Read Time: 9 minutes1 Samuel 11–12
Saul’s kingship is confirmed by a deliverance, and for one bright moment he is the king he was anointed to be. Nahash the Ammonite — Nahash means serpent — besieges Jabesh-gilead and offers terms of monstrous cruelty: he will make a covenant with them only on condition that he thrust out every right eye, “and lay it for a reproach upon all Israel.” The serpent demands the maiming of the people as the price of peace. When the news reaches Saul, “the Spirit of God came upon Saul,” and he musters Israel and routs the Ammonites at dawn. The serpent-king who would blind Israel is broken by the Spirit-filled anointed — a true picture, for this moment, of the Anointed who breaks the serpent’s power over a people he means to save whole.
In the flush of victory the people want to kill those who had despised Saul, but Saul refuses: “There shall not a man be put to death this day: for to day Yahweh hath wrought salvation in Israel.” This is Saul at his best — generous, crediting Yahweh with the salvation, sparing his detractors on the day of his triumph. It makes what comes later the sadder. The man who began humble among the baggage and magnanimous in victory had every grace; the ruin was not written into the beginning. And here the type holds: Saul is natural Israel, given every advantage — the Spirit, the victory, the kingdom renewed — and the whole tragedy ahead will be a nation’s tragedy in one man, grace richly given and not kept. They go to Gilgal and renew the kingdom and rejoice greatly.
Chapter 12 is Samuel’s farewell, and it is the testimony of a clean steward laying down his office. “Whose ox have I taken? or whose ass have I taken? whom have I defrauded?… and I will restore it you.” The contrast with chapter 8’s manner of the king — who will take and take — is exact: Samuel took nothing, the king they chose will take everything. The judge who gives way to the monarchy can stand before the nation with empty hands and a clean record, the very opposite of the taking king. He is the faithful servant handing over to an institution he warned them against.
Samuel rehearses the whole history of Yahweh’s deliverances to press one point: the demand for a king was a sin, a rejection of Yahweh who had always saved them when they cried. To seal it he calls for thunder and rain in the dry wheat harvest — an impossibility in that season — and Yahweh sends it, and the people fear greatly and confess, “we have added unto all our sins this evil, to ask us a king.” The unseasonable storm is the sign, as the obedient cows were the sign and the dry-then-wet fleece will be Gideon’s sign: creation bending out of its ordinary course to authenticate the word of Yahweh.
Yet the chapter ends not in condemnation but in grace, and the turn is pure gospel. “Fear not… for Yahweh will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake: because it hath pleased Yahweh to make you his people.” Even the sin of demanding a king will not make Yahweh cast off the people he has chosen — for his own name’s sake, not their deserving, exactly as Isaiah said he refined them for his name’s sake. And Samuel binds himself to keep praying for them: “God forbid that I should sin against Yahweh in ceasing to pray for you.” The faithful intercessor will not stop interceding even for a people who have sinned — a small figure of the great Intercessor who ever lives to make intercession.
The serpent-king who would blind Israel is broken by the Spirit-filled anointed — but the keeping is the test, and Saul had every grace at the start. Yahweh will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake; the faithful intercessor does not cease to pray.
Isaiah 55
The chapter throws the doors of the covenant wide open with a street-cry: “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat… without money and without price.” The invitation is to everyone and the price is nothing — wine and milk bought without money, the exact opposite of Babylon’s traffic where everything is bought and sold. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread?” The water and wine and milk given freely are the gospel offered to all who thirst, the bread that satisfies against the bread that never fills. This is the open table that answers the harlot’s golden cup.
At the center is the everlasting covenant, and it is tied to David: “I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given him for a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people.” The sure mercies of David are the promises of the throne covenant — the everlasting kingdom pledged to David’s seed — now offered to all who come. Paul reads this in Acts 13:34 as the promise of the resurrection of Christ, the sure mercies made good in the raised Son of David who never dies. The free water and the Davidic throne are one offer: come and drink, and you are brought under the covenant of the King who reigns for ever.
Then the great invitation to repentance, framed by the distance between Yahweh’s thoughts and man’s: “Seek ye Yahweh while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way… and let him return unto Yahweh, and he will have mercy.” The nearness is the urgency — while he may be found — and the mercy is abundant, “he will abundantly pardon.” And the reason given is the height of Yahweh above man: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways… for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways.” The pardon is so far beyond man’s grudging measure that it can only be explained by the infinite distance between the divine mind and the human.
The chapter closes with the word that does not return empty and the joy of the new creation. “For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth… so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please.” The word of Yahweh is as certain as the rain that always does its work — it cannot fail of its purpose. And the redeemed “shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing,” and instead of the thorn the fir tree, instead of the brier the myrtle — the curse of Eden reversed, creation itself singing as the redeemed are led home. The second exodus ends in a renewed creation.
Come, buy without money — the free water and the sure mercies of David against the harlot’s bought cup. Seek him while he is near; his word will not return empty, and the redeemed go out with joy as the thorn gives way to the fir tree.
