The Mythologicon

Spirit World

2011-11-09T19:10:00.000-08:00

Todd Warnock/Corbis

In our modern understanding we fancy the spirit world as an invisible plane intersecting our carnal world, inhabited by magical powers exerting a compelling influence on human affairs. Through modern influences we treat the spirit world as a sort of science fiction dimension, potent yet devoid of any knowledge of the natural world that exists just next door to theirs. This attitude of looking at the spiritual as something separate, obscure, and indifferent comes from the modern illusory need to rationalize whatever the curious mind touches, including Biblical faith. Until the modern sciences of reason, with all their impressive intellectual trappings, the believer needed no further proof of the existence of the spiritual and the supernatural. Faith and the Scriptures were all that was necessary to prove it and the disciplines of philosophy, logic, and science were nothing more than complications born out of skepticism designed to fortify inferior assertions. There was no standing up against the issue of faith until the Hellenization of ideas in the eighth century B.C., then during its revival in the sixteenth-century A.D. in the form of the Renaissance, and finally when then Age of Reason took shape in the eighteenth century. During each of these periods, an incremental deadening of the natural sensitivity to the spiritual had been manifest. What had started as a successful stage of departure of Greek thought from the influence of the gods had ultimately come up face to face with Biblical faith. And in a few hundred years, this rift of has now become a chasm. If the children of Israel elected God as their King (Numbers 23:21, Deuteronomy 33:5), now we have the separation of church and state. Back in the days of the Bible, education was made mandatory for the people to “meditate” on “the Book of the Law…day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it” (Joshua 1:8); today, a short prayer to start a day’s school class can become a national controversy.

Arte & Immagini srl/CORBIS

The challenge of doubt can be traced way back to the Garden of Eden when the serpent enticed Eve into disobedience with the introductory line, “Did God really say…?” (Genesis 3:1) The result was banishment from the Garden (verse 23). In the same way, the mistrust initiated by the natural world against the very reality of the spiritual ended in estrangement of the two worlds.

The first verse in the Bible features an introduction of these two worlds: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (King James Version), two dimensions that were meant to be alike. The ninth chapter of the Book of Hebrews, in this matter, spoke about an “earthly sanctuary” (verse 1) and the “greater and more perfect tabernacle…not a part of this creation” (verse 11). The writer provided an ancient principle that God adopted in creating the earth: the replication of heavenly things (verse 23). This bears great significance when we consider Psalm 115:16 which testifies that God has given the earth to man, while heaven He keeps for Himself. Man himself is a copy of his Creator as he was formed in His image (Genesis 1:26 to 27). As God rules heaven, He gave the entire earthly dimension to man to “fill… and subdue” (verse 27). In this context is the Eighth Psalm understood when the fourth and fifth passages explore the wonder why God made man “a little lower than God” (New Living Translation) “and crowned him with glory and honor.” This will be the first lesson to be gleaned in our study of the spirit world: that the natural was never intended to be an inferior version of the spiritual.

Alinari Archives/CORBIS

God has afforded great respect for His creation even before the seventh day when He rested from all His work. At certain points during the creative six days, the Bible notes several periods when God would seem to step back, behold His accomplishment so far and see that it “was good.” In the third verse of the Genesis 1, after creating the light, God steps back to see “that the light was good” (verse 3), then He goes on to call the light “day” and the darkness “night.” In the ninth, after God finished marking the seas and the dry ground, He again steps back to see “that it was good.” In the twelfth, after the land blossomed with the green, God “saw that it was good.” In the eighteenth, God appends the sun and the moon then “saw that it was good.” In the fifth day, God delighted in the sight of the aquatic, arboreal (verse 21), and the terrestrial animals (verse 25), which followed on the sixth day. Then in the thirty-first verse, “God saw all that He had made, and it was very good.”

Yann Arthus-Bertrand/Corbis

Mount Heaven?

What made God descend upon the earth “in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8) was that He was as much at home in an earth that looked and felt no different from the heaven. We can even further claim that God dwelt in Eden with His creation for no Biblical account makes mention of God selecting heaven as His permanent abode prior to the invasion and corruption of sin. The idea of God seated in the clouds above all He has made comes from our imagining of Genesis 1:31, where He surveyed “all that he had made” to see that “it was very good.” Though the illustration given by the Prophet Isaiah speak of a “heaven” (Isaiah 14:13) and a place “above the tops of the clouds” (verse 14), he states that the Divine throne was situated “on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of” what was coined as “the sacred mountain” (verse 13). With God enjoying and savoring the work of His hands, He chose the highest point of the planet—the mountain—to survey “all that he had made.” The Prophet Ezekiel seconds this setting with the mention of “the mount of God” in the sixteenth verse of the twenty-eighth chapter of his book.

Sandro Vannini/CORBIS. Mount Zion today.

The matter may be trivial to begin with, but we have never considered if God originally ridged the earth with an uneven elevation of hills and mountains at all. Yet whether or not the earth’s horizon was meant to be beheld in an uninterrupted line running from the east to the west, there was one height that had risen on earth so high to surpass the clouds, exceeding the firmament where it was once believed the stars and the two great lights were supposed to have been hooked upon. King David alluded to this in prophetic song in Psalm 113:5 to 6:

“Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth?”

Lebrecht Authors/Lebrecht Music & Arts/Corbis

The Biblical writers saw the sky as a vault as did any ancient observer. Back in their time, the idea that the heavenly bodies actually surpassed the earthly clouds by light years was out of the question. What was firmly established then was that the sun, moon, clouds and stars were parts of the sky. The sky, which to them may have been understood as the blue may in turn have been part of the vast canvas of heaven. Yet the complexity did not end there. In 2 Corinthians 12:2, the Apostle Paul wrote of a “third heaven" ruled out any possibility of God’s sacred mountain being scaled by even the most physically enduring. Jesus hinted on this in one of His parables where it took several angels to assist the departed beggar Lazarus in flight to “Abraham’s side” (Luke 16:22). But the seclusion of heaven came after the visitation of sin.

Heaven is representative of the vast authority of God; the sky, heaven’s earthly depiction, illustrated God’s dominion over the earth. Heaven, as pictured by Jesus in His prayer pattern in Matthew 6:10, is a place where God’s will is fully enforced. So when Jesus declared, “your will be done on earth,” He may have almost been alluding to Eden, for it was the most perfect place where God and man communed. Eden was a place of delight; its very name meant “pleasure,” used figuratively to speak of a voluptuous life. Later in the New Testament, Jesus and the Apostles Paul and John the Beloved referred to it as “Paradise” (Luke 23:43, 2 Corinthians 12:2, and Revelation 2:7, respectively). Its foundation was God’s expression of His desire to be in the company of man and all His creation. Yet to keep it from the defilement of sin, He had to withdraw it from man’s and the earth’s corruption and share it with him at a later period in man’s after-death existence when he had shed away his “corruptible” mortality and put on “incorruption” and “immortality” (1 Corinthians 15:54, New King James Version), for “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does corruption inherit incorruption” (verse 50, New King James Version).

Francis G. Mayer/CORBIS

Before the fall of man and all creation, God spent His days on His uncorrupted earth. He dwelt with His creation and took great pleasure in beholding His masterpiece whether closely at the unique intricate detail of a humble organism or from atop His sacred mountain that provided the grand vista of all the earth. Contrary to the common impression, God, when He finished creating, did not withdraw to His throne in heaven behind the clouds and leave the earth to wind in its cycles of perpetuity. Albeit on a limited scale, any human artist who had ever stepped back to view and fall in love with the work of his hands can understand the love and awe God felt, and still feels, for His creation. But while the human artist can only dream for his creation to come to life, it was only God who inspired life into His work. For this delight, He communed with His masterpiece. Back in the days before sin, man and God—the natural and the spirit—shared one world, one dimension.

The Interdependence of Worlds

Images.com/Corbis

Corruption changed everything for the spirit and the natural. Principles changed. But God’s will proved sovereign. Where there was a chasm, God maintained a point, a bridge where He and man could commune. And in the matters He redesigned, He outlined a pattern that reminded Him of unity and reconciliation.

The human creation is of two most basic components: the body and the soul. The body, or that which is made up of flesh and blood, is primarily the result of the physical ability to reproduce. Its precise and awesome design is a network of interdependent parts developing, protecting, and maintaining each other in a perfectly orchestrated concerto of survival. But mere parts minutely assembled together do not produce a living organism. In somewhat the same extent as the complexity of the physical body, the human being is also a system of urges that drives the further equipping of the body and impels for more survival. This is where the soul comes in, to power the physical apparatuses into action.

