2 Kings 17

The northern kingdom ends here, and the chapter stops to explain why — the long harvest of the divided heart. Hoshea conspires with So of Egypt, Shalmaneser besieges Samaria three years, and in the ninth year of Hoshea the king of Assyria took Samaria, and carried Israel away into Assyria — to Halah, Habor by the river of Gozan, and the cities of the Medes. The ten tribes as a kingdom are gone. There was none left but the tribe of Judah only.

Then the indictment, the longest in Kings. Israel had sinned against Yahweh their God, feared other gods, walked in the heathen statutes, built high places on every hill and under every green tree, made the calves, served Baal, caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire, used divination, and sold themselves to do evil. And through it all, Yahweh testified against Israel, and against Judah, by all the prophets… saying, Turn ye from your evil ways — and they would not. They hardened their necks, like the neck of their fathers, until Yahweh removed them out of his sight.

The resettlement is the bitter coda. Assyria brings foreigners from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim into the cities of Samaria; lions come among them; a captive priest is sent back to teach them the manner of the God of the land. And the result is the verdict on the whole tragedy: they feared Yahweh, and served their own gods. The mongrel worship of Samaria, still standing in the days of the woman at the well.

A heart that fears Yahweh and serves idols is not divided worship; it is no worship at all. That sentence — they feared Yahweh, and served their own gods — is the epitaph of the northern kingdom, and the warning over every heart that keeps a calf in the corner while bowing to Yahweh in the temple.

The neck hardened against the prophets, generation by generation, until the kingdom was carried away. A heart that fears Yahweh and keeps its idols ends in exile.

Ezekiel 7

What 2 Kings reports for the north, Ezekiel pronounces over Jerusalem: the end is come. The word tolls like a bell — An end, the end is come upon the four corners of the land… Now is the end come upon thee. There is no more delay, no more space for repentance held open; the day of trouble is near, and not the sounding again of the mountains. The patience that warned by all the prophets has run out.

The chapter strips away every false refuge. They shall cast their silver in the streets, and their gold shall be removed: their silver and their gold shall not be able to deliver them in the day of the wrath of Yahweh. The wealth they trusted becomes worthless in the day it is most needed — the idols of metal cannot save from the judgment. The rod hath blossomed, pride hath budded; the harvest of arrogance is ripe and ready for the sickle.

And the reason is named without flinching: the land is full of bloody crimes, and the city is full of violence. The end is not arbitrary. It is the just verdict on a city that filled itself with blood and idols — the same charge that emptied the north, now sealing the fate of the south.

The silver and gold cannot deliver in the day of wrath; the rod has blossomed and the end is come. When the warning is spent, only the judgment is left.

Luke 3

Against the gathering darkness of the prophets, a voice cries in the wilderness to make the way ready. John comes preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins, and Luke sets him in Isaiah’s words: Prepare ye the way of Yahweh, make his paths straight… and all flesh shall see the salvation of God. The valleys filled, the mountains brought low, the crooked made straight — the road graded for the coming of the King. And there is a fitness in the chapter Luke draws from: Isaiah 40 is the seam of that prophecy, where judgment turns to comfort — the thirty-nine chapters before it answering to the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament, the twenty-seven after to the New, sixty-six chapters mirroring the sixty-six books — so that John, fulfilling Isaiah 40, stands at the very seam between the testaments.

John’s word has the same edge as Ezekiel’s. O generation of vipers — the serpent’s brood — bring forth therefore fruits worthy of repentance; and begin not to say… We have Abraham to our father, for Yahweh can raise children to Abraham out of stones. The axe is laid unto the root of the trees; descent from Abraham saves no one whose life bears no fruit. The practical fruits follow — the coat shared, the tax not over-exacted, the soldier content with his wages — repentance with hands. And John points past himself to the Mightier One who will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire, the fan in his hand to separate wheat from chaff.

Then the hinge of the whole stretch. Jesus is baptized, and as he prays the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou art my beloved Son; in thee I am well pleased. Where Ezekiel’s glory is about to rise and leave the temple, here the Spirit descends and rests upon the Son. The glory that abandons the house of stone comes down on the Anointed at the Jordan.

This is Mary’s line, not Joseph’s: where Matthew traces the guardian-father’s descent, Luke follows the blood through Mary back to David by way of his son Nathan — the living line of the Son of Man. And Luke traces it all the way back, through David and Abraham, to Adam, which was the son of God. The Beloved Son is also the son of Adam: the new Head of the race, the second man, in whom the natural at last gives way to the spiritual.

The glory rises from the old house; the Spirit descends on the new Son. Prepare the way — bear fruit, presume nothing on Abraham, for the axe is at the root.