The Stoning of Israel

I think it’s worth looking at the literary structure of this passage. Here’s a revised version of the sheet I handed out after the sermon.

As I’ve written before, modern readers (and commentators) only look at the content of the text, but the authors of Scripture also communicate to us through where they place that content within that text, i.e. how it is arranged.

Without any punctuation or text layout, all we have to go on is previous literary structures, all of which can be traced back to Genesis 1. Each phrase is “self effacing,” that is, it is symbolic, a type, pointing away from itself to something else as part of a process of redemption. By its “symbolic” or typological content, we can identify the structure of the text. (When brilliant theologians look at this theory and reject it, I must admit I feel like picking up rocks.)

Because of the complexity of the diagramming, I’ve uploaded the text as a PDF, which you can download here. But the commentary will remain here, so (if you have a wide enough screen) you can have both open at once and not have to scroll up and down.

1. We have seven stanzas, following the Bible matrix, which means that as a body of text, these stanzas will work through (a) a process of Creation or renewal, from forming to filling; (b) the “festal” process of agriculture, from planting to harvest; and (c) a process of Conquest (Dominion), from Egypt to Canaan.
2. Within these, each stanza works on the same pattern (“fractally”) which is where it gets interesting, because the authors of the Scriptures, and the authors of any good literature, often play with well-established structures (and our expectations) to make a point. They slay them (open the Word) and resurrect them (expound the Word) as something new, taking us from where we are to where they are, like all good preachers.
3. The first stanza is five-fold, following the Biblical Covenant structure. We can tell where this ends because the second stanza begins with “you also,” the Hierarchy.
   The first stanza begins with the source of their life, the Son of God. Notice where His rejection is placed in the text. Jesus was judged under the Law of Moses—at least according to the PR campaign of the Jewish leaders. As I mention in The Covenant Key, men cannot live without rules, so the best way to avoid obedience to the Laws of God is to replace them, and to then work on classifying actual obedience to God as an offensive hate crime.
   The words chosen and rejected occur many times in this passage. This is the Urim and Thummim process of the judgment of God, light and dark, night and day, the two goats of Atonement, the execution of the Covenant sanctions. This line stands in this stanza where the High Priest stood on the Day of Atonement, the true Adam able to stand face to face with God. This puts the word “precious” at Glorification, the finished product, a New Covenant for Israel. If we group the centre three stanzas together under “Ethics,” we see the five-fold Covenant structure of the first stanza played out in first century Israel as a new seven-fold Creation. The Law is split into three, recreating the structure of the Trinity administered by the Spirit in the people of God: Father – Spirit – Son here becomes Head (Son) – Spirit – Body.
4. Stanza 2 is seven-fold because the Law is opened in the people of God. Notice “built up” at Ascension and “offer up” at Maturity. Built up is the bloody bronze altar and “offer up” is the fragrant golden altar. The passage forms the house, then fills the house. We see the same thing in Peter’s ministry. At the house of the High Priest, he condemns himself by denying Jesus, who then “looks” at Him from above (the fiery eyes of the Lampstand-Law). This is the altar of death, a sentence carried out on the Land. But later, Peter sees Jesus by another fire, a fire by the Sea (Gentiles). This is the altar of resurrection, and Peter’s threefold Covenantal “no” is resurrected as a threefold Covenantal “yes” or Amen.
5. Notice that all the mentions of stone are in the first four stanzas. The passage itself calls the nation of Israel into the courtroom of God. She is presented with a new Law written on flesh, Jesus as the tablets of God. Like Moses, the Law of Moses in this passage doesn’t make it past Deuteronomy. In fact, it is “cut off” in the “midst of the week.” The house of unbelieving Israel became demonic after Pentecost. Perhaps the phrase “rock of offence” means a rock of transgression. In this stanza, Adam’s feet trip on Day 6, and there is judgment, not rest, on Day 7.
6. The sixth stanza matches the second. Stanza 2 is delegation, the oracles given to Israel. Stanza 6 is vindication, their fulfilment. The hearts of stone in 2 are now hearts of flesh, and the particular thread of the matrix that shines here is the festal one.
   We think that the difference between stone and flesh is only their hardness, but there is also the comparison between Lot’s wife and Abraham’s. She who had children became barren and she who was barren became fruitful. The New Israel is not a barren Land, and the Old Israel became the incestuous cave of Lot and his daughters, who manipulated nature to obtain a future, but only bred enemies of the Covenant. (They can most certainly be redeemed, as Ruth was.) The old Israel was not only stoned. She was a Land “sown with salt,” a mineralized miscarriage of justice (2 Kings 2:21).
   The Ten Commandments were good, but they could not have true children (paedobaptists, take note). In a sense, the Old Covenant itself, the Succession of Moses, stones without the Spirit of God, was a eunuch, and could not enter into the heavenly Tabernacle. But a eunuch with the Spirit of God could enter. Not only would he not enter to serve, but he would be enthroned at the feast. [1]
   It is fitting that the word “possession” is placed at Pentecost. It is followed by the fulfilment of the feasts in the apostolic ministry and the first resurrection. The firstfruits martyrs saw God face to face and now reign with Him.
7. The final stanza concerns the finished house. It is a shelter for the nations, the shelter that Israel was called to be, but could not truly be until the True Israel arrived.

