1 Kings 12

The tearing Ahijah foretold comes to pass over a single foolish decision. Israel gathers at Shechem — the old place of covenant, where Joshua set the people before Yahweh — and asks Rehoboam to lighten the heavy yoke his father laid on them. The old men counsel a soft answer; the young men counsel a harder one; and Rehoboam — whose name means a people has enlarged — chooses the scorpions and loses the people his name boasts of: My father hath chastised you with whips, but I will chastise you with scorpions. The king who would not lighten the yoke loses the kingdom over it.

The people’s reply is a cry we have heard before. What portion have we in David? …to your tents, O Israel — the very words of Sheba’s revolt in the days of David (2 Sam 20:1). The flesh’s old slogan, we have no part in the son of Jesse, splits the nation in two; ten tribes follow Jeroboam, and only Judah is left to the house of David. The kingdom is torn exactly as the prophet said, the rending of the harsh yoke completed.

Then Jeroboam, fearing the people will go up to worship at Jerusalem and drift back to Rehoboam, commits the sin that will name him forever. He makes two calves of gold and sets them at Bethel and Dan: Behold thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. It is Aaron’s calf raised again (Exod 32), the same lie in the same words — a manageable, golden god to keep the people home. And the places he chooses preach the lie: one calf at Bethel, ‘the house of El,’ the counterfeit lodged in the house of God’s own name, the other at Dan, ‘judgment,’ as if to enthrone the calf where judgment should sit. He ordains priests of the lowest of the people, who were not Levites, and invents a feast in a month of his own devising.

The whole apparatus is a counterfeit kingdom of worship — convenient gods, convenient priests, a convenient calendar — set up to keep men from going up to the true house. Jeroboam’s fear builds a religion of the flesh’s own making, and it becomes the sin of Jeroboam that infects every king of Israel after him. The split that began over a yoke is sealed by a calf; political rebellion hardens into idolatry. The king who would not lighten the yoke tears the kingdom, and the king who feared losing it makes golden calves to keep it — and both are the work of the flesh that will not go up to the true house.

Jeremiah 38

The princes want Jeremiah dead, and their charge is that his word weakeneth the hands of the men of war — for he keeps saying that to stay in the city is to die and to surrender to the Chaldeans is to live. The truth that offers life on humbling terms is heard as treason. Zedekiah, too weak to resist them, gives the prophet up, and they let him down by cords into the dungeon of Malchiah, where there is no water but mire, and Jeremiah sunk in the mire.

The prophet of the word is left to die in the pit — and the picture is old and deep. The righteous sufferer sinking in the miry clay, crying out of the deep, is the very figure of the psalms of the afflicted: I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing (Ps 69:2); he brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay (Ps 40:2). Jeremiah in the cistern is a shadow of every faithful witness cast down toward death for the word — bearing, as Isaiah’s servant would, the iniquity of the many (Isa 53) — and of the One who would go down into the pit and be drawn up.

Deliverance comes from an unlikely hand. Ebed-melech the Ethiopian — the king’s servant, a Cushite, a foreigner in the court — goes boldly to the king for the prophet’s life, gathers old rags and worn-out cords, and lowers them to pad the ropes so they will not cut Jeremiah’s arms as he is drawn up. The Gentile’s gentleness lifts the prophet from the pit; the stranger does what all Judah would not. It is the same note struck across these readings — the nations doing what Israel will not.

Zedekiah consults Jeremiah one last time, in secret, terrified, and the prophet pleads with him plainly: surrender, obey, I beseech thee, the voice of Yahweh… so it shall be well unto thee, and thy soul shall live. But the king is more afraid of the Jews who have already defected than of Yahweh, and he cannot bring himself to obey. The fear of man holds the king back from the word that would have saved him — the last door of mercy stands open, and he will not walk through it. The prophet sinks in the mire for the true word and is drawn up by a Gentile’s hand; the king is offered life and held back by the fear of man.

Mark 12

Jesus answers the rulers who questioned his authority with a parable that is their own indictment. A man plants a vineyard — Isaiah’s figure for Israel (Isa 5) — lets it to husbandmen, and sends servants for the fruit; they beat and kill them. Having yet therefore one son, his wellbeloved, he sent him also… But those husbandmen said… This is the heir; come, let us kill him… And they took him, and killed him, and cast him out of the vineyard. The keepers of the vineyard will murder the beloved Son to keep it for themselves — and Jesus says it to their faces, days before they do it.

And he seals it with the stone. The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: this was Yahweh’s doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes (Ps 118:22–23). The builders — the rulers — throw away the very stone Yahweh makes the cornerstone; the rejected One becomes the head of the building, and the vineyard is taken from the murderers and given to others. They perceive he spoke the parable against them, and they want to seize him, but fear the crowd.

Then the questions meant to trap him, each turned into doctrine. The tribute coin: Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s — the image of Caesar goes back to Caesar, and the man who bears the image of God goes back to God. The Sadducees’ riddle about the resurrection he answers by their ignorance: ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God — at the rising the saints are as the angels, and God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for the covenant He swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob guarantees He will raise them. The God who calls Himself their God will not leave them in the dust.

A scribe asks the first commandment, and Jesus gives the Shema: Hear, O Israel; Yahweh our God is one Yahweh: and thou shalt love Yahweh thy God with all thy heart — and the second, to love the neighbor as oneself. The one God, loved whole-heartedly, is the foundation under everything — and the scribe who agrees is told he is not far from the kingdom. Then Jesus turns the tables: how is the Christ David’s son, when David in the Spirit calls him Lord — Yahweh said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand (Ps 110:1)? The Messiah is David’s son by the flesh and David’s Lord by the Father’s exaltation.

He ends watching the treasury, and the last thing he commends is the smallest gift. A poor widow casts in two mites, and he says she hath cast more in, than all they… for all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. The widow’s everything outweighs the rich men’s surplus — the measure of the kingdom is not the size of the gift but the cost to the giver. She is the ecclesia in figure, the second Eve, pouring her whole life into the house of God; she and the dying thief who will own him on the stake are the two poor souls whose all-or-nothing devotion comfort the King as he goes to the offering. The husbandmen will kill the heir, the rejected stone becomes the corner, the one God is to be loved whole, and the widow’s two mites outweigh all the rest.