Read Time: 6 minutes1 Kings 20
Ben-hadad of Syria besieges Samaria with thirty-two vassal kings and a host that covers the country, and demands Ahab’s silver, gold, wives, and children. Syria did not find its own way into the land: Asa of Judah hired this man’s house to come against Israel, and paid for it with the silver and gold of the temple (1 Kgs 15:18–20). The good king’s arm of flesh is still being felt two reigns later, and it is now besieging the capital. When Ahab balks at the second, greedier demand, Syria boasts that the dust of Samaria will not fill the hands of its army. Into the apostate king’s hopeless corner comes a prophet — unnamed, ministering to Ahab in the very days Elijah hid at Horeb sure he alone was left — with a stunning word: Behold, I will deliver it into thine hand this day; and thou shalt know that I am Yahweh. One of the seven thousand who had not bowed is already at work while Elijah counts himself the last man — the remnant the prophet could not see, standing in his absence; no man, not even Elijah, is indispensable to the purpose. The deliverance is aimed not at reward but at revelation: that even Ahab will know who he is.
The victory is given by the unlikeliest means — the young men of the princes of the provinces, a tiny force, rout the drunken kings. The next year Syria returns with a new theology: Israel’s gods are gods of the hills, so let the battle be fought in the plain. Yahweh answers the slander directly: because the Syrians have said, Yahweh is God of the hills, but he is not God of the valleys, therefore will I deliver all this great multitude into thine hand. Israel,** *****like two little flocks of kids*****, defeats a Syrian army that filled the country** — the weak confounding the strong again, and the lesson stamped on it that Yahweh is God of every place, not a local deity of the heights.
But the chapter ends with a king who turns a victory into a verdict against himself. Ben-hadad, the man Yahweh had appointed to utter destruction, falls into Ahab’s hand, and Ahab spares him, makes a treaty, and lets him go — a misplaced mercy that disobeys the word, the same sin that cost Saul his kingdom when he spared Agag (1 Sam 15). A mercy that overrides the command of Yahweh is not mercy but disobedience.
A prophet traps him with it, as Nathan trapped David — disguised, wounded, telling a parable of a prisoner who slipped away on his watch — and then pronounces the sentence: thy life shall go for his life, and thy people for his people. Ahab goes home to Samaria heavy and displeased. The king who was twice given victory to know Yahweh throws away the knowledge by sparing the man Yahweh had marked for judgment. Yahweh saves Israel by the weak — by an unnamed man of the hidden remnant — that Ahab might know him; and Ahab forfeits it all by a mercy that disobeys the word.
Jeremiah 47
A short, fierce oracle falls on the Philistines — the old enemy of Israel, the people of Goliath, the seed of the serpent that troubled the covenant nation from the beginning. They were not of the land at all but sea-people out of Caphtor (Crete; Amos 9:7), settled on the south-western coast; the adversary that harried Israel longest came in from the water. Waters rise up out of the north, and shall be an overflowing flood — Babylon again, the flood from the north, sweeping down over Philistia, over Gaza and Ashkelon and the coast. The judgment of the nations rolls on, and the old adversary is not exempt.
The terror is painted in a single unbearable image: the fathers shall not look back to their children for feebleness of hands — the day so overwhelming that a father will not turn to save his own child, every hand gone slack with dread. Gaza is shaved bald, the head of mourning, and the cry over Ashkelon — how long wilt thou cut thyself? — carries the sense will thy lamentations never cease? Tyre and Zidon are cut off from their helpers; the strong cities melt. The flood that took Judah and will take Egypt takes Philistia too; no nation stands before the appointed sword.
The chapter ends with a cry that is half lament and half awe: O thou sword of Yahweh, how long ere thou be quiet? put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still. The sword of Yahweh has its appointed work, and it will not be sheathed until the work is done. The prophet feels the weight of the judgment and longs for it to cease, and is answered that it cannot rest while Yahweh has given it a charge — the sword goes until the appointment is fulfilled.
