Read Time: 7 minutes2 Chronicles 9
The queen of Sheba comes from the ends of the earth to test Solomon with hard questions, and finds the report fell short of the reality: the half was not told me: thy wisdom and prosperity exceedeth the fame which I heard. She comes seeking wisdom, not spoil — the opposite of Gog — and goes home laden. Her confession names the true source of the king’s glory: blessed be Yahweh thy God, which delighted in thee to set thee on his throne, to be king for Yahweh thy God. The throne is Yahweh’s; the king reigns for him.
The Lord himself read this scene forward: the queen of the south shall rise up in the judgment… for she came from the uttermost parts of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and, behold, a greater than Solomon is here. The Gentile queen drawn from afar to the wisdom of the king is the firstfruit of the nations coming to the greater Solomon — the picture of Isaiah’s Gentiles streaming to Zion, the wealth of the nations brought to the King in his glory. Sheba at Solomon’s throne is the kingdom-age in miniature.
What took the breath out of her is itemised, and the list reads like a floor-plan of the age to come: the meat of his table — the memorial table set before the King; the sitting of his servants, and the attendance of his ministers, and their apparel — the two orders of the house, those who serve and those who stand near, clothed in the garments of their office; his cupbearers also, and their apparel — the wine of the offering carried in holy dress; and his ascent by which he went up into the house of Yahweh. Bread, servants, ministers, robes, wine, and the way up to the house. She was shown the kingdom in furniture, and there was no more spirit in her.
The chapter piles up the glory — the gold, the throne of ivory overlaid with gold, its six steps and twelve lions, the shields of beaten gold, the silver counted as nothing in Solomon’s days. All the kings of the earth sought the presence of Solomon, to hear his wisdom, that God had put in his heart. The Peaceable King sits in a glory that draws the earth to his throne — the reign of wisdom and peace that the prophets make the pattern of the age to come.
Then, abruptly, Solomon slept with his fathers. The glory that drew the world ends in a grave; the wisest king lies down with the rest. The splendor of Solomon is real and a true type, but it is a shadow — the glory of the natural king passes, and the eye is thrown forward to the greater Solomon whose throne does not end and whose wisdom never sleeps.
The queen of the nations comes from afar to the king’s wisdom — the firstfruit of the Gentiles seeking a greater than Solomon — yet the glory of the natural king ends in a grave, and the type points beyond itself.
Ezekiel 44
The vision returns to the east gate, and a word seals it: This gate shall be shut, it shall not be opened, and no man shall enter in by it; because Yahweh, the God of Israel, hath entered in by it, therefore it shall be shut. The gate through which the glory came is closed for ever — too holy for common traffic, kept sealed because the presence passed through it. Only the prince may sit in it to eat bread before Yahweh. The way the glory entered is honored by being shut.
The chapter then sorts the priesthood by faithfulness in the day of apostasy. The Levites who went astray after idols shall bear their iniquity and do the lower service — keeping the gates, slaying the sacrifices, ministering to the people but not coming near to Yahweh. But the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray, shall come near to minister, to offer the fat and the blood, to stand before Yahweh. The faithful in the day of falling away are brought nearest in the day of glory.
There is a reason sacrifice comes back at all, and it is not that the offering of Christ needed topping up. The altar could only ever stand where Yahweh had recorded his name (Exod 20:24), and through all the times of the Gentiles there has been no such altar; when the place is restored, the service belonging to the place is restored with it. And the age itself creates the need. In a world where the child shall die an hundred years old (Isa 65:20), where violence is ended and the cemeteries stop filling, death becomes a rumor rather than a daily fact — and a race that has stopped seeing death will stop understanding sin. The blood at the sanctuary door keeps the lesson visible: this is what the flesh earns, and this is how the Exalted One overcame it.
This two-tier ministry belongs to the order of the age to come — a priesthood graded by how it stood when others fell. The kingdom-house has both those who draw near and those who serve at a distance, and the difference was settled long before, in the time of testing. What a man does when the rest go astray fixes his nearness when the glory returns — the faithfulness of Zadok’s house in the dark day is rewarded with the closest place in the bright one. And the offerings they bring are memorial, not propitiation — the blood at the sanctuary door teaching the one finished offering by which sin was conquered, pointing back to it and never repeating it.