Can you imagine the length of a Bible commentary that took literary structure into account?

[1] See New Covenant Virility.

“…that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on the Land, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah, son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.” Matthew 23:35

“from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah who perished between the altar and the temple. Yes, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation.” Luke 11:51

The Hebrew word for “land” is feminine. [1] The fruitful Bride is pictured in the fruitful field. Both are to be cultivated and cared for under God by Covenant.

When the priesthood was faithful, God promised to make the people, animals and Land fruitful: the Covenant “to,” the input of the Spirit as Head, as Covenant Word made flesh. Deuteronomy 28 gives a long list of ways in which God would make her abundant.

After harvest, the priests, like Adam, would bring the firstfruits to God, the evidence of Covenant faithfulness, and God’s “interest.” Adam’s death-to-self (as Noah) brings Eve’s willing subordination (the animals/nations). Abundance and easy plunder always picture the faithful Bride, humbling herself before God like Sarah, Manoah’s wife, Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary. This is the Covenant “fro,” the return of the Spirit as Body, the Covenant Word clothed in glory. Adam’s faithfulness reverses the curse upon Eve.

Continued obedience would bring domination, politically and economically. This chosen nation — as priest — would picture the relationship between the Father and the Son. An obedient priesthood would create an ever-expanding glory, a Bride gathered together by the Spirit.

Blood and Wine

Covenant is not perpetual motion, maintaining the status quo. It is even better than that. Obedience creates a door through which God miraculously pours new life into the world by His Spirit: spiritually (relationally) for sure, but also economically and politically. [2] The abundance we receive from the back and forth is a multiplication we cannot explain, a conception of new life on the threshing floor that bursts into the world from another realm, fearfully and wonderfully made. Sex is Covenant. Economics is Covenant. Commuting to and from work is Covenant. And God brings the increase.

Until, of course, we start acting like squatters (gods) instead of tenants (stewards by Covenant). The relationship between church and state becomes Jezebel and Ahab, Sapphira and Ananias — a conspiracy with the serpent to hijack the fruitful field and its abundance, resulting from an unwillingness to recognise God as the owner, the One who brings the increase. Such conspiracies always end in the shedding of innocent blood, and God almost always brings a famine. If there is scarcity, it is a spiritual problem. We panic and turn to other gods, as Israel did in the book of Judges (hence Jordan’s equation of Israel’s Baalism as a form of humanism) [3]. There is the shedding of innocent blood, and Ruth begins with a famine, a barren field and a barren woman (Naomi). It takes the obedience of a new Adam (Boaz) and the willing Covenant subordination of a new woman (Ruth as “field”) to renew the worship, the Land and the Promise. [4]

Throughout the Old Testament, Israel (the Bride) is inextricably linked to the Land by Covenant. Even when she was “vomited out” at the exile, it was under the sanctions of the Covenant. She was unfaithful to God (sacrilege in the Temple) and killed her own children (abominations the Land). God warned her, judged her under the Covenant conditions (divorce), and then He slew her. Blood for blood.

