Read Time: 7 minutes2 Kings 4
The chapter is a gallery of grace, one mercy after another, the ministry of life that marks Elisha as a shadow of the One to come. A prophet’s widow is about to lose her sons to a creditor; she has nothing save a pot of oil. Elisha tells her to borrow vessels — not a few — and pour. The little oil fills every vessel she can gather and stops only when the vessels run out — the provision is limited not by the source but by the faith that prepares to receive it. The creditor came armed with the law that let him take her sons for the debt, and the grace of the prophet’s God abounds over the law (Rom 5:20): she sells the oil, pays what the law demanded, and lives on the rest; the empty house is filled because she dared to borrow many jars.
Then the Shunammite woman, who built the prophet a room, is given a son in her old age — and the son dies on her knees at noon. She lays him on the prophet’s bed, rides hard to Carmel, and will not be put off with a staff sent by a servant: As Yahweh liveth… I will not leave thee. Gehazi is sent ahead to lay the prophet’s staff on the child’s face, and nothing stirs — the bare staff, the instrument of office sent without the man, brings no life, as the law laid on dead Israel could raise no one. Only when Elisha himself comes, shuts the door, and stretches his own living body on the dead child, mouth to mouth and eye to eye, does the dead boy sneeze seven times and open his eyes. It is the second great raising in these books, the firstfruits-pattern of resurrection: the child given back alive to his mother, the door of death opened by the prophet’s God.
The mercies keep coming. In a famine the sons of the prophets boil a poisoned stew — there is death in the pot — and Elisha casts in meal and there was no harm in the pot; the death is healed and the food made safe. The prophet turns poison into bread, death into nourishment — the same hand that raised the child neutralizes the death in the common meal.
And the chapter ends with bread multiplied. A man brings twenty barley loaves and some ears of corn, and Elisha says, Give unto the people, that they may eat; the servant objects that it cannot feed a hundred, and the word answers, They shall eat, and shall leave thereof. So… they did eat, and left thereof, according to the word of Yahweh. A little bread feeds the multitude with fragments left over — the very sign Christ will work for the five thousand and the four thousand. Oil that does not fail, a child raised, poison healed, bread multiplied: Elisha’s whole ministry is the gospel of life in advance. Empty vessels filled, a dead child raised by the prophet who lays himself on the dead, death taken out of the pot, and a little bread feeding the many with some left over.
Jeremiah 52
The book closes not with an oracle but with the bare record of the catastrophe, told once more so it cannot be doubted or softened. The siege, the famine, the breach of the wall; Zedekiah’s flight and capture; his sons slain before his eyes, his own eyes then put out, and the blind king carried to Babylon to die in prison. The temple, the palace, every great house burned; the walls broken down; the people carried away. The word Jeremiah carried for forty years stands fulfilled in cold detail.
The chapter lingers, almost tenderly, over the temple furniture carried off — the pillars, the bases, the molten sea, the pots and shovels and the bowls of gold and silver. The days themselves were kept: the fourth month for the breaching of the city, the fifth for the burning of the house, two fasts Israel would keep for centuries (Zech 7:3–5) and which Yahweh promises to turn at last into cheerful feasts (Zech 8:19). And it names the two great pillars by their work: Jachin and Boaz, he establishes and in it is strength, broken up and carried to Babylon. The gateway that once proclaimed the God who upholds his house is now scrap metal in a conqueror’s wagon. The glory that filled Solomon’s house has gone entirely into exile.
It is the lowest point of the whole national story — the throne blinded, the house burned, the holy vessels in pagan hands; five hundred years of the kingdom of God on earth come to an end here, as in Eden undone by sin. And the name of that last king is the bitterest irony of all: Zedekiah, “the Righteousness of Yah,” ends blind in a Babylonian dungeon, a hollow name over a failed reign — while the King whose right it is (Ezek 21:27), the true Branch named Yahweh-Tsidkenu, Yahweh our Righteousness (Jer 23:6), is yet to come, and the lamp kept for David’s sake is not finally out. The reader who has followed it through every faithless king wonders whether it has gone out at last; the kingdom of Judah is, to all appearance, simply over.
