Read Time: 6 minutes1 Samuel 31
Saul — the asked-for king — dies on Gilboa in a single day, and the house demanded so Israel could be “like the nations” is cut off with him. Saul means asked-for; he was the people’s choice (1 Sam 8), the head-and-shoulders man, the flesh enthroned. Now the flesh meets its end on a mountain whose name (Gilboa, a bubbling or swelling) fits the proud thing that rises and bursts. Three sons fall with him — and the fall of king-and-sons together is the closing of a line.
Jonathan dies beside the father who hunted the beloved. Jonathan means Yahweh has given — the covenant-friend who had stripped off his own robe and girdle to clothe David (1 Sam 18:4), confessing without knowing it that the kingdom belonged to the other. The seed of the woman and the failing house are bound together on Gilboa; the friend of the beloved sleeps, and his covenant with David survives him into the next chapter.
The man who would not wait for Yahweh becomes his own executioner. The armor-bearer will not lift his hand against the anointed; Saul falls on his own sword. This is sin in the flesh running its whole course — a king who consulted a medium at Endor the night before (1 Sam 28) because Yahweh would not answer him, now dying by his own hand. The Chronicler reads it plainly: Saul died for his transgression which he committed against Yahweh… and enquired not of Yahweh: therefore he slew him, and turned the kingdom unto David (1 Chron 10:13–14).
The Philistines fasten the body to the wall of Beth-shan — “the house of ease.” The flesh’s trophy is hung on a wall whose name means house of quiet or security. The uncircumcised display the head and armor of the king in the temple of their idol; the asked-for man ends as a sign of the flesh’s defeat, exposed on the wall of a false rest.
Jabesh-gilead repays an old kindness, and a covenant-loyalty is sworn even over the fallen. The valiant men of the town Saul rescued in his first royal act (1 Sam 11) travel by night, take down the bodies, and fast seven days — and seven is the number of covenant, the sheba that binds an oath. Over the ruin of the flesh-king, hesed is still kept. The first king must be buried before the beloved is crowned.
The asked-for king falls on the mountain so the beloved can be raised; the first man must die before the second can reign.
Jeremiah 6
“Blow the trumpet in Tekoa” — the alarm sounds and Judah will not hear it. Tekoa itself carries the sense of the trumpet-blast, the thing fastened and driven home; the place-name sounds the warning. The evil looks out of the north (the quarter of the invader through the prophets), and the comely daughter of Zion is marked for the shepherds who pitch their tents around her to devour. The watchman’s horn is the mercy that precedes the judgment.
The whole nation is bent toward gain, and the wound is healed with a lie. From the least of them even unto the greatest of them every one is given to covetousness — the flesh, top to bottom. And the men who should bind the wound say Peace, peace; when there is no peace — the false comfort that lets the disease run. This is the counterfeit peace Jeremiah will name again two chapters on; hold it, because it returns.
“Ask for the old paths… but they said, We will not walk therein.” Here is the chapter’s keystone. Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls — Yahweh sets the ancient way before them, the tried road of the covenant, and they refuse the rest he offers. The Lord Jesus takes up the very promise — ye shall find rest unto your souls (Matt 11:29) — and gives it as his own yoke; the good way Judah would not walk is a Person.
The watchmen are set, and the answer is the same refusal. I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken. The ear is named uncircumcised — the flesh in the ear, unable to receive the word — the very thing Stephen will charge against the same city (Acts 7:51). To refuse the trumpet is to choose the sword it warned of.
The refiner works the fire and the silver will not change — “reprobate silver shall men call them.” The bellows are burned, the lead is consumed of the fire; the founder melteth in vain. The figure of fire is the refiner’s purifying, but a metal that will not yield to the fire is cast away as worthless. Israel, tried and unchanged, is reprobate silver. The fire that purifies the faithful only hardens the flesh that resists it.
The old paths and the good way are still set in the road; the trumpet still sounds before the sword. Walk in, and find rest.
Matthew 17
Six days after the promise that some would see the Son of man in his kingdom, the kingdom is shown on the mountain. After six days (17:1) — the number of man, of labor before rest — Christ takes the inner three up high and is transfigured, his face… as the sun, and his raiment white as the light. The mount — most likely the white heights of Hermon by Caesarea Philippi, where the confession had just been made — frames the figure: the white-robed Lord glorified on the white mountain. This is the preview of the kingdom Matthew 16 promised: the Sun of Righteousness (Mal 4:2) seen ahead of time, the glory of the seventh-day rest breaking into the sixth-day world.
Moses and Elijah stand with him — the law and the prophets converging on the Son. The lawgiver drawn out of the water and the prophet of fire both appear in glory, talking with him of his decease (Luke’s word is exodos) about to be accomplished at Jerusalem. The whole prior witness gathers to the one they pointed toward; he is the substance their shadows traced.
Peter would build three tabernacles, and the voice corrects him — “hear ye him.” Peter’s instinct levels the King with the two servants, one booth apiece. The bright cloud — the Shekinah glory, the cloud that is the company of the glorified — overshadows them, and the Father speaks: This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him. When the disciples look up, Jesus only remains. Moses fades, Elijah fades; law and prophets resolve into the Son who is to be heard. It answers Judah’s we will not hearken across the day’s readings with the Father’s hear ye him.
Down from the glory, the flesh writhes at the foot of the mountain. A man kneels for his son, sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water — the spirit casting the boy toward the two elements of destruction. The nine who stayed below could not cast it out. The pattern is fixed: the mount of glory and the valley of the afflicted flesh sit back to back, and the saint lives between them.
The mustard-seed faith and the free Son who still pays. Because of your unbelief… if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, nothing shall be impossible — the smallest living faith against the largest mountain. Then the temple tax: the didrachma is asked, and the Son shows that sons are free in their Father’s house — yet lest we should offend them, a single coin from the fish’s mouth, pays for two: that take, and give unto them for me and thee. One coin covers the King and the one who follows him; the free Son binds himself to the one beside him.
Hear the beloved Son; carry the seed of faith down into the valley where the flesh still writhes; and know that the one coin from his hand covers both the King and you.
Synthesis and Exhortation
Three heights govern the day, and the same movement runs through all three. On Gilboa the asked-for king falls and the kingdom turns toward the beloved. Over Zion the trumpet sounds and the daughter of the city refuses the old paths and the good way. On the mount of transfiguration the beloved Son is revealed in the glory of the kingdom and the Father commands that he be heard. Saul will not enquire of Yahweh; Judah will not hearken to the trumpet; and against both refusals the voice from the cloud says hear ye him. The whole canon is pressing toward the one who must be heard — and toward a death he is already speaking of on the mountain, the exodus he will accomplish at Jerusalem.
The beloved rises only through the fall of the first man. David cannot be crowned while Saul reigns; the Sun of Righteousness is shown on the height but descends at once toward his offering. The pattern is first natural, then spiritual — the flesh-king dies, the beloved is enthroned; the glory is glimpsed, then the valley of the afflicted. The same hand that is glorified on the mountain is the hand that produces the single coin to cover the one beside him.
So the exhortation is plain, and it is one charge with three faces. Enquire of Yahweh where Saul would not. Hearken to the trumpet where Judah would not, and ask for the old paths, the good way, the rest Christ now holds out as his own yoke. And on the strength of the voice from the cloud, hear the beloved Son — carry a mustard seed of faith down into the valley, and trust that the free Son has bound himself to you, his coin covering King and follower alike.
Do not be the flesh that will not wait and will not hear. Stand in the old paths, hear the beloved Son, and the one coin from his hand will answer for you.