In a Land from which Cainites were being dispossessed, Israel herself would not only judge between the manslayer and the avenger of blood, but provide cities of refuge to the “firstborn” Levites as a gift.

The Avenger of Blood

Like Adam, Cain would not “bear” his sin. But unlike Adam, Cain was rejecting the covering of animal substitutes. As the “offspring” of the serpent (kinghood without priesthood), he only understood law as tyranny. There was no place for mercy (Atonement) because mercy required Covenant confession.

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

Join now for a year for $15!

 And I looked, and behold, a black horse! And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. (Revelation 6:5)

 The book of Revelation is a mystery, yet like all good mysteries it is a book made entirely of clues. It is a glimpse through the torn veil of the Temple, that is, the flesh of Jesus, into the heavenlies. The cloud into which He was taken up is opened to John’s eyes that he might see the horses and chariots of God (2 Kings 6:17). But John is a prophet who knows the Bible, and like John we will only understand the symbols if we know the Bible. The conversation at God’s table is for those who know their Master’s mind, who hear His voice as children and thus quit themselves like men. To them, this is indeed a Revelation. To those outside His commission, it remains an enigma, terrible lightning and thunder and the sound of trumpets (Exodus 19:19; 20:18).

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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

Join now for a year for $15!

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, and they were unaware until the flood came and swept them all away, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. (Matthew 24:38-39)

Most disputes concerning the meaning of the Scriptures are not due to a lack of trying when it comes to hermeneutics. They result from a lack of due process. By this, I do not mean the process of interpretation but the identification in the Scriptures of the processes of God.

An example would be the meaning of Christ’s words concerning the unpardonable sin, which have terrified many Christians unnecessarily. Blasphemy against the Spirit is unpardonable not because it is the worst sin. It is unpardonable because it is the last sin.

This post has been slain and resurrected for inclusion in my 2015 book of essays, Inquietude.

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

Join now for a year for $15!

My Federal Vision friends believe baptism is an important subject, from both theological and pastoral points of view. I agree, but for me it is also an issue of aesthetics. The Bible has a wonderfully consistent internal logic, and paedobaptism crunches the gears at every turn.

Peter Leithart just posted something concerning baptism, and it’s worth answering, not only “because somebody on the internet is wrong,” but also because it is an issue I’ve just finished dealing with in The Shape of Galatians. It should be noted that Trinity House is hosting some lectures on sacraments by a baptist, so Dr Leithart and his colleagues have a spirit that should be imitated by theologians everywhere. My own posts here are always bait in the hope of a bite, a friendly disputatio, so don’t take them the wrong way. If a friend has soup on his tie, or wax in his ear, or a fertility rite in his sacrament, what sort of friend isn’t going to point it out!?

Dr Leithart writes:

Paul calls circumcision a “seal of righteousness” in Romans 4:11, and that same phrase has historically been applied to baptism.

But what does it mean to be a “seal of righteousness”? A seal (Greek sphragis) is an identifying mark. The word is used to describe brands on animals, identifying tattoos on slaves, signs that identify a man’s regiment in the military. To be sealed is to be identified in some way.

A “seal of righteousness,” it would seem, is a mark that identified the one sealed as “righteous.” That’s true for Abraham: He trusted Yahweh’s promise, Yahweh counted it for righteousness and thus considered Abraham to be righteous, and the seal of circumcision imposed that status on Abraham’s flesh. Abraham would have explained his circumcision as a seal that Yahweh considered him righteous.

But then that same seal is applied to the infant Isaac, and then many other infants, on the eighth day. It’s still a “seal of righteousness.” Changing Isaac’s nappies, Sarah could have seen Isaac’s circumcision and thought, “Yahweh sealed my little son as a righteous one! Praise to Yahweh!”

When we apply this logic to baptism, as paedobaptists are wont to do, what are we to conclude? Is baptism a “seal of righteousness,” also for our children?

Firstly, what does Paul actually say in Romans 4? Abraham became the father of a priestly nation because he believed. He believed first, and then received the Circumcision. The question here is this: if Abraham and the men in his household believed before they were circumcised, why wasn’t Isaac required to believe first? Because Abraham was sealed as righteous, and through him all Israel were given promises. It says nothing about Isaac being sealed as righteous. He was the fulfillment of the promise.

Notice that Dr Leithart doesn’t mention males, but infants. That’s the classic bait-and-switch. Circumcision wasn’t about child rearing but child bearing, about a physical seed. Yes, Sarah would have praised God every time she changed Isaac’s nappy. She would also have praised God every time Abraham was naked before her. Circumcision was a reminder of their previous barrenness, which was removed because Abraham believed God. Both the birth and circumcision of Isaac were a sign of Abraham’s righteousness, and nobody else’s.