Innocent blood makes the Land unclean, and guilty blood makes it clean again. Instead of the wine of a bridal feast (the true vine), there is a Land soaked in blood (the curse of thorns). Lusts bring forth death.

Blood and Figleaves

Which brings us to Cain and Abel. Some important background first, so bear with me. What I want to say rests upon some observations by James Jordan concerning the events in Genesis 4.

Biblical chronology shows that Abel’s murder would have taken place almost 130 years after Adam’s sin. Jordan writes:

“After killing Abel, Cain went out and built a city, naming it after his firstborn, Enoch (Genesis 4:17). It seems odd that a man would build a city all by himself.

We can ‘get real’ about this situation if we pay attention to Genesis 5:3 and 4:25. These sentences tell us that Seth was born when Adam was 130 years old, and that he was born after the death of Abel as a replacement for Abel. What we learn from this, thinking ‘really’ and concretely, is that Cain slew Abel about 128 years after the creation, when Cain was, say, 128 years old and Abel was, say, 126 years old.

Now, think about this. Adam and Eve had obviously had many sons and daughters by the time of this murder. Cain and Abel had each married one of those daughters, had had children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren—at least—of their own by the time of the murder.

Getting real, I suggest that Abel, as keeper of flocks and as secondborn, was the priestly worship leader under Adam, while Cain, as firstborn, was the kingly clan leader, the prince under Adam. God had killed an animal to clothe Adam and Eve and had rejected their figleaf vegetable garments. Hence it was clearly known that one approaches God first and foremost through animal offerings, not through vegetable ones. Vegetables might be added, but on top of the animals (compare Leviticus 1 and 2). This means that in some sense Abel was worship leader.

Getting real, I suggest that annually ‘at the turn of the year,’ Adam and then Abel as his deacon led the entire human race in worship. This had been going on for 128 years. By this time there were thousands of human beings in attendance.

Then, one fateful year, Cain decided to bring his own vegetable offering separate from Abel. Some kind of revolutionary spirit is manifest here. Indeed, what we see here is the ‘state’ taking over the ‘church’ and the liturgy of the church, something that has happened loads of times in history. Cain was not content to be clan leader. He wanted to be ‘high priest’ as well.

In this event, Cain was rejected in front of thousands of people, in front of the entire human race. This was not some private disgrace, but a public humiliation. He was embarrassed in front of his own entire extended family. It is because this humiliation was so public and so intense that in his rage he slew Abel.

Then Cain went out and built a city. We can see now that he did not go alone. There were doubtless other men who had joined with Cain in his revolutionary act. There were doubtless sons and grandsons and others of his extended family who went with him. I’m not going to bother to try and do the math. I’ll just say that probably a thousand or more people went with Cain. That’s how he could build a city.” [5]

When Abel and Cain approached the Garden for Covenant renewal (at “the proto-Veil”), it was as representatives. As a national Day of Covering, we can assume there was to be a dual atonement, two offerings: head and body, as in Leviticus 1, the complete Covenant process. I do think it took more than one animal to cover both Adam and Eve. Perhaps this is also the case here: the first animal as head and the second as body. Abel’s offering was the to and Cain’s the fro. Abel’s approach (discovering of Adam) and offering (covering of Adam) was to build the house, open the Holy Place. Cain’s offering (discovering of Eve) was to fill it, to present, symbolically, the Bride (covering of Eve).

Abel made the first approach, obediently. Perhaps Cain did understand that the Bride was a “fruitful field,” and so offered such fruits. But like all the crucial Old Covenant brides she was a barren field. As Eve, she required a covering provided by innocent blood to make her fruitful again for the next cycle.

