2 Kings 13

The chapter ends Elisha’s life with two pictures of how the dead are raised — and one picture of faith measured out too small. Israel under Jehoahaz is ground down by Hazael until Yahweh gives them a saviour, but they cleave to the calves of Jeroboam still. Then Elisha falls sick to death, and Joash king of Israel comes down and weeps over his face: O my father, my father, the chariot of Israel, and the horsemen thereof — the very words Elisha had cried when Elijah was taken. The mantle-grief passes down the line.

The dying prophet calls for bow and arrows, lays his own hands over the king’s hands, and bids him shoot eastward toward Syria: the arrow of Yahweh’s deliverance. The hands of the prophet on the hands of the king say it plainly — the power is Yahweh’s, channelled through the man of God. Then comes the test: smite upon the ground. Joash strikes the ground three times and stops. And Elisha is angry: thou shouldest have smitten five or six times; then hadst thou smitten Syria till thou hadst consumed it: whereas now thou shalt smite Syria but thrice.

The measure of the victory was set by the measure of the king’s zeal. The deliverance was real and offered without limit; Joash took only a third of what was held out to him. The hand of Yahweh was on his hand — but he struck the ground like a man going through a motion, and got exactly the half-hearted result his half-hearted striking asked for.

Then Elisha dies and is buried — and the chapter’s last wonder is that his death is not the end of his life-giving. A burial party, surprised by raiders, throws a dead man into Elisha’s grave, and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived, and stood up on his feet. Life out of the dead prophet, given to the dead man who touches him. It is resurrection in figure: the dead are raised by contact with the one who has died — the very shape of the saint’s hope, who is raised because he is joined to the One who went down into death and is the firstfruits out of it.

The hand of Yahweh was on the king’s hand — but the victory was cut to the size of his striking. Smite the ground like a man who believes the deliverance is whole.

Ezekiel 3

The prophet is told to eat the word before he speaks it, and it is sweet going down though its message is woe. Eat this roll, and go speak unto the house of Israel… cause thy belly to eat, and fill thy bowels with this roll. He eats, and it was in my mouth as honey for sweetness. The scroll was filled with lamentation and mourning, yet the word of Yahweh received into the inward parts is sweet — the same pattern John will know when he eats the little book, sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly. The sweetness is in receiving the word; the bitterness is in carrying its judgment to a people who will not hear.

For they will not hear. He is sent not to a people of a strange tongue — had I sent thee to them, they would have hearkened unto thee — but to Israel, impudent and hardhearted. So Yahweh hardens the prophet to match them: I have made thy forehead strong against their foreheads… as an adamant harder than flint. The messenger is given a face that will not flinch.

Then the charge that defines the office: I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel. If the watchman fails to warn the wicked, the wicked dies in his sin but his blood will I require at thine hand; if he warns and is not heard, thou hast delivered thy soul. The watchman is answerable for the warning, not for the response. The Spirit then lifts him and sets him among the captives at Tel-abib, and he sits astonished seven days; the hand of Yahweh binds him, and his mouth is shut except when Yahweh opens it.

Eat the word first; it is honey going in. Then sound the warning — the watchman answers for the trumpet, not for the ears that hear it.

2 Corinthians 10–11

Paul names the real battlefield: not flesh and blood, but the high reasonings of the mind. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. The strongholds are arguments; the captives are thoughts; the war is fought in the mind where the flesh raises its proud fortresses.

He guards the ecclesia as a betrothed bride: I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. And his fear is the oldest fear in Scripture — lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. The two-seeds war of Genesis 3 is still running, now aimed at the bride’s mind. False apostles are at work, and Paul will not be surprised by them, for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light — the adversary’s most dangerous disguise is brightness, not darkness.

Then the strange boast. Forced to defend his apostleship, Paul “glories” — but in all the wrong things by the world’s reckoning: stripes, imprisonments, shipwrecks, a night and a day in the deep, perils of every kind, hunger, cold, and over all the care of all the ecclesias. If I must needs glory, I will glory of the things which concern mine infirmities. The apostle’s credentials are his scars, not his strength — the exact inversion of the proud strongholds he is pulling down.

The war is for the mind; bring every thought captive to Christ. And glory not in strength but in the scars — the adversary comes as light, and the truest credential is weakness borne for the bride.