1 Chronicles 13–14

David sets out to bring the presence of Yahweh up to his city — and learns that good intentions are not the same as Yahweh’s way. With the kingdom united and Zion taken, David’s first great desire is right: let us bring again the ark of our God to us: for we enquired not at it in the days of Saul. He gathers all Israel, and the ark is fetched from the house of Abinadab at Kirjath-jearim with music and gladness. The longing is good; the king wants the presence at the centre of the kingdom. It was no whim but the desire of many sleepless nights (Psa. 132); seven Psalms are gathered to the occasion (Psa. 15, 24, 29, 30, 68, 132, 141), and David moves by the spirit of appeal, consulting every leader, not by the force of command.

But the manner is wrong. The ark is set upon a new cart — the way the Philistines had once sent it back, not the way Yahweh commanded, borne on the shoulders of the Levites. The oxen stumble, Uzza puts out his hand to steady the ark, and the anger of Yahweh was kindled against Uzza, and he smote him… and there he died before God. David is at first displeased, then afraid: How shall I bring the ark of God home to me? The ark is left at the house of Obed-edom, who is blessed for keeping it. The presence of Yahweh must be approached on Yahweh’s terms, not ours, however sincere the zeal — a new cart borrowed from the nations, a steadying hand laid on the holy thing, are not honored but judged.

Then chapter 14 sets a Gentile interlude between the two attempts at the ark, and the change of tone is deliberate. Hiram of Tyre sends cedars and masons and carpenters to build David a house — the nations brought into association with the king while the ark still waits at Obed-edom’s. David takes more wives and his sons are born in Jerusalem; David perceived that Yahweh had confirmed him king over Israel, for his kingdom was lifted up on high. The establishing of the king draws even the Gentile craftsman in, a small early picture of the nations bringing their glory to the greater Son of David.

The chapter then turns on the very thing Saul lacked and the new cart ignored: David enquires of Yahweh before he acts. Twice the Philistines spread out in the valley of Rephaim, and twice David enquired of God — and is answered. The first time Yahweh breaks through his enemies as the breach of waters, and David names the place Baal-perazim. The second time the word is not to charge but to wait: go not up after them… when thou hearest a sound of going in the tops of the mulberry trees, then thou shalt go out to battle, for God is gone forth before thee. The king who will not lay an unbidden hand on the ark also will not strike an unbidden blow in the field; he waits for Yahweh to move first.

So war interrupts the bringing-up of the ark — typical of the times of the Gentiles, the long delay of the kingdom’s glory while the nations rage. But the chapter ends in spreading dominion: the fame of David went out into all lands; and Yahweh brought the fear of him upon all nations — a type of the effect of Christ’s victory, his influence going out into all the earth in the Age to come.

The presence is approached on his terms, not the nations’ new cart; and the king who enquires of Yahweh and waits for the sound in the mulberry trees is the one whose fame goes out into all lands.

Ezekiel 26

Proud Tyre gloated over Jerusalem’s fall as a rival’s bankruptcy, and the merchant city that trusted her wealth is told she will become a bare rock where fishermen dry their nets. Tyre said of fallen Jerusalem, Aha, she is broken that was the gates of the people: she is turned unto me: I shall be replenished, now she is laid waste — reading the ruin of the holy city as an opening in the market, a competitor removed. The great trading power, secure on her island, saw only profit in Judah’s grief.

So Yahweh turns against her. Nebuchadnezzar will come from the north; the walls and towers will fall; the rubble will be scraped into the sea. And the verdict that history made exact: I will make thee like the top of a rock: thou shalt be a place to spread nets upon; thou shalt be built no more… thou shalt be sought for, yet shalt never be found again. History split the fulfilment in two: Nebuchadnezzar broke the mainland city in a thirteen-year siege, and Alexander, more than two centuries later, scraped its very rubble into the sea to build his causeway out to the island — the dust and the stones and the timber laid in the midst of the water, the rock left bare for the drying of nets exactly as the word had said. The city that trusted in her trade and her sea-walls becomes a fishing-rock — the merchant princes who sat on thrones come down and clothe themselves with trembling. Tyre’s wealth could not buy off the word of Yahweh.

The point reaches past Tyre. Every power that measures the world by the market and reads the fall of the righteous as its own gain is reading the times as wrongly as the gloating nations of the chapter before. The Yahweh who judged his own city for her sins is the One who judges the proud trader who gloated over her — and the wealth that seemed unsinkable is scraped into the sea.

Tyre saw Jerusalem’s fall as a gap in the market and trusted her wealth — and is made a bare rock for drying nets, built no more. The riches that seemed unsinkable could not buy off the word.

Luke 23

The Lamb is led to the slaughter, examined by both Jew and Gentile and found without fault, and lifted up between two thieves whose two ends are the whole judgment to come. Luke has shown three Jewish trials; now come the three Gentile ones — before Pilate, before Herod, and before Pilate again — and at each the verdict is the same: I find no fault in this man, nothing worthy of death is done unto him. As the Passover lamb was examined four days for blemish before it was killed, so the true Lamb is handled by priest and governor and king and pronounced spotless by the very men who condemn him. The examination itself is a witness: the One they crucify is the unblemished offering.

On the way to Golgotha he turns to the weeping daughters of Jerusalem: weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children — the same city that did not know the time of her visitation, now warned of the days coming upon her. If they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry? The green tree is the righteous One who bears the stroke; the dry is the fruitless nation kept for the burning.

At Golgotha the figure of the whole age is set up in three stakes. The centre is the Lord, God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself; and on either side the two thieves — two men who share his death as the responsible share his baptism, and whose destinies divide. One rails, seeking only to be saved from the present pain — the man who sees no glory beyond the dying, a type of the responsible who fail, the goats of the parable. The other reasserts his faith in the dark: Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom — and hears to day shalt thou be with me in paradise. The first man saved at the King’s side is a dying criminal who saw the kingdom past the stake and asked only to be remembered in it.

Then the darkened hour: from the sixth to the ninth hour the sun is darkened over the land, the veil of the temple is rent in the midst, and the Lord cries Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit, and gives up the spirit. The political and the literal heavens go dark together; the way into the holiest is torn open by the death of the One who stood in the gap. Even the centurion confesses, Certainly this was a righteous man.

Last, the borrowed tomb. Joseph of Arimathea, a good man who waited for the kingdom of God, begs the body, wraps it in linen, and lays it in a new sepulchre where no man had lain; and the women mark the place and rest the sabbath. The Lamb examined and slain is laid in the rock — the stillness before the morning that the next reading will break.

The spotless Lamb is examined, crucified between two thieves, and laid in a borrowed tomb. Be the thief who saw the kingdom past the stake: “Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.”