Read Time: 6 minutes2 Kings 10
Jehu finishes the purge, and the chapter is a study in zeal that goes far but not all the way. Ahab had seventy sons in Samaria, and Jehu writes letters daring their guardians to set one of them up and fight — knowing they will not. They cave, and at his second letter they slay all seventy and send the heads in baskets. Jehu lays them in two heaps at the entering of the gate until morning, then stands before the people and makes them the witness of his cause: ye be righteous: behold, I conspired against my master, and slew him: but who slew all these? The whole house of Ahab is cut off, until he left him none remaining, as Yahweh had spoken by Elijah.
Then the trap for Baal. Jehu feigns devotion — Ahab served Baal a little; but Jehu shall serve him much — and proclaims a great assembly, gathering every worshipper and priest of Baal into the house of Baal until it is full. He posts eighty men outside, lets the sacrifice begin, and gives the word. The worshippers of Baal are slaughtered in their own temple, the images burned, the house of Baal broken down and made a draught house unto this day. The seed of the serpent is rooted out of Israel; the cult that Jezebel had nursed is destroyed root and branch.
For all this Jehu is commended — because thou hast done well in executing that which is right in mine eyes… thy children of the fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel. But the chapter will not let the zeal stand unqualified. Jehu cast down Baal and kept the calves. Howbeit from the sins of Jeroboam… Jehu departed not from after them, to wit, the golden calves that were in Beth-el, and that were in Dan. He tore down the foreign god but kept the home-grown idolatry that flattered the kingdom’s independence. Jehu took no heed to walk in the law of Yahweh with all his heart.
There is the whole warning. A man can be furious against the sin that is easy to hate and tender toward the sin that is useful to keep. Zeal that destroys Baal and spares the calf is real zeal and partial obedience at once — and the heart that is not whole shows itself exactly there, in the idol it declines to touch.
Jehu broke down Baal and kept the calves. The half-cleansed heart hates the foreign sin and spares the comfortable one.
Ezekiel 1
The temple in Jerusalem is in ruins behind these captives, and the glory of Yahweh appears among them on wheels by a Babylonian canal. Ezekiel the priest — his name means El will strengthen, the very work the vision is given to do — among the captives by the river of Chebar, in the fifth year of Jehoiachin’s exile, sees the heavens opened: a whirlwind out of the north, a great cloud, a fire infolding itself, brightness, and the color of amber out of the midst. He dates the vision twice over — by that fifth year of the exile and by the thirtieth year (1:1), the age at which a Levite entered his service (Num 4:3). The priest who can no longer serve at a ruined altar is called, at the priestly age, into a new service in exile.
Out of the fire come four living creatures, each with four faces — man, lion, ox, and eagle — and four wings, moving straight forward wherever the spirit goes, never turning. These are the cherubim (chapter 10 will name them so), the bearers of the throne. With them are wheels like beryl, a wheel in the middle of a wheel, their rings full of eyes round about, and the spirit of the living creature was in the wheels — the whole structure moving as one living thing, all eyes, all motion, all of it animated by one Spirit.
Above their heads a firmament as the colour of the terrible crystal, and above the firmament a throne as the appearance of a sapphire stone, and on it the likeness as the appearance of a man. Fire and amber and brightness, and round about, the appearance of the bow that is in the cloud in the day of rain. The verdict on the whole vision: This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of Yahweh. Ezekiel falls on his face.
The message of the chariot-throne is its mobility. Yahweh’s glory is not chained to the fallen house in Jerusalem that Lamentations has just wept over; it comes to the exiles, riding on living cherubim, going wherever the Spirit goes. The four faces are the fourfold witness — the lion of Judah’s King, the ox of the patient servant, the man, and the eagle of the heavenly — the same four that stand at the cardinal points of Israel’s camp and reappear around the throne of Revelation 4. These living ones are no new thing: the cherubim were set to guard the gate of Eden (Gen 3:24) and were beaten in gold over the mercy-seat (Exo 25:18–22), and now they carry the moving throne to Babylon — the same guardians of the holy Presence from the garden to the tabernacle to the place of exile. And the rainbow about the throne is the bow of Noah’s covenant: mercy arched over the very glory that comes in judgment. The cherubim that bear the throne are the pattern of the multitudinous body that will one day bear the glory of Yahweh through the earth.
The house in Jerusalem lies in ashes, but the glory is not buried with it. It rides on living wheels to the exiles, and a rainbow of covenant mercy arches over the throne.
2 Corinthians 5–7
Paul holds the dissolving of the earthly body against the building of God that waits at the resurrection. If our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. The saint groans in this tent, longing not to be unclothed — a bare, bodiless state — but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life. That swallowing-up is the change at the Lord’s coming, not a flight to heaven at death; the earnest of the Spirit is the pledge of it. Meanwhile we walk by faith, not by sight.
All of it answers to the judgment ahead: we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body. The hope is real but not yet possessed; it is kept toward an appearing.
Then the heart of the new ministry: reconciliation. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself… and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. The estrangement is ended from Yahweh’s side, and the saints are ambassadors begging others to be reconciled. The deepest line states how it was done: he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Christ, who never sinned, was made to share fully the very nature that sin had claimed — in him, condemning sin in the flesh and being raised — so that those who are in him are counted righteous. Not a swap of one person’s account for another’s, but the Head of a new humanity carrying his people through death into life by his own action. Now is the day of salvation.
Chapter 6 lists the marks of that ministry — afflictions, stripes, watchings, fastings, as dying, and, behold, we live — and then turns to the call out: Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers… Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith Yahweh, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you. Chapter 7 closes on the two sorrows: godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. One sorrow turns the heart back to Yahweh and lives; the other curdles into despair and dies.
The tent is struck so the building of God may be put on. Walk by faith toward the appearing — and come out wholly, touching not the unclean thing.
Synthesis and Exhortation
The day turns on the question of a whole heart. Jehu breaks down Baal and keeps the calves — zeal that goes far and stops short, hating the foreign idol and sparing the useful one. And straight against that half-measure stands the apostolic call: come out from among them, and be ye separate… touch not the unclean thing. The separation Jehu would not finish is the very thing the saint is called to finish. It is not enough to throw down the Baal that is easy to hate; the calf in Bethel has to go too.
Over the whole reading hangs the glory that outlives the ruin. Ezekiel’s chariot-throne lifts the glory of Yahweh out of the fallen house and carries it, living and mobile, to the exiles — and Paul says the same of the saint: if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, eternal in the heavens. The temple falls; the glory rides on. The tent is struck; the building waits. The cherubim that bear the throne are the pattern of the body that will one day carry the glory of Yahweh through all the earth, and the rainbow over that throne is the covenant mercy that arches over every judgment.
So the exhortation gathers around the whole heart and the appearing it waits for. Do not be a Jehu, furious against the obvious sin and quietly fond of the comfortable one; come out, and be separate, and let the separation be complete. Walk by faith, not by sight, toward the judgment seat and the building of God — and let the sorrow that visits the heart be the godly sorrow that turns it back to Yahweh and lives, not the sorrow of the world that ends in death.
The earthly tent is struck so the eternal building may be put on; the glory is not buried with the fallen house. Come out wholly, keep no calf, and walk by faith toward the appearing.