“By the imperative, time is formed into a cup, still empty but formed for the special purpose of being filled with the content demanded by the order.”

The Imperative Comes First

Essay by John Barach

As many people have pointed out, in Christian ethics, the indicative precedes the imperative. First God says, “I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage,” and then he gives the Ten Words (“You shall have no other gods before me…”). First Paul tells us what Christ has done and who we are in Christ, and then he summons us to act accordingly. First comes the good news of what God has done for us and then comes the summons to respond in faith and love and new obedience.

But when we look at the very beginning of Scripture, what we discover is that the imperative came first.  God creates the heavens and the earth, and then the first word God speaks is a command: “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).  Now, that’s not the first word in the Bible — first comes the narration, the story of God creating the heavens and the earth, and the description of the earth at the time of creation — but it is the first word recorded that God spoke with regard to that creation. He creates the world. It’s dark, unstructured, and unpopulated, and the Spirit is hovering over the deep. The narrative reminds us that there’s always an indicative implicit in and before the imperative, so that the imperative assumes and develops a personal relationship between commander and commanded, so that the imperative is never mere imperative but rather is a vocation.  Nevertheless, in terms of God’s speech in history, the imperative comes first, and surely that’s significant.

With regard to man, something similar is the case.  In Genesis 2, which develops and expands the account of Day Six in Genesis 1, we learn that when Yahweh God placed Adam in the Garden, he spoke to him: “Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.” Here, the first thing Yahweh God says is indicative (“Of every tree of the garden you may eat”), but it’s an indicative indicating permission (as opposed to a mere statement) and is tied to the next clause in the sentence, which is an imperative disguised as an indicative: “you will not eat” is indicative in form but imperative in force, meaning “don’t eat.”  So the permission given in the first clause also shares something of that imperatival character. Again, there is a lot of implicit indicative here, including the personal relationship of Adam to Yahweh God who is his creator and the commander.  But the first thing Yahweh God says to Adam has the force of a permission and a command with regard to the trees, something imperatival in force.

Returning to Genesis 1, we find that God’s work with creation takes the form of a series of imperatives, moving through the days of creation up to the sixth day, when man is created, male and female. While the events in Genesis 2 take place first, before the creation of the woman, in Genesis 1 the first word of God to the pair, to man as the image of God, male and female, again takes the form of an imperative.  God’s first word to Man (male and female) is not a description of creation, not a presentation of all of God’s goodness, not a report about how God made man in his image, not a promise of what God would do for Adam and Woman.  Instead, it’s a command. Sure, it’s a blessing, but it’s a blessing in the imperative: “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen 1:28).  Only after that does he go on, in the indicative, to say that he has given man the green plants and the trees for food (1:29). The first thing Adam and Woman heard from God was an imperative, and surely that’s significant.

In fact, we can go back before the creation of man to the first word God spoke, and again it is an imperative: “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3).  That’s not the first word in the Bible — first comes the narration, the story of God creating the heavens and the earth, and the description of the earth at the time of creation — but it is the first word recorded that God spoke with regard to that creation. He creates the world. It’s dark, unstructured, and unpopulated, and the Spirit is hovering over the deep.  But then comes the imperative and things begin to change (“And there was light”). Again, the imperative comes first, and surely that’s significant.

What does an imperative do?  Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy’s observations are helpful here:

The imperative not only commands the listener; it at the same time lights up an alley of time into the future. A trail into time is beaten by the logic of any order given. A high tension current places the moments following the order under the expectation: will this command be followed up and fulfilled? The term “fulfillment” used in this connection is significant. By the imperative, time is formed into a cup, still empty but formed for the special purpose of being filled with the content demanded by the order. The action following the order is not a blind accident of the moment. By having been ordered, it has become organized into one “time span” which stretches from the moment in which the order was given to the moment in which the report is echoed back: “order fulfilled.” Orders connect two separated human beings into one time span, of which the imperative forms the expectation, the report the fulfillment (The Origin of Speech, 46-47).

When God speaks to man for the first time and uses the imperative instead of the indicative, he is creating what Rosenstock-Huessy calls a “time cup.”  There is now a dramatic tension in the story: Will Adam and Woman obey God? Will they be fruitful and multiply? Will they have dominion over the animals? What will they do in response to God and to his commanding word? His order now orders their lives, revealing to them their calling, their responsibility, their relation to God and to the world– revealing how they are to use and order time.

The imperative creates the story that follows: by creating the expectation and setting the standards for judgment, it makes the story that follows what it is.  Without the imperative, it would just be a story of God creating man and then man doing, well, whatever he felt like. There would be no tension, no expectation, no hope, no sense of satisfaction at a job completed, no disappointment in failure and rebellion, and no corresponding joy at redemption and restoration — by which I mean: restoration to the original task and calling, the calling of maturation, fruitfulness, multiplication, and dominion.

But there was an imperative, an expectation, an impetus forward, creating the story.  It’s a story in which, in an important sense, the indicative does precede the imperative: God takes the initiative (as he does even in the Creation narrative) and man responds; God acts on our behalf so that we then can and do respond to him in trust and obedience.  In all imperatives, there’s at least an implicit indicative that underlies it, as I’ve said above.  But what makes it a story is that it’s a time cup, an imperative-created expectation awaiting fulfillment. We still look forward to man’s fulfilling of the mandate given in Genesis 1 (and so does God), with the joyful certainty because of Christ (here’s the all-important indicative!) that it will be fulfilled. In fact, even the imperative that was God’s first word in his creation (“Let there be light”) has not yet been fulfilled to the fullest extent, and all of history — and all of our lives — are meant to be aspects of that fulfillment until the earth is full of God’s glorious light.

