Read Time: 5 minutes2 Kings 19
Hezekiah answers the taunt not with an army but by spreading the threat before Yahweh in the house — and one angel settles the war in a night. He rends his clothes, goes into the temple, and sends to Isaiah, who returns the word: Be not afraid of the words… behold, I will send a blast upon him. When Sennacherib sends a letter renewing the threat, Hezekiah takes it up into the house of Yahweh, and spread it before Yahweh, and prays the model prayer of a besieged saint: Yahweh Elohim of Israel, which dwellest between the cherubims, thou art the Elohim, even thou alone… save thou us out of his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that thou art Yahweh Elohim, even thou only.
The answer through Isaiah turns the taunt back on the taunter. The virgin the daughter of Zion hath despised thee. Whom has Sennacherib reproached? — even against the Holy One of Israel. The boast of the conqueror was nothing but Yahweh’s own appointed work, and now the hook goes in his nose and the bridle in his lips, and he is turned back the way he came. I will defend this city, to save it, for mine own sake, and for my servant David’s sake. The deliverance hangs, again, on the covenant with David.
Then the night. The angel of Yahweh went out, and smote in the camp of the Assyrians an hundred fourscore and five thousand: and when they arose early in the morning, behold, they were all dead corpses. No Israelite sword is drawn; salvation is wholly of Yahweh. Sennacherib withdraws to Nineveh, and there, as he was worshipping in the house of Nisroch his god, his own sons strike him down with the sword. The king who mocked the living Elohim dies before a dead one, killed in the act of false worship.
Spread the threat before Yahweh and wait. The city is saved by one angel and no sword — salvation is of Yahweh alone, for his own sake and for David’s.
Ezekiel 9
Judgment comes to the city, and the first act is to mark for life everyone who grieved over the abominations. Six men come from the higher gate with slaughter weapons, and among them one man… clothed with linen, with a writer’s inkhorn by his side. The tally is not idle: six to condemn and one to seal — six the number of man, seven the covenant number — so the whole work of the seven is judgment bounded by covenant, the destroying hand held back until the sealing hand has gone first. The glory of the Elohim of Israel has already lifted from the cherub… to the threshold of the house — the departure has begun. And before any blow falls, the linen-clothed man is sent first: Go through the midst of the city… and set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that sigh and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst thereof.
Then the six are loosed: Slay utterly old and young… but come not near any man upon whom is the mark; and begin at my sanctuary. The order is exact. The mark goes on the foreheads of those who sigh and cry over the sin of the city — not the activists, not the reformers, but the grievers, the ones whose hearts break over what breaks Yahweh’s heart — and the slaughter spares every marked head. It is the sealing before the judgment that Revelation will take up: hurt not… till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads.
And the judgment begins at my sanctuary — at the elders standing before the house. Judgment begins at the house of God; the nearer to the holy things, the heavier the reckoning for defiling them. Ezekiel falls on his face: Ah Adonai Yahweh! wilt thou destroy all the residue of Israel? The marked remnant is the answer that the residue is not all destroyed.
The mark goes on those who sigh and cry over the city’s sin, and the marked are spared. Grief over what grieves Yahweh is itself the seal of the remnant.
Luke 5
The Son of man gathers a remnant, cleanses the unclean, and claims on earth the authority the departing-glory temple no longer held. Peter has toiled all night and caught nothing; at the word let down your nets the catch breaks the nets and fills two ships, and Peter falls down — Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. The answer is the call: Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. The net of the gospel begins to gather the new people.
A leper kneels: Lord, if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. And the word that no priest could speak — I will: be thou clean — cleanses the defilement of sin with a touch. Then the paralytic, let down through the roof by the faith of his friends, and the Lord’s word: Man, thy sins are forgiven thee. The scribes recoil — who can forgive sins, but God alone? — and he meets them head-on: that ye may know that the Son of man hath power upon earth to forgive sins — take up thy couch and walk. The Son of man — Ezekiel’s own title, the child of dust — now wields on earth the authority the temple was losing. Where the glory departs the house of stone, forgiveness walks the streets in flesh.
Then Levi the publican is called from the receipt of custom, and the feast fills with publicans and sinners, and the verdict on it all: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. New wine is not poured into old bottles; the new thing cannot be stitched into the worn-out garment. The remnant being gathered is a new creation, not a patch on the old.
The Son of man calls the fishers, cleanses the leper, forgives the paralytic — the authority the temple lost now walks the streets. New wine asks for new bottles.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day is held together by the remnant and the One who saves it. Hezekiah spreads the threat before Yahweh, and the city is saved by one angel for David’s sake. Ezekiel watches the glory rise to the threshold while the mourners are marked and the judgment begins at the sanctuary. And the Son of man gathers the fishers, cleanses the leper, and forgives the paralytic — the new remnant called out of the old.
The thread is the mark and the net. Those who sigh and cry over the abominations are sealed before the slaughter; the fishers are caught in the net that will gather men; the leper and the paralytic and the publican are drawn out of their uncleanness into the new people. In every case the salvation is wholly the gift of Another — the angel that no Israelite summoned, the mark that no man set on his own forehead, the word of forgiveness that only the Son of man could speak. The remnant does not save itself; it is marked, netted, cleansed, forgiven.
So the exhortation runs along the same line. Trust like Hezekiah, who spread the letter before Yahweh and waited for the deliverance he could not work. Be among those who sigh and cry over the abominations — grief over what grieves Yahweh is the seal of the marked remnant, not a weakness to be ashamed of. And come to the Son of man as the leper came — if thou wilt, thou canst make me clean — for he has power on earth to forgive sins and to make the unclean clean, and he calls sinners, not the righteous, to repentance.
Salvation is of Yahweh — the angel, the mark, the word of forgiveness, none of them ours to summon. Sigh and cry over the city’s sin, and come to the Son of man who can make the unclean clean.