So, why were Abraham and Sarah barren in the first place? Because they were a new Adam and Eve, the beginning of an “Edenic” nation which would carry the curse for all nations. Abraham plants trees and buries Sarah in a tree-circled grove. Thus, Circumcision was about the Land and the womb, the firstfruits and the firstborn. It was about cutting off Cain and cutting off Canaan. It was inherently Edenic, because the original promises were given to Adam and then distributed by Noah.

God promised fertility to Adam, constructed Eve, and then qualified Adam to receive that fertility as a gift. The Land and the womb would not be opened until Adam was qualified. He sinned, but the shedding of blood allowed God to bless him still with a fertility in Land and womb that was tempered, not cut off, by a curse. Circumcision was likewise a shedding of blood that would allow God to give a faithful Man a fruitful Land and a fruitful womb. But things had progressed, because although death was mitigated in Eden, human blood was still shed. The mitigating blood in Circumcision was now human blood. In a sense, every male Israelite was cut off as an Abel that he might not be a Cain. Isaac himself was a son offered as an ascension sacrifice. He was symbolically slain as a Cain and “born again by faith” as an Abel, hence the constant battle for Covenant Succession between firstborn and secondborn sons, right up to Christ and the Herods, upon whom all the righteous blood from Abel would be avenged.

Because of his faith, righteousness was counted to Abraham. Working through Galatians I noticed a structural correspondence between Paul’s reference to this counting, and the counting of the sons of Israel. The name of the book Numbers refers to the two censuses which bookend it, the generation which came out of Egypt (“my firstborn son”) but died in the wilderness, and the new uncircumcised generation which took possession of the Land. The children of Israel are numbered so many times it gets boring. But the point is that they are counted. As Dr Leithart has himself noted, Revelation 7 alludes to Numbers when it counts out the 144,000, the “firstfruits” of the Land, the first Jews who believed the Gospel. But notice that the Gentile believers are not counted. They are count-less, like the stars in the sky or the sand of the seashore. To be “counted” is to be a sacrifice, an ascension offering like Isaac. The counting of righteousness to Abraham resulted in the counting of sons and their inheritance in the Land. Israel’s physical and agricultural fertility were evidence of the faith of Abraham in the promises of God.

But the third promise was this countless blessing to all nations. The nations, generally speaking, were never under such a curse of barrenness. Their offspring were always countless, and their swarming hordes were held back by God when Israel was faithful, and brought by God upon Israel in a “flood” of judgment when faithless. And the famines also seem linked to the presence of Abraham and his sons. Indeed, it was the very fruitfulness of the nations (in both Land and womb) which deceived Israel into worshiping their gods of fertility, the Baals. Just as it was in the Garden, Molech was simply another dragon hijacking the offspring of the woman with an offer of certain food. [1]

So, what kind of sons is Paul talking about when he refers to Gentiles who have Abraham as their father? Obviously, it is those who believed.

Paedobaptists take this faith as “household by household” to tie it once again to offspring, but for Gentiles it was never about offspring, or the Land, which were always tied together, just as Abel and the ground were tied together. This question is answered by taking note of the nature of this great blessing for all nations. Once again, it takes us back to Genesis. Just as the Land and womb were opened by the mitigation of death, so also the curse upon Land and womb was swallowed up in the defeat of death. The resurrection of Christ made Circumcision, the Jew-Gentile distinction, redundant. [2] This is why the writer of Hebrews works his way from slavery to death (World), to the children of Abraham (Land and womb), to Adam’s temptation (Garden), in Hebrews 2:14-18. Jesus was a better Adam, then a better Abel, and then a better “son of God,” [3] a priest king after the order of Melchizedek, a priesthood of all nations:

Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. For surely it is not angels that he helps, but he helps the offspring of Abraham. Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.

So, the blessing upon the Gentiles was not a fertility which they already possessed. It was the removal of the fear of death. Israel bore their barrenness as a substitute, and then Jesus, as Israel, bore their death as well. The significance of the womb of Sarah and the tomb of Sarah were united in Christ. The very Land itself shook with birth pangs at His resurrection, and again just before the first resurrection, as Jesus predicted. There was never any need for a sign upon infants. There was a sign upon all Abrahamic males as  Cains who received God’s mercy and subsequently enjoyed the restoration of the fruit of the Land.