History — the history of the world, and our history — is a time cup, formed by God’s imperatives.

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

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

. . . . .

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

Tongue Lashing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This post is from Chris Wooldridge’s blog. His take on the structure of the Lord’s prayer is a little different to mine (I have the evil one at the center) but I find it very attractive and interesting. He writes:

The Lord’s Prayer is a very special prayer. I have prayed it more times than I can count, both in personal and in corporate worship. A while back I spent some time analysing its structure and it appears to be based on the ten commandments. But before I get into that, I need to explain how the ten commandments themselves are structured.

Although evangelicals typically treat the first two “You shall” statements as separate commandments, I think they are best viewed as a unity. The reason for this has to do with the fact that the commandments ‘pair up’. Here is how this works:

1. Do not have other gods before Yahweh, do not worship idols (Idolatry)
2. Do not take Yahweh’s name in vain (Name)
3. Remember the Sabbath (Sabbath)
4. Honour your parents (Parents)
5. Do not murder (Murder)
6. Do not commit adultery (Adultery)
7. Do not steal (Theft)
8. Do not bear false witness (Witness)
9. Do not covet your neighbour’s house (House)
10. Do not covet your neighbour’s household (Household)

This is how the commandments are paired up:

1. The first two commandments are both specifically about God and how to honour him in all things. They are related to the book of Genesis, since they are foundational marks of a true believer in all ages.
2. The second two are both about authority, they are also the only two commandments not to begin with “You shall”. They are related to the book of Exodus, since they both relate specifically to Israel’s distinctness from the nations (the Sabbath being a special sign for Israel and living long in the promised land of Canaan being the blessing for honouring one’s parents).
3. The third two commandments both involve death, the first of a person and the second of a marriage, both are also punishable by death. They both relate to Leviticus, which is a book about death. There are regulations pertaining to the death of animals, houses, skin, and various forms of ritual death featured throughout Leviticus.
4. The fourth two commandments both carry an eye-for-an-eye penalty, in the second case the offender would suffer whatever punishment they caused the victim to suffer by falsely testifying against them in court. They both relate to Numbers, which is all about the penalty that Israel bore in the wilderness for disobeying God.
5. The fifth and final two commandments are both about coveting, one relating to the house and the other to the household (the various people, animals and objects in the house). They both relate to the book of Deuteronomy, which is all about Israel’s plans for setting up and moving into their new home in the land of Canaan.

Now that we have examined the structure of the ten commandments, we can see them reflected in the Lord’s Prayer, as demonstrated below:

1. Our Father, Who is in heaven (God)
2. Hallowed be Your Name (Name)
3. May Your Kingdom come (Sabbath)
4. May Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven (Mother and Father/Land-promise)
5. Give us this day our daily bread (Bread) and forgive us our sins (Wine)
6. As we forgive those who sin against us (Adultery)
7. And lead us not into temptation (Theft)
8. But deliver us from the evil one (False Witness)
9. For Yours is the Kingdom (House)
10. And the Power, and the Glory, unto the ages, Amen (Household)

Some comments are in order. The fourth commandment is seen in the fourth line in several ways. Firstly, there is the reference to earth and heaven, which represents mother and father (Adam was formed from the dust of the earth and was filled with heavenly breath). Also, the word for “earth” can also mean “land”, which links back to the fact that the blessing for obeying the fourth commandment was tied up with the promised land.

The fifth commandment is trickier to see here. The references to ‘bread’ and ‘forgiveness’ remind us of the story of the baker and the butler in prison (Genesis 40). The baker (who made bread) was killed on the third day, whereas the butler (who served wine) was forgiven and restored on the third day. It’s only with both parts in place that we can see the reference to death in this line. A reference to bread and wine also reminds us of the Last Supper and Jesus’s death on the cross. When we get to the seventh line, there is a plea not to be ‘stolen’ through temptation, and the person attempting the stealing is revealed to be “the evil one” (Satan – a false witness) in the eighth line.

In conclusion, when Jesus teaches us how to do something foundational like prayer, we should pay very careful attention.

When Moses is given the Ten Commandments they are written on two tablets:

And he declared to you his covenant, which he commanded you to perform, that is, the Ten Commandments, and he wrote them on two tablets of stone. (Deuteronomy 4:13)

Why are the Ten Commandments written on two tablets? Was one tablet not big enough for God’s handwriting? Or did God give Moses two copies of the Law, one tablet being a duplicate of the other?

Two Witnesses

Firstly, we must understand that God always requires the testimony of at least two legal witnesses.

On the evidence of two witnesses or of three witnesses the one who is to die shall be put to death; a person shall not be put to death on the evidence of one witness. (Deuteronomy 17:6)

The book of Deuteronomy itself is a “second testimony” of the Law (deutero-nomos meaning “second law”), repeating what was given to the Israel whose bodies fell in the wilderness.

A legal case will fail if the testimony of the witnesses does not corroborate, as was the case in the trial of Jesus. It seems the Father and the Son were two witnesses against the tower of Babel. The angel of the Lord sent two angels as witnesses into Sodom. And Israel herself saw her unfaithful spies slain, leaving only two faithful witnesses of Canaan, Joshua and Caleb.

The Ten Words are referred to as a “testimony”:

Then Moses turned and went down from the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand, tablets that were written on both sides; on the front and on the back they were written. (Exodus 32:15)

So the tablets of the Law are “two witnesses” with a corroborated testimony, and we should notice that even these two tablets were given twice due to Israel’s idolatry. The tablets themselves suffered a “death and resurrection”, the second set being a prefigurement of every future “new covenant,” including the one predicted by Jeremiah and fulfilled in Ezra/Nehemiah and Haggai/Zechariah.