Image Zoo/Corbis

The soul is the seat of man’s consciousness, his psychology, his will, his intellect, and his ability to distinguish sensations. The soul also contains the emotions, the ambitions, the power to decide, the conscience—the storehouse of morals, the ability to recognize and weigh right and wrong. By Biblical principle, the soul holds the life the physical body is endued with. Without the soul, the body in all its intricacies will cease to function. This relationship is illustrated in Colossians 2:19 regarding the connection of every believer—“the whole body”—to Christ, the soul or “the Head” of the Church:

“He has lost connection with the Head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow.”

Sandro Vannini/CORBIS

In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word used for “soul” is nephesh which is widely employed to speak of desire, lust, pleasure, will, and even the body. “Life,” however, would be the best word to abridge the variety of specific applications. Two of the world’s most reliable Bible translations will demonstrate this in their rendition of 1 Samuel 24:11:

“…there is neither evil nor transgression in mine hand, and I have not sinned against thee; yet thou huntest my soul to take it” (King James Version).

“…I am not guilty of wrongdoing or rebellion. I have not wronged you, but you are hunting me down to take my life” (New International Version).

It doesn't matter what anybody tells you. Without the soul, the body is just as dead as the coffin it lies upon or this awesome funeral mask of the Egyptian boy king Tut.

Brooklyn Museum/Corbis

In the same way, the sustenance needed by the natural world to function and exist comes from the spirit world, from Christ essentially:

“The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3).

And, "He is before all things, and in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17).

Jesus Christ, therefore, is the soul of the material world. At a very vital point, survival is the position at which the natural and the supernatural crisscross. In such a condition, it may appear that a perfect yet precarious balance of power will exist between the two worlds. Throughout the Old and the New testaments, there seems to be a pairing of the two worlds with every occurrence of “heaven and earth,” suggesting an interdependence that must not be severed.

But it shall never be severed, for as far as Jesus is concerned, the natural world shelters the Church which He desires as His “bride,” His chosen city Jerusalem, and “all things” created simply because He loved them (Revelation 4:11):

“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created” (King James Version).

The natural world needs Jesus Christ, its Soul, for without Him, it would cease to exist. Jesus, however, needs nothing from us, the natural world, except for the extreme delight He gets from beholding “all things” which He had been “appointed heir of” (Hebrews 1:2).

Worlds in Marriage

Elizabeth Etienne/Corbis

Another idea that will perfectly illustrate the unity of the spirit and the material worlds is that of marriage. It was, in fact, from which the principle of the marriage was derived. The prophetic psalmist sang of this wedding in Psalm 85:10 to 11:

“Love and faithfulness meet together; righteousness and peace kiss each other. Faithfulness springs for from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven.”

Based on the song, it is clear that God lavished the natural world, or “the earth,” with
love and righteousness, while the latter offered her faithfulness and her peace. This principle of marriage between the natural and the supernatural was very much applied to the indivisibility of the soul and body and the intended inviolability between man and wife. In these marriages, it is not hidden to us that any separation that occurs meant the involvement of death.

The concept of marriage has been the most precise depiction of God’s relationship with His people, a harmony manifested between the natural and the supernatural spheres as well. The Bible repeatedly alludes to this. In the sixteenth chapter of Ezekiel, the prophet composes an inspired allegory of God’s love as He courted a personified Jerusalem in the hope to elicit her peace and faithfulness:

Araldo de Luca/CORBIS

“…I spread the corner of my garment over you and covered your nakedness. I gave you my solemn oath and entered into a covenant with you, declares the Sovereign Lord, and you became mine” (verse 8).

What follows next is a wonderful attention of a supernatural Lover presenting His mistress to the stars. It was in this same and unadulterated manner how the supernatural world looks after its physical half:

“I bathed you with water and washed the blood from you and put ointments on you. I clothed you with an embroidered dress and put leather sandals on you. I dressed you in fine linen and covered you with costly garments. I adorned you with jewelry: I put bracelets on your arms and a necklace around your neck, and I put a ring on your nose, earrings on your ears and a beautiful crown on your head. So you were adorned with gold and silver, your clothes were of fine linen and costly fabric and embroidered cloth. Your food was fine flour, honey and olive oil. You became very beautiful and rose to be a queen. And your fame spread among the nations on account of your beauty, because the splendor I had given you made your beauty perfect, declares the Sovereign Lord” (verses 9-14).

Tetra Images/Corbis

Many centuries after the Prophet Ezekiel, John the Revelator saw the same sight of this transcendent natural earth in the form of “the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband” (Revelation 21:2).

And being the loving husband to a lovely bride, God delightfully descended into the natural realm and personally shared with her His undivided time and attention, “walking in the garden (of Eden) in the cool of the day” (Genesis 3:8). Until Adam and Eve gave in to the sin of disobedience, God, after the creative six days, did not spend the rest of the days seated on His throne on lofty heaven merely surveying the work of His hands. This spiritual Deity enjoyed a dynamic relationship with His son Adam and his wife Eve in the natural realm, feeling the grass, the smell of the flowers, the rippling sound of the river of Eden, the awesome sight of His flocks aflight even as they blocked the daylight sun with their mighty numbers.

[There be more, folks, thar be morrre!]

Tale of Two Brothers

2011-11-08T23:20:00.000-08:00

The Gallery Collection/Corbis

Knowing the incident that highlights this character, like Judas Iscariot, we are predisposed to the impression that Cain had always been a black sheep, and his younger brother, a gentle, saintly, quiet-as-a-lamb, skinny little nipper. Notwithstanding his being the Bible's first murderer, the value judgment we pass on his reputation has been stretched quite too far.

Nowhere in the Bible does it designate Cain being a rebellious son from the beginning. As a matter of fact, he, as his young brother Abel, was raised in the strictest obedience to Adam's Godly tradition. This is manifest in his deliberate adherence to the pre-mandated ritual sacrifice of their firstfruits. Here is where the controversy started to simmer.

There is a popular notion that Cain actually offered up the rotten portions of his farm produce. This is downright impossible on the account that the sacrificial rite needed to take place at a time shortly after harvest time, if not at the onset of harvest itself, to ensure freshness of the yield. There is no known problem the Bible makes mention prior to the sacrifice that would connect Cain into committing the unprecedented first murder. Cain was, in fact, the unlikeliest person to fall precipitously from the grace of God. Being the firstborn of the earth's first man, it is all so possible that Cain felt great responsibility in taking Adam's culture of worship beyond his father's lifetime. It is almost doubtless that Adam instilled to his firstborn the solemnity of his call. Cain was seriously aware that his title as the firstborn male of God's firstborn male lay beyond the concept of privilege. Yet if this sentiment brought him to believe that it was up to himself to prove his worth, to do something to match his father's credit, his life then lay in harm's way. If this ever was the case, then it is here where Cain's downfall takes root, not in the day of the sacrifice.

Charles & Josette Lenars/CORBIS

Cain was a hard worker; and he delighted in the sacrifice he always gave. He surrendered to God what was due God, and every time he did, he did it with a hilarious heart. It is not difficult for us to surmise this, for God, according to the Bible, "does not change" (James 1:17, also in Malachi 3:6, New International Version). The writer of the Book of Hebrews, in asserting Jesus Christ's equality with the Father, claims in effect that God "is the same yesterday, today, and forever" (Hebrews 13:6). When it comes to sacrificially giving to Him, therefore, such an act would not be complete if it were not given by a "cheerful giver" (II Corinthians 9:7, New International Version). Note that this blessed joviality was the first thing to vanish when God one day looked with favor at the younger sibling Abel's immolated lamb, and not at the rich crops freshly picked from Cain's arduously plowed farmland. Cain was a farmer. It was no doubt that hard work was the only kind of work he knew. Giving his best and his physical and intellectual fullest became a lifestyle for him. As far as he was concerned, he toiled harder than Abel, who was mostly seen merely standing among the flock or sitting rested under the spreading canopy of a tree in the heat of the day. Back then, predatory beasts were unknown or unheard of for both man and animal lived under a heavenly mandate that limited food consumption to only vegetables and fruits (Genesis 1:29–30). Slaying flesh-bound beings for food was called bloodshed, a practice that later dragged all creation into corruption.

