2 Chronicles 16–17

The Asa who once rested wholly on Yahweh against a million Ethiopians now, against a lesser threat from Baasha, hires the king of Syria — strips the treasures of the house of Yahweh to buy a pagan alliance. The seer Hanani’s rebuke names the fall exactly: because thou hast relied on the king of Syria, and not relied on Yahweh thy God herein thou hast done foolishly. The man who learned that numbers are nothing forgets the lesson the moment the threat looks manageable; reliance is not a trophy won once but a posture held daily.

Hanani gives the great word of the whole chronicle: the eyes of Yahweh run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him. Yahweh is searching the earth for the whole heart — not for the strong arm or the clever alliance, but for the heart wholly his, to throw his strength behind it. Asa had been such a heart and now is not; and the searching eyes that would have strengthened him find him leaning on Syria instead. He answers the rebuke with rage, imprisons the seer, and in his last disease sought not to Yahweh, but to the physicians.

The contrast is Jehoshaphat his son, whose heart was lifted up in the ways of Yahweh — the right kind of lifting, the heart raised in courage to seek and serve. He removes the high places and groves, and then does something rare among kings: he sends princes and Levites to teach in the cities of Judah, carrying the book of the law of Yahweh city to city. The reform is not merely cleansing but teaching — the word of Yahweh carried into every town so the people may know him.

The fruit follows the teaching: the fear of Yahweh fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands that were round about Judah, and the surrounding nations bring tribute rather than war. The king whose heart is lifted in Yahweh’s ways, who fills the land with the law, is hedged about by Yahweh’s strength — the very strengthening Hanani said the searching eyes are looking to give. The whole heart that seeks and teaches is the heart Yahweh’s eyes find and uphold.

Reliance is a daily posture, not a trophy — Yahweh’s eyes search the earth for the whole heart to strengthen, and the king who fills the land with the law is hedged about by the strength the divided heart forfeits.

Ezekiel 48

The vision ends by dividing the land — the tribes given their portions in order from north to south, and across the centre the holy oblation: the sanctuary’s portion, the priests’, the Levites’, the city’s, with the prince’s land on either side. The land that was spoiled and torn is re-allotted with the sanctuary at its heart, every tribe given its inheritance, the holy portion reserved before all. The kingdom-age is a world re-divided around the dwelling of Yahweh.

The count is the architecture. Seven tribes are set north of the oblation and five south — seven the covenant number, five the number of grace — with the holy portion lying between them and twelve in all, the number of complete government. The covenant above, grace below, the sanctuary in the middle, and the whole twelvefold order of the kingdom laid out around the place where Yahweh dwells. The prince’s land runs east and west of the oblation, and out of his own portion he may grant inheritance to his sons and his servants (46:16–18) — the King with land to give away, and immortal and mortal alike receiving of him.

The city has twelve gates, three on each side, each named for a tribe of Israel — Reuben, Judah, Levi to the north; Joseph, Benjamin, Dan to the east; and so around. It is the city John will see at the end, the new Jerusalem with twelve gates bearing the names of the twelve tribes, the gathered people named into the very structure of the dwelling. The whole house of Israel has a gate; the city is built of the tribes.

Then the last word of the whole prophecy, the name that crowns the vision and answers the question the entire month has asked: the name of the city from that day shall be, Yahweh-Shammah — Yahweh is there. From the dry bones to the returning glory to the deepening river, the long vision arrives at a city whose very name is the presence: not a house that the glory may leave, but a city named for the fact that Yahweh has come to stay. Will God in very deed dwell with men? — the city’s name is the answer, carved into its title for ever.

This is one of the great covenant-names, set beside Yahweh-Yireh and Yahweh-Shalom — the Name given to a place because of what Yahweh has shown himself to be there. The mount where Abraham was told Yahweh will provide, the altar where Gideon found Yahweh is peace, the city where the presence dwells unbroken: Yahweh is there. The whole temple arc resolves into a Name — the dwelling of Yahweh with men made permanent, and the city called by it.

The land is re-divided around the sanctuary, the city gated with the twelve tribes, and the long vision ends in a Name — Yahweh-Shammah, Yahweh is there — the presence come to stay.

John 17–18

The high-priestly prayer opens with the definition of life itself: this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent. The Father is named the only true God, and the Son is named the one sent — the distinction is the prayer’s own, life eternal being the knowledge of the one true God and of the One he commissioned. Jesus does not pray to himself or as a second God; he prays to his Father, I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.

What the prayer is in type is worth naming. He has come out of the upper room with the golden temple behind him, and he is enacting the altar of incense — the priest’s incense standing before the veil, and on the day of atonement carried within it. The prayer is the incense; the offering follows at dawn. The man praying in John 17 is already at his priestly work before a hand has been laid on him, and the sweet smoke of it is a Son talking to his Father about the people he is about to die for.

The burden of the prayer is oneness: that they all may be one; as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us. The union of Father and Son is the pattern for the union of the saints — I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made perfect in one — a oneness of will, love, and indwelling, not of person. The same Father who dwells in the Son will dwell in them; the prayer is that the saints become a Yahweh-Shammah, a people in whom the presence dwells, I in them, and thou in me.

And Jesus has manifested thy name — the Son is the Father’s Name made visible, the glory of the only true God shown in a man. He asks that the saints be kept, sanctified by the truth, and at last be with me where I am; that they may behold my glory. The hope runs forward to that beholding — the gathered ones brought to be where he is, made one, perfected, the presence dwelling in them.

At the prayer’s end he goes out over the Kidron into a garden — and the first garden stands beside it. The first Adam was tested in a garden and fell; the last Adam is tested in a garden and stands. The serpent comes back in the shape of Judas and his band, and at Jesus’ I am he they fall backward to the ground; the majesty flashes out even in the arrest. The two seeds are in the garden again, and this time the heel is bruised and the head is not spared.

Before Pilate the kingship is defined: My kingdom is not of this world… but now is my kingdom not from hence. It is not sourced in this world-order — not won by sword or established by men, the stone cut without hands — yet it is a real kingdom, for to this end was I born… that I should bear witness unto the truth. Pilate’s What is truth? hangs unanswered over the Truth standing bound before him.

Take ye him, and judge him according to your law, says Pilate — and they will not, though their law could stone a man in an hour. They want a Gentile death, and the motive is read straight out of the Law they were keeping so scrupulously: cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree (Deut 21:23). A crucified man could be shown from Moses himself to be under the curse of God, and therefore no Messiah. So they chose the one death that would disqualify him — and chose, not knowing it, the only death by which the blessing of Abraham comes on the Gentiles (Gal 3:13–14). The curse they meant as their proof is the curse he bore to redeem, and John notes the whole manoeuvre only fulfilled his own word signifying what death he should die.

Eternal life is to know the only true God and the Son he sent; the prayer is that the saints be made one as Father and Son are one, a people in whom the presence dwells — and the King bears witness to a kingdom not sourced in this world.