Read Time: 6 minutes2 Samuel 22
The narrative breaks into song, and the song is David’s whole life turned into worship — the same psalm we have as Psalm 18, set here as the capstone of his deliverances. Yahweh is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer. Out of all the danger of the past chapters — Absalom, Sheba, the giant who nearly killed him — David gathers one confession: the deliverance was never his sword’s, it was Yahweh’s hand.
The peril is named in the language of death itself. The sorrows of death compassed me, the floods of ungodly men made me afraid; the sorrows of the grave compassed me about; the snares of death prevented me. This is more than a king’s close calls. It is the voice of a man pulled up out of the pit — and so it is, by the Spirit, the song of the greater David who went down into death and was drawn out: he sent from above, he took me, he drew me out of many waters. Resurrection is the deep grammar of the song.
Then the theophany. Yahweh comes down in fire to deliver his anointed — he bowed the heavens also, and came down; and darkness was under his feet. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly… He sent out arrows, and scattered them; lightning, and discomfited them. It is Sinai language and judgment language at once: the God who came down on the mountain comes down to fight for his king, and the same coming that saves the anointed shakes the foundations of the world.
At the centre stands the question that holds the whole Christadelphian confession in two clauses: For who is God save Yahweh? and who is a rock save our God? There is one — Yahweh, the El, the rock — and the rock is the one Paul says followed Israel and that rock was Christ (1 Cor 10:4). David sings his deliverer; we know the deliverer’s Name and his Son.
The song ends on the covenant. Thou hast made me the head of the heathen… He is the tower of salvation for his king: and sheweth mercy to his anointed, unto David, and to his seed for evermore. The delivered king is set head of the nations — Christ over the Gentiles, the very inflow Romans has been tracing — and the mercy runs not to David only but to his seed for evermore, the everlasting covenant of 2 Samuel 7 still carrying the song.
The rock that drew David out of the floods of death is the rock that was Christ; the king delivered from the grave is set head of the nations, and the mercy reaches his seed for ever.
Jeremiah 25
The chapter fixes a number on the coming captivity, and the number is the spine of later prophecy. This whole land shall be a desolation… and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Seventy — the span of a man’s full age (Ps 90:10) and the appointed measure of the nations’ service — is the exact term Daniel will count down in prayer (Dan 9:2) and Chronicles will tie to the land’s unkept sabbaths. The discipline has a fixed end; the exile is measured, not abandoned. And this same year — Nebuchadnezzar’s first as sole monarch — is where the Spirit begins to reckon by Gentile times (Luke 21:24): the throne of David set aside, the long dominion of the nations begun, and the seventy years its near front edge.
And the term cuts both ways. When the seventy years are accomplished… I will punish the king of Babylon, and that nation… for their iniquity. The rod that Yahweh uses on Judah is broken in its turn. Babylon is the instrument of judgment and then the object of it — the pattern that runs all the way to the great Babylon of the Revelation, raised up to chasten and then thrown down. The link is not merely thematic: the silenced millstone and candle of verse 10 are taken up again over Babylon the Great (Rev 18:22–23), John following the Hebrew closely.
The center of the chapter is the cup of the wine of fury, passed hand to hand around the nations. Take the wine cup of this fury at my hand, and cause all the nations… to drink it. Jerusalem drinks first, then Egypt, then the kings of the earth in their order, and the king of Sheshach shall drink after them. None is exempt; the cup goes round until all have drunk the day of Yahweh.
That cup runs straight to Gethsemane and straight to the end. The cup of wrath the nations must drink is the cup the Son of David lifts in the garden — the cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it? — taking into himself the judgment the nations had earned. And the same cup is held out to Babylon the Great at the last (Rev 16:19). He drank the cup of fury so that those in him would not.
The chapter closes on the roar of the Lion of judgment. Yahweh shall roar from on high… he shall give a shout, as they that tread the grapes, against all the inhabitants of the earth. The slain of Yahweh shall be from one end of the earth to the other; the shepherds howl, for their day to be slaughtered is come. It is the day of Yahweh in full voice — the same roar Joel and Amos hear from Zion, the latter-day judgment of the gathered nations.
The captivity is measured to seventy years and Babylon’s judgment is sure; the cup of fury goes round to all the nations — and the King drinks that cup so his own need not.
Romans 13–14
Paul sets the saint inside the present order without surrendering him to it. Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers… the powers that be are ordained of God. The magistrate is the minister of God who beareth not the sword in vain — and this is the very sword of public justice that Romans 12 forbade the saint to seize privately. Vengeance belongs to Yahweh and, under him, to the ordained power; the saint owes it honor and tribute, owe no man any thing, but to love one another.
Then the alarm clock of the gospel: the night is far spent, the day is at hand. It is high time to awake out of sleep… let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light… put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ. The day of Yahweh that roars at the end of Jeremiah is, for the saint, a day to dress for — not the cup of fury but the morning of the King’s return, and the only fit clothing for it is Christ himself put on like armor.
Chapter 14 turns to the body’s inner peace over disputed things — meats and days, the weak in faith and the strong. Who art thou that judgest another man’s servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth. The principle that governs it is the coming reckoning: we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Each saint answers there, and that future accounting is exactly why no saint sits in judgment on his brother now over things indifferent. And the Lord’s title to that seat is given in the verse just before it: to this end he died, and rose, and revived (v. 9) — and the word for ‘revived’ is anazao, recovered to life, proof positive that he truly died and was truly brought back, with no immortal part slipping free of the grave.
The pastoral edge is the stumblingblock. Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way. Sheba and the giants were stumblingblocks of the flesh; here the warning is gentler and closer to home — do not let your liberty be the thing your weaker brother trips over. And the summary lifts the whole question above food: the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Honor the order Yahweh has set, dress for the day that is at hand by putting on Christ, and keep the body’s peace — for each stands before the judgment seat of Christ, and the kingdom is righteousness and peace and joy.
Synthesis and Exhortation
Two cups and two days run through the readings. There is the cup of fury that goes round all the nations in Jeremiah, drunk down to the dregs in the day Yahweh roars from on high; and there is the day Romans tells the saint to dress for — the day is at hand — by putting on the Lord Jesus Christ like armor of light. The same coming of Yahweh that David sings in 2 Samuel 22, when he bowed the heavens and came down riding the cherub in fire, is fury to the nations and deliverance to his anointed. Which face of that day we meet depends entirely on whose we are.
And the bridge between the cup of wrath and the day of light is the King who drank the one so his people could meet the other. The cup of fury the nations earned is the cup the Son of David lifted in the garden and did not refuse; who is God save Yahweh, and who is a rock save our God — the rock that drew David out of the floods of death is the rock that went down into death and was drawn out, set head of the nations, his mercy running to his seed for evermore. The everlasting covenant stands while Babylon drinks and falls.
So the day calls for sober dress and a quiet conscience. The captivity was measured to seventy years — the discipline has an end, the rod is itself broken in its time, and the saint need not despair under chastening or envy the nations their hour. Honor the order you live under; owe no one anything but love; do not make your liberty your brother’s stumblingblock, for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ. The night is nearly gone. Put on the King who drank the cup, and the day that roars at the nations will dawn on you as morning.
Two cups are poured: the fury for the nations, and the King who drank it for his own. Put on Christ, and wake — the day is at hand.