DLILLC/Corbis

Abel’s Sacrifice

What was it then about Abel's sacrifice that caught God's attention and not to afford any affection for the firstborn's? The concept of the younger brother's offering can be traced back to the Garden of Eden on the day God delivered unto Adam, Eve, and the serpent the judgment of the Fall. Adam and Eve partook of the fruit of the forbidden tree to corrupt all creation with the sin of disobedience. To restore all that was lost, God promised the arrival of a Deliverer, a Messiah. Genesis 3:15 contains this promise, including the specific measure the Christ would take to consummate the re-purifying task: a sacrifice of earthly death.

"And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel" (New King James Version).

The sight, therefore, of a slain lamb being offered in holy sacrifice gripped the Creator's heart, since it vivified the idea of His very prophecy. And the only spectator to behold this ritualized interpretation of the Christ's sacrifice was God. It was to Him a unique, creative, and unexpected realization of His promise carved by a flesh-bound child of finite days. The typology was perfect. He took the "firstlings of his flock" (Genesis 4:3 NIV), a concept that established the lamb as the everlasting symbol of the Christ. Three instances in the Book of the Revelation (5:6, 12, and 13:8) was Jesus Christ pictured as a "Lamb, looking as if it had been slain" (NIV). In John 1:29 and 36, John the Baptist called Him "the Lamb of God." At that point, Abel was able to accomplish for the first time since the expulsion from Eden what Adam, Eve, and Cain had endeavored: to capture the heart of God. It was the beginning of the blood sacrifice, adopted much later into the Mosaic worship pattern for sin offering. It was also the beginning of Cain's spiritual downfall.

Ragnar Schmuck/fstop/Corbis

As far as Cain was concerned, touching the heart of God was his privilege as firstborn, after all, being such not only entitled him to grip the torch of worship leadership after his father but also to raise it to even further heights. By the younger's sacrifice, however, that dream was apparently washed away from "rightful" hands to one so unsuspectingly least. There was a new form of worship born into the Adamic house, approved by God, and Cain had nothing to do with it.

Did Cain feel his authority and privilege slipping from him to his young brother? He will continue to be firstborn, yes; but in the ensuing event, only as one in the order of birth. The substance of Cain's life-long envy, as felt at the very moment he watched God savour the bloody sacrifice, will be that his birthright will be transferred to Abel. For this not to happen there must be no Abel to receive this blessing. It was a plan Cain thoroughly laid out, totally drenched with the spirit of bitterness.

Significance of the Brothers’ Conflict:

Arte & Immagini srl/CORBIS

The Old Testament is no stranger to sibling rivalry gone lethal, that of Cain and Abel merely being one of them. We are all so familiar with the story of Joseph in Genesis who was hated by his brothers (Genesis 37:6) because of a vision for his life shown to him by God. Some commentators criticize Joseph for impulsively verbally spilling his secret to antagonists. Yet down does one expect of a seventeen-year-old boy (verse 2), the least in a family of over a dozen brothers, who was given a vision from the God loved and feared by all? In this story, the spectre of death did hover over young Joseph’s life. In verse 18, his brothers “plotted to kill him.” In the verse that follows, it was almost agreed by the seething brothers that this young and harmless “dreamer” be killed and thrown into a cistern. Fortunately for Joseph, the plan took on a different course: Reuben, the firstborn, discouraged any bloodshed; dropping the boy into the cistern alive, however, was concurred.

Marion Peck/Illustration Works/Corbis

Before the story of Joseph, his father Jacob also had a life-and-death situation with his brother Esau, also involving the destiny of a birthright. The futures of Jacob and Esau had been discernible from their time in their mother Rebekah’s womb. In Genesis 25:32, it says that “the babies jostled each other within her.” Distressed, Isaac inquired of the LORD in behalf of his wife as to the significance of this turmoil.

“The LORD said to her, ‘Two nations are in your womb, and two peoples from within you will be separated; one people will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger’” (verse 23).

How this was accomplished almost destroyed the family. Esau became his father Isaac’s favorite. It is suggested that Esau became a hunter, “a man of the open country” (verse 27), a sportsman. With an image that could be arrayed with the likes on an Orion, he was physically the stuff that a hero was made of. Adorned with a six-gun and a lasso, he would look no different from the cowboy of western legend. He was the best candidate to establish a “stronger people.” Probably every time he came home, he had a gift of wild game for his daddy, who had a taste for it (verse 28). He was everything his father was not, and therefore became the latter’s favorite.

Alfredo Dagli Orti/
The Art Archive/Corbis

Jacob, the twin, on the other hand was everything his brother was not. He was smooth of skin while his brother was hairy (27:11). He loved to cook (26:29). He was “quiet…staying among the tents” (verse 27).

The story of the brothers’ fate is so rich with significance that many of us have given up exploring what has yet been unravelled. And among these is the typology drawn of the relationship between the Christian church and Judaism.

Throughout the Bible, a curious trend sweeps its stories, and is eventually explained by Jesus Christ to be a principle to God's chosen nation and the church: the first will be last, and the last will be first. And it begins with Cain and Abel. Did the brother's offerings reflect the death of the old form of worship, embodied by Cain, to give way to the new, as typified by Abel? In most instances, we cling to the more obvious lesson of the fallen brothers: carnality versus spirituality. Never have we seen the principle of a worship cycle's rise, ebb, and rebirth depicted by Cain and Abel. What is more chilling is that Cain's murderous reaction to the new trend pictures, in fact, a disposition that resides in the heart of any God-worshiper. It lies dormant and hidden until the opportune time, when God's attention is drawn to "another favorite."

Jim Zuckerman/Corbis

Evangelical Bible scholars speak of the periods and stages of church revivals in history as "moves of God." And in every "move of God," there has been displayed a hostile welcome by the very body that birthed it. Christianity, for instance, faced several attacks by its mother, Judaism, until achieving independence by enrooting its membership in Europe's gentile population. At this time, St. Paul, in his epistles, vehemently taught and instructed various churches to reject the doctrine of certain "Judaisers": infiltrators and "false brothers" (Galatians 2:4 New International Version) who came to spy on and convince the Christians in fellowship regarding the importance of the circumcision rite in order to ensure spiritual salvation. In essence, what the Judaisers wanted was for Christian’s gentile members to adopt Jewish religious customs, beginning with the vital rite of circumcision: the first Jewish rite established by Abraham. This was one of the three decisions made by the Apostle Paul to distance Christianity from Judaism.

Brooklyn Museum/Corbis

Since its inception, it seemed in the least that Christianity had always longed for the acceptance of Judaism, as a child yearning for its mother's smile and embrace. Almost none, however, was afforded the new spin-off faith. What it received instead was the death of its greatest teacher and unrelenting persecution. In its defense, survival, nourishment, and right to growth, Christianity's greatest and most unexpected convert, St. Paul, decided on three major factors that spelled independence from Judaism's standard: extending its membership to the pagans, or "Gentiles"; the abandoning of the customary Jewish dietary laws and the indispensable rite of circumcision; and the replacement of the Torah for Jesus Christ as the most vital link between man and the Father.

What If Abel Survived?

At this point, we cannot resist supposing what would have been if Abel survived at all. Would have he retaliated? Again, the Bible presents instances of warring kin where the chosen of God neither dies nor raises a finger against the aggressor.

Araldo de Luca/Corbis

One is seen in Genesis 28:2–3 where an aged Isaac charges Jacob to flee to Padam Aram to escape the murderous wrath of his brother Esau. Another is in the First Book of Samuel where David, newly anointed to be the second king, is relentlessly pursued all over the Palestinian by a bloodthirsty and incumbent King Saul. David could have waged a counterattack against the King but chooses to flee believing that Saul was “the LORD’s anointed” (I Samuel 24:6 New International Version). Twice, David resists the opportunity of slaying the King, once in a cave where the latter to relieve himself (I Samuel 24:3) and another at the King’s very camp (I Samuel 26:7). It is amazing that these two instances had been prearranged by God, as expressed by David in 24:10 and by the Bible itself in 26:12, wherein it says that it was the LORD that had put Saul and his men “into a deep sleep,” so David and Abishai could sneak into the camp unnoticed and steal away the spear and water jug near Saul’s head.