Now that the seed had come, and the old Land had “given birth,” a new sign was required, a sign which pictured a new Land rising from the abyss, a heavenly country. The New Covenant, and its sign, are not about the fertility of Christian wombs but about the fertility of Christian tombs. This is not hard to understand.

Baptism has nothing to do with physical fertility, but that is where the baptismal regeneration of the Federal Cision, er, Vision, takes us. A Federal Vision friend recently celebrated the birth of another child, and commented that this birth was another victory against Satan. That floored me, but this is surely the next logical step. The second and third generations of the Federal Vision are not going to be scared to claim the crazy things that the first generation would be reluctant to say out loud.

To claim that a baptized infant is “righteous” is not only to misunderstand and misrepresent baptism (and thus misrepresent the Gospel itself) but to misunderstand and misrepresent Circumcision as well.

_____________________________________
[1] See “Kids in the Kitchen: Passover in the Motherland” in God’s Kitchen: Theology You Can Eat & Drink.
[2] The New Covenant didn’t institute a refurbished distinction concerning offspring and territory, which is why paedobaptism historically has always been perverted into religious nationalism, the “Cainite” kingdom of the Herods, and indeed the very same offer which Satan made to Jesus in the wilderness. The reason this will always occur is because it is inherent in the “tribal”nature of the rite.
[3] Genesis 6 concerns the priestly line of Seth intermarrying with the godless, autonomous Cainite kingdom, which brought about the end of all flesh.

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)

___________________________________
[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

“Once the architecture is taken into account, the text is not ridiculous but terrifying. It marches inexorably through the deep rhythm of the seven days with laser precision, stately deliberation, and omniscient vision. These words were breathed by the source of all breath.”

Part I – Picking Up Sticks

“You shall kindle no fire in all your dwelling places on the Sabbath day.” (Exodus 35:3)

Many Christians ignore, and atheists poke fun at, the weird bits of the Bible, as though these texts are primitive, distorted, or contrived. Nothing could be further from the truth. The truth is that these texts are designed to choke the faithless, and to be chewed over, meditated upon by the faithful, that we might be changed.

Why was fire forbidden on the Sabbath? The first thing to do with any text is identify its context. No more treating Bible texts like fortune cookies, do you hear me?

Firstly, it is the first new commandment after a “new covenant” has been given. It follows the breaking of the “old covenant,” that is, the first pair of tablets after Israel’s sin with the golden calf, and the establishment of a “new covenant.”

The account of that sin is flanked by “Tabernacle” chapters. Before the sin are the chapters of instructions for the building of the tent of meeting. After the sin are the chapters concerning its actual construction. The golden calf is a “fiery” event at the center of the process, between the Word and the Flesh.

However, there is also fire at the end.

So Moses finished the work. Then the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. (Exodus 40:33-35)

You might notice that the cloud covered the tent (external) and the glory filled the tent (internal). Here are the Old and New Covenants, external and internal Law. But the point is that the glory of the Lord did not fill the house until all the materials were donated, crafted and assembled.

The Tabernacle was a substitutionary model of the Lord’s people, their own tents being gathered around it in Numbers. At this point in Covenant history, the people themselves could not be filled with the glory. James Jordan observes that the timber poles of the court and the tent, “trees of righteousness” (having been cut down and “resurrected”, transferred from nature to culture) represented God’s people at one level, the Natural. Then the timber furnitures in the Holy Place, covered in gold, each one with an architectural “crown,” represent the glorified people of God at an even holier level, the Supernatural.

The Lampstand was a replica of the “burning bush” which was not consumed, but the entire tent was a gathering of wood which was not consumed by the fire of God. Moses, had he entered the tent, would have been consumed in this house which despised the flesh. The house was a picture of resurrection: a tree which remains evergreen, despite the cutting of the wood (Bronze Altar) and the most ferocious testing by fire (Lampstand), it was covered in a “cloud” of fragrant leaves, burial spices which could not die (unlike those which Adam and Eve used to hide themselves – Incense Altar).

So, what of the text? It follows the “Creation Week” order of the Tabernacle elements, which give us a clue as to its meaning. Once the architecture is taken into account, the text is not ridiculous but terrifying. It marches inexorably through the deep rhythm of the seven days with laser precision, stately deliberation, and omniscient vision. These words were breathed by the source of all breath.

