Read Time: 9 minutes1 Samuel 23
Even hunted, David acts as the true king should — he saves the people who will not save him. Word comes that the Philistines are robbing the threshingfloors of Keilah, and David, though a fugitive with a price on his head, inquires of Yahweh and goes down to deliver the city: “David saved the inhabitants of Keilah.” The rejected anointed does the work of a shepherd-king for a town that is not even loyal to him — for when Saul hears David is shut up in Keilah, David inquires again and learns that the very men he saved will hand him over to Saul to save themselves. He delivers Keilah, and Keilah would betray him; the anointed saves the ungrateful, the pattern of the One who “came unto his own, and his own received him not” (John 1:11) — Keilah, the enclosure or fortress, a walled town that would shut its gates on its own deliverer.
The chapter turns on David’s inquiring of Yahweh through the ephod Abiathar carried — the priesthood that fled to him now serving him in the wilderness. Twice he asks, and twice Yahweh answers plainly: will Saul come down? He will. Will the men of Keilah deliver me? They will. The rejected king has what Saul has lost — the word of Yahweh, the guidance of the Spirit, the priestly oracle — while Saul on his throne is left to his own counsel and his own jealousy. The kingdom in waiting has the presence of God; the kingdom in name has only the king’s malice.
Saul hunts him through the wilderness of Ziph — a name of refining or melting — and the hunted king is refined in that wilderness as in a furnace, “and Saul sought him every day, but God delivered him not into his hand.” Day after day the persecutor presses, and day after day Yahweh sets the hedge — the same keeping that overcame the messengers in chapter 19 and numbered the hairs of the head in Matthew 10. And into the hardest stretch comes one of the sweetest verses: Jonathan comes to David in the wood, “and strengthened his hand in God,” saying, “Fear not: for the hand of Saul my father shall not find thee; and thou shalt be king over Israel, and I shall be next unto thee.” The friend comes once more, not to fight beside him but to strengthen his hand in God — the ministry of the one who steadies the faith of the hunted, and renews the covenant that he will gladly take the second place.
The chapter ends on a deliverance so narrow it names the rock. Saul closes in, compassing David and his men round about — and at the very moment of capture a messenger comes that the Philistines have invaded, and Saul must break off the chase. The place is named Sela-hammahlekoth, the rock of divisions or of escape. The hedge holds at the last possible instant; the anointed slips the snare again, not by his own strength but by a providence that turns even the enemy’s invasion to David’s rescue. The persecutor is pulled away by the very Philistines David had been fighting; Yahweh delivers his anointed by a hair, and the rock keeps its name as a memorial of the escape.
The hunted anointed saves the city that would betray him and inquires of Yahweh while the king is left to his malice. The friend strengthens his hand in God; and at the rock of escape Yahweh plucks him from the closing snare.
Isaiah 66
The last chapter of Isaiah opens with Yahweh’s word against trusting in any house men can build for him. “The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool: where is the house that ye build unto me?… but to this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembleth at my word.” The God who fills heaven and earth cannot be housed by human hands; what he looks to is not the temple but the contrite heart — the same word as chapter 57, the High and Holy One dwelling with the lowly. And against the contrite he sets the hollow worship of the rebellious, whose sacrifices are as the slaying of a man, who “have chosen their own ways” — the form of religion without the trembling heart, the same as Saul’s sacrifice without obedience.
Then the chapter sounds its strangest and most wonderful note — Zion gives birth in a moment, a nation born at once. “Before she travailed, she brought forth; before her pain came, she was delivered of a man child… Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day? or shall a nation be born at once? for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children.” The barren-womb pattern that began with Hannah reaches its last and largest statement here: Zion, so long forsaken and desolate, gives birth suddenly to a whole nation — the redeemed brought forth in a day when the kingdom comes. And the comfort is the tenderest maternal image in all the prophets, set beside the maternal image of chapter 49: “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you; and ye shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”
The chapter then gathers the great latter-day themes that the close of Isaiah has been building. Yahweh comes “with fire, and with his chariots like a whirlwind, to render his anger with fury… for by fire and by his sword will Yahweh plead with all flesh” — the day of judgment, the warrior of chapter 63 come to tread the press. And the gathering of all nations and tongues to see his glory, the sending of survivors to the nations that have not heard, to declare his glory among the Gentiles, and the bringing of all the brethren “for an offering unto Yahweh out of all nations” to his holy mountain. The judgment of the rebellious and the ingathering of the nations are the one great close — fire for the proud flesh, and the gathering of the redeemed from every people to Jerusalem.
And the book ends where the kingdom-age rests, on the new heavens and new earth and the perpetual worship of all flesh. “For as the new heavens and the new earth, which I will make, shall remain before me, saith Yahweh, so shall your seed and your name remain. And it shall come to pass, that… from one sabbath to another, shall all flesh come to worship before me.” The renewed creation that does not pass, the seed and name that remain, all flesh coming to worship from sabbath to sabbath — the kingdom on the earth, the Sabbath-rest of the creation. The very last verse is sober — the carcasses of the rebels, the fire not quenched, the abhorrence of all flesh — the judgment that stands forever beside the glory, the two ends of the day of Yahweh that the whole book has held together from the start.