We can see how this was easily distorted in the time of the Judges, and how easily this is distorted today. Any scarcity under the “global economy” of the New Covenant is a spiritual problem. Prosperity is to come from God but we insist on manufacturing it. We cannot create miraculously except by obedience (however imperfect) to the Covenant. Our attempts are simply inflations, bubbles, phantom pregnancies. All our fiscal policies are a breaking of wind. [6]

This goes for Cain’s offering. It was the fruit of a rebellious heart, an unwillingness to submit to the revealed Word of God. Abel’s witness as priest was faithful, even after his martyrdom. There was no exploitation from the Adam. But there was an insubordinate Eve. Based on Israel’s prosperity and defiance later in history, we may surmise that the testimony of Cain’s offering was the “grace” of Bart Simpson:

“Dear God, we paid for all this stuff ourselves, so thanks for nothing.”

Exhibit Abel

As under humanism, communist and socialist, the state took the place of God as provider, and “Stalin” slew the clergy. Instead of there being evidence of Covenant faithfulness, the evidence against Cain was the wrong blood on the ground. Instead of an Atonement that would keep barrenness at bay, a field that was fruitful, there was the first killing field.

His philosophy was exposed for what is was — sterile as salt. Just as the fruitful Garden was barred to Adam, the fruitful Land was barred to Cain. He, too, should have been under the sword but God again showed mercy. God demonstrated to Cain that He was still the Provider. Cain again rejected God as Provider. He built a city away from God — a false “Bride.” As with the vegetables, it was again a counterfeit of the Covenant fro, a manufactured fruitfulness, a figtree covered with leaves but no fruit, like Adam. It was an empty room.

Peter Leithart writes:

Cain’s city is a city of wanderers, those who have been disconnected from the soil. Modern cities are proverbially full of rootless wanderers, but this is not only the modern city. The city as such is a city of wanderers, people cut off from the soil. The city is the city of fear. Cain is afraid that “whoever finds me will kill me,” and though the Lord assures Him of protection, he immediately goes and builds a city, walling himself in from the dangers outside, creating the sacred protective space of the city. [7]

Now, I hope you are still with me. Instead of the holy to and fro:

F A T H E R  > < S O N  +  B R I D E
and
F A T H E R  > B R I D E <  S O N

it was:

F A L S E   F A T H E R  |  A B E L  (sacrificed son)  <  C A I N  (false son)
and
F A L S E   F A T H E R  >  C I T Y   O F   C A I N  (false body)  <  C A I N   (false son)

This laid the foundation for the establishment of false worship, false Covenants and a world filled with violence and bloodshed. False worship, bereft of obedient faith, wants nothing of substitutes. This was the outcome in Genesis 6, and it was also the outcome in Judaea under the Herods.

F A T H E R  > <  S O N S  +  F A L S E   B R I D E S

F A L S E   F A T H E R  >  I N N O C E N T  B L O O D  <  F A L S E  S O N S

This, understandably, resulted in the end of the first Creation (in both cases, hence Jesus’ references to AD70 with flood motifs), and the cutting off of all flesh, a worldwide circumcision. In both cases, the Matrix expands to a new level, with substitute smoke (Noah’s obedient animals = Gentiles) and a worldwide substitute Laver (the flood = crystal city). The raven was the Covenant curse, most likely feeding on floating bodies, flying to and fro until the waters went down, and the Lord put away His sword (cf. Rev. 19).

Wait, He didn’t put it away, did He? He gave it to Noah/Christ, the first human judge, the man who built and filled a house with many mansions, an infinite room.

Next time: Filling the Infinite Room.

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[1] See What the Seraphim Really Said.
[2] Our modern problems — economic and environmental — are all spiritual ones. But Western Christians don’t see the world this way at all. We’ve swallowed a secular worldview hook, line and sinker. The future is sure going to be interesting as we mature in our understanding of the world as ours by Covenant.
[3] See Baal’s Stimulus Package.
[4] See Fairy Tale in a Field.
[5] James B. Jordan, Getting Real in Genesis, Biblical Horizons No. 203. Subscribe at www.biblicalhorizons.com
[6] See Building Cages Out of Freedom.
[7] Peter J. Leithart, City of Cain.

