Read Time: 5 minutes1 Chronicles 8
The genealogy of Benjamin runs down to the first crown Israel ever wore — the house of Saul. The chapter traces Benjamin’s families through their towns and chiefs, and the line gathers toward its climax: Ner begat Kish, and Kish begat Saul, and Saul begat Jonathan, and Malchi-shua, and Abinadab, and Esh-baal, and Jonathan’s son Merib-baal, and his son Micah. The Chronicler is setting the stage; the next thing in the narrative will be Saul’s death and David’s rise. This list ends at the throne.
It is worth marking which crown this is. Saul was the king the people asked for — the tall man, the king after the pattern of the nations, chosen to fight their battles. His house is given its due in the record, named and honored as Benjamin’s most prominent line. But the reader knows the arc: the crown of Saul will be torn away and given to David, and the covenant-throne will run through David’s line, not Benjamin’s. The first crown is a borrowed one, soon to pass to the house Yahweh chose.
So the genealogy that ends at Saul is a genealogy that points beyond Saul. The crown rests for a moment on Benjamin’s head and then moves to Judah’s — and from David’s line, through all the wreckage of the later chapters, it travels toward the One who holds it for ever. The list closes on a throne that was always meant to be handed on.
The line of Benjamin ends at Saul’s crown — the king the people chose, the borrowed throne soon handed to David’s house and onward to the King who keeps it.
Ezekiel 21
The sword of Yahweh is drawn and polished for slaughter, and the crown is stripped from the last king of Judah — and held in reserve until the rightful King comes for it. The chapter is one long flash of the blade: a sword, a sword is sharpened, and also furbished… that it may glitter. Ezekiel is to sigh with the breaking of thy loins, to cry and howl, for the sword is appointed against Jerusalem and the sanctuary. The title Son of man under which the prophet bears this vision of judgment is itself the title of the Judge — fulfilled in the One to whom all judgment is committed (Jn. 5:27). Even the king of Babylon stands at the parting of the ways, shaking his arrows and consulting his idols, and the lot falls on Jerusalem — the pagan divination unknowingly serving Yahweh’s verdict.
Then the word to Zedekiah, thou profane wicked prince of Israel, whose day is come: Remove the diadem, and take off the crown… exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. And the threefold sentence that gathers up the whole collapse of the throne: I will overturn, overturn, overturn it: and it shall be no more, until he come whose right it is; and I will give it him. The crown is not destroyed; it is removed and held in reserve. Three times overturned — Judah’s last kings swept away — and then suspended, waiting, until he come whose right it is. The rightful King has a claim that the exile cannot cancel; the crown is being kept for him.
This is the answer to the lament of two chapters ago. The royal vine had no strong rod to be a sceptre; here we learn why the scepter is gone — it has been taken up and set aside, reserved for the One whose right it is. And the manner of the keeping is itself a prophecy: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high — the proud crown brought down so that the lowly Branch may receive it.
The crown is stripped from the last king and overturned three times — but not destroyed. It is kept in reserve until he come whose right it is, and Yahweh will give it him.
Luke 18
The great reversal Ezekiel named over the crown — exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high — fills this chapter with the cry that is always heard: the widow, the publican, the blind man crying for mercy. The persistent widow wears down the unjust judge, and the Lord presses the contrast: if even he yields to her crying, shall not God avenge his own elect, which cry day and night unto him? The question he hangs on the parable — when the Son of man cometh, shall he find the faith on the earth? — is not whether faith of some kind survives but whether this praying faith does, the anxious waiting that cries and does not faint; for as Brother Roberts put it, a prayerless man is a man without mercy. Then the two men in the temple: the Pharisee who thanks God he is not as other men, and the publican who would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. The man who humbled himself went home justified, and the man who exalted himself did not — for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
The children are brought, and the kingdom is given to those who receive the kingdom of God as a little child — empty-handed, dependent. The rich ruler asks the way to life, keeps the commandments, and is asked the one thing he cannot do: sell all that thou hast… and come, follow me. He goes away sorrowful, for he was very rich; and the Lord marvels how hard it is for the rich to enter — easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye — yet the things which are impossible with men are possible with God.
The chapter closes at Jericho with blind Bartimaeus, crying over the crowd’s rebuke, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me — naming him son of David, the King whose crown is reserved. Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. The cry for mercy, refused by no one who truly makes it, is answered on the road up to Jerusalem.
The cry for mercy is always heard — the widow, the publican, the blind man. The low are exalted and the high abased; come empty-handed like a child, and the proud and the rich keep their hands full and go away.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day turns on the crown reserved and the reversal that decides who receives it. Benjamin’s line ends at Saul’s borrowed crown, soon handed to David; Ezekiel watches David’s last crown stripped from Zedekiah and overturned three times — kept until he come whose right it is — and names the rule by which it will be given: exalt him that is low, and abase him that is high. And Luke fills that very rule with faces: the publican goes down to his house justified, the Pharisee does not; the child and the blind beggar receive what the rich ruler cannot; every one that exalteth himself shall be abased, and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.
The thread is the low lifted and the high brought down. The throne the proud kings wore is overturned and reserved for the lowly Branch; and the kingdom that Branch brings is entered by exactly the people the world counts lowest — the woman with nothing but her persistence, the tax-man with nothing but his breast to smite, the child with nothing in his hands, the beggar with nothing but his cry. The crown was taken from the high and kept for the low; and the door beneath it opens only to those who stoop. The rich ruler could not stoop, and went away with his hands full and his heart empty.
So the exhortation is to take the low place where the reserved crown is given. Do not be the Pharisee who exalts himself, or the ruler who clings to his fulness; be the publican who smites his breast, the child who comes empty-handed, the blind man who will not be silenced. He that humbleth himself shall be exalted — that is the law of the reserved crown, and it runs straight to the One whose right it is, the son of David whom the beggar hailed on the Jericho road. Cry for mercy and it is never refused; stoop, and the King who was himself made low lifts you toward the throne that is kept for him.
The crown is reserved for the low, not the high — be the publican, the child, the beggar who cries for mercy. He that humbleth himself shall be exalted; he that exalteth himself shall be abased.