Because the tablets of the Law agreed, those who swore to keep the Law could be punished, excommunicated, or executed for breaking it.

A Complementarian Covenant

Ray Sutton attempts to fit the ten words to the five-fold Covenant pattern found everywhere in the Torah, as outlined in his groundbreaking book, That You May Prosper (p. 214).

Although numbers 1 and 5 seem to fit the Covenant pattern very well, Sutton has to go to great lengths to make the others relate to it. Also, his book sees the Covenant process as a linear progression, rather than a “there and back again,” as the Bible Matrix shows. With the matrix in mind, we can see this twofold “head and body” progression in the Ten Words.

Being very familiar with the “above, beside, below” movement of the Bible Matrix (also found in James Jordan’s excellent essay on slavery), when I came across another possibility for the arrangement of the Ten Words, even though it made no reference to the Covenant structure or the Bible Matrix, I could see immediately that it corresponded very well.

The alternate arrangement is by Moshe Kline, a Jewish scholar who follows the “scroll” division of the commandments (as did Augustine). This means that our first two are combined into one, and our last is divided into two. This sounds strange until we realize that not only are the Ten Words a double witness, they are an Adam and an Eve horizontally, and God, Mankind and the Future vertically.

If we read the laws as the warp and weft in fabric, we have “Adamic” laws as 1 3 5 7 9 (odd numbers) and “Evian” laws as 2 4 6 8 10 (even numbers). multiples of two – the Bride always “multiplies”

So, the structure works from above to beside to below (from God, through fellow man, down to offspring, that is, past to present to future), and it follows the fivefold Covenant pattern:

You might notice that this is also a slightly truncated version of the Creation Week, since the “mediating veils” are removed. There is no “removal of sin” at Passover (Day 2) or Atonement (Day 6), which things correspond to Circumcision and Baptism. Adam and Eve are entirely naked before heaven at every point. Not only this, but they have unobstructed access to the Garden (Transcendence) and the World (Succession) from the Land.

Ten Fingers

The Ten Words were written with the FINGER of God. Ten Words is ten fingers, two human hands, instruments of righteousness or unrighteousness. When Jesus broke bread, He would have used all ten fingers to tear it, picturing His imminent death under the curse of the Law. We should remember this whenever we break bread.

“And Moses threw the tablets out of his hands…” (Exodus 32:19)

The theft in the Garden of Eden was carried out with two hands, the hand of Eve and then the hand of Adam, five fingers each. If the Adam/Eve, priest/people idea is strange, it is simply an expression of the totus Christus in Man and Woman at every level, from the Sanctuary to the Household to the Nations.

Also, the High Priest made two approaches to the Most Holy on the Day of Atonement, once for the priesthood and once for the people. This is recapitulated in Daniel 7, which predicts Jesus’ ascension into the glory cloud as “head,” then four decades later returning “in like manner” for the sacrificial “body,” the firstfruits martyrs.

We also see this in Abraham, who entered the land to sacrifice Isaac (firstfruits/priesthood) and then again to bury Sarah (offspring/people).

When the sin of any culture is fullgrown, it is thus “ten fingered” (priesthood and kingdom corrupted) it has become military, a swarm (the fullness of Day 5). God sends prophets (Day 5/Trumpets), and then acts through mediators (Day 6/Atonement/Sanctions) to save a remnant, and secure for them the future, historical continuity (Day 7/Succession).

Filthy Lucre

Finally, if this arrangement of the Ten Words is correct, it should be reflected through correspondence with other events. The first is the correspondence between theft and lying in Prophetic Ministry, which was condemned by Paul in Titus 1, and appears to be rampant today. We can see this combination in the “ministry” of Gehazi (2 Kings 4), who sought to misrepresent the generosity of Israel’s God to the faithful through his sly words to Naaman, the believing Gentile.

Peter Leithart helpfully highlights another two cases, without corresponding this “unusual” combination to either the Ten Words or to Adam’s sin. He writes:

Zechariah 5:3-4 threatens a curse to those who steal and those who swear falsely. It’s a somewhat unusual combination. Perhaps the implied scenario is this: A thief steals, he is questioned about his theft, and he swears falsely that he did not steal. His theft is compounded by an oath declaring his innocence. He steals goods, and then robs the name of God by a lie.

The ultimate source of this threat, though, goes back to a specific incident in Israel’s history. Jericho was under the ban, which meant that all living things were slaughtered and all plunder was given to Yahweh. Achan, the “troubler of Israel,” stole some of the consecrated goods and hid them in his tent. Yahweh accuses him of “stealing” and “deceit” (Joshua 7:11). Because of his sacrilege, Israel is defeated before Ai, changing the psychological dynamics of the conquest against Israel. Before they got beaten at Ai, the Canaanites’ hearts were melting (2:9); after Ai, Israelite hearts became water (7:5).

No wonder Zechariah takes this combination of sins so seriously: Until the troublers are purged, Israel will flee in fright before their enemies.

Ten Tests

The last example I will present is James Jordan’s list of the ten tests which Israel failed before that generation was doomed to die in the wilderness (from the notes for his lectures on the book of Numbers). It seems to fit very well, typologically speaking:

Two Copies?

Meredith Kline argues that the “tables” were actually two copies of the same law (The Structure of Biblical Authority, pp. 117-120.) This is based on the assumption that the Mosaic Covenant is either a divine “answer” to Ancient Near East suzerainty treaties, or their inspiration, and still closely related. Dr. Meshulam Margaliot writes:

To get at the peshat, or simple meaning, we must take account of the historical context in which the Ten Commandments were given. According to Ex. 19, this was done in the course of establishing a covenant–a berit–between the Lord and Israel. Hence, we are dealing with the text of a covenant, a type of contract between two (or more) parties. For obvious reasons, it is customary for every written contract or agreement to be issued in duplicate, each party receiving a complete copy of the agreement, contract, or covenant.