Moses, with face veiled, was speaking as the mouth of the uncreated Word:

We must learn these patterns. They are the manner in which God always speaks. Every splinter of the Bible is, as Peter Leithart commented, a lens through which the entire Bible is refracted. If we do know these patterns, we will see that the household fire not only corresponds with the filling of the Tabernacle with the Shekinah, but also with the Feast of Booths, otherwise known as Tabernacles, and Ingathering. The word “booths” literally means “clouds.” [1]

The feasts are not given until Leviticus 23, but the point of Booths was that every Israelite household, now purified after the Great Day (Atonement), would be a temporary Tabernacle, and Israel would minister to the nations. This is what the world would have been like had Adam not sinned. A man would leave his father and mother (now the dead stone tablets in the Ark [2]) and establish a new household of faith, yet filled with the Spirit given to faithful Adam in the Garden. [3] The entire world would be filled with lights, (much like those nighttime satellite photos), just like the stars in the sky. But the light would be Triune: Physical (Genesis 1), Social (Genesis 2) and Ethical (Genesis 2), a house of many dwellings (John 14:2), each in its own unique way a three-level house like the Tabernacle.

So, the significance of the prohibition goes beyond the labor necessary in those days to kindle a fire. The Sabbath, picturing our final rest, and the glorification of all nations, is the day when the only fire is that of God dwelling in all human flesh as evergreen burning bushes, trees of righteousness who are not consumed but animated by the Words of God. A household fire on the Sabbath was a strange fire, a sin against the entire congregation, much as any false religion, philosophy, ideology or heresy is a sin against all mankind, a fire that must be stamped out.

It seems that gathering kindling on the Sabbath instead of being “gathered” to God made one an idolater. One’s own household was usurping the household of God. In Numbers 15: 32-36, the people of Israel understood this. They judged with wisdom based on the stoicheia given them in Exodus 35. In this instance, they themselves became “transcendent words,” that is, self-governing. Israel was becoming the holy house which consumed the unholy within it.

Once again, an awareness of the structure of the text fills me with awe and terror. It follows the fivefold (closed scroll) pattern, yet the word of the Lord is sevenfold, a curse upon One Man that is the blessing of a new creation for all Israel. The Sanctions cycle and the entire cycle end with the phrase “outside the camp” in the place of Booths, or Shekinah. The strange fire, the false god entertained by this Adam, must be cast out. This “new commandment” would remind them to love their neighbors as themselves, as one household, a household of faith.

Jesus was One Man, gathering timbers and sticks for kindling for His own house on the Sabbath.

“I came to cast fire on the Land, and would that it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49)

“The Jews picked up stones again to stone him.” (John 10:31)

____________________________________
ART: Moses and the Burning Bush, Joe Moorman.

[1] See A Place Called Clouds.
[2] See Why Ten Words on Two Tablets?
[3] See Spirit of Adam 1 and 2.

Paul’s Numbers

We have arrived at what appears to be the center of the epistle, which would be Testing (in matrix terms), the “opening” of the Law (Ethics 2 in Covenant terms) and “purification” (in sacrificial terms). And, being at the centre of the book, this part is the Apostle’s main argument, or thesis. Just as Christ and the coming of the kingdom in His sending of the Spirit are found at the centre of Covenant history, so the transformation by fire of the Levitical priesthood into a fragrant Bride are at the centre of Galatians.

At this point, it seems that there may be more than one cycle here, which means this section could enjoy its own expansion “fractally” to allow for more exposition. We’ll have to wait and see. But Paul’s journey has reached the fourth book of Moses, “In The Wilderness.”
This post has been refined by fire and included in a new book, The Shape of Galatians.

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

Join now for a year for $15!

The miraculous gifts given to the firstfruits church are part of a very large pattern, one which we can can see thwarted in the Garden of Eden, and presented as laws in the Ten Commandments. It is the “song of the Woman” after the crushing of the serpent. It is a “legal testimony” that the Word of God is true. We see this epitomized in the life of Paul the apostle, who sought every opportunity to testify in court concerning the resurrection of Jesus. In the greater picture, the witness of the firstfruits church is this part of the picture in the history of the world. That legal witness continues today, but in the first century it had a special purpose, and that was to divide the Jews into “two goats,” two women, Hagar and Sarah (the past and the future) and bring down the curses of the Covenant upon those who rejected the Gospel. The gift of tongues was part of that miraculous witness, a corroborrated legal witness in the courtroom of God, [1] and the purpose of this “Babelic” gift was completed when the Herods and their Temple, the “Babylon” of the day, was destroyed. [2] Consequently, the miraculous gifts ended with the firstfruits church. The time of “childhood” for the Church was over. [3]

Luke Welch has some related observations which are interesting, and he, like Jordan, demonstrates how much we Christians miss because we fail to read the Bible as a united book.

