1 Chronicles 20–21

Chapter 20 finishes the wars with the fall of Rabbah and the slaying of the giants. Sibbechai kills Sippai, Elhanan kills Lahmi the brother of Goliath, and Jonathan kills a man of great stature, whose fingers and toes were four and twenty, six on each hand, and six on each foot — and he too was born unto the giant in Gath. The giant-brood of Gath is the seed of the serpent in its rawest form, and the six-and-six of fingers and toes marks it: the man-number multiplied, flesh swollen to monstrous size. They fall by the hand of David, and by the hand of his servants. The Christ-warrior and his servants put the giant down together; the head and the body slay it as one.

And there is a silence in the chapter louder than the giants. At the time when kings go out to battle, Joab besieged Rabbah, but David tarried at Jerusalem — the very sentence under which Samuel tells of the roof, and Bathsheba, and Uriah dead in the front of the battle. The Chronicler writes the sentence and walks past the story. He is not whitewashing a king he elsewhere shows sinning outright; he is holding to his subject, which is the throne and the house, not the private ruin of the man who held it.

Chapter 21 turns the sword inward. And the adversary stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel. Set it beside its twin in 2 Samuel 24, where Yahweh moves David to number the people — the same act, named once as the work of the adversary and once as the providence of Yahweh, because God is standing against Israel: the people did not submit to David’s numbering and their hearts were not right before God. The likeliest hour for it — offered as a proposal, not a settled date — is after Absalom: a king lately restored by a nation that had run after a usurper, counting how many swords would still answer if the trumpet blew again. He asked no prophet; he asked a general.

Read the two accounts together and the guilt lies in two layers, not one. The wrath was already burning before a man was counted — Samuel opens again the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Israel, and Chronicles keeps the target the same: God was displeased with this thing; therefore he smote Israel. The nation that had traded Yahweh’s anointed for Absalom and for Sheba the son of Bichri was already under it. And then Joab’s poor execution of the order: Levi and Benjamin counted he not among them; for the king’s word was abominable to Joab. Numbering is not itself sin. Moses numbers twice at Yahweh’s command, Saul numbers at Bezek and at Telaim without a word of censure, and David numbers his own men in 2 Samuel 18 with no consequence at all. The census is not the offence; it is the instrument that lays bare what was already there.

Watch which two tribes drop out of the count. Levi serves the sanctuary; Gibeon, where the tabernacle Moses made and the altar of burnt offering still stood, lies in Benjamin. Joab’s omission takes out the tribe of the sanctuary’s service and the tribe of the sanctuary’s site — a nation counted for war with its worship left off the roll. Behind that lies the ransom Moses was given: when thou takest the sum of the children of Israel… then shall they give every man a ransom for his soul unto Yahweh… that there be no plague among them (Exod 30:12). The silver of that count became the sockets the sanctuary stood on (Exod 38:25–27). A count without the ransom, and a plague on the counted — the link is not stated by either historian, but the nouns and the outcome sit close enough to be worth holding. A people numbered for its swords and not for its sanctuary is a people already exposed.

Gad brings three choices, and David takes the one that leaves him no cover: let me fall now into the hand of Yahweh; for very great are his mercies: but let me not fall into the hand of man. War would leave the king safe behind his men, famine safe in his stores; pestilence falls without respect of persons. Seventy thousand fall — seventy, the span of man’s frail years and the number of the nations, judgment at the scale of a whole people.

Then the mercy, and the order of it matters. Yahweh beheld, and he repented him of the evil, and said to the angel that destroyed, It is enough, stay now thine hand — and only after that does David lift his eyes and see the angel between the earth and the heaven, the drawn sword stretched out over Jerusalem, and cast himself down: is it not I that commanded the people to be numbered?… but as for these sheep, what have they done? let thine hand, I pray thee, O Yahweh my God, be on me, and on my father’s house; but not on thy people. The hand was stayed before the king opened his mouth. His offer buys nothing; it is not a bargain struck and accepted. What it shows is the shape of true kingship — a head who owns the guilt of his body and will not stand outside it. And David cannot be the ransom, because he is inside the trespass himself. That is precisely why the figure has to reach forward. The one who can stand at that floor shares the nature without sharing the trespass, and is himself both the priest and the offering — not another man put in the sinner’s stead, but the Head in whom the flesh is condemned and the body raised together with him.

Gad sends him to rear an altar in the threshingfloor of Ornan the Jebusite — the very spot where the sword hangs. Ornan offers floor, oxen, threshing instruments and wheat for nothing; David refuses: I will verily buy it for the full price: for I will not take that which is thine for Yahweh, nor offer burnt offerings without cost. Samuel says he paid fifty shekels of silver for the floor and the oxen; Chronicles says six hundred shekels of gold for the place. The Chronicler is buying a temple, not a threshingfloor — the site, the platform, the whole mount. Silver is the ransom-metal of the census; gold is the metal of the holy place. Each book names the price its own argument needs.

And the altar had to be built there, because the lawful one had become unreachable. Chronicles alone explains it: the tabernacle of Yahweh, which Moses made in the wilderness, and the altar of the burnt offering, were at that season in the high place at Gibeon. But David could not go before it to enquire of God: for he was afraid because of the sword of the angel. All David’s reign the worship had been split — ark in Jerusalem, altar at Gibeon — and here the split ends, on ground bought at full price under a drawn sword. Fire falls from heaven on the new altar, the angel puts up his sword into the sheath, and David names the place for ever: this is the house of Yahweh God, and this is the altar of the burnt offering for Israel. Fire from heaven falls three times in Scripture on an altar, and each time a stage of the house is sealed: at the tabernacle’s first offering (Lev 9:24), here where the site is named, and at the temple’s dedication (2 Chr 7:1). And 2 Chronicles will tell us which mountain it is — Moriah, where Abraham was told Yahweh-Yireh, Yahweh will provide.