Infinite Room series links here.
INFROOM

It’s cat-among-the pigeons time again.

Identifying the Bible Matrix in Acts reveals in quite a number of places that the author, Luke, has a sense of humour. Or the Holy Spirit does. In Acts 8, at Ascension (Firstruits), the Ethiopian eunuch asks Philip to hop up into his chariot. [1]

Philip opens the Law for him at Pentecost, the man is “resurrected” at Trumpets, baptized at Atonement (the Laver), and at Tabernacles we have both a Jew and Gentile whose witness flows out into the nations.

I think I’ve dealt with the significance of the position of the Laver as baptism elsewhere around here. Today I want to deal with the significance of the Covenant model as it overlays onto this passage.

As Eric Rauch has very helpfully summarised for us, the pentamerous Covenant model is:

1  Transcendence: Who’s in charge?

2  Hierarchy: To whom to I report?

3  Ethics: What are the rules?

4  Sanctions: What happens if I obey or disobey?

5  Succession: Does this relationship have a future? [2]

I believe that this pentamerous pattern as WORD becomes the heptamerous pattern as HISTORY when the central point (Ethics) is split into three. The Law is given to the Covenant head (Ascension), opened to the Body (Testing) and received by the Body (Maturity), unless of course the Body breaks the Law, in which case Moses has to bring a new set of Tablets (deutero-nomos) at Maturity.

This is exactly what we see in Acts 8. The Eunuch possesses the scroll; Philip “opens” it for him; the Eunuch receives it. Baptism follows at Sanctions (Atonement) and the Eunuch’s life is “cut in two.” And then, at Succession, which is my point, HOW CAN A EUNUCH HAVE COVENANT CHILDREN?

Throughout the Old Testament, this step of the pattern concerns either having children, or being made barren. Elisha atones for the sins of Jericho with a bowl of salt (barrenness) and the Gentiles are made fruitful. Then he sets the bears onto the Israelite children of Bethel (home of a golden calf). One bloodline is reconnected with history, and another is cut off. [3] He is doing exactly the opposite of what Joshua did to Jericho. He is cutting off the “old” Covenant of stones so a new one can be made—a new set of tablets, written on flesh.

So, what kind of stones does the Ethiopian get in this new, new, New Covenant. Jesus went about healing people of things that made Israelites ceremonially unfit to approach God. [4] So did the apostles. If these strange laws weren’t simply pedagogical, why didn’t Philip make this gelding truly fruitful and restore him physically?

Because, in the true New Covenant, having children doesn’t require that kind of testicles.

In his book on the Covenant structure, That You May Prosper, Ray Sutton wisely wrote, “Everyone talks about the Covenant, but nobody does anything about it.” What is it, exactly, that we are to do under the New Covenant?

The theonomy movement has helpfully reapplied the Bible to many areas long-neglected by evangelicals: to family, to economics, to politics. Under God’s Law, obedience brings blessing at Sanctions instead of cursing. As it did in the Old Testament, it still brings an abundance of children, prosperity and godly government. This redux is slowly fixing the myopic gnosticism of evangelicals who think that we under Covenant have nothing to do but witness and wait.

My problem with all of this wonderful stuff is that it takes the focus off witness. Brave testimony takes the kind of balls that Philip gave the Ethiopian eunuch.

Baptism isn’t about physical offspring at all. It gives any believer (child or adult) the authority to conceive and raise the kind of “children” an Ethiopian eunuch can have—by testimony. The New Covenant sign is outward-looking, not inward-looking. It’s not about crowding around the offspring of the Woman any more because the Child has already come. It’s about proclaiming this truth to the nations and watching them submit and join the church.

So, should Christians be careless about discipling their children under the Covenant? Of course not. God is cutting off an apostate western culture by rendering it childless.

Should Christians be careless with their finances? Of course not! Look at the debt the west is in.

Should Christians neglect to vote or run for office? Of course not. Look at the corrupt individuals in office.