Fine Art Photographic Library/Corbis

Therefore, instead of standing his ground in defense, David opts to seek asylum among Israel’s archenemy, the Philistines (I Samuel 27:1–28:2). And as if David’s running days were not over, in II Samuel 15:14, he—already crowned the King of Israel, the champion of many battles—decides to flee Jerusalem instead of suppressing the coup d’état launched by his son Absalom. This usurping son and King Saul met the same gory fate, but not by David’s hands or through any of his clandestine directive. Absalom was killed by David’s commander Joab because of a swollen personal grudge, and Saul in a war against the Philistines, where twice he attempted suicide and finally orders a complying armor-bearer to kill him.

Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis

In the New Testament, Jesus declined in a number of instances to prove his Godhood, from His temptation in the desert to His death on the cross. St. Paul enumerated some life-threatening sufferings he faced from his enemies: “From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one. Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; in journeys often …in perils of robbers, in perils of my own countrymen, in perils of the Gentiles, in perils among false brethren” (II Corinthians 11:24–26 New King James Version). Fighting back was never in their list of options.

Only a few people in the world know what it's like to be at the ugliest end of persecution. Among them are the Christians. And the Jews.

Finally, in the driving the examples closer to home, the Jewish people also chose to run—worse, to run and hide—first from their homeland in Palestine, then from almost every country they have sought refuge in. In the last two thousand years until May 14, 1948, a Friday at 4:00 P.M., the Jewish people had been adopted and then spewed from Western to Eastern Europe, then back to the West where they ran into the holocaust. The amazing thing was that they never fought back. Throughout two thousand years after the Roman siege of Masada, the Jewish diaspora was characterized with peaceful co-existence in an alien land and compliance to its laws, including edicts of banishment. Instead of putting up a fight, a Jewish enclave would almost immediately pack up and leave in choosing the best possible alternative to promote peace. Yet even before the Romans, the Jewish captive life under the Egyptians, Romans, Babylonians, and Persians prioritized peaceful co-existence and cooperation without being assimilated to the majority’s culture and gene pool.

Arte & Immagini srl/Corbis

Being a typology of the Christ, Abel would not have retaliated at all. Rather, it must have been he who became “a restless wanderer on the earth” (Genesis 4:14 New International Version), and not Cain. Abel would have been the one to found the first city mentioned in the Bible, and it certainly would not have been named Nod. And, again, being a typology of the Christ, there must have been no Cainite culture replacing the God-oriented Adamic. Instead, the latter would have been reinforced and taken into new heights of glory than being later debased by Cain’s line. Abel’s calling would have been sooner fulfilled in that he becomes the new generation priest of God to lead the world into a renewed and improved worship of the One True Creator.

But what of the Cainite culture? Though we may be primarily geared to believe that it would have gone better for the world without this decadent generation taking over the aging dominant Adamic culture, the suggestions given by our alternate scenario unfortunately bring something no less foreboding. The continued existence of Cain might have meant a successful turnover of leadership from his father, and this fault might have dealt an ignominious blow to Adam’s righteous house in the course of time. Again, this view can be justified by the example of King Solomon.

Who would have thought that the wisest and most-loved King in Israel was able to develop adversaries? I Kings 11:14 is clear that it was “the LORD” who “raised up an adversary against Solomon” by the name of Hadad the Edomite; then Rezon the son of Eliadah in verse23; and Jeroboam, whose story is told throughout verses 26 to 40. With Jeroboam, not only did God raise him up, but through a prophet he was told: “Behold, I will tear the kingdom out of the hand of Solomon and will give the ten tribes to you” (verse 31).

Heritage Images/Corbis

Being a leader of a society and of a culture, Adam was in effect a king, Cain a prince. And should have Adam successfully bestowed his authority to Cain, God would have surely disapproved and most certainly did something about it, during the course of Cain’s reign if not before the actual bestowal. Yet there may have been a twist to this: what if Cain truly repented of his act and searched for Abel for forgiveness?

Such a situation will truly warrant forgiveness, knowing the character of the God they served, being of everlasting mercy (Psalm 100:5). Being the king of the Adamics, however, remains a different matter. Let us remember that, back during the momentous sacrifice, God had made the decision in favor of Abel.

This final matter on forgiveness is a basic matter fondly pondered by every believer of the Bible: what if he actually asked for forgiveness? It is a noble thought, credit given. But did Cain truly ask for forgiveness?

"Then the LORD said to Cain, ‘Where is your brother Abel?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he replied. ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’” (Genesis 4:9 New International Version)

Arte & Immagini srl/CORBIS

The Authority of God: To Save Lives

2011-11-02T19:59:00.000-07:00

The Biblical prophet-writer Zechariah and Jesus Himself expressed this principle to warn of the threat of a society's disintegration should its leader disappear or lose his competence:

"Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered, and I will turn my hand against the little ones" (Zechariah 13:7); and in predicting Peter's denial on the night hours before it occurred, "“This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written: ‘I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered’" (Matthew 26:31).

According to Romans 13:1, “there is no authority except that which God has established.” Man is born with an inclination to leadership as naturally as his need for food, sex, and shelter. And because this is a basic need, God provides for it. As man survives through the challenges of his environment and his imitations, he openly leaves behind a trail for others to follow. He has in effect become a leader. And because he believes that the opportunities that had brought him to a far stage of his survival cannot be explained without the context of the Divine—that life is a gift of favor from God—he then believes that his existence at that point has been elevated into leadership by the same Giver of life. Leadership, therefore, is a device of God that ensures the survival of a people and their graduation into the greater opportunities above basic subsistence. Joseph, the son of the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, applied this principle when he revealed himself to his unsuspecting brothers:

“And now do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. For two years now there has been famine in the land, and for the next five years there will not be plowing and reaping. But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance” (Genesis 45:5-7).

Joseph first survived being thrown into a pit, then his Egyptian slavery. With his life, he defended his integrity in the face of temptation and never did he give an inch to compromise his reputation as one trusted of Potiphar (Genesis 39:4), even when it meant death. Fortunately, it must have been a process that Potiphar was compelled to comply with and Joseph landed in prison alive (verse 20) than being chopped into bits in a crime of passion! Through all the twists and turns of Joseph’s life, prison was the very critical for it was here where he would get his renown as one who interprets dreams, the key that would lead him from the prison dark to the heights of Egyptian political power. One day, the Egyptian pharaoh had a dream that distressed him greatly. His cupbearer, who was a former convict in the king’s prison, recounted to the king how his freedom was foretold by a Hebrew inmate through the interpretation of a dream (41:9-13). The great monarch wasted no time in summoning this foreign dream-master, heeding him, and placing him in charge of all Egypt regarding the matter of surviving the predicted famine.

The chain of survival in Joseph’s life headed towards leadership that saved many people, including his family, “by a great deliverance” (34:7). In the forty-seventh chapter of Genesis, we see how leadership serves survival as the people of the Nile and the Canaanite region turn to Joseph as the famine grew more intense. And as it did, the human will to live gets expressed through devotion to leadership. In the fourteenth and fifteenth verses, the people bought Egyptian grain until all their money ran out. In the sixteenth, they offered their livestock for food. In the year that followed, conditions remained harsh, and household subsistence deteriorated. The people offered their land for seed to plant and in this respect, gave their lives into the Pharaoh’s service (verse 21). On top of this, it can be seen that it was out of the people’s willingness and pleasure to offer themselves into the Pharaoh’s bondage (47:25):

“’You have saved our lives,’ they said, ‘May we find favor in the eyes of our lord; we will be in bondage to Pharaoh.’”

And who would not find great pleasure in offering themselves in the service of Egypt at that time? Joseph, in his great wisdom, had made an outstanding representation of the Egyptian crown during his years of service. Joseph’s God-given understanding not only possessed interpreting dreams, but a systematic insight to assess and implement measures to insulate the imperial economy from an impending calamity. This Hebrew acumen that impressed the pharaoh was displayed when Joseph offered his unsolicited recommendation to "…look for a discerning and wise man and put him in charge of the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh appoint commissioners over the land to take a fifth of the harvest of Egypt during the seven years of abundance. They should collect all the food of these good years that are coming and store up the grain under the authority of Pharaoh, to be kept in the cities for food. This food should be held in reserve for the country, to be used during the seven years of famine that will come upon Egypt, so that they country may not be ruined by the famine” (41:33-36).

Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive/Corbis

The pharaoh did not need a committee to plan for the coming famine; as far as he was concerned, before him stood a Hebrew who had virtually volunteered himself by presenting a scheme that could save his kingdom. During the seven years of Egyptian prosperity, Joseph efficiently managed the stockpiling of food in preparation of the coming disaster. Had the pharaoh given this task to an all-Egyptian team, the entire country would have been subject under an austerity plan that could have famished a part of the Egyptian household even during a rich seven-year harvest period. As our Bible passage above shows, Joseph instead adopted a “one-fifth policy” in that a carefully measured fifth—not half, not even a third—of Egypt’s harvest during the coming seven years would go to storage for consumption in the time of famine. This allowed the entire empire a wide breadth of reserve for the people to celebrate with over the abundance of each of the seven years’ harvest. With the system that he maintained, he could have already been the most popular person in the kingdom from the pre-famine years; and his renown made the pharaoh look good. Later on, he would apply his “one-fifth policy” on the crop harvest of the empire during the famine period to further replenish the calamity stock that by then had continued to flood the Egyptian depots.

During the famine, it may appear that Joseph opportunistically devoured the peoples’ belongings and later their souls as they groaned and groveled at his feet for food. The forty-seventh chapter of Genesis attests that the entire region of Egypt and Canaan wasted under the brutal famine. Lives perished—plant, animal, human. And as much as Joseph wanted to provide food to everyone who came begging at the Egyptian gates, he had a responsibility to preserve his stock above dwindling. Selling grain was therefore the most effective measure to keep survival levels afloat. With the money that they profited out of the grain sales (47:14-15), Egypt boosted food import from trade partners. When money was all used up, the people traded their livestock, which was the most logical emergency commodity to traffic because animals die needlessly during a famine and it took the God-given and compassionate genius of Joseph take these live items and redistribute them back to the people as food. The last item to be offered was the peoples’ lands, and with it, their lives. Again, it was a wise trade that benefitted both the people and the Egyptian nation. Joseph held all the grain and seed; the people the manpower and the element of earth to nurture seed into crop. Why not indeed form a partnership by keeping the people alive from starvation while they till the land they have offered in exchange and apportion a fifth of every harvest to the Egyptian government? It was a policy that remained in effect several hundred years after Joseph had passed away (47:26), a remembrance and a gift left behind by the One True God as gratitude to a great nation that opened its leadership to His intervention to “save lives.”

The King After God: Perdition and the Law

2011-10-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

The Bridgeman Art Library/Gettyimages

When considering Deuteronomy 17:18-19, there seems to be one specific king the events of whose life highlighted the conditions of the passage like fulfillment of a prophecy. Around 638 B.C. an eight-year-old child by the name of Josiah rose into power in the kingdom of Judah. Now someone coming to the throne at this age can give us the impression that the kingdom is at the verge of destruction, finding no one else fit to occupy the throne, desperately holds on to its tradition and gambles its everything on this one in whom is believed to be from the line of its best king. Yet by a slim margin there is that chance that the kingdom may be on a path to glory. Knowing the God whom the Israelites worshiped, Who split the Red Sea and delivered His people from certain slaughter, slim chances were His specialty. And with an eight-year-old Josiah, son and grandson of two of the most evil monarchs Judah has ever had, God was about to turn the tide of corruption upon itself through the relentless fury of this young king.

National Geographic Society/Corbis

Unlike his grandfather King Manasseh who prostituted the Israelite culture to the paganism of its neighbors, and his father King Amon who exceeded his father’s guilt (2 Chronicles 33:23), Josiah was raised in righteousness. In 2 Chronicles 34:2, it says that, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left.” And by then he was only eight. At age 16, “he began to seek the God of his father David” (34:3). This became the vital four-year spiritual foundation that would fuel his mission to wage war on the paganism that was corroding the cultural integrity of Judah. At 20, his twelfth year on the throne, “he began to purge Judah and Jerusalem of high places, Asherah poles, carved idols and cast images” (Ibid.). With such violence, he “cut to pieces,” “smashed,” “broke,” “scattered” (verse 4), “burned,” “crushed…to powder” and “tore down” (verse 7) every symbol, altar, edifice, and bone of those who served as priests of the Baals and Asheras in his entire kingdom. Six years later, to complete the spiritual purification of his land, he ordered the repair of God’s Temple in Jerusalem. Apparently years of religious-cultural mutation had added a lot of changes in the Temple. The common impression of a reader reading about the Israelite kings, like Manasseh, who “did evil in the eyes of the Lord” is that when they worshiped their false gods in the Temple of God, they merely pushed in a few altars and some variously sized statues, added new draperies and probably decommissioned some menorahs and stuck them in the Temple warehouse. This is not what happened. Manasseh alone ruled a long fifty-five years (2 Chronicles 33:1) and in that period he renovated the Temple to incorporate his pagan pantheon. This required alterations in the original Temple plan to accommodate additions, probably promote and block some “positive” and “negative energies” coming in and going out of the building. You know what I mean. For a total of fifty-eight years, half a century, the Temple of God gained a new look, starkly alien from the Temple King David planned and which his son Solomon built. And it was Josiah’s self-appointed task—as far as he was spiritually concerned, that is—to restore the Temple to its original holiness.

National Geographic Society/Corbis

It could have been that Josiah's grandfather King Manasseh and father King Amon were trying to remodel the Temple of God to resemble a Mesopotamian ziggurat as during their lifetime they tried to identify themselves with their neighbors by adopting their religious culture and push the Jehovah away from Jehovic Israel.

The account is told in 2 Chronicles 34:9 to 13. One of the expressions of faith and rededication to God was the immense unanimous financial support given by the “people of Manasseh, Ephraim and the entire remnant of Israel and from all the people of Judah and Benjamin and the inhabitants of Jerusalem” (2 Chronicles 34:9). Trust was another demonstration of their approval for their king and his mission to restore the Jehovah-centered society of Israel. According to the tenth and eleventh verses of our passage, the people entrusted the money they set aside for Temple restoration “to the men appointed to supervise the work on the Lord’s temple,” who, in turn, “paid the workers who repaired and restored the temple” and those who purchased the replacement stone and the timber. The workers worked in absolute honesty and diligence over the finances and in their specified jobs (verses 12 to 13).

The degradation of the Temple could have been externally as simple as the one on the left, with the Mesopotamian genies drawn at the facade above the door, or as massive as the Assyrian model below. In any case, alterations did take place that new materials needed to be shipped in to replace the old and add what Manasseh and Amon's specifications eliminated.

Nik Wheeler/CORBIS

The Temple of God had been through massive alteration and corruption that new “dressed stone, and timber for joists and beams” had to be purchased to replace the ones that “the kings of Judah had allowed to fall into ruin” (verse 11). In other words, King Josiah and his team of appointees were to undertake a great extreme makeover, spiritual edition. This was the juncture when God plays the father of the parable who runs to meet his homecoming son whom he thought he had lost forever (Luke 15:20). After an unremitting ten-year campaign that spiritually and socially sterilized Israel for God, He was about to perform His operation through a string of events that led to the rediscovery of an important artifact. Hidden somewhere in a cabinet or a niche or a chamber that had been bricked or boarded up, gathering layers of dust and forgotten in the long backslidden years, “the Book of the Law of the Lord that had been given through Moses” (verse 14) finally surfaces.

PoodlesRock/Corbis

History views this episode as the most crucial point of Josiah’s campaign. There is, however, some controversy concerning how the Mosaic volumes were applied to the cultural revolution. According to 2 Chronicles 34:30, Josiah read the Law to “the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and Levites—all the people from the least to the greatest” and created a wave of reawakening throughout the entire nation. Israelites came from every corner of the kingdom with a compelling heart hunger for the word of God. But the word of God that Josiah read to them, according to some scholars, was actually a new version which he had revised to match the temper of his generation.

It is agreed that the Law of Moses was rediscovered at some secluded part of the Temple. Interpretations will arise, however, in the passage where the king’s secretary Shaphan “read from it in the presence of the king” (verse 18). Here, Josiah, understanding from the original manuscripts, decided to present God’s word and culture that his generation could easily understand. With the expertise of his priests and Scriptural specialists, the endeavor was blessed in the form of a book that later came to be known as the Book of Deuteronomy.

Burstein Collection/CORBIS

According to experts in Scripture history, there are four major narratives of the Old Testament; two of these are called the “J” and “E” documents. The “J” document is so named because the name “Jehovah” is used in every appearance of “God.” It is the oldest of all written documents, dating back to the ninth century B.C., during the time of Jeroboam, and was penned in the southern kingdom of Judah.