This was also the practice in the ancient Near East. The most famous example of two copies of a diplomatic agreement between two kingdoms is the treaty containing the pact made between the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II and the Hittite King Hattusilis III, c. 1270 B.C.E. The Egyptian copy was found in Egypt, and the Hittite one in the capital of the Hittites, in eastern Turkey. The contents of both copies are identical.

It would be reasonable for the pact made at Sinai to be issued in two copies, one for the Lord, and one for the Israelites. This practice explains why one tablet did not suffice, rather two were needed.

I believe, as Kline does, that the Lord’s Covenants were the inspiration for the pagan treaties, not other way around, not least because the same Covenant structure can be traced back to Genesis 1. However, the explanation of the need for two copies does not suffice, since in Israel’s case, both copies were kept in the Ark of the Testimony. Israel’s “copy” was the hearing of the graven words. Based on the “complementarian” structure of the Ten Words outlined above, it would seem that each tablet contained only five commandments each, because the Covenant was not merely an expression of unitarian (vertical) authority between heaven and earth (or between Egypt and the Hittites). God’s Covenants are Trinitarian, with not merely an above and a below but a “beside.” They include the relationship between Church and State, the horizontal “marriage” between priesthood and people.

Moreover, Moshe Kline argues:

that the division in the Masoretic Text (MT), which appears in the Torah scrolls read in synagogues, should be preferred because it leads to a reading that integrates all ten Words in a coherent document.

The document itself consists of five consecutive pairs of Words organized hierarchically, from the first pair, which focuses on God, to the last pair, which is limited to subjective human experience, “Do not covet.” Once this internal structure is recognized, it leads to seeing a new arrangement of the Words on the two stone tablets.

They should be seen as written in pairs across the two tablets, the first Word on one and the second Word on the other, the third on the first, etc. Thus one tablet contains the “odd” Words and the other the “evens.” This arrangement may be the literal meaning of the otherwise difficult verse in Exodus 32:15, “לחת כתבים משני עבריהם, מזה ומזה הם כתבים”, “(the writing was) written across both tablets; (alternately), on one and (then) the other, were they written.”

What is the conclusion here? That the Ten Words work not only from heaven down to earth (vertically) but also horizontally, between priesthood (Adam) and people (Eve), the left hand and the right hand. This means that their architecture aligns with the four “points” of the Tabernacle furnitures, leaving out only the Incense Altar in the centre. The Tablets taken together are a cruciform instrument of death, the curse upon Adam and Eve. The missing element, the Incense Altar, is a fragrant symbol of the resurrection, Word and Response, both vertically and horizontally, united at last in the bosom of Christ.

“Once prosperous (gold), we forgot God and dismantled marriage (girls) and then relied upon military power rather than God’s protection to maintain peace with our enemies (guns).”

In Deuteronomy 17:14-20, Moses gave Israel three laws for her future kings. As moderns who wrongly assume the Bible is merely “propositional truth,” we not only fail to see these three laws as a continuum, and thus fail to identify them in Bible history, we also fail to interpret contemporary history in their brilliant “triune” light.

As expected, the laws themselves follow the Covenant pattern (precisely the same patterns we have been observing in Galatians), and are thus a microcosm of the entire book:

TRANSCENDENCE

Creation (Genesis – Ark of the Covenant)

This first stanza predicts the pattern of events to come, and they are “sacrificial architecture.” However, Israel was not yet humble, not yet ready for kingdom. Their sin was the same sin as that of Adam. They saw kingdom (equality with God, Phil. 2:6-7) as something to be grasped, not something to be received as a gift after being qualified through humble obedience.

The symmetry between the gift of the Land from God in line two and the king in line 6 shows that even the king was to be a gift from God, His legal representative, His “image,” authorized to carry out judgments from His great white (ivory) throne.

HIERARCHY

Division (Exodus – Veil/Circumcision)

Just as the Laws concerning Israel’s kings were decreed by God, so the act of choosing a blameless king (Hierarchy) would follow the process of sacrifice. The king would be set apart from his brothers (as a substitute/mediator) just as Israel was set apart from the nations. We can see the Ethical/Social/Physical nature of the world here as Seed/Flesh/Skin: Christ/Israel/Gentiles. Israel was a skinned sacrifice, a “peeled fruit” which carried the seed. If the king was a Gentile, there would be no Covenant Succession. This goes beyond the circumcision of the flesh to the circumcision of the heart (Leviticus 26:41). Saul was rejected because he acted like an uncircumcised Gentile king, an authority unto himself.

Notice that the king was the centre of stanza 1 as the source of Law (Day 4), but in stanza 2 the command of the Lord is at the centre. And there is no line 7, no Succession. Israel’s problem was kings who did not act like brothers, but who behaved like Pharaoh, one who did not know Joseph, Israel’s brother. This brings us to…

ETHICS

Ascension (Leviticus – Bronze Altar)

The people were not to return to Israel Ethically (in their hearts, desiring a golden calf), Socially (through intermarriage with idolaters), or Physically (which was included as part of the curses in Deuteronomy 28:68, fulfilled under Titus in AD70):

And the Lord will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.”

Israel’s destiny was to “serve the nations” as priests (as in The Feast of Booths), not as slaves to their gods (the Book of Judges).