None of those things has been rendered unimportant by the New Covenant. Disobedience in any of those areas still brings barrenness to a culture. But that is not the heart of the issue. Under the New Covenant, Christians also have the kind of fruitfulness that Noah’s animals, Ruth’s womb and Mordecai’s willing vassals all pointed to: a permanent, miraculous supply of true dominion by the Spirit at the very heart of the cultus: a Covenant body kept fruitful by the constant addition of willing Gentiles from outside: NEW BLOOD. We obey God and witness (as martyroi), and He gives us kingdom on a platter. [5]

Thus, I believe credo-baptism is the only kind that is truly postmillennial.

Eunuchs and barren women can be as fruitful as anyone else in the church. This is “New Covenant” life from the dead. That is the kind of offspring the New Covenant is, foremost, about, and these children are just as much “flesh and blood” as the ones that come out of the womb so the accusation of gnosticism rolls like water off a duck.

For all their myopia when it comes to the Covenant, this is one thing that even the most liberal, modernist, gnostic Baptist gets totally right, and it builds big churches. Paedobaptism, in practice, brings relative sterility. A tree is known by its fruit, and paedobaptism, like circumcision, seems to me to do little more than maintain the status quo.

I wonder if the ever-reforming Reformed church will contemplate reforming on that one.

I’m not saying big churches build quality Christians or culture. They don’t. But why can’t we have both in the one place? Under the New Covenant, we can have quality and quantity, and it will come as we submit entirely to the Word and its obvious patterns.

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[1] The only reason Luke mentions sailing under the Sign of the Roman Twins in Acts 28 is because he is following the Feasts/Tabernacle pattern and he’s at Atonement. He needs two identical goats and a laver (sea).
[2]  See A Jaw-Dropping Book.
[3] See Dashing Her Little Ones and Elisha’s Short Fuse.
[4] See Why Jesus Healed Some.
[5] The significance of the nationality of the eunuch comes (mainly) from the Book of Esther.

Art: The Royal Procession of the Ethiopian Eunuch by Julian Van Dyke.

“Paul knew his kinsmen. This is a group of people on whom this tactic would work.”

Doug Wilson has been preaching through Romans (subscribe to his podcast now!) and recently commented on his blog about Romans 11, and the relationship between Christians and Jews today.[1] I’ll have to listen to his sermon to figure out whether Doug sees this as interpretation (“all Israel” is yet to be saved), or application.

I made some comments and a gent called Lemuel replied, and I made some more. It brings out the significance of the phrase “the sons of God.”

Mike:

There are no longer any Jews – or Gentiles – in God’s economy. That went out with Circumcision. So did the provocation. God made a short work on the Land.

Doesn’t mean there won’t be (or isn’t currently) a time when many Jews will convert. It’s just not what Paul’s talking about in Romans.

I think Jordan’s essay The Future of Israel Re-examined, although controversial, covers Jewish history, identity and eschatology very well. And it makes sense of Romans.

Any application of this to post AD70 “Jews” is exactly that – application.

Lemuel:

To say that Jews (Judaeans) and Gentiles no longer exist in God’s economy because in the church they are united is kind of like saying that men and women don’t exist in God’s economy because of Galatians 3:28. Admittedly, the usage of “Jew” varies. There is the inward Jew, whose heart is circumcised. There is the Gentile who gets fleshly circumcision. And then there is the genetic Israelite, the descendant of Israel – the way in which tribes/ethnic groups are identified, just as Amalekites descend from Amalek, Semites descend from Shem, etc. One of the groups discussed in Romans is ethnic Israel, Paul’s kinsmen according to the flesh, his race. None of this would necessarily rule out a 70 A.D. fulfillment, but I think Christians spend too much time pretending that racial groups don’t exist.

Mike:

Good point, but Galatians 3:28 is not the argument. There were Jews and Gentiles in the church together before AD70. The writer of Hebrews insisted that they keep meeting together (in defiance of those who were falling back into old habits?) as they saw the Day approaching. After that Day, it was no longer an issue.

