirite was like a blazing torch (the Ark-chariot/Adam) and smoking firepot (the smoke clouds of the incense altar/Eve army), parting his enemies like the pillar of God.

The hair is her “crop”, the twelve stars around her head (Rev. 12), and the question constantly posed to Israel concerns her role as God’s mediatorial Land. Is her crop one of thorns and thistles, or is it godly grain? This is also the question in Numbers 5, and the Lord put Israel to this exact test after the idolatry with the golden calf. The “harlots” were slain with the Levitical sword.

You must be logged in to see the rest of this post.

Join now for a year for $15!