Read Time: 9 minutes1 Samuel 10
Samuel anoints Saul privately first, pouring oil on his head and kissing him: “Is it not because Yahweh hath anointed thee to be captain over his inheritance?” The anointing is the making of a mashiach, an anointed one, and Saul is given a set of signs to confirm it — men who will tell him the donkeys are found, men who will give him bread, and a company of prophets he will meet coming down from the high place with music, upon whom “the Spirit of Yahweh will come upon thee, and thou shalt prophesy with them, and shalt be turned into another man.” The signs are pure grace; Saul does nothing to earn them. Yahweh gives him a new heart, the Spirit, and confirming wonders, every advantage a king could be given.
The promise “God is with thee” and the gift of “another heart” make Saul’s later failure all the more sobering. He is not a man set up to fall for lack of help; he is given the Spirit, a changed heart, a prophet’s mantle for a day, and the plain word that Yahweh is with him. When the kingdom is later torn from him, it will not be because heaven withheld anything. The tragedy of Saul is the tragedy of a man given everything at the start who does not keep it — a warning that gifts and even the Spirit’s touch are not the same as the enduring obedience of the heart.
When the time comes to present the king to the nation, Saul is found “hid among the stuff.” The tall man, head and shoulders above everyone, has hidden himself among the baggage. There is a kind of modesty in it, but also the first hint of a man who shrinks from the thing Yahweh has called him to — who would rather hide than stand. They have to run and fetch him out, and when he stands among the people he is again the tallest there, the king the eye chose, drawn out of hiding to be shown. “God save the king,” the people shout — though the Hebrew is simply “let the king live.”
Samuel writes “the manner of the kingdom” in a book and lays it up before Yahweh — the king is to be bound by a written law, not a law unto himself, set under Yahweh and not over him. This is the safeguard against everything chapter 8 warned of: a king who takes and consumes is a king who has forgotten the book. The true King who comes at the end of the line will be the one who keeps the whole law perfectly, the word made flesh, the king who is the book he is bound by.
The chapter ends with the nation divided over Saul, as it will be divided over every anointed one. Some are “a band of men, whose hearts God had touched,” who go with him; but “the children of Belial said, How shall this man save us? And they despised him, and brought him no presents.” Belial means worthlessness, without profit — the worthless ones despise the anointed and ask how shall this man save us, the very question the world will later ask of the true Anointed, “can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” And there is a deeper irony in it: Saul is himself the type of natural Israel, the king after the flesh — so here natural Israel, divided over its own fleshly king, foreshadows the day natural Israel will be divided over and largely reject the King after the Spirit. The pattern of the despised anointed, doubted by the sons of worthlessness, is set here in seed and comes to full flower at the rejection of Christ.
The king is given the Spirit, a new heart, and every advantage — and the keeping is still his to lose. Bind the king to the book; and mark the sons of Belial who ask of every anointed, “how shall this man save us?”
Isaiah 54
After the marred Servant of chapter 53 comes the singing of the barren woman, and the placement is everything: because the Servant poured out his soul and saw his seed, the desolate woman can now be told to sing. “Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear… for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith Yahweh.” This is the direct fruit of the offering in the chapter before — the seed the Servant saw is the multitude of children given to the once-barren Zion. The whole barren-womb pattern that began with Hannah finds here its great prophetic statement: the offering of the Servant is what fills the empty womb of the bride.
She is told to enlarge her tent and lengthen her cords, “for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles.” The children come from outside the natural family — the Gentiles gathered in, the bride’s house enlarged to hold a multitude she did not bear in sorrow. And the shame of her widowhood and barrenness is to be forgotten: “thy Maker is thine husband; Yahweh of hosts is his name… for Yahweh hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit.” The covenant is a marriage; Yahweh is the husband of the forsaken woman, taking back the wife of his youth with everlasting kindness.
The promise rests on an oath sworn by the most stable thing the prophet can name — the days of Noah. “For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee.” As surely as the bow in the cloud holds back the flood, so surely Yahweh’s covenant of peace will not depart. “For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed.” The same comfort as chapter 51 — the created order is less permanent than the covenant; the hills will go before the kindness does.
The chapter ends with the city rebuilt in jewels and the heritage of the servants secured. “I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires… and all thy children shall be taught of Yahweh; and great shall be the peace of thy children.” The bride who sat in dust is rebuilt in precious stones — the language reaching forward to the New Jerusalem of Revelation 21, her foundations of sapphire and her children taught directly by Yahweh. And the final word is protection: “no weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper… This is the heritage of the servants of Yahweh.” The bride who was forsaken is now unassailable, her peace guaranteed, her children taught and kept.
Sing, O barren — the Servant’s offering fills thy empty tent with a multitude. Thy Maker is thy husband, and his covenant of peace is surer than the hills; no weapon formed against thee shall prosper.
Revelation 17–18
Here the harlot is shown in full, the counter-image to the bride of Isaiah 54. An angel shows John “the great whore that sitteth upon many waters,” a woman arrayed in purple and scarlet, decked with gold and jewels, holding “a golden cup in her hand full of abominations,” and on her forehead a name, “MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS.” Babylon is confusion — the name of Babel, where the tongues were confounded and man built his tower to heaven — and against the bride whose children “shall be taught of Yahweh,” it is the city of religious confusion, the false worship that mingles the things of God with the abominations of men. She is drunk with the blood of the saints, and she rides a scarlet beast with seven heads and ten horns. Against the chaste bride kept for one husband stands the harlot who has committed fornication with the kings of the earth — the false bride, the religious-political system that wears the colors of royalty and priesthood but holds a cup of abominations and the blood of the martyrs.
