2 Kings 8

The chapter opens with an inheritance restored to the woman whose son was raised. The Shunammite, whose dead boy Elisha had brought back to life, is warned of a seven-year famine and flees to the land of the Philistines. When she returns to plead for her house and land, she walks into the king’s presence at the exact moment Gehazi is recounting how Elisha had restored a dead body to life. The timing is no accident: the one bound to resurrection has her inheritance given back to her — house, field, and all the fruits of the land from the day she left. Resurrection and restored inheritance arrive in the same breath; the figure runs straight to the saints whose portion in the land is secured by the One raised from the dead.

And the seven years of famine she waits out are their own measure — the long reign of the flesh, the seven millennia of human nature’s rule — after which the woman returns to claim her portion, as shall Israel, natural and spiritual together, in the day when God may be all in all (1 Cor 15:28). The restored field is the inheritance of the resurrection age.

The middle of the chapter is darker. Elisha comes to Damascus and weeps as he looks Hazael in the face, foreseeing the cruelty this man will work on Israel — the dashed children, the ripped-up women. Hazael protests, is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing? — and the next day takes a thick cloth, dips it in water, and smothers his sick master Ben-hadad to seize the throne. The seed of the serpent rises by murder; the prophet weeps because he sees the rod Yahweh will use against a faithless people. The prophet who weeps over the evil he foresees is a small figure of the greater Prophet who would weep over Jerusalem, foreseeing her ruin (Luke 19:41).

The scene shifts south to Judah, and the corruption travels with it. Jehoram of Judah walks in the way of the kings of Israel, for the daughter of Ahab was his wife — Athaliah, Jezebel’s seed, married into David’s line, dragging the southern house toward the northern apostasy. Edom revolts from under Judah’s hand, and Libnah with it; the kingdom is fraying.

And yet the lamp is kept burning. Yahweh would not destroy Judah for David his servant’s sake, as he promised to give him alway a light, and to his children. The throne-covenant holds even while the house corrupts. The light of David will not be put out, because Yahweh swore it would not — and that lamp is finally the King who cannot fail.

The flesh rises by the wet cloth and the murderer’s hand; the covenant holds by the oath of Yahweh. Judah survives not on her merit but on a promise to David.

Lamentations 4

The fourth lament weighs former glory against present ruin, and the gold is the measure. How is the gold become dim! how is the most fine gold changed! The precious sons of Zion, once comparable to fine gold, are reckoned now as earthen pitchers, the work of a potter’s hands. The stones of the sanctuary are poured out at the head of every street. The contrast is the whole point: the holy thing has not merely been damaged, it has been changed — turned from gold to clay.

The siege-horror returns once more, and the prophet’s verdict on it is staggering: the punishment of the iniquity of the daughter of my people is greater than the punishment of the sin of Sodom. Sodom was overthrown in a moment; Zion is consumed slowly, by famine and siege, the pitiful women seething their own children. To be the covenant people and fall is a heavier thing than never to have known the covenant at all.

The deepest line names the loss of the king: the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of Yahweh, was taken in their pits. Zedekiah — the mashiach, the anointed one — is hunted down and blinded, the life of the nation snuffed out in a pit. The natural anointed fails utterly. And precisely there the text aches for the true Anointed who will not be taken, the breath of his people who cannot be extinguished.

The poem closes turned outward, toward Edom: Rejoice and be glad, O daughter of Edom… the cup also shall pass through unto thee. The seed of Esau gloats over Zion’s fall, but the cup of judgment is being passed around the table, and Edom’s turn is coming. Obadiah will say it at length; Lamentations says it in a verse.

When the gold is changed to clay and the anointed taken in a pit, the heart learns that no king of flesh is the breath of his people. Wait for the Anointed who cannot be taken.

2 Corinthians 1–2

Paul opens the second letter with comfort drawn straight out of affliction. Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble. The comfort is not a private possession; it flows through the sufferer to the body. As the sufferings of Christ abound in the saints, so the comfort abounds also.

He tells of a trouble in Asia so crushing that we despaired even of life — and names the lesson Yahweh pressed home through it: we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead. The God of all comfort is the God who raises the dead — the same resurrection-God of yesterday’s reading. The whole point of being brought to the end of his own strength was to throw Paul wholly on the One who calls the dead to life.

The promises of God do not waver: all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen — every covenant word made firm and answered in Christ. And the saints are sealed and given the earnest of the Spirit in their hearts — the down-payment, the first instalment of the inheritance yet to come.

Chapter 2 turns to mercy in the ecclesia. The offender who had been disciplined is now to be forgiven and comforted, lest perhaps such a one should be swallowed up with overmuch sorrow — and so that Satan, the adversary, get no advantage of us. Discipline that will not forgive becomes its own kind of harm.

The chapter ends with the triumphal procession: thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savour of his knowledge by us in every place. The saints are a fragrance — a sweet savour of Christ — but the same fragrance divides: to the one we are the savour of death unto death; and to the other the savour of life unto life. The gospel is never neutral; it is the savor of life or the savor of death, depending on what it meets.

The God who raises the dead is the Father of all comfort. The sentence of death in ourselves is only there to teach us to trust the One who raises.