As I read along in Numbers, I keep seeing things that Paul has latched onto. For example, Paul says (1 Corinthians 14.5-9, 24):

“Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. The one who prophesies is greater than the one who speaks in tongues, unless someone interprets, so that the church may be built up. Now, brothers, if I come to you speaking in tongues, how will I benefit you unless I bring you some revelation or knowledge or prophecy or teaching? If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played? And if the bugle gives an indistinct sound, who will get ready for battle? So with yourselves, if with your tongue you utter speech that is not intelligible, how will anyone know what is said?… If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds?”

The punch line to this whole thing is at the bottom, but let’s focus on the bugle thing first. Look at Numbers 10.1-3, 9:

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying, “Make two silver trumpets. Of hammered work you shall make them, and you shall use them for summoning the congregation and for breaking camp. And when both are blown, all the congregation shall gather themselves to you at the entrance of the tent of meeting. … And when you go to war in your land against the adversary who oppresses you, then you shall sound an alarm with the trumpets, that you may be remembered before the LORD your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies.”

The bugle gets two things to happen which Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 14:

1. Gets the congregation to assemble
2. Gets the congregation to be ready for battle by breaking camp while making a memorial directed at God.

Having established the passage connection, notice another huge one, which we see when God gives “the Spirit which is on Moses” out to the 70 elders, and two have not shown up at the elder assembly. They were caused to prophecy even in the camp, and Joshua wants to help by saying, “My lord Moses, stop them!” What is Moses’ reply?

But Moses said to him, “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the LORD’s people were prophets, that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!” (Numbers 10.29)

Remember that? Now I want you all to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. (1 Corinthians 14.5). Paul’s heart is Moses’ ministry desire too.

I note also that this prophetic period for both Paul and Moses:

1. was a forty year period between defeat of one enemy and another
2. Pharaoh, and Philistines (for Moses)
3. Caesar, and Satanic Israel (for Paul)
4. Moses took the people INTO the land for conquest.

Throughout Paul’s writing, he is calling the church to the conquest of the whole world, and at the end of those forty years they will be forced out of the land, in a sense, after the destruction of Jerusalem.

_______________________________
[1] See A Tongue of Gold.
[2] See Three Babylons.
[3] See Cessation.

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. (Romans 7:21-23)

Interpreters debate the meaning of Paul’s words in Romans 7:14-25. Are we to apply these statements to a Christian or a non-Christian? Could a Christian utter these words? Perhaps a better question is, are these the words of an unregenerate man?

Did Paul as a Pharisee ever have such thoughts? As a friend wisely pointed out, the Pharisees were hypocrites. They condemned Jesus for healing on the Sabbath and then planned to murder Him on the Sabbath. “The thing that I hate, that I do,” would not have been the cry of their hearts. These are the words of one terribly aware of his condemnation under a just Law. David could certainly have uttered these words. Paul could not have entertained such thoughts as he incarcerated and murdered Christians.

Paul is expressing the “hunger for righteousness” which the Law brings about, by the Spirit, in a contrite heart. The Law had carried out this ministry for centuries in Israel and through her ministry convicted many Gentile hearts as well. The Law brings enlightenment concerning sin, but that is the limit of its power. And such enlightenment is often the awaking of monsters (as James Jordan has observed) who then plunge themselves into deeper darkness. They see their sin but do not repent, and it then becomes high-handed, sin with full knowledge that it is sin (Numbers 15:30). That is the flipside of the ministry of the Law. (I believe that in AD70, after one generation of mercy, Jesus, now enthroned, might have said, “Do not forgive them, Father; they know exactly what they are doing.” This is exactly the scenario facing Western culture right now.)

This hunger for righteousness, this desperate awareness of the void within, the chasm between desire to fulfill the Covenant and one’s natural ability, would be the difference between the hate-filled Pharisees and those Jews and God-fearing Gentiles who received Christ. Those who reject this position of tension, this state of desperation, are filled with seven worse demons.

The state that Paul describes is thus the state of the “blessed,” Temple vessels waiting to be plundered from the house of the strong man and filled to the brim with the righteousness of Christ.

Paul’s point is that the Spirit of Christ is not a revised but still powerless moral code. It is a satisfaction of this hunger for righteousness, as Jesus promised in His most famous sermon.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.” (Matthew 5:6)

The chapter break between 7 and 8 is thus an episode cliffhanger. The words of Jesus had come to pass. Those who heard the Gospel and believed were New Creations. The Law had formed them and now they had been filled.

“They shall neither hunger anymore nor thirst anymore…” (Revelation 7:16)

A little while ago I posted a video which I found very helpful.

“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.