And then, in the last four verses, a door cracks open. In the thirty-seventh year of his captivity, Jehoiachin the Davidic king is lifted up out of prison, his prison garments changed, set above the other kings, and given a daily portion at the king’s table all the days of his life. It is the smallest of mercies and the largest of hopes: the seed of David, the line of the lamp, is alive and honoured in Babylon. The book that ends in ashes ends also with a son of David eating at a king’s table — the lamp not out, only carried into the dark, waiting for the King who is Yahweh our Righteousness. The catastrophe is told in full, the pillars of the house are carried to Babylon, the king named Righteousness-of-Yah ends blind — and the book closes with a son of David lifted from prison to the king’s table.
1 Corinthians 12–13
Paul turns to the gifts of the Spirit and corrects the Corinthian habit of ranking them. There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit — wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, tongues — dividing to every man severally as he will. The word gifts is supplied by the translators and stands in italics; Paul’s subject is spiritual matters more broadly, and the apostles could manifest all nine, while those on whom they laid hands received one apiece (1 Tim 4:14; 2 Tim 1:6). The one Spirit gives many gifts, and no gift is the whole or the badge of rank. The Corinthians prized the showy ones; Paul insists they are all from one Source and all for one purpose, the profit of all, not the glory of the gifted.
Then the figure that governs the whole question — the body. For as the body is one, and hath many members… so also is Christ. The foot cannot say it is not of the body because it is not the hand; the eye cannot tell the hand it has no need of it. The members are diverse precisely so they can need each other, and God has set each in the body as it hath pleased him, giving more honor to the parts that seem to lack it, that there should be no schism in the body. Ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular — the multitudinous Christ, one body of many parts, suffering and rejoicing together.
And from the body Paul lifts to a more excellent way — the thing without which every gift is nothing. Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass… and though I have all knowledge… and have not love, I am nothing. The greatest gifts, without love, are noise and emptiness — prophecy, knowledge, faith to move mountains, even a body given to be burned, all come to nothing if love is absent. Love is not one gift among many; it is the air the gifts must breathe — the bond of perfectness (Col 3:14), the fulfilling of the law (Rom 13:10), not the natural affection of the flesh but the self-giving love that is the very character of God.
So he draws love itself: love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not… seeketh not her own… beareth all things… never faileth. The gifts will cease — tongues, prophecy, knowledge all belong to the in part that passes when that which is perfect is come — but love abides. Now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face. When the partial gives way to the perfect, three things remain — faith, hope, love — and the greatest is love. The body lives not by its gifts but by the love that holds the members together. The one Spirit gives many gifts to one body of many members — and the more excellent way, the thing that never fails, is love.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day holds the ministry of life and love against the record of the ruin. Elisha’s gallery of grace — the oil that fills the vessels, the dead child raised, the poison turned to bread, the loaves multiplied — pictures the gospel of life; Jeremiah 52 records the kingdom burned to ashes with one son of David lifted to a king’s table at the end; and Paul lifts the Corinthians from their squabble over gifts to the one body and the more excellent way of love. Life given freely, a lamp kept in the dark, and love that never fails — these are the threads that close the month, and they all point past the ruin to the One who gives life and is himself love.
And the readings teach how the people of God are filled and held. The widow’s vessels fill only as fast as she gathers them; the dead are raised not by the staff of office but by the prophet who lays his own body on the dead; the body of Christ lives only as the members honor and need each other; and every gift is empty without the love that suffers long and seeks not its own. The blessing is free but received into prepared and humble channels; the law laid on dead Israel could raise no one, and only the living grace of the prophet’s God gives life. Where the Corinthians ranked their gifts and divided, Paul sets the body that cannot say I have no need of thee and the love that envies not and is not puffed up.
So the day asks us to receive the life freely given and to walk the more excellent way. Borrow many vessels for the oil that does not fail; do not limit the provision by your own small expectation. Take heart that the lamp kept for David’s sake is not out, only carried into the dark and lifted, at the last, to the king’s table — the line of promise alive in Babylon, the King who is Yahweh our Righteousness still to come, the hope not extinguished by the worst the judgment could do. And above every gift you are given, put on love — for tongues and knowledge and mountain-moving faith are sounding brass without it, and when all the partial things have passed, faith and hope and love remain, and the greatest is love. Bring many vessels for the oil that does not fail, trust the lamp that the dark could not put out, and above every gift put on the love that never fails.