2 Kings 3

Three kings — Israel, Judah, and Edom — march against rebellious Moab and find themselves stranded seven days in the wilderness with no water for the army or the beasts. The king of Israel despairs that Yahweh has gathered them to be destroyed; Jehoshaphat of Judah asks the better question: Is there not here a prophet of Yahweh? In the dry place, the king who fears Yahweh looks for the word, and the king who does not despairs. Elisha is found, and only for Jehoshaphat’s sake will he answer the apostate house of Ahab at all.

Elisha calls for a minstrel, and as the music plays the hand of Yahweh comes upon him. The word is strange: Make this valley full of ditches… ye shall not see wind, neither shall ye see rain; yet that valley shall be filled with water. The provision comes without the visible means — no storm, no wind, no cloud, just the dry trenches filling in the night with water from an unseen source. The army that was dying of thirst wakes to a valley running full; the God who needs no rain to give water fills the prepared ditches.

The deliverance turns on the dug trenches. The water comes by Yahweh’s hand, but it gathers where the people have prepared the channels to receive it — the blessing is given freely and held in the vessels faith prepares. And the same water becomes the snare for Moab: at sunrise it shines red as blood, the Moabites take it for the slaughtered kings’ gore, rush in to spoil, and are routed. The gift of life to Israel is the trap of death to the enemy; the morning light on the water saves one army and destroys the other.

The chapter ends in horror — the king of Moab sacrifices his eldest son on the wall — a glimpse of what the worship of false gods finally demands, the dark opposite of the God who gives water in the desert. The true God fills the dry valley; the false god devours the firstborn. The contrast is the whole point: Yahweh provides where there is no rain, and the idol consumes its own children. In the dry place the prophet of Yahweh is sought, the ditches are dug, and the valley fills with water from an unseen hand.

Jeremiah 51

The great oracle against Babylon comes to its height, and the imagery is total reversal. The golden cup that made the whole earth drunk is itself dashed: Babylon hath been a golden cup in Yahweh’s hand, that made all the earth drunken… Babylon is suddenly fallen and destroyed. The empire that intoxicated the nations is given her own cup to drink — the measure she poured out is measured back to her, exactly and without remainder. And Yahweh raises a wind against her: I will send unto Babylon fanners, that shall fan her, and shall empty her land — the winnowing blast that drives the chaff off the floor, the same wind of Daniel’s vision that swept the great image away until no place was found for it (Dan 2:35); the Gentile colossus is fanned to nothing.

Against Babylon’s idols Yahweh sets himself as Creator: The portion of Jacob is not like them; for he is the former of all things… Yahweh of hosts is his name. The gods of Babylon are vanity, the work of errors, but the God of Jacob made the heavens and the earth. The dead idols cannot stand before the living Maker, and the city built on them must fall. Her broad walls and high gates are no defence against the One who formed the world.

And again the command rings out to the people of God caught in her midst: My people, go ye out of the midst of her, and deliver ye every man his soul from the fierce anger of Yahweh. Separation from the doomed system is the saint’s safety — and the prophet seals the word against Babylon by an acted sign: Seraiah carries the written oracle to Babylon, reads it, binds a stone to the scroll, and sinks it in the Euphrates with the words thus shall Babylon sink, and shall not rise. The written word goes down into the river as the city will go down, never to surface.

The whole oracle is the answer to every reader who feels the world-system is permanent and invincible. Babylon looked eternal — the golden cup, the broad walls, the gods of gold — and Yahweh sinks her like a stone in the river. What exalts itself against the living God, however vast, sinks and does not rise. The same Babylon will reappear in the last book as the great harlot given the cup of his wrath (Rev 17–18), and the same command will sound: come out of her. The golden cup is given her own draught, the chaff is fanned away before the Maker, and the word against Babylon sinks in the river like the city it dooms.

1 Corinthians 11

Paul takes up order in the assembly, beginning with headship, and the order he names runs all the way up. The head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man; and the head of Christ is God. Even the Son has a head — God, the Father — and the whole order of the ecclesia hangs from that. This is no chain of worth but of order and source; as the Son does the Father’s will and is subject to him, so the household of faith is to honour the order Yahweh set, each in his place, for all things are of God.

That order is made visible in the assembly. The covered head of the sister is a wordless figure — the Bride covered by her Head — the hair that is her glory veiled in token of submission, the mind dedicated to Yahweh and kept under his authority. Where Eve uncovered herself to the serpent’s word and took its mind for her own, the Bride is covered by her Husband; the sign in the meeting is a standing exhortation to the whole ecclesia, brethren and sisters together, of the subjection the Bride owes her Head.

Then the heart of the chapter — the Lord’s table, the oldest record we have of it. The Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed took bread… This is my body, which is broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also he took the cup… This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. The bread and the cup are the memorial of the offering and the seal of the new covenant — the covenant Jeremiah promised, now sealed in his blood, kept not by re-sacrifice but by remembrance.

And the table looks two ways at once. As often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord’s death till he come. The memorial reaches back to the offering and forward to the coming — it proclaims a death already accomplished and waits for a King who will return. It is the bond of the one body (chapter 10) and the proclamation of the one offering, held between the offering behind and the kingdom ahead.

So Paul warns against eating it unworthily — for to eat unworthily is not to come feeling unworthy but to treat the holy thing as common, the symbol made a mere meal, the table that joins the many divided between rich and poor. Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat. The table that joins the body must be approached with self-examination, not carelessness — for to despise it is to be guilty of the body and blood it remembers. The memorial of the broken body is no place for a divided one. The order of the ecclesia hangs from the Son who owns the Father as head, made visible in the covered Bride; the bread and cup are the memorial of the offering and the new covenant, proclaiming his death till he come.