The sword drawn over the city goes back into its sheath at an altar bought at full price — and the floor of judgment is named the house of Yahweh, on the mount of the provided lamb.

Ezekiel 31

The last Egyptian oracle takes a different emblem: Pharaoh is a great cedar, and the warning is delivered through the felling of Assyria before him. Behold, the Assyrian was a cedar in Lebanon with fair branches… his top was among the thick boughs. The waters made him great, the deep set him on high; all the fowls of heaven nested in his boughs, all the beasts of the field brought forth their young under his shadow, and all great nations dwelt under his shadow. The empire is the world-tree, sheltering the nations in its branches.

The tree is so glorious that the cedars in the garden of God could not hide him; no tree in that garden was like him in beauty. The Eden-language returns — as with the king of Tyre, the proud Gentile power is set in a figurative Eden, clothed in a glory that recalls the first garden. And as with Tyre, the glory becomes the snare: thine heart is lifted up in his height. The taller the tree, the further the fall.

Egypt had watched this tree stand and had felt its shadow. In Assurbanipal’s day the Assyrian came down and broke Thebes — populous No, that was situate among the rivers, whose strength was infinite, carried away captive (Nah 3:8–10) — and then that same Assyria fell so low that Pharaoh Necho marched north to prop her up, and lost the whole northern venture to Babylon at Carchemish (2 Chr 35:20; Jer 46:2). Egypt has already seen the cedar felled once, and has learned nothing. The oracle names Assyrian cities to a Pharaoh who had spent an army trying to save them.

So the great cedar is cut down. I have therefore delivered him into the hand of the mighty one of the heathen… I have driven him out for his wickedness. The branches break, the nations that sheltered under him scatter, the fowls and beasts that lodged in him depart. The tree that gave shade to the world is left a felled trunk, and all the trees of Eden… shall be comforted in the nether parts of the earth — the other fallen powers greeting the newcomer in the grave.

The closing question is aimed straight at Pharaoh: to whom art thou thus like in glory and in greatness among the trees of Eden? yet shalt thou be brought down with the trees of Eden unto the nether parts of the earth. The great tree goes down to the pit — not a place of conscious torment but the silence of the grave, where the proud of all ages lie still. This is the same figure Daniel will use of Nebuchadnezzar’s tree hewn down, and that Christ inverts in the mustard seed that grows into the tree where the birds lodge: the kingdom that shelters the nations is the one Yahweh plants, not the one man exalts.

The world-tree that shelters the nations is felled for the lift of its own heart, and goes down to the grave with all the proud trees of Eden before it.

Ephesians 1–2

The letter opens with a single breathless sentence of blessing that runs from eternity to inheritance. The saints were chosen in him before the foundation of the world, predestinated unto the adoption of children, accepted in the beloved, redeemed through his blood. And the whole purpose has one gathering-point: that in the dispensation of the fulness of times he might gather together in one all things in Christ. All things converging into one head — that is the mystery, and it is the answer to every scattering the prophets lamented. Predestinated is not a lot cast over a man’s head before he was born; the word is to mark out beforehand — the same act as Yahweh’s word to Jeremiah, before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee — and what is marked out is the destination, sonship in the Beloved, not the bypassing of the faith that walks toward it. Adoption likewise is not the modern courtroom sense: the Greek huiothesia is not the taking-in of a stranger’s child but the bringing of a son already begotten to his maturity and full standing. Israel were Yahweh’s firstborn, but held under tutors and governors until they came of age in Christ; the sonship was always theirs in promise, ripening toward the day the heir takes his inheritance.

Those who believed were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance — the down-payment on a possession not yet received in full. Paul prays that the eyes of their understanding be enlightened to know the hope of the calling and the exceeding greatness of his power, the power measured by what it did in Christ: when he raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand. Christ raised and enthroned, head over all things to the ecclesia, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all. The head is exalted; the body is named as his fulness.

Chapter 2 begins in the grave of the old life — dead in trespasses and sins, walking according to the course of this world, by nature the children of wrath. Then the great reversal: But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. By grace, through faith — and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast. The new life is wholly a gift, the saint created in Christ Jesus unto good works.

The saints are raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This is reckoned, not yet realised — the saint counted dead, raised, and seated with Christ by faith and baptism, while the actual rising and the actual enthronement wait for his appearing. The standing is real and sure, held by faith to the end; the resurrection body and the throne are given when Christ, who is our life, shall appear.

Then the wall comes down. The Gentiles, once aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, are made nigh by the blood of Christ. He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition — Jew and Gentile fashioned into one new man, with access by one Spirit unto the Father. And the figure that closes the chapter gathers up the whole temple arc of the day: the called are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone; in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord… an habitation of God through the Spirit. The temple of living stones — Christ the corner, the saints framed in and growing, the house David could only point toward now rising in the bodies of the called.

Once dead, now quickened by grace; once afar off, now made one new man — the living temple grows on Christ the corner stone into a habitation of God.