1 Kings 15

The chapter measures kings by one line — whether the heart was perfect with Yahweh — and the verdicts come fast. Abijam of Judah walks in his father’s sins, and his heart was not perfect with Yahweh his God, as the heart of David his father. Yet he is not cut off, and the reason is the thread that has run through this whole stretch: for David’s sake Yahweh gives him a lamp in Jerusalem. The covenant keeps a light burning over an unworthy son, because the promise was never anchored in the son’s worth.

Then Asa, and a breath of mercy. Asa did that which was right in the eyes of Yahweh, as did David his father. He puts away the idols his fathers made, removes the male cult-prostitutes from the land, and even removes his own grandmother Maachah, the queen-mother, from her place because she had made an idol, which he cuts down and burns at the brook Kidron. He will sever even the dearest tie — the matriarch of the royal house — to clear the land of the abomination. Asa’s heart was perfect with Yahweh all his days — proof that even in the wreckage of the divided kingdom a king could turn and do right.

His reforms are not flawless — pressed by Baasha of Israel, he buys off Ben-hadad of Syria with the temple’s silver and gold, leaning on an arm of flesh rather than on Yahweh. The good king has a fault-line; the chronicler will rebuke it. But the chapter still holds him up as one whose heart was whole, in sharp relief against the north.

For in Israel the word marches on. Nadab, Jeroboam’s son, does evil, and Baasha kills him and smote all the house of Jeroboam; he left not to Jeroboam any that breathed… according unto the saying of Yahweh, which he spake by his servant Ahijah. The doom pronounced over Jeroboam’s house is carried out to the letter — the word that goes out of Yahweh’s mouth does not return to him void, but accomplishes the thing he sent it to do (Isa 55:11); the word that named Josiah and sentenced the calf-altar does not fail here either. The lamp is kept in Judah for David’s sake; the house that made the calves is swept away to the last breath. The covenant keeps a lamp over an unworthy son for David’s sake, a good king cuts down even his grandmother’s idol — and the word against the house of the calves is fulfilled exactly.

Jeremiah 41

The knife Gedaliah would not believe in falls. Ishmael of the royal seed eats bread with Gedaliah and then rises and kills him — murders the governor at his own table, and the Chaldean soldiers with him, and so cuts down the last fragile order the remnant had been given. And it falls in the seventh month, the month of Atonement: covenant-bread shared and then betrayed, blood shed in the very month of national cleansing. The man of David’s line, instead of being the lamp, becomes the assassin; the royal blood that should have kept the people sheds the blood that scatters them.

The horror deepens the next day. Eighty men come from Shechem and Shiloh and Samaria with offerings for the house of Yahweh, mourning, their beards shaven — pilgrims toward the ruined place — and Ishmael lures them in and slaughters all but ten, who buy their lives with hidden stores of food — the welcome that masks the knife, what Judas would later work on his own Master. He casts the bodies into a pit — the great cistern Asa had once made for the defence of the land now filled with the murdered. The day would be kept ever after as a fast (Zech 7:5) — and named among the fasts Yahweh promised to turn into joy and gladness, and cheerful feasts, when he restores his people (Zech 8:19); even this murder is folded into the promise that the mourning will be made a feast. The royal son turns a place of refuge into a grave; the violence of the flesh fills the land with blood even after the judgment has fallen.

Ishmael carries off the rest of the people captive toward Ammon, but Johanan and the captains pursue and recover them at the great waters of Gibeon. The captives are rescued, but Ishmael himself escapes to the Ammonites — the murderer slips away, and the rescued people are left frightened and rootless. There is deliverance, but no security; the remnant is saved from one hand only to stand trembling in the open.

And the chapter ends in the fear that will undo them. Dreading the Chaldeans’ revenge for Gedaliah’s murder, the survivors set their faces toward Egypt — back toward the house of bondage, the exact opposite of the prophet’s counsel. Fear drives the remnant toward Egypt, away from the land and the word — the old pull of the flesh, running from the appointed place of discipline back into bondage. The fall of Jerusalem has a long, bitter tail, and it ends with the people turning their backs on the land and toward Egypt again. The governor is murdered at his table in the month of atonement, the pilgrims are slain and thrown in the pit, and fear turns the frightened remnant back toward Egypt.

Mark 15

They bind him and deliver him to Pilate, and the trial turns on a title. Art thou the King of the Jews? — Thou sayest it — and through the false accusations he is silent, so that Pilate marvelled. The silence is not helplessness: he had the whole law to call on and would not answer a fool according to his folly (Prov 26:4), upholding the divine righteousness by refusing to argue with blasphemy. The King of the Jews stands condemned for being what he is. Pilate, knowing the chief priests delivered him for envy, offers the crowd a choice, and they choose Barabbas — a murderer released, the innocent bound — and cry Crucify him. The guiltless is given up and the guilty goes free, and the irony is the gospel: the man of blood walks, and the sinless King is led away.

The soldiers clothe him in purple, crown him with thorns, and mock the kingship — Hail, King of the Jews! — bowing the knee in scorn to the One before whom every knee will truly bow. They crown him with thorns — the very curse of the ground (Gen 3:18), and the thicket of Moriah too, where the ram caught by its horns in the thorns died in the son’s place (Gen 22:13) — and hail as a jest the King the whole earth will one day own. Simon of Cyrene is compelled to bear the beam, and they bring him to Golgotha, the place of a skull, and there, at the third hour, they crucify him between two thieves.

Darkness covers the land from the sixth hour to the ninth, and out of it comes the cry: Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani — My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? It is the opening of the twenty-second psalm, the psalm of the suffering righteous one — and that psalm, begun in forsakenness, ends in vindication and a declared righteousness before a great congregation. He goes down into the full depth of human dereliction, taking on his lips the cry of the forsaken — the Father’s protecting hand withdrawn that the Son might be the willing offering, not the Son abandoned; the psalm he quotes already knows the end is deliverance. With a loud cry he yields up his life.

And at the death, the house is opened. The veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom — torn by no human hand, top down, the same word Mark used when the heavens were rent at the Jordan (Mark 1:10). And it stopped the house in its tracks: with the veil in ruins the Passover ceremony could not go forward that day — the worship of Israel interrupted in the very hour the true Passover was offered outside the wall. The veil that shut men out of the holiest is torn the moment he dies — the new and living way consecrated for us through the veil, that is to say, his flesh (Heb 10:20): the veil is his own flesh, the tearing of it his death, and through it the way into the holiest — into immortality itself — is opened, the access the temple only pictured now made real. The centurion who watched him die says the truest word of the day: Truly this man was the Son of God — the first confession of the crucified King comes from a Gentile soldier, the firstfruit of the promise that he became a curse upon the tree that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles (Gal 3:13–14).

The women watch from afar — the ones who followed and ministered — and Joseph of Arimathaea goes boldly to ask for the body and lays it in a tomb hewn from rock, rolling a stone to the door. The King is laid in a borrowed grave as the sabbath falls — the offering finished, the body resting, the women marking the place. The kingdom of David has come to a tree outside the city and a stone over a tomb; and yet the veil is torn, the Gentile has confessed him, and the third day is coming. The innocent King is condemned and crowned with thorns, cries the psalm of the forsaken from the dark, and at his death the veil of his flesh is torn and a Gentile confesses him the Son of God.