This explains why Egypt appears at the “Deuteronomy” step in this legal stanza, representing both the “swarms” of Day 5 and the plagues upon Pharaoh. The horses at Conquest match the ones at Division. For Joshua, they were not the chariots of Pharaoh but the chariots of the Captain of the Lords hosts.

Ascension has two stanzas, the second one presenting the Covenant scroll, although here it is not sevenfold but fivefold, which means it is not an inheritance as it is in Revelation 5, but a stone tablet.

(Leviticus – Table of Facebread)

What is interesting is that when we get to this point in the Revelation, Jesus opens His inheritance scroll to knock off Pharaoh (Herod) and claim the nations, and the four “Spirit horses” of the Gospel ride out! By chapter 19, He has multiplied horses, but they are not Egyptian ones. They are the saints as the Lord’s hosts, no longer angelic but glorified men.

Interestingly the “return” at the Levitical step of the Bronze Altar is still at the Levitical step here, which reflects the relationship between the fivefold pattern of Moses and the sevenfold pattern of Israel (see these charts from Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key for more on that. It’s amazing).

Testing (Numbers – Lampstand)

Well, that covers the “guns,” now we get to the girls and the gold. I had expected the “Guns, Girls and Gold” to be the threefold Ethics in this cycle but the horses have been connected to the Conquest of the Land, borders which God would protect. If Israel was faithful, God would keep the nations at bay and she would have no need of horses. If she was unfaithful, God would first allow the Land to be invaded, and finally the City and then the Temple destroyed.

Women and gold appear at the centre for typological reasons. Gold and fire (desire) are represented by the Lampstand. The gold represents the godly king, the Adam (who is wiser than a bronze “earthy” serpent because he is holy) and the fire his legal love for the Woman. The book of Israel’s harlotry is Numbers, the book of Testing by serpents and a serpentine king, whose false prophet caused Israel to commit adultery with idolaters.

This fivefold stanza follows the Covenant pattern, with the Transcendent Law at the beginning, an uncircumcised heart at Hierarchy, a deceived heart at Ethics, plunder (a Covenant blessing) allowed to become a plague (a Covenant curse) at Sanctions, becoming a false inheritance of earthly riches at Succession.

The word “multiply” is used repeatedly, and true “multiplication” is not supposed to come until Maturity, from the hand of God. The multiplication of guns, girls and gold (symbols all sourced in Adam’s theft of kingdom from God’s right hand) is a form of sorcery. It is an attempt to gain God’s blessings without prior obedience. That is, to gain success without following God’s directions. This is where the glorious “swarms” of Day 5 become locusts who eat the Pentecostal harvest, and the clouds of incense become clouds of sulphur.

It is interesting that these five lines also echo the architectural progression of the Ten Words (above, beside, below):

How beautiful is that? Silver always seems to turn up at that point. It is the point where the Bride is either redeemed or sold, harking back to Adam’s failure to protect Eve, to Abraham’s purchase from Ephron for Sarah’s burial, and also Achan’s theft of gold, silver and a robe.

Maturity (Deuteronomy – Incense: Legal Witness)

James Jordan notes that the reason the wisdom literature is so mysterious to us is that we have not had the books of Moses and Samuel drummed into us. The kings of Israel had to copy out the Law for themselves, which I had never noticed before. For instance, Jordan sees Ecclesiastes as a mediation on the Feast of Booths. [2]

What is really excellent here is that Maturity is the “Deuteronomy” step, which means “Second Law,” because Moses repeated the Law to a new generation. It was the macrocosm of the second set of tablets given to old Israel after her golden calf sin at Sinai. Not only this but the phrase “a copy of this law” appears at the centre. The king was to be a son of God, an image of the Father. His obedience was to be a sign of the goodness of God: Israel’s God not only spoke (unlike idols), He was worthy to be obeyed.

I love the fact that Maturity concerns “legal witness,” and here the king shows his submission to God through his submission to Levitical priests. As the king watched over Israel (as her shepherd), so God watched over the king through his priestly angels “filled with eyes.”

SANCTIONS

Conquest (Joshua – Mediators)

This is the “Day 6″ of the cycle, and the theme is Adam in the Garden of God, humbling himself that he might be given kingdom, the second tree, as a gift, and therefore have God’s complete blessing to subdue the Land, instead of the partial one which Adam received. The fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, appears at the center of numerous Covenant cycles, sometimes as “trembling.” Instead, Adam feared a lesser authority. Jordan observes that Solomon, with his interest in studying nature, “naming biology,” is presented as a greater Adam.

SUCCESSION

Glorification (Judges – Representing God to the Nations)

Finally, we come to Covenant Succession, the inheritance of the faithful man. This one is explained by my subheadings, but I would also note that the “right hand or left” is a reference to Kingdom and Priesthood, both of which are under the authority of the Prophet. It is at this step (Maturity) that Moses sits on a rock and Aaron (Priest) and Hur (of Judah: King) hold up his arms. All three were there at Ascension, but not yet united (separate elements, stoicheia). At Maturity, Priest, King and Prophet are one (a holy hybrid, the High Priest) [3]. Hence, Ehud’s faithful left-handed stabbing of Eglon was a priestly act, not a kingly one.

History:

In his downfall, Solomon actually reversed the order of the three Laws, which began a process of “de-Creation.” He amassed 666 talents of gold so that silver became commonplace (hence the symbols 666 and “wisdom” are used to signify the temple-building Herods in the Revelation), he took many idolatrous wives, and then became a trader in Egyptian horses. His fall was Ethical, Social, then Physical, as the Land was taken away.