Although we do need to accommodate for racial groups, the Judaism Paul was dealing with no longer exists. As the apostles kept preaching (and dying), the unconverted Jews (and the apostates) hardened their hearts like Pharaoh. During this period of “plagues”, Judaism became something else entirely — a synagogue of Satan.

In context, Paul is not dealing with “racial” Jews at all, but with their calling as mediators to the nations. This calling was the reason that the judgment for all the innocent blood shed from Abel fell upon that generation. Both the blessings and the curses of their Covenant calling were irrevocable. But that calling ended with the Old Covenant when it finally passed away with the Temple.

In the first part of Romans 11, Paul follows the pattern of Israel’s feasts, ending with the “branches” of Tabernacles. See Seven Thousand Who Have Not Bowed to Baal – 2.The book of Ruth also follows this pattern. The “fullness” of the Gentiles came in in the first century, just as Ruth came into the Covenant and bore Obed on barren Naomi’s lap. [2] So does the account of Noah: “Gentile” beasts substitute for the faithless “branches” who died in the flood. [3] And AD70 was a flood (Dan 9:26; Matt 24:37-38). Notice that the sin of the “sons of God” (those with the priestly calling) in Genesis 6, in Ruth, and in Matthew 24 is ungodly “intermarriage”.

AD70 revealed who were the true “sons of God.” It wasn’t the Circumcision. (Romans 8:14-19; John 1:12; Phil 2:15; 1 John 3:1;-2).

The context of Romans 11 is the imminent judgment of Herodian worship and the end of the Jews. As much as it distressed Paul, God’s wisdom in this process of “jealous inspection” blew him away (Numbers 5; Rev. 14:10). By AD70 it was all over.

One more comment. This would also mean that those with the title “the sons of God” in Job were not angels but priestly, mediatorial men (an obervation I have heard from Gary DeMar). Satan envied them, accused them, as he always does. They are Adams in the garden, Covenant heads, and he hates them. Job was a priest-king.[4]

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[1] Preliminary Thoughts on Envy and the Jews.
[2] See Fairy Tale in a Field and Feasts in Matthew 13 for more on this.
[3] This gives greater significance to the dove’s olive branch. Concerning Noah’s animals and their use in Isaiah, see The Wolf and the Lamb.
[4] See Jordan’s Was Job an Edomite King? Part 1 and Part 2.

The Creation matrix begins with a single mediator and ends with a corporate mediator-nation. The judges were single mediators, corporate only in a progressive way: a new creation.

But there were seven ‘elected’ judges (seven is 3+4 [betrothal] at the centre of a greater pattern). The basic themes of their respective narratives illustrate a new creation, with Gideon’s ‘Pentecost’ flames at the centre, and the great solar bridegroom at the end.

All this adds deeper meaning to the role of Samuel as the last judge, the eighth judge — the one who carried Israel from tribes to kingdom. Son of a barren woman, he was the beginning of a new week.[2]

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[1] This also explains the 42 children mauled by Elisha’s bears, 12 x 3 1/2. See Elisha’s Short Fuse.
[2] This fact is slightly more narrative than historical. James Jordan observes that Samson and Samuel, two Nazirites from birth, and Obed, son of Boaz and Ruth, were all born around the same time: two shoulders and a new head. The Nazirites were miraculous births, and Obed was born to Naomi by a Gentile surrogate. See Judges: God’s War Against Humanism [PDF]. Eli the High Priest was also a judge, whose tenure overlapped that of Samson and Samuel. See the chronology in Peter J. Leithart, A Son to Me: : An Exposition of 1 & 2 Samuel.

This beautiful gem from Paul Huxley (reposted here with his permission):

A man finds some treasure in a field, he covers it up, joyfully buys the field and gets the treasure. Does that sound familiar? That’s right. It’s the plot of the book Ruth.

A man, Boaz, finds a treasure in a field (2:4), he covers it up (implied by 3:9), joyfully buys the field (4:9-10) and gets the treasure (4:13).