With the “E” document, God is referred to as “Elohim.” It was written in the eighth century B.C., this time in the northern kingdom of Israel, about a hundred years after the “J.” It is believed that the “E” was produced to rival the “J,” which was housed in the Temple in Jerusalem.

It was these two documents that Josiah saw the need to harmonize. If the “J” called God “Jehovah” and the “E” referred to Him as “Elohim,” Josiah’s new work formulated the new concept of a “Jehovah Elohim” for “Lord God,” thus creating the “JE” document. The king’s team also added their own expert interpretation on some portions of the document which they believed would boost new generation understanding. This may explain the fact that the passage in Deuteronomy 17:18 to 20 makes an uncanny reference to Josiah’s act and fueling principle:

“When [the king] takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the priests, who are Levites. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his brothers and turn from the law to the right or to the left.”

National Geographic Society/Corbis

The late great Jewish historian Max I. Dimont noted the “good fortune” that brought the rise of Josiah in the hour of Judah’s most critical crisis [Jews, God and History, p.65]. Before he came into power at the age of eight, Judah had been immersed in fifty-seven straight years of religious apostasy which seemed to be irreversible. The spiritual and cultural amalgamation with its pagan neighbors had buried the Israelite religion deep beneath layers of defiance and corruption. King Manasseh and later his son King Amon had deliberately torn away the Jehovah from the kingdom’s culture and spliced in His place the Baals, Asherahs, “all the starry hosts” (2 Chronicles 33:5), “sorcery, divination and witchcraft” (verse 6). During this period, a generation was born knowing “neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10). In this new age, the god they knew wore a pointy hat holding in one hand a slender tree that ended in a spearhead, a raised club in another, and a man dangling by his hair in another. The god they knew had a female consort who held in her hand a phallic scepter, the symbol of the life that allegedly issued from her, from her breasts where flowed eternal sustenance, and every time the three-armed god goes to bed with her—and every time meant all the time.

Werner Forman/CORBIS

In 722 B.C., Judah watched in silent horror as the Assyrians descended upon Israel and carried away whatever was left of its populace. During that time, the righteous king Hezekiah ruled the southern kingdom. For twenty-nine years, Judah depended on the Lord for protection from the threat and taunts of Sennacherib. It was a time of great fear, great obedience, and great miracles, including how an angel of God armed with a sword descended into the Assyrian siege camp and killed "a hundred and eighty-five thousand" soldiers (2 Kings 19:35), forcing the loud-mouthed Sennacherib to break camp and scamper back to Nineveh (verse 36). The Bible seems to draw some humor in this in that it even notes that he "stayed there." But it was for a reason. In the same way as he drew delight in humiliating God when he tried to bleach Hezekiah and Jerusalem with his murderous intimidations, God took His turn and determined the flow of event of his life:

Araldo de Luca/CORBIS

"One day, while he (Sennacherib) was worshiping in the temple of his god Nisrok, his sons Adrammelek and Sharezer killed him with the sword" (verse 37).

But after Hezekiah died, his son Manasseh ruled the kingdom for fifty-five years corrupting the land with his idolatry. It could have been worse if his successor Amon was allowed to rule longer than two years; probably God saw how bleak the future was for the kingdom so He took him out.

In a generation that knew not God, a boy king arose who began to seek God in the years when teenage sexual curiosity was supposed to be consuming that stage of his youth. Instead, he thought that if the kingdom kept on going on its religious and cultural course the way it did from the days of his grandfather Manasseh, Judah would end up with the same judgment that befell the northern kingdom of Israel. And if someone like Josiah and any righteous prophet would view Judah by that time, he would doubt whether Israel was really exiled at all, or at least its spirit of uncleanness had spilled itself crazy upon the kingdom. God was gracious to David, to Jerusalem, to Judah that He provided the kingdom with a king like Josiah.

Gettyimages

Josiah, the boy king who changed the course of Judah and provided the a new document for the coming generation of believers would understand and life according to: The Book of Deuteronomy.

[That was fun! All those modeling and remodeling and back to the old model. Well, didn't I tell you there was gonna be more? What disappoints me at this point is this large white space beside the last pic. Hope you don't mind, though. There's more to come, and it's gonna have more King Saul in it! Excited? You know I am! So, till then, stay tuned! Hey, that's new.]

The King After God: All the King's Wives

2011-10-05T22:07:00.000-07:00

Christine Osborne/CORBIS

In the seventeenth verse of Deuteronomy 17, God’s guidelines for choosing a king, firstly stipulates that the candidate “must not take many wives.” Now, we all know of one king who had failed this law, keeping a total of “seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines” (1 Kings 11:3). King Saul was known to have had one wife, a woman named Ahinoam (1 Samuel 14:50); and a concubine named Rizpah. Back in those days, it was more or less prevalent among kings and nobles to keep at least one partner other than the common-law wife. It was not the rule and much less was it a legal stipulation for a man to have one; but because of society’s permissiveness on the matter, the Law of Moses later regulated the practice by providing certain rights to the concubine, her children, her benefactor, including a certain protocol that must be observed in obtaining a mistress (Deuteronomy 21:10-14). Regardless, however, of the toleration and management imposed by the Law over the custom, a part of the Scriptures spoke against concubinage and it was doubtless that there were those who believed, citing it as a source of trouble based on certain cases in the lives of the patriarchs. It was from this contingent that held the incompatibility of the concubinage part of culture to Christianity.

Araldo de Luca/CORBIS

An Example from the Life of Abraham. Abraham, for instance, kept several concubines—Genesis 25:6, and had sons by them—but none gave him great deal of complication than Sarah's Egyptian maidservant named Hagar. The first snag that this arrangement is liable to promote is between wife and mistress. Hagar was an Egyptian maidservant who was dragged into the mess spilled by Abraham and Sarah when they attempted to facilitate God’s promise of a son and heir (Genesis 15:40). Knowing the fact that their bodies were “as good as dead” (Romans 4:19), they resorted to the custom of impregnating the Sarah’s slave (Genesis 16:3). And out of that arrangement, Hagar bore Ishmael; a development that changed the attitudes of both Hagar and Sarah toward each other. The fourth verse in Genesis 16 says that Hagar began to despise her mistress. Sarah, armed with her legitimate right as wife and Hagar’s owner, coupled with an embittered soul, it was easy for her to mistreat her and send the slave running away (verse 6). But in a desert road, God meets Hagar and tells her to “go back to [her] mistress and submit to her” (verse 9), with a promise. On account of the respect God had for Abraham, He assured to greatly increase the progeny of Abraham from her body “that they will be too numerous to count” (verse 10).

Bettmann/CORBIS

Hagar did as the Lord commanded and returned to Sarah. She gave birth to Ishmael while she stayed with her mistress (verse 16). Little more than a decade later, Sarah got pregnant and gave birth to the awaited heir, Isaac (21:1-5). At this point, Sarah compelled Abraham to divorce Hagar and disinherit Ishmael by sending her away (Genesis 21:10). The matter, according to the Scriptures, “distressed Abraham greatly” (verse 11).

An Example from the Life of Jacob. It distressed the patriarch greatly “because it concerned his son” (Ibid.). One observable problem in ancient concubinage is seen in the conflict among the offspring. In Genesis 21:8 to 10, the sight of Ishmael teasing Isaac infuriated Sarah prompting her to banish the servant child and her mother. And that ended a sibling conflict which could have grown worse in time, such as what happened among Jacob’s eleven sons when their jealousy of Joseph sent him into Egyptian bondage. The passage in Genesis 35:23 to 26 outlines Jacob’s family. In order of marriage, Leah was the first; and from this union brought Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun. From Leah also came Dinah, Jacob’s only daughter (30:21). Rachel, though Jacob loved her first, fell second to give him Joseph and Benjamin. By her maidservant Bilhah came Dan and Naphtali. Leah, too, offered her maidservant Zilpah and from her came Gad and Asher.