Application:

We can apply this to modern Western Culture. Faithfulness to God brought global conquest, faithfulness in marriage, then prosperity and great wisdom (science). Once prosperous (gold), we forgot God and dismantled marriage (girls) and then relied upon military power rather than God’s protection to maintain peace with our enemies (guns).

As one commentator said today, regarding the possibility of another brutal intervention into a brutal civil war in the Middle East, instead of sending soldiers we ought to be sending missionaries. Instead of sending a swarm of sulphuric locusts, we should be sending heavenly birds and schools of fish.
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[1] See Esther and the Ten Words.
[2] See How To Read the Bible.
[3] See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key for more on this fascinating subject of “holy mixtures”.

And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.” (Mark 11:17)

The same word is used of the men crucified alongside Jesus in Mark 15:27.

And with him they crucified two robbers, one on his right and one on his left.

Is this merely coincidental, or is there something deeper going on? Is there a link between the “white collar” Temple crimes and the “blue collar” criminals?

The word itself derives from booty or plunder, so the connotation is theft from the vulnerable.

The link between the Temple and the thieves at the crucifixion is implicit (not explicit in the text as such) but obvious once we take sacred architecture into account, which is a foreign idea to moderns, but nonetheless a consistent type as far as the Bible is concerned.

The original theft occurred in the Garden of Eden, in the first Sanctuary. It was theft from God, with consequences outside the Garden, that is, in the Land then in the World. The Temple itself replicated these three domains: the Most Holy (Garden), the Holy Place (the Land/Israel) and the Gentile Courts (the Nations/World).

Because the Herodian High Priesthood had usurped the authority of God’s commandments, the outflow corrupted the sacrifices and then Israel’s Covenant witness to the nations. The imaging of Yahweh to the nations by His people (as a kind of corporate “Adam”) was inaccurate, corrupt.

We can see this reflected in the structure of the Ten Commandments, which echo the events of Genesis 1-3. Adam stole from God, and God asked Adam for a legal confession of what he had done, that He might show mercy. Theft and legal witness are consecutive commands, followed by commands concerning “house and contents,” or Israel as a shelter, a “Booth” for the Gentiles. (Remember also the true testimony of Jesus and the false witnesses brought against Him by the priesthood.)

The same architecture is inherent in the crucifixion, where the two robbers are “blessing and cursing,” two Covenant witnesses. Christ is the High Priest and these two men take the roles of  Cain and Abel, sons of thieves (and also of the two goats on the Day of Atonement [1]). The one who humbles himself “unto death” in a priestly fashion is the one who will be exalted in the kingdom. The other, who exalts himself as a usurping “king” against the Son of God is the one who will be humbled and receive nothing. So once again we have theft and legal witness tied together.

Finally, “plunder” is a Covenant concept which is also both positive and negative. Obedience to God’s Laws brings a “multiplication” of the heart of those under Covenant. Obedience brings plunder from God’s hand. Disobedience brings plagues from God’s hand. Plunder and plagues were tied together as “swarms” in Egypt (with Israel herself as a kind of “swarm” which plundered the Egyptians). We see it again in the “multiplication” of the victory of the Ark of the Covenant in Philistia, where the gold they sent with the Ark (as plunder) was actually fashioned in the shape of plagues, (bubonic?) tumors and rats.

The theme of vulnerability in all cases is “bridal,” that is, those who are under the priestly representation (of Adam, or Israel), whose offspring, as the future, are at stake in Adam’s mediation on her behalf before God. In Eden, this was Eve, the great “multiplier,” the mother of all. In Israel, it was the tribes under the mediation of a faithful High Priest. In the world, it was all nations under the ministry and witness of Israel as a corporate Adam, “cut” and bloodied to bring the kings of the nations — and their riches — in willing submission to God.

The flipside of “Adamic” theft is “Christian” generosity. What goes on in the World and the Land (from petty crime right up to theft by the state) is a result of what goes on in the Sanctuary. Cultus inevitably informs culture.

Let the thief no longer steal, (Garden) but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, (Land) so that he may have something to share with anyone in need (World). (Ephesians 4:28)

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[1] See Remember Me.
ART: Bible images created using Google Earth.

“That which they sought to save them from the condemnation of the Law of Moses has also innoculated them against the grace and Spirit of Jesus Christ.”

Pope Francis, in a recent homily, has written,

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

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From Tim Gallant’s blog:

The Sabbath and the Day of Yahweh

It strikes me that people tend to read the conflicts between Jesus and the Pharisees in the Gospels as a matter of incompatible casuistries. “The Pharisees are applying the fourth commandment wrongly because they don’t make the proper exceptions for works of necessity, works of mercy and works of piety.”
But when we consider the Gospels themselves, it is hard to take that approach all that seriously. The Gospels globally are not about Jesus needing to correct the moral vision of His opponents in connection with their reading of Torah (even if that may come up occasionally on the fringes).

The Gospels are about JESUS. The reason He comes into conflict repeatedly with the Pharisees on this is not merely that they have too many minutiae attached to the rulebook, nor that they forgot some categories of exceptions.

Rather, the reason is that Jesus presents HIMSELF as the embodiment of true Sabbath, doing what Torah could not do. We look at Jesus’ Sabbath healings and conclude: “Aha, works of mercy are exceptions to the general rule.” But although Jesus observes that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath, that is hardly His fundamental point. We should not miss that Jesus is performing HEALINGS by a power that His opponents did not have, no matter how good they may have been at lawkeeping.

So long as we view the Gospel Sabbath episodes primarily as moral directives, we will misread them. They are primarily signs of an inbreaking kingdom that transcends the old creation and its Torah.