The angel interprets the vision in the framework of empire. The seven heads are seven mountains on which the woman sits, and the seven mountains point unmistakably to Rome — the city on seven hills, known by that very description to every reader of John’s day. This is the key that unlocks the harlot: Babylon is Rome, the great city that “reigneth over the kings of the earth” — first the imperial power that shed the blood of the saints, then the religious system that rose on the same seven hills and carried the same cup, mingling the worship of God with the abominations of men. Scripture’s first Babylon was the city of confusion on the plain of Shinar; its last is the city of confusion on the seven hills, and the one is named for the other. The seven heads are also seven kings; the beast that “was, and is not, and yet is” is the empire-power in its successive forms; the ten horns are kings who receive power “as kings one hour with the beast” and give their strength to him. They make war with the Lamb, “and the Lamb shall overcome them: for he is Lord of lords, and King of kings: and they that are with him are called, and chosen, and faithful.” The whole confederacy of beast and kings and harlot is arrayed against the Lamb, and the outcome is declared before the battle: the Lamb overcomes, and those with him are the called and chosen and faithful — the same multitudinous company, named by their faithfulness.
Then the turn: the ten horns and the beast come to hate the harlot, “and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire.” The system devours itself — the political powers that carried the harlot turn and tear her, for “God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will.” Even the self-destruction of the wicked serves Yahweh’s purpose; the beast that bore the woman becomes the instrument of her ruin. This is the inward collapse of the whole false system, the kingdoms that upheld Babylon turning on her in the end.
Chapter 18 is the great dirge over fallen Babylon, and through it sounds the call that has echoed since Isaiah: “Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.” It is the same cry as come out of Babylon in Isaiah 48 and be ye clean in Isaiah 52 — the people of God called out of the doomed city before the judgment falls. The merchants and kings and shipmasters weep as the smoke of her burning rises, mourning the loss of their traffic in everything from gold to “slaves, and souls of men,” for in one hour her judgment came. The lament is for commerce, not righteousness — the world weeps for Babylon because its trade is ended, not because it loved her. And heaven is told to rejoice over her, “for God hath avenged you on her” — the blood of the prophets and saints found in her is answered at last.
The harlot with her golden cup is the false bride against the chaste one — and the beast that carried her turns to devour her. Come out of her, my people, before the plagues fall; her merchants weep for their lost traffic, but heaven rejoices that the blood of the saints is avenged.
Synthesis and Exhortation
Today sets two women side by side, and the whole reading is the choice between them. Isaiah 54 sings over the barren bride whose tent is filled with children because the Servant poured out his soul; Revelation 17–18 shows the harlot with her golden cup of abominations, drunk with the blood of the saints, mother of fornications. The one was forsaken and is taken back by her Maker-husband with a covenant surer than the hills; the other was decked in purple and scarlet and is stripped, devoured, and burned by the very beast she rode. The bride sits down in sapphires; the harlot’s smoke goes up forever. Every soul belongs finally to one woman or the other — the chaste community kept for one husband, or the great city drunk on blood.
The barren-bride song is the direct fruit of the marred Servant, and that link is the spine of the day. Because chapter 53 ended with he shall see his seed, chapter 54 can open with sing, O barren. The empty womb that has run through the whole month — Hannah, forsaken Zion, the desolate woman — is filled at last, and filled from the offering of the One who had no beauty that we should desire him. The children come from outside the natural family, the Gentiles gathered in, the tent enlarged to the right hand and the left. This is the seed the Servant saw, the multitude born of his travail, the bride’s house crowded with sons she did not bear in sorrow. The offering fills the womb; the death bears the harvest.
And the readings keep the hope future, oath-bound, and certain. The bride’s covenant of peace is sworn on the oath that held back the waters of Noah — as sure as the bow in the cloud. The Lamb shall overcome the beast and the kings; Babylon’s fall is announced and lamented but the new city is not yet descended. Saul is freshly anointed, the Spirit freshly given, and the keeping still ahead of him. The saint stands where the bride is promised but not yet adorned, where the harlot still holds her cup, where the call come out of her, my people is still sounding and there is still time to heed it. The choice of women is still open; the day to make it is now.
So the exhortation is to come out and be the bride. Hear the call that has echoed from Isaiah to Revelation — come out of her, my people — and refuse the harlot’s cup however gilded it looks. Do not weep, when Babylon falls, for the loss of her traffic; rejoice that the blood of the saints is avenged. Bind yourself to the Maker who is husband to the forsaken, whose kindness outlasts the hills and whose covenant of peace cannot be removed. Remember Saul, given everything and called still to keep it, and ask not how shall this man save us but be found among the band whose hearts God has touched. The barren is singing; the tent is enlarging; the children are coming home. Be among them.
Two women, one cup of abominations and one covenant of peace — come out of the harlot and be the bride. The Servant’s offering fills the empty tent; bind yourself to the husband whose kindness outlasts the hills.