Examples from the Life of the Israelite Kings

The first three Israelite kings were not from this contingent. King Saul was known to have kept a wife and a concubine, a fact we either know little or care little about. Saul’s wife was Ahinoam (1 Samuel 14:50), from whom came Jonathan, Ish-Bosheth (who went by the names Ishvi, Esh-Baal, and possibly Abinadab, 31:2), and Malki-Shua (verse 49); and the daughters Merab and Michal, the princess whom Saul gave to David as wife at the cost of two hundred Philistine foreskins (1 Samuel 18:27). The concubine was Rizpah (2 Samuel 3:7,21:8,10,11).While the trouble that the women entangled in concubinage could churn out is well established in the consciousness of the Israelite, Saul’s disobedience had instead created for his partners the lifelong pain of losing their sons in tragic deaths that could have well been avoided from the start. We have already known how in 1 Samuel 31, Ahinoam lost her three sons in a battle against the Philistines on Mount Gilboa. Rizpah lost her two sons, Armoni and Mephibosheth (2 Samuel 21:8), to the Gibeonites who had them immolated for a mandate defied by—you guessed it—Saul.

Rizpah, Saul's Concubine, in the Middle of Saul's Transgression with the Gibeonites

The story in 2 Samuel 21:1 to 14 tells that Saul, “in his zeal of Israel and Judah” (verse 2) attempted to do what Joshua centuries before him would not: “annihilate the Gibeonites.”

George Steinmetz/CORBIS

The Gibeonites, according to 2 Samuel 21:2, were an ancient race of Amorites who, in Joshua 9, extracted Israelite protection through a cunning ruse. In verses 4 to 6 and 9 to 14, they successfully deceived the Israelites into believing that they were worn and vulnerable travelers from some far distant land drawn to where the Israelites were “because of the fame of the Lord” (verse 9). Flattered it seemed by the testimony posed by the Gibeonites that Joshua and the Israelites forgot the fundamental procedure of inquiring of the Lord (verses 14 and 15) and on went the decision to establish a treaty of peace with these people , unwittingly disobeying God’s mandate never to make any covenant with them (Exodus 23:32).

Adrian Abib/CORBIS

The sanctity of their survival sealed by an oath invoking the Name of the Lord demanded the lives of seven of Saul’s male descendants with their bodies left unburied and exposed “before the Lord” (verse 6). David had five sons of Saul’s daughter Merab, along with the two sons of Rizpah, delivered to the Gibeonites and immolated (2 Samuel 21:8 to 9). When the Gibeonites were done with them, Rizpah came and stood by the bodies of her two sons, spread sackcloth on a rock, and, enduring night and day and the pouring rain, scared away scavenging birds and other wild animals that tried to approach the corpses. This prompted King David to have the remains of Rizpah and Merab’s sons gathered and given a proper burial. Along with this, he claimed from the people of Jabesh Gilead the bones of Saul and Jonathan and buried them in the tomb of Saul’s father Kish in Benjamin (verses 12 to 14).

Werner Forman/Corbis

Her name appears four times in the Bible. In 2 Samuel 3:7, her name gets dragged into a scandal cooked up by Ish-Bosheth in an attempt to derail the growing influence exerted by Abner, the king’s general and uncle, in their clan. As we already know, King Saul by this time was already unfit to rule. His obsession to murder David through the influence of intermittent demonic oppression and possession and the Prophet Samuel’s public declaration that God had rejected him as king (1 Samuel 15:23,26,28) were factors enough for many to seek other leaders in place of Saul. One of these was David. Another was Abner, at least in Ish-Bosheth’s interpretation of how Abner had been flexing his influence in Saul’s clan. It could have been that Abner had been trying to gain the clan’s support to install him as king and thereby keep the supremacy over all Israel. Ish-Bosheth’s scandalous accusation, however, may have irredeemably shattered Abner’s delicate prospects to gain the major trust of the clan, so he opts for the next best thing: a defection over to David’s side.

Saul was a normal reflection of his society as he escaped the technicality of taking “many wives” (Deuteronomy 17:17). He had one wife and one other wife, and that was it. But how many is “many”? When God transferred the anointing as king, He was risking landing it on someone who had a starkly illicit control over his raging hormones.

Jim Zuckerman/Corbis

David's Life with his Wives

As we read of David’s story, we can notice that the stages of his life were landmarked by the women he loved. Michal, King Saul’s princess, would cover David’s early rise to popularity; Abigail would be during the stage when he was eluding Saul’s murderous pursuit; Bathsheba, who would mark the zenith of David’s life as by then the undisputed king of Israel; and Abishag, a Shunammite girl given to him by his servants during the twilight years of his life to attend and take care of him (1 Kings 1:2), since by then his senility had robbed him of the ability to basically care for himself (verse 1).

The "Abigail Age of David's Life": “This part of my life is called, ‘Running.’ And I wanna thank my wife Abigail for all of the support and prayer; and, of course, God without whose blessing and guidance my head would be stuck at the edge of a royal spear right now!”

But even aside from these ladies, David was known to have married some lesser known wives like Ahinoam of Jezreel (2 Samuel 3:2), Maacah daughter of Talmai king of Geshur (verse 3), Haggith (verse 4), Abital, and Eglah (verse 5). He was also known to have kept a harem of concubines. In 2 Samuel 15:16, he was known to have left ten of them to take care of the palace when he escaped Jerusalem before his usurping son Absalom could take over the city.

"This part of my life is called, ‘Being Stupid’!” It was the day the king came to his rooftop, saw the bathing Bathsheba, and was conquered. But to what price?

The number of the partners David kept was not exactly the direct answer to our question as to how many did Deuteronomy 17:17 mean by “many wives.” After Saul’s death, David’s life changed. The ease, popularity, and prosperity facilitated the growth of his family in a way that he added more wives who bore more children, sadly, beyond his ability to discipline. As a result, the privileged royal lifestyle and the unchecked excesses of unrestraint swelled into a deposit that encrusted their God consciousness, like what led to the chain of events involving Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom (2 Samuel 13). According to the chart provided in 2 Samuel 3:2-5, Amnon, David’s “firstborn” was born of Ahinoam of Jezreel (verse 2); Tamar and Absalom were siblings from Maacah, the Geshurite princess (verse 3).

Mimmo Jodice/CORBIS

One of the great scandals of David’s life began with his desire for Bathsheba. The lust of a night as he watched the woman bathing turned into fornication, which resulted into her getting pregnant. In his attempt to cover up his blunder, he recalled Bathsheba’s husband Uriah from the battlefield and tried to get him to sleep with her, which even in his most inebriated state would not violate the code of a soldier in a time of battle, which ignites the frustration of the king, which leads him to pen a directive to his general Joab to march Uriah into the part of the battlefield where the fighting is thickest and to abandon him there. Uriah successfully hand-carried the sealed letter to Joab and with great regret, the latter obeys. The battle ended with Uriah as casualty, a victim not of war but of a carefully meditated plot to murder him.

Alinari Archives/CORBIS

It could be considered, therefore, that the “many” expressed in Deuteronomy 17:17 is the point that goes beyond a man’s ability to control his dependents and keep them from self-destructing. In the example that involved Amnon, Tamar, and Absalom, it presented David’s family self-destructing immorally.

Mimmo Jodice/CORBIS

Abishag was one described in 1 Kings 1:4 as “very beautiful,” the result of a nationwide search for “a young virgin to attend the king and take care of him,” who “can lie beside him” to keep the king warm (verse 1). The “beauty search” proved to be a great success in Abishag as she was faithful in her task and even maintained her virginity throughout the period she took care and waited on the king (verse 4). If she had ever served a master younger and other than David at another time, that master would call that point of his life, “Being Happy.”

Solomon's Polygamy and its Possible Egyptian Origin

The penchant for the lovely ladies passed on from David to his son Solomon whose fame was built, among others, on the plain fact that he loved “seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines” (1 Kings 11:3), maintaining an unbroken violation of God’s condition in Deuteronomy 17:17. Yet if there were any value to virtue in this aspect of his life, it was the fulfillment of the second part of the passage: “…or his heart will be led astray” (Ibid.). And true enough, “his wives led him astray” (1 Kings 11:3).

Andy Sotiriou/moodboard/Corbis

In our recent article, The King After God: All the King's Horses, we have suspected that King Solomon amassed a great number of horses and chariots in emulating the Pharaoh of Egypt, whose collection was renown for its quantity and quality throughout the region. War horses and chariots, however, were not the only array he wanted in his treasure trove. The kings of Egypt were known to have loved multiple wives and concubines. Ramses II, said to be Moses' contemporary, was reported to have kept as many as fifty wives, and from them the famed Nefertari was chosen to become his queen, the chief of all his female consorts. With the record we have available today, we may well say that Solomon surpassed Ramses II in this respect, by a great measure—try lining up fifty against a thousand wives and concubines! One comparable element the Israelite king did not adopt was the Egyptian custom of marrying the immediate family member.