This of course is why the supposed problem of “only nine commandments” is beside the point. As Jordan says, the Ten Words were Israel’s charter. While the other Nine Words are transformed but retransmitted to the Church, it is not at all problematic to say that the Fourth Commandment does not simply switch days of the week and carry on. In the Gospels, the Fourth Commandment plays a key role, but not because it needs to stick around in any independent way. It plays a key role because Jesus is emerging from its heart with something new: His arrival is the arrival of the Day of Yahweh, promised throughout the prophets.

It is no accident that in Matthew 11-12, the narrative flows from John the Baptizer to Jesus the rest-giver, and on into Sabbath conflicts. In Malachi 3-4, the Day of the Yahweh would be marked by the messenger of the covenant purifying the sons of Levi as well as bringing justice and hope to the poor and oppressed. A time of new creation would arrive. This would be preceded by “Elijah the prophet.”

Jesus’ Sabbath healings are not merely intended as a generalized picture that doing generic good (“works of mercy”) is a suitable activity for the Sabbath. Rather, they demonstrate that in Him, not only is a “greater than the temple” present, but that the Day of Yahweh has arrived, transcending the Sabbath. The seventh day Sabbath is part of the first creation, but now, in Jesus, the new creation has come in the eschatological Day of Yahweh.

He is Yahweh; and His ministry is the Day of Yahweh.

And thus He says, “Come to Me, all you who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest”—a rest that the law’s Sabbath could not give.

The “Day of Yahweh” is translated “the Day of the LORD” (Kuriou) in the LXX (Greek OT) and thus into the New Testament. It is therefore no surprise when we get to the Revelation of St John, and he uses another form for that genitive: “the LORD’s Day” (Rev 1:10). On the first day of the week, when the disciples around the Roman world were gathering into the presence of the God of Israel, John was alone, exiled on Patmos, but “in the Spirit” he enters into God’s throne room where that host of believers has also gathered for worship.

And there, John sees what? He sees the unfolding apocalypse (revelation) of “the Day of the LORD,” beginning with preliminary judgments and culminating in the final one.

It is fair to say that in the New Testament vision, Lord’s Day worship is a miniature, a preliminary anticipation of the final Day of Yahweh. The reason that Hebrews says not to forsake the assembling together “as you see the Day approaching” is that the assembly itself partakes of the character of that Day.

The Sabbatarian vision is too small. This is why Paul chides the Galatians for observing “days and months and seasons and years.” The Sabbath, along with the Torah administration as a whole, belonged to the stoicheia, the “elements of the world,” the things that constituted the first creation.

But for us, there is something more than that. We gather into the Day of Yahweh, and find not merely physical rest, but an eschatological event that is busy setting the kosmos to rights, even as Yahweh incarnate did throughout His earthly ministry.

1 John 5: 1-12   |   Sermon Notes   |   17 June 2012

Introduction

Jewish Christians were first opposed by unbelieving Jews, then by Jews who said they believed. Members of this latter group are called “Judaizers,” and they were the false teachers whom the apostles condemn in their letters.

Not only did these men pervert the gospel by including adherence to the Law of Moses, they also failed to keep the commandments of Jesus. This was Pharisaism dressed up in Christianity, the old leaven carried into the new age. The Pharisees loved to control people, while they failed to control themselves. This is the context of John’s letters to Jewish Christians: despite their profession, these men would be exposed by their lack of of certain things in their character.

1    Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, and everyone who loves the father loves his child as well.

• The first “child” we love is Jesus. The Jews claimed, and still claim, that they love God, but hate Jesus. John says this is impossible. One cannot love Japan and show disrespect to a Japanese ambassador. Jesus was sent by the Father, and did only what the Father asked Him to do. He spoke the Father’s words. To reject Jesus is to reject the Father — and to replace Him with an idol of our own making.
• First century Judaism became a “doctrine of devils,” and it remains demonic today. In Galatians, Paul refers to it as witchcraft. Judaism is rebellion against Christ and is thus rebellion against the very God of the Jews. (However, when they convert, Jews usually become remarkable Christians.)

2    This is how we know that we love the children of God: by loving God and carrying out his commands.

• And if we love the firstborn, we will love God’s other children, whether we actually like them or not. And if we don’t, the Spirit will be calling us to do so. True Christians know how much they have been forgiven and will be forgiving. Those who refuse, and continually harden their hearts, are most likely not born again.

3    In fact, this is love for God: to keep his commands. And his commands are not burdensome,

• Christians keep God’s commands not because they are terrified of God, but because they both love and fear Him as a father. We fear discipline from God, but we also come to understand how much we hurt Him when we sin, and what it cost Him to cover that sin in Christ.

4    for everyone born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith.

• What does this mean? It means that any pain can be born if there is a great reward to be had on the other side of it. A mother endures childbirth for the sake of a child. Jesus bore the cross for the sake of plundering the devil’s house of its captives.

• So, the faith spoken of is faith in the promise God makes of what is on the other side of suffering. We take His word for it and endure until what we heard becomes visible to our eyes. Overcoming the world means not believing what the world says, and not believing our eyes. Faith looks at ruins and sees a new house based on the blueprint in the promises of God.

5    Who is it that overcomes the world? Only the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.

• Our faith is based on the fact that Jesus overcame the world. Christians persevere, even when threatened with death, because Jesus, as the Son of God, overcame death.
• The period between AD30 and 70 was characterized by the rivalry between the testimony of Jesus and the testimony of the Jewish rulers. Would it be the Temple or the Church which survived the tribulation? Only one of them “overcame.” Likewise, only the true believers persevered to the end.

6    This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He did not come by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth.