Revelation 19–20
Heaven breaks into Hallelujahs over the fallen harlot — “Alleluia; Salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: for true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore.” Four times the word sounds, the only Hallelujahs in the New Testament, the rejoicing of heaven that the blood of the saints is avenged and Babylon’s smoke rises forever. And then the announcement the whole book has been straining toward: “the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.” The bride is granted to be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white, “for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” Against the harlot in purple and scarlet stands the bride in clean linen; the false marriage ends in fire, the true marriage begins. “Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper of the Lamb.”
Then the heavens open and the King comes forth as warrior. “I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war.” His eyes are flame, on his head are many crowns, he is clothed in a vesture dipped in blood, and his name is “The Word of God,” and on his vesture and thigh a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.” The armies of heaven follow on white horses in clean linen — the bride who is also the army, the same multitudinous company seen now riding to the battle. This is the wedding and the war as one event: the King comes to marry his bride and to tread “the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of God,” the warrior from Bozrah of Isaiah 63 fused with the bridegroom of the marriage supper.
The beast and the false prophet are taken and cast into the lake of fire, the kings and their armies slain by the sword of his mouth, and the fowls gorged on the flesh of the great — the supper of the great God set against the marriage supper of the Lamb. Then the dragon, “that old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan,” is bound a thousand years and cast into the bottomless pit, that he should deceive the nations no more till the thousand years are finished. The serpent of Eden, who warred on the woman through the whole book, is chained for the great Sabbath age — the thousand years, the millennial reign, the seventh-day rest of the creation-week pattern, when Christ and the risen saints reign over the earth.
The saints live and reign with Christ the thousand years — “this is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection… they shall be priests of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thousand years.” This is the reward held out all month: the kings and priests reigning on the earth, the first resurrection of the faithful at the King’s return. After the thousand years the loosed serpent gathers Gog and Magog for a final revolt — the same names Ezekiel gives the great northern confederacy drawn against the mountains of Israel (Ezek 38–39), here reaching past the millennial age to one last gathering of the nations against the camp of the saints — and fire devours them, and the dragon is cast into the lake of fire forever. Then the great white throne, the last resurrection and final judgment, death and the grave themselves cast into the lake of fire — “this is the second death” — the last enemy destroyed, the ground cleared for the all-in-all.
The marriage of the Lamb is come and the bride is in clean linen — the wedding and the war are one, the King rides as Faithful and True. The serpent is bound for the great Sabbath age; the saints reign a thousand years, and death itself is at last cast into the lake of fire.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The last day of June gathers the whole month into a wedding. The barren-womb pattern that began with Hannah, ran through forsaken Zion, and was filled by the Servant’s offering arrives here at the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready. The bride who sat in dust is arrayed in clean linen; the children promised to the once-barren woman are the armies of heaven riding behind the King on white horses. Every empty womb and every desolate city of the prophets has been pointing to this supper. And it stands in deliberate contrast to the harlot just fallen: the false bride in purple and scarlet with her bought cup is burned, while the true bride in white linen is married — the open invitation of Isaiah 55, come, buy without money, answered by the marriage supper to which the blessed are called.
The wedding is also a war, and that fusion is the prophetic shape of the King’s coming. He comes Faithful and True with eyes of flame to marry his bride and to tread the winepress in one motion — the warrior of Isaiah 63 and the bridegroom of the supper are the same rider. Saul’s brief glory pointed faintly here: the Spirit-filled anointed breaking Nahash the serpent to save the people whole was a small dawn of the day the true Anointed binds the old serpent for a thousand years and saves his people entirely. What Saul did for a morning at Jabesh, the King of kings does for the age — the serpent that demanded the maiming of the people is chained, and the people reign whole.
And the hope lands exactly where it has stood all along — future, earthly, and held by the resurrection. The first resurrection raises the faithful to reign with Christ the thousand years on the earth; this is the reward the whole month has named, the kings and priests reigning, not a flight to heaven but a kingdom on the ground. The saints who slept rest from their labors until this awakening; the dead are raised, judged, rewarded; the last enemy is destroyed and death itself cast into the lake of fire. The covenant sworn surer than the hills, the word that does not return empty, the sure mercies of David made good in the risen Son — all of it is kept, and kept for the day the marriage is come. We are not there yet; the bride is making herself ready, the linen is being woven of the righteousness of saints.
So the exhortation, at the close of the month, is to make ready. Come to the free waters while he may be found, for the price is nothing and the table is open against the harlot’s bought cup. Come out of Babylon and be the bride; weave the clean linen that is the righteousness of saints; remember that Saul had every grace and that the keeping is the test. Do not ask of the Anointed how shall this man save us, but be found among the band whose hearts God has touched, riding behind the King who is Faithful and True. The serpent will be bound; the saints will reign; death will die; and the marriage of the Lamb will be come. Make yourself ready, for blessed are they that are called unto the supper.
The marriage of the Lamb is come; the bride is in clean linen; the serpent is bound and death is destroyed. Come to the free waters, weave the linen of the righteousness of saints, and make yourself ready for the supper.