It is a sober reminder that the One who spoke in the still small voice is also the One whose sword does not rest, and that his judgments fall on all the proud and violent nations in their turn — Egypt, Philistia, and in the end Babylon itself. The Philistines are judged at last for laying hands on the people who are the apple of his eye — for he that touched Israel touched the very pupil of Yahweh’s eye (Zech 2:8). The same word that comforts Jacob with correction in measure cuts the nations to a full end. The flood from the north takes even the old adversary; the sword of Yahweh does not rest until its charge is done.
1 Corinthians 6
Paul is appalled that brethren drag one another to law before the unjust, before pagan courts, and he answers with the dignity of their calling, in the drumbeat question that runs all through these letters — Know ye not? He asks it again and again, some eleven times across the two epistles, every stroke built on the first of them (know ye not that ye are the temple of God, 3:16), driving home a holiness they keep forgetting: Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world?… Know ye not that we shall judge angels? The people destined to judge the world and the angels are squabbling before pagan magistrates over trifles — and the better course, he says, is plainer still: why do ye not rather take wrong? why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be defrauded? The future judges of the world can afford to be wronged now.
Then a list of the unrighteous who shall not inherit the kingdom of God — and the turn that lifts the chapter: and such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God. What they were is named, and then buried under three verbs of grace — washed, sanctified, justified. The vice-list is their past; the cleansing is their present; the kingdom is their future. The water of the laver has done its real work, on the inside, on the life.
So the body itself becomes the ground of holiness. All things are lawful unto me, but all things are not expedient — liberty is not licence — meats for the belly, and the belly for meats; but God shall destroy both it and them: the body’s present appetites will pass at the resurrection, but the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. Their bodies are now** *****the members of Christ**, joined to him, and so cannot be joined to what defiles; flee fornication*, for the sin against the body is a sin against what now belongs to another.
And the chapter ends on the temple theme made utterly personal. Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s. The temple has come all the way down — from Solomon’s house, to the gathered ecclesia, to the single body of the believer — and the redemption is the reason: bought with a price, the redeemed are not their own, and the ransomed body is a sanctuary for the Spirit. The saints who will judge the world are washed and sanctified; their very bodies are the temple of the Spirit, bought with a price — so glorify God in the body.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day holds together the power of God in weakness, the certainty of his judgments, and the holiness of the redeemed. Yahweh saves Israel by two little flocks of kids against a Syrian flood, that even Ahab might know he is God of the valleys as well as the hills; the sword of Yahweh sweeps even the old Philistine adversary in the flood from the north; and the saints in Corinth are told they will judge the world and angels, and that their bodies are now the temple of the Spirit. The God who is mighty in the weak, sure in his judgments, and dwelling in his redeemed people runs through all three.
And the readings warn how the flesh forfeits and defiles what God gives. Ahab is twice given victory to know Yahweh, and throws it away by a mercy that disobeys the word — sparing the man Yahweh had marked, as Saul spared Agag. The Corinthians, destined to judge angels, demean themselves before pagan courts over trifles and are tempted to defile the very bodies that are members of Christ. The dignity is enormous and the failure is petty; the calling is to judge the world, and the temptation is to win a small lawsuit and indulge a small lust. The flesh always trades the great inheritance for a present advantage.
So the day asks us to know who we are and to keep the temple holy. You are bought with a price; you are not your own; your body is the dwelling of the Spirit and a member of Christ — so glorify God in it, flee what defiles it, and do not, like Ahab, throw away the knowledge of God for a convenient compromise. You are destined to judge the world; do not demean that calling by clinging to small rights and small revenges — why not rather take wrong? The God who is God of the valleys as well as the hills, whose sword does not rest till its charge is done, who guards his own as the apple of his eye, has washed and sanctified and justified you and made your body his temple. Live as what you are. You are bought with a price and made the temple of the Spirit — so glorify God in your body, and do not trade the great calling for a small gain.