• This point is where I twigged that in this passage John is working his way very subtly through the Ten Commandments. John is up to “false witness.” Two or three witnesses were required for God to make a judgment. Remember the witnesses against Cain? And Sodom? And the false witnesses brought to testify against Jesus? Here we have the water and the blood as witnesses, and the third witness is the Spirit, who unites the water and the blood. But why is it water and blood?
• Water and blood are both liquids required for life. One comes out of the body and one goes into the body. The Jews were the blood, the circumcision, the genealogy of Christ, the Land rising out of the water. The Gentiles were the water, the baptism, the office of Christ, brought into the household of faith in the first century to bring new life to the Old Covenant body. The body of Christ is one new man, made up of Jew and Gentile, blood and water.
• Jew and Gentile had been separated in Abraham as “Land and Sea.” [1] Water and blood poured out of Jesus’ body when He was speared. Being separate, they were two witnesses that He was dead. But they were reunited in His resurrection body. The old division was torn down. The last sacrificial blood was shed, and now there is only “office.” Genealogy no longer matters. Baptism wipes out all heredity and confers basic Christian office upon all believers.
• Why it is not “blood and water”? The water ended Jesus’ perfect life and began His earthly ministry. The blood completed that ministry. So it’s:
  Circumcision (blood) > Baptism (water); Atonement (blood) > Ascension (water)

7    For there are three that testify:
8    the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement.

• Unlike the witnesses against Jesus, the witness of Jesus’ baptism and Jesus’ death both corroborate the story of His identity. Not only did the Spirit testify at His baptism, it testified at His resurrection. He came up out of the water, then came up out of the Land.
• The process is actually blood to water: Circumcision to baptism, death to resurrection. But it is the baptism and death in the centre here that John has in mind. If Jesus was only baptized but not resurrected, He would have been a false teacher.

9    We accept human testimony, but God’s testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son.

• The Spirit not only witnessed to Jesus’ sonship in history, His testimony continues in us now.

10    Whoever believes in the Son of God accepts this testimony. Whoever does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because they have not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.

• Christians believe the Spirit’s legal witness, and that is why Christians gather as further witnesses, even though we are not eyewitnesses.

11    And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.

• Our very life is a testimony to the truth of the Gospel, because the Spirit is making us like Jesus. And now God says of us, as He did of Jesus, that we are “beloved sons.”

12    Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.

• Here we have the inside/outside of the new household of God. Only those inside Christ, inside the ark, inside the passover household, are safe.

The Ten Commandments in 1 John 5:1-12

1. Worshipping the True God
2. Responding faithfully to the New Covenant Oath — Jesus’ name
3. Overcoming the world brings Sabbath rest
4. Honouring father and mother (God and church) because Jesus is the Son of God
5. Water and blood testify to the murder of Jesus
6. The Spirit of Jesus is not “strange fire,” or spiritual adultery
7. The Spirit unites water and blood into Kingdom (Adam believed a lie and stole kingdom)
8. We accept God’s testimony, in the cursing and blessing of His Son
9. Eternal life is a new house
10. Whoever believes is in that new house [2]

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[1] See Cosmic Language.
[2] I follow the ancient Jewish “scroll” division of the Ten Words, followed by St. Augustine, because it fits the Bible Matrix. See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key, chapter 4, “God-In-A-Box.”

Art: Land, Sea Alchemy by Lisette, Textile Seahorse

Peter Leithart’s blog is included on the blogroll here, and most readers here read PJL anyway, but his recent posts on Church unity are worthy of flags being flown everywhere possible.

His post Too catholic to be Catholic received a huge response, both positive and negative, which has enabled him to get down to his basis in biblical theology, specifically in the books of the Kings. The Catholic / Orthodox / Protestant divide is no different to the divided kingdom of Israel.

The idea is common on all sides of the divided church that there is in fact no divided church.  Some Protestants unchurch Catholics and Orthodox; on this view, Protestants constitute the only true, pure church, and therefore the line that divides Protestants from Catholics and Orthodox is not a line that runs through the middle of the church.  It’s instead a line that runs between church (Protestants) and non-church (everybody else).  There are forms of the same idea in both Catholicism and Orthodoxy, though since Vatican II the Catholic church has acknowledged that while the church subsists in Catholicism, “many elements of sanctification and of truth are found outside of its visible structure” (Lumen Gentium, 8) and has famously recognized that some outside the Catholic church are “brothers,” albeit separated ones.

From the perspective of 1-2 Kings, this is altogether too sanguine a view of the state of the church. In the history of Israel, the line that divides the northern kingdom of Israel from the southern kingdom of Judah is a line that divides brothers, a line that divides two covenant nations, a line that runs right through the middle of Israel herself. At the beginning of the history of the divided kingdom, Yahweh warns Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, not to attack the northern kingdom and force them back into the Davidic orbit, and in that warning describes Israel as Judah’s “brothers” (1 Kings 12:24). The prophets pick up on similar familial language: Ezekiel describes Jerusalem and Samaria, capital cities of nother and south, as twin sisters (Ezekiel 23).  More remarkably, toward the end of the Northern kingdom, after a long history of calf worship and worse, Yahweh holds back from finally destroying Israel because of the promises He made to the patriarchs: “Yahweh was gracious to them and had compassion on them and turned to them because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (2 Kings 13:23).

Sectarianism is a comfort. If my church is the only church, then there’s no tragic division within Christendom, no rent in the fabric, to tearing of Christ’s body. 1-2 Kings gives us no such comfort: Christ has been divided in our divisions.

Leithart calls on all sections of the Church to tear down her “high places,” wherever they are found. He takes sides with no one but the Bible, and allows the Scriptures to highlight the tender mercies of God towards us in our carnality, which is what I love about the Biblical Horizons crowd.