2 Chronicles 32

The contrast Hezekiah names before the walls of Jerusalem is the contrast the whole day turns on: an arm of flesh against the arm of Yahweh. Sennacherib comes up against the fenced cities of Judah. Hezekiah stops the waters, repairs the breaches, raises the wall, makes weapons in abundance — and then, having done all a man can do, sets the whole defence on its true footing: Be strong and courageous, be not afraid… for there be more with us than with him: with him is an arm of flesh; but with us is Yahweh our God to help us, and to fight our battles. The preparation is real; the confidence is not in the preparation.

Rabshakeh’s railing is the blasphemy of the flesh that cannot tell Yahweh from the idols of the nations. He reasons that since no god delivered Hamath or Arpad or Samaria, the God of Hezekiah will be no different — as if Yahweh were the work of men’s hands like the rest. It is the oldest error: to measure the living God by the dead gods, to think the Maker of heaven is one more local deity to be tallied against the others.

The answer comes in a single night, and not from the wall. Yahweh sent an angel, which cut off all the mighty men of valour, and the leaders and captains in the camp of the king of Assyria. One angel undoes an empire’s host while Judah sleeps. Sennacherib returns with shame of face to his own land, and there, in the house of his god, his own sons cut him down — the god who could not save him watching the king fall at his feet.

Set this in the latter-day flow and it stands plainly as a type: the invader gathered against Jerusalem and destroyed by the hand of heaven is the pattern of the northern confederacy broken before the holy city, the day the King fights for Zion and the field is left full of the slain. The Assyrian’s overthrow is a rehearsal of Armageddon — the gathered nations, the impossible odds, the deliverance that comes not from the wall but from the angel of Yahweh.

The sickness that follows is worth weighing, because the chapter puts it where it does for a reason. Hezekiah’s heart was lifted up, therefore there was wrath upon him, and upon Judah and Jerusalem — the king’s pride and the nation’s account are one account. And when he humbles himself, the wrath of Yahweh came not upon them in the days of Hezekiah. What is laid on the king is lifted off the people. Read the sickness as the pride drawn out of him before it could be expressed, borne in his own body for the nation’s benefit — a shadow, at a great distance, of the One on whom the iniquity of us all was laid, and by whose stripes a people is healed.

Yet the chapter will not let even Hezekiah stand as the deliverer. Sick to death and healed, given a sign, he rendered not again according to the benefit done unto him; for his heart was lifted up. Pride survives in the best of kings — the man who trusted Yahweh against Sennacherib swells before the Babylonian envoys, and God left him, to try him, that he might know all that was in his heart. Even the good king is not the King; only one ever offered Yahweh a heart with no high place left standing in it.

The arm of flesh counts its odds and trusts its wall; the arm of Yahweh empties the camp in a night — and even the rescued king must be tried to show what is in his heart.

Daniel 12

This is the clearest resurrection promise in all the Old Testament, and it opens with the prince standing up. At that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince which standeth for the children of thy people: and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time. The captain who came to help against the prince of Persia now rises for the last deliverance — and Christ names this very hour, great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of the world (Matt 24:21). Michael’s standing-up is the threshold of the day of Yahweh.

Then the dead are raised. And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Hold the words exactly as they stand. They sleep in the dust — they are not in heaven, not in torment, not conscious somewhere else; they sleep, and the awakening is the resurrection at the end. The two destinies are settled at the awakening, not before it: everlasting life or shame and contempt, the judgment of the responsible who shall be found written in the book.

They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament; and they that turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever. The wise shine as the stars — the saints raised to the glory the heavens have always figured, the stars of Abraham’s promise made incorruptible. This is the reward, and it is future: not a status held now, but a brightness given at the awakening, to those kept faithful to the end.

The man clothed in linen — the same figure who stood over the river in chapter 10 — closes the vision, and the staging is deliberate. Two stand on this side of the bank of the river, and the other on that side — and the man in linen is upon the waters. It is the picture it plainly is: the attendants on the banks, the authority standing over the stream itself. Waters are peoples, and the one who swears the oath stands above them. John sees the same figure with the same gesture — a hand lifted to heaven, swearing by him that liveth for ever and ever that there should be time no longer (Rev 10:5–6).

