1 Chronicles 6

The tribe with no land of its own is given the priesthood and the song — Levi stands between Yahweh and the people, and sets the house to music. The chapter traces the line of Levi through Aaron and his sons, the high-priestly succession from Eleazar and Phinehas down through the generations until Yahweh carried away Judah and Jerusalem by the hand of Nebuchadnezzar — the priesthood itself walking into exile. These are the men who bore the names of the tribes on their hearts, who made atonement, who stood in the gap that the false prophets of earlier chapters would not.

And then the singers. David set over the service of song in the house of Yahweh, after that the ark had rest, the Levites Heman, Asaph, and Ethan and their families, and they ministered before the dwelling place of the tabernacle… with singing. The same tribe that carried the sacrifices carried the psalms — the worship of Israel given a voice, the courts of the house filled with song. The genealogy of Levi is also the genealogy of the choir: Heman the Faithful set in the place of honor at the centre, Asaph the Collector on the right, Ethan the Firmness on the left — the names themselves a quiet creed about who keeps the house singing.

Levi’s portion is the strangest and the richest. The tribe receives no territory of its own; instead it is given cities scattered through all the other tribes, and Yahweh himself for an inheritance. Dispersed among the people on purpose, the priests and singers are everywhere and own nothing — a tribe whose treasure is the service of the house and the nearness of Yahweh, not a patch of ground. And among Levi’s scattered cities are the cities of refuge — the elevated, accessible places where the manslayer fled from the avenger of blood, set as a standing type of the refuge the saints have fled to in the Anointed, who is himself our strong consolation and refuge (Heb. 6:18).

The tribe with no land is given the altar and the song, and Yahweh himself for its inheritance. Dispersed among the people, the priests bear the names and the singers fill the house.

Ezekiel 19

This chapter is a funeral song for the royal house — the lioness whose cubs were caged, the vine whose branches were burned. Take thou up a lamentation for the princes of Israel, Yahweh says, and the dirge unfolds in two images. First the lioness and her whelps: she rears one cub that learned to catch the prey; it devoured men, and the nations take him in their pit and bring him in chains… unto the land of Egypt (Jehoahaz). She rears another, and he too is hunted down and brought in chains to the king of Babylon (Jehoiachin). The royal lions of Judah, caged one after another in Egypt and Babylon.

Then the vine. Thy mother is like a vine in thy blood, planted by the waters: she was fruitful and full of branches, with strong rods for the sceptres of them that bare rule. But she is plucked up in fury, cast down to the ground; the east wind dries her fruit; fire is gone out of a rod of her branches, which hath devoured her fruit. The royal vine that sought the support of the neighboring kings is left all leaves and no fruit — much like the fig tree in the Master’s path that had the appearance of life and bore nothing, and was cursed. And the dirge ends in desolation: she hath no strong rod to be a sceptre to rule. This is a lamentation, and shall be for a lamentation.

The scepter of Judah is broken; the lament has no resolution in itself. The royal vine that should have ruled is a burnt stump in the wilderness — a house that reached for the security of the nations, the lioness hunting and the vine seeking the river, and lost the very crown it grasped at. The chapter is a closed grief, a dirge that ends where it began, with no strong rod left to rule.

A funeral song for the royal house: the cubs caged, the vine burned, no scepter left to rule. The lament is real and unresolved — Judah’s crown is a stump in the wilderness.

Luke 16

You cannot serve two masters — and the man who served his wealth and ignored the beggar at his gate found the account closed beyond appeal. The unjust steward, about to be sacked, shrewdly uses his master’s accounts to make friends who will receive him afterward — and the Lord draws the lesson without commending the dishonesty: make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations. Use the money that will fail you to lay up what will not. For no servant can serve two masters… ye cannot serve God and mammon. The covetous Pharisees deride him, and he answers that that which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God.

Then the rich man and Lazarus — a parable told in the popular imagery of the day, not a map of the afterlife, but a mirror held up to the covetous. The rich man fares sumptuously in purple; Lazarus lies at his gate full of sores; both die. Lazarus — whose name means Whom God helps — is the beggar the covetous would despise exactly as they despised the One full of sores of Isaiah 53; and the chapter’s sting is sharpened by what came after, for the Lord did raise a Lazarus from the dead, and still they would not repent — neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. In the parable’s picture the beggar is carried to Abraham’s bosom and the rich man to torment, and between them a great gulf fixed. The point is not a geography of the dead but the finality of the reversal and the sufficiency of the word already given. The rich man begs that his brothers be warned, and Abraham answers: they have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them — and the verdict that ends the chapter, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. The man who would not hear the Scriptures he had would not be moved by a resurrection either.

You cannot serve God and mammon; use what fails to gain what lasts. And the man who ignored Lazarus had Moses and the prophets all along — the word already given is enough, if the heart will hear.