Of course, you’ll recognise the story from Matthew 13:44.

In the circles I’m in, we’re quick to point out that Boaz is a type of Christ, redeeming his people (sometimes understood corporately, sometimes singularly, occasionally referring to the gentiles). However, the parable in Matthew 13 is always us finding the treasure of the gospel, giving up everything we have for the Kingdom of heaven.

Because the God is three-in-one, I don’t have a beef with either of these, nor having multiple correct understandings of the same passage. But I think we could do with some sharper thinking on Matthew 13.

This post partly sponsored by ‘who the man?’ on Christ the Truth.

If you’ve read my book you’ll be familiar with the Bible Matrix’s correspondence of the ark animals, plunder, Gentile brides, and Gentile money offered to support the Jerusalem church during a famine.[1] Systematic typology opens a lot of doors.

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[1] See What the Seraphim Really Said.

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?

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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

“And now, indeed, the hand of the Lord is upon you, and you shall be blind, not seeing the sun for a time.” And immediately a dark mist fell on him, and he went around seeking someone to lead him by the hand.” Acts 13:11

The blindness of Elymas caused Sergius Paulus to believe. The temporary blindness of a Jew brought about the conversion of a Gentile.

A repeated symbolic concept in Scripture is that of sight and blindness. Samson and King Zedekiah both lost their eyes. Isaac and Eli were blind. From Genesis 1:4, 3:6 and 6:2 we learn that eyes are organs of discernment and judgment. The process of maturity makes wise judges who are “the eyes of the Lord”, walking “to and fro on the earth”, collecting evidence to present before His court. Bible symbols are consistent, and their meanings become plain to the saints with their “new eyes.” Those who refused to obey the gospel twisted the Scriptures to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16).

“For I do not desire, brethren, that you should be ignorant of this mystery, lest you should be wise in your own opinion, that blindness [hardness] in part has happened to Israel until the fullness of the Gentiles has come in.” Romans 11:25

…Herod and the Jews had symbolically become Egypt, hardened like Pharaoh (Romans 9:17-18; Hebrews 3:16; 8:9; 11:26-29; Jude 1:5; Revelation 11:8). The old Jerusalem was Hagar, and the New Jerusalem was Sarah. Christians, not Jews, were “the promised child.” Judaism had become childless like Naomi, and it was only the “fullness” of outsiders, Peter’s “unclean animals”—Ruth—that rescued the people of God from spiritual famine, the extinction of unbelief. The barrenness of Egypt was replaced with the harvest of Pentecost.

…Agabus the prophet foretold a famine in Judea (the curse for the shedding of Stephen’s innocent blood), but the Antioch saints sent relief (the richness of ‘Ruth’) to those in Judea.

Being a Jew was never a matter of bloodline, but of Covenant. Think of Abraham’s servants circumcised in Genesis 17, the Egyptians at the Exodus, Caleb the Kenizzite, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah, etc. It seems the Old Testament keeps throwing us examples of people “grafted in.” The only actual bloodline of any importance is the one we are given, the family tree from Abraham to Christ.

Israel’s captivity and Restoration gave us a perfect picture of the New Covenant events. The Temple and walls of the old Israel were ‘de-created’ and God Himself (the ark) died in Babylon for the sake of a new Jerusalem with impregnable walls.

Christ was the human ark. Judaism, intermarried with Roman political power, became Babylon.

My point is, the captivity was a death-and-resurrection of first century Israel (the resurrection as predicted in Ezekiel 37) in type. The first century was the antitype. Thus, whatever remains of Judaism today is like exhumed idols from the eras of Jeroboam, Ahab*, Omri and Manasseh.

It is not about blood. It never was. It is about Covenant, and there is only one of those. Despite its various death-and-resurrection renewals, there has only ever really been one covenant. There is no replacement of God’s people, only transfiguration from glory to glory.

*Remember it was Jezebel’s daughter Athaliah that almost DID destroy this single bloodline that mattered. Jehoash was the single son who escaped, an echo of Moses and a type of Christ.