He holds up both hands to heaven and swears by him that liveth for ever that it shall be for a time, times, and an half. The prophetic span, reckoned by the day-for-a-year, measures the long dominion under which the holy people are scattered before all is finished. Daniel does not understand it all; he is told to go his way, for the words are closed up and sealed till the time of the end.

The last word is to Daniel himself, and it is the whole hope in one sentence: Go thou thy way till the end be: for thou shalt rest, and stand in thy lot at the end of the days. His own name is in it. Daniel is God is my judge — and the man named for the judgment of God stands in his lot on the day the judgment of God has come. Every kingdom he outlived and outlasted will be gone by then: the image, the golden man on the plain of Dura, the furnace, the den, the whole apparatus of the empires that renamed him at seventeen and could never own him. Daniel will be standing; they will not. He rests now; he stands then. The prophet sleeps in the dust with the fathers, and at the end of the days he rises to his portion in the kingdom — the inheritance on the earth, received at the resurrection, not a flight to heaven at death. Rest, and then the standing; sleep, and then the lot.

You shall rest, and stand in your lot at the end of the days — the dust is not the end, only the waiting.

Acts 13

Paul’s first great address ends on the one body that did not see corruption, and the whole argument is a resurrection argument. The Spirit separates Barnabas and Saul at Antioch; on Cyprus Elymas the sorcerer is struck blind and the proconsul believes; Saul, now called Paul, sets his face to the nations. In the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia he rehearses the story — the exodus, the wilderness, the judges, Samuel, Saul, and then David, a man after mine own heart, which shall fulfil all my will.

From David he goes straight to David’s son: Of this man’s seed hath God according to his promise raised unto Israel a Saviour, Jesus. The rulers of Jerusalem, because they knew him not, fulfilled the very prophets they read every sabbath by condemning him; and when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree, and laid him in a sepulchre. But God raised him from the dead — and that is the hinge of everything Paul says.

Verse 33 repays stopping. Paul grounds the resurrection in the second Psalm: he hath raised up Jesus again; as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. The begetting is dated to the resurrection morning — not to Bethlehem, not to the Jordan, but to the day the grave gave him back. He was declared the Son of God with power… by the resurrection from the dead, and it is not hard to think that the words spoken over him at Jordan and on the mount were spoken over him a third time at the mouth of the tomb. And they are not finished being spoken: the same Psalm sets the Son on the holy hill of Zion and gives him the nations for an inheritance.

He proves it from the Psalms with a single, decisive stroke. David himself said thou shalt not suffer thine Holy One to see corruption — yet David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep… and saw corruption. David saw corruption; Christ saw none. The patriarch is asleep in the dust, his sepulchre with them to that day, exactly as Acts 2 already insisted — he is not ascended, he waits. The Holy One who saw no corruption is the only one risen, the firstfruits of all who sleep.

The conclusion is the gospel itself: Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins: and by him all that believe are justified from all things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of Moses. Justified by the risen man, not by the law — the forgiveness comes through what Christ accomplished and is offered to faith, where the law of Moses could never reach. The sure mercies of David are made sure in the Son who cannot die again.

One shadow crosses the chapter, and it deserves a kind word. At Perga John departing from them returned to Jerusalem — no reason given, and the rift it opened will split Paul from Barnabas two chapters on. But it is not the end of Mark. Thirty years later, in a Roman cell with his own death close, Paul asks for him by name: take Mark, and bring him with thee: for he is profitable to me for the ministry (2 Tim 4:11). The man who turned back at Perga is the man Paul wanted at the end. The kingdom is not closed to those who fail early.

The Gentiles hear it gladly and beg to hear it the next sabbath; and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed. The word spreads through the whole region; the unbelieving stir up persecution; Paul and Barnabas shake off the dust of their feet and go to Iconium, filled with joy, and with the Holy Spirit. The door that opened in Acts 10 is now a road running out into the nations, carried by men no threat could silence.

David sleeps in the dust and saw corruption; the risen Son saw none — and through him, not the law, the forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to all who believe.