Heaven is his throne; he looks to the contrite, not the house men build. Zion travails and a nation is born in a day; the nations are gathered to his mountain, and from sabbath to sabbath all flesh comes to worship in the new heavens and new earth that remain.
Matthew 11
The chapter opens on John the Baptist in prison, sending to ask the question that the persecution of every anointed servant raises: “Art thou he that should come, or do we look for another?” The herald who baptized the Lord and saw the Spirit descend now sits in Herod’s dungeon and wonders — for the Messiah has come and yet the prisons are not opened, the kingdom not visibly arrived. And the Lord answers not with a claim but with the works of Isaiah’s Servant: “the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them” (Isa 35, 61). The acceptable year is being fulfilled even while the day of vengeance waits — the very reason John, like Isaiah 61, must hold the two comings apart. “Blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me.”
The Lord then honors John as the greatest born of women and yet sets the kingdom higher still. John is the promised Elijah, “the messenger before thy face,” the greatest of the prophets — “notwithstanding he that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” The herald stands at the threshold, the last and greatest of the old order, but the least in the kingdom is greater, because the kingdom is the substance the prophets only foretold. And between the herald and the kingdom stands a word of holy force: “the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force” — it is seized not by the apathetic but by the earnest who press in, the forceful faith that will not be turned back. And the Lord rebukes the generation that would receive neither John’s fasting nor his own eating — “we have piped unto you, and ye have not danced” — the children who will be pleased by nothing, the rebellious heart that rejects both the call to mourning and the call to feasting.
Then comes the woe on the unrepentant cities and the great reversal of who receives the revelation. Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum — the towns that saw the most mighty works and did not repent — are told it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon and Sodom than for them. The privileged who saw the most are judged the hardest, while Yahweh hides these things “from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.” It is the same division as Isaiah 65 and 66 — the self-righteous who said I am holier than thou turned away, the contrite babes receiving what the wise could not. “Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.”
The chapter ends on the deepest unveiling of the Son and the gentlest invitation in the Gospels. “All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him.” The Father manifest in the Son, the Son alone the revealer of the Father — the mystery the whole Gospel has been opening since the Jordan. And then the call that gathers the whole day: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” The contrite of Isaiah 66, the heavy-laden, the babes — to these the meek and lowly King offers rest, the rest that the new creation will complete, the Sabbath-rest given now in him.
The works of the Servant answer John’s question; the least in the kingdom is greater than the greatest prophet; and the things hidden from the wise are revealed to babes. Come unto me, all ye heavy laden — the meek and lowly King gives rest.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day closes Isaiah and gathers the rejected King, the nation born in a day, and the invitation to rest. David saves the city that would betray him and is plucked from the snare at the rock of escape; Isaiah ends with Zion travailing to bring forth a nation in a moment and all flesh gathered to worship in the new heavens and new earth; and the Lord, answering John from prison, does the works of the Servant and calls the heavy-laden to himself. The hunted anointed who saves the ungrateful, the forsaken Zion who suddenly bears a multitude, and the meek King who gives rest to the laboring are the one story — the rejected One who gathers, bears, and finally brings forth the whole redeemed family of God.
The contrite heart against the proud binds the whole day, as it has bound the close of Isaiah. Yahweh looks not to the house men build but to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembles at his word; the mighty works are hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed to babes; the cities that saw the most are judged the hardest while Sodom would have repented. Saul on his throne with all his power cannot find David, while David in the cave has the word of Yahweh; John the greatest prophet stands lower than the least in the kingdom. The whole movement of the readings lays the proud low and lifts the lowly — the self-righteous turned away hungry, the contrite babes given the revelation and the rest.
The hope reaches its fullest statement and holds its shape — the new heavens and new earth that remain, still to be made; the nation born in a day, still future; the rest offered now but completed only in the kingdom. Isaiah ends with all flesh coming to worship from sabbath to sabbath in a creation that does not pass — the Sabbath-rest of the kingdom — and the Lord offers the first taste of that rest now to the heavy-laden who come to him. David is delivered but not enthroned; Zion’s travail is promised but not yet come; the laborers find rest in the meek King while they wait for the rest that remains. The saint lives between the rest given and the rest to come, gathered to the lowly King, looking for the new heavens and new earth.
So the exhortation gathers the close of the prophet and the call of the King into one. Be the contrite heart Yahweh looks to, not the builder of houses or the boaster of holiness; be the babe to whom the revelation is given, not the wise and prudent from whom it is hidden. Like David, do the work of the kingdom even toward the ungrateful, and trust the hedge that holds at the rock of escape. Hear the warning of the cities that saw much and repented not, and do not be the children whom neither mourning nor feasting can move. And above all, come — come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden — take the yoke of the meek and lowly King and find rest for your life, the first taste of the Sabbath-rest of the new heavens and new earth that remain.
Be the contrite heart he looks to and the babe to whom it is revealed; do the kingdom’s work toward the ungrateful and trust the rock of escape. And come, all ye heavy laden, to the meek and lowly King who gives rest — the first taste of the new creation that remains.