The priests’ ordinances are all the marks of holiness: linen and no wool, that they cause not sweat — no fleshly toil staining the service; no wine in the inner court; to teach my people the difference between the holy and profane; to judge. And the charge that crowns it: I am their inheritance… I am their possession. The priest who comes near owns no portion of land because Yahweh himself is his portion — the saints’ inheritance is not a place but the presence, not an estate but God.
The gate the glory entered is sealed for ever; the priesthood is graded by who kept the charge when Israel went astray; and the reward of nearness is that Yahweh himself is the inheritance.
John 11
Word comes that Lazarus is sick, and Jesus delays, saying this sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God. The name fits the sign — Lazarus is Eleazar, God has helped — for the help comes at the grave. When he moves, he frames death as the canon frames it: Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; but I go, that I may awake him out of sleep. The disciples mistake it for rest, and he says plainly, Lazarus is dead — but the first word stands: death is sleep, and the dead are not gone to a reward but laid down to be awakened. The whole chapter holds the resurrection-frame: the dead sleep until the voice calls them.
To Martha he gives the great word: I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live. Martha’s hope is exactly the saints’ hope, and Jesus does not correct it — I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. The resurrection she looks for is future, at the last day; what Jesus adds is that the One standing before her is its source. He is not announcing that the hope is already realised; he is naming himself the resurrection that the last day will bring.
The delay itself is doing the teaching. He stays where he is two days, and comes on the third; Lazarus is four days in the tomb before the voice reaches him, past every hope of reviving. The seventh sign is a resurrection — the last of the seven and the covenant-number completing them — the last of the signs before his own, and the shape of it is the shape of the hope: two days of absence, and on the third the Master comes and the graves are emptied (Hos 6:1–3). And the word to the bystanders is the word every saint waits on: loose him, and let him go. The graveclothes come off at his command, not before.
Then Lazarus, come forth, and the dead man walks out bound in graveclothes. It is a sign, not the substance — Lazarus rises to a mortal life and will sleep again; the true resurrection at the last day is to a life that does not die. But the sign shows the substance: the voice of the Son empties the tomb, the dry-bones breath of Ezekiel made personal at a grave in Bethany. Jesus wept over the death even as he was about to undo it — the Lord of the resurrection grieving the sleep he came to end.
The raising forces the rulers’ hand, and Caiaphas speaks better than he knows: it is expedient… that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not. John reads the prophecy out: Christ would die not for that nation only, but that also he should gather together in one the children of God that were scattered abroad. The death that the rulers plot is the offering that gathers the one flock — the same gathering as the good Shepherd’s other sheep, the two sticks joined, the scattered children made one by the one man’s death.
Death is sleep and the dead await the last-day awakening; the Son is the resurrection who calls Lazarus from the tomb as a sign — and his own death will gather the scattered children of God into one.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day joins the seeking nations, the rewarded faithful, and the resurrection life. The queen of Sheba comes from the ends of the earth to the king’s wisdom — the firstfruit of the nations seeking a greater than Solomon. The sons of Zadok, faithful when Israel went astray, are brought nearest to the returning glory, with Yahweh himself as their inheritance. And at Bethany the Son calls a sleeping man from the grave and names himself the resurrection, and the life, his coming death the offering that gathers the scattered children of God into one. The nations drawn, the faithful brought near, the dead raised — three faces of the one ingathering.
The thread is drawing near, and the death that makes it possible. Sheba is drawn to the throne; Zadok’s house is drawn to the sanctuary; Lazarus is drawn from the tomb; the scattered children are drawn into one flock. And under it all is the one man’s death that Caiaphas names without understanding — the offering that gathers. The glory that returns to the house, the priest who comes near, the dead who rises, the nations who seek: all of it is purchased by the death that the rulers plot and Yahweh intends, the death that draws the scattered into one.
So the exhortation is to be drawn near and to hold the resurrection-hope as Martha held it. Seek the wisdom of the greater Solomon as the queen sought Solomon’s — from afar, with hard questions, willing to be told the half was not reported. Keep the charge when others go astray, that you may be brought near when the glory returns, with Yahweh himself as your portion. And do not grieve as those without hope: the dead sleep, the Son is the resurrection, the awakening is at the last day, and the death of the one man has gathered the scattered children of God into one.
Seek the greater Solomon’s wisdom, keep the charge when others fall, and hold the hope that the dead only sleep. The Son is the resurrection at the last day — and his death has gathered the scattered children of God into one flock.