After Nefertari, Ramses was known to have loved their daughter Isetnofret. From this union came her successor Bintanath. After Bintanath, the Pharaoh chose another daughter he had by Nefertari, Meritamen. Her sister by the same mother, Nebettawy, took her place. Nearing the end of his life, seeming to have run out of daughters to desire after, he chose Maathorneferure who, scholars suspect, had been either another daughter or his sister.

Roger Wood/Corbis

It is called incest, and the Israelite law which the king and his people were to equally obey severely prohibited such a practice. Leviticus 20:17 called it "a disgrace" if a man marries a sister, "the daughter of either his father or his mother." The law prescribed banishment to anyone guilty of this "disgrace," as the commission of the act discriminated the offender from his God-authored culture. If there was a law that Solomon was not as desperate to violate as gaining for himself a thousand wives, it was experimenting with incest.

Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive/Corbis

But Solomon went for the foreign gals, specifically from the very nations God warned the Israelites never to intermarry with (1 Kings 11:2). And in this matter, he not only modeled after the king of Egypt but even perfected this aspect of his foreign hero.

Unlike his father David and King Saul before him, Solomon was not known for his prowess in the battlefield. But it was during his time when the kingdom of Israel experienced great peace "on all sides" (1 Kings 4:24). Countries as far as the Euphrates River to the borders of Egypt brought tribute to Solomon and were his subjects all his life.

Lebrecht Music & Arts/Corbis

Though God never sanctioned its arrangement, polygamy and polygyny were acts that had been with man from the dateless past. Solomon's tremendous numerical buildup of wives can be understood from the diplomatic relationship he established and maintained with the nations around him. One can deduce that the peace that marked his reign, described in 1 Kings 4:23–25, may have resulted from accepting wives customarily offered by the kings who negotiated for peace. The arrangement of marriage, therefore, was a significant motion to bind an alliance between parties involved, a mutual sincere reciprocation of goodwill.

The Gallery Collection/Corbis

Even as late as the Colonial history, the marriage of King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile in A.D. 1469 united their two of their Spanish kingdoms and established their government as a world power.

The Bible's First Bigamist and his Role in Advancing the Cainite Culture

That was for peace. But the role of marriage serves more than peace. In Genesis 4:19 a man by the name of Lamech expanded the influence of the house of Cain, Adam's cursed firstborn and the Bible's first murderer, by rapidly populating the vast stretches of wild lands untamed by the people of his time. How he facilitated this was through the expedience of a bigamous marriage.

Lamech was the first known bigamist in the Bible. It was his expression of the loose sexual element that marked the Cainite culture that lured the young restless men of Adam's house, the "sons of God" of Genesis 6:2. It was also the best way to promote a counter culture. In the time of Adam, it was his house that dominated the planet. The culture which he promoted and which the world almost automatically embraced was the Godly lifestyle authored by God Himself. Except by Cain, however.

Zhou Hua/Xinhua Press/Corbis

The blessings that came with a righteous life refused to apply to Cain after he murdered his brother Abel. In Genesis 4:11 to 12, his ability to tame crops was nullified by a curse that God slapped on his life. In spite of this, God continued to be gracious by allowing him to live, though wandering the face of the earth (Genesis 4:12 and 14). It did not mean that Cain gained immortal life, impervious to hunger, thirst, exhaustion or pain. He still had to contend with these but without his talent to farm the earth. He needed a new way of living, and in the ensuing verses, it becomes apparent that he did find a way, a compromise that worked around the loss of his talent. In the sixteenth verse, he lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. The birth of his firstborn Enoch is the first evidence that the new lifestyle he adopted was working. In the seventeenth verse, he gains a following, a considerable one as he establishes the first known city in the Bible. At this point, his pattern of survival was getting noticed and gaining the respect and renown as a workable alternative to the Adamic culture, though at this point it was not seen as an alternative but as an enhancer of certain aspects of life. Four generations later, the Cainite culture explodes from being a minor global player to end the Adamic age and the Godliness it upheld.

Historical Pictures Archive/CORBIS

The greatest exponent of the Cainite culture, next to Cain, was Lamech. The passage in Genesis 4:19 says that he was married to two women: Adah and Zillah. This multiple marriage was not only responsible for enlarging the increments of population, but out of it came the three fathers of invention that changed the way people lived forever.

"Adah gave birth to Jabal; he was the father of those who live in tents and raise livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal; he was the father of all who play stringed instruments and pipes. Zillah also had a son, Tubal-Cain, who forged all kinds of tools out of bronze and iron" (Genesis 4:20-22).

Araldo de Luca/Corbis

In Psalm 127:3, it says, "Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him." In the next verse it explains one benefit: "Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court" (verse 4 to 5).

Without the Lord, however, to bless with a quiver full children to contend with their opponents, it seemed like Cain's house was bound nowhere but oblivion. Cain himself took only one wife. It was Lamech who conceived of the daring experiment and accomplished by the flesh what the hand of God could grant.

National Geographic Society/Corbis

The psalmist disclosed one benefit of having a large number of offspring in your family. In ancient times, a large family meant power. Children did not survive the starvation that followed a poor man's austere condition; those, however, of a lavishly wealthy family not only did but had more to give and help their neighbor. A wealth of strong male children was a family's insurance that secured its wealth in good hands.

Fine Art Photographic Library/CORBIS

Rehoboam, the First Non-Israelite King?

If David's polygamous marriage wrought shocking scandals and disasters in his life, Solomon’s wives and concubines produced an array of interesting contenders to the throne after him, including a half-Israelite, half-Ammonite forty-one-year-old by the name of Rehoboam. It was through Rehoboam that the Israelite kingdom, which kings Saul, David, and Solomon, took painstaking care in establishing all their lives, split into two with the Northern part made up of ten tribes unilaterally slipping into apostasy, and the Southern part preserved for the descendants of David to rule.

Rehoboam too took for himself wives and concubines. But unlike the complicated marriages of his immediate two predecessors, the Bible attributes no problems stemming from his eighteen wives and sixty concubines (2 Chronicles 11:21). He did not love them equally, though, for there was one whom he treated with greater favor: Absalom’s daughter Maacah, who must have been specially beautiful if she took after her father who in his time was the most flawlessly handsome man in all Israel (2 Samuel 14:25). From his union with Maacah came Abijah, a favorite he personally groomed above all his other twenty-eight sons (2 Chronicles 11:21). Out of all the disasters that occurred during his reign, Abijah proved to be Rehoboam’s greatest success.

Mimmo Jodice/Corbis

There may be, however, some discrepancy concerning the Abijah of 2 Chronicles 11:20 and 22 from the Abijah of 13:2. Although extra-Biblical references make no difference between the two, a reader trekking the abovementioned passages may readily differentiate the first Abijah being the son of “Maacah daughter of Absalom” (verse 20) from the second Maacah of 13:2, “a daughter of Uriel of Gibeah.” The dilemma here would therefore concern Abijah’s mother Maacah. Other reliable translations render the word “daughter” of 13:2 as “granddaughter” instead. The man Uriel of Gibeah may have been Maacah’s maternal grandfather. But without looking any further than 1 Kings 15:2, Maacah was identified as the “daughter of Abishalom,” "Abishalom" a variant of “Absalom,” meaning “father of peace.” Later in the tenth verse, Maacah daughter of Abishalom became grandmother to Abijah’s successor, Asa.

But while Asa turned out to be a righteous man of God, Maacah found her niche later in life as a pagan “queen mother” (verse 13) for the goddess Ashera. In accordance to the cultural reform instituted by Asa, the king “deposed his grandmother Maacah from her position as queen mother” (2 Chronicles 15:16).

The Stapleton Collection/Corbis

Abijah, the Only Righteousness from Rehoboam's Multitude of Wrong

Rehoboam first placed Abijah in a prominent position as “chief prince” (2 Chronicles 11:22). It was not a bad decision, in fact, verse 23 says that “he acted wisely.” He spread out his sons to settle various districts of Judah and Benjamin and provided for them lavishly. Among the commodities he provided were wives: “He gave them abundant provisions and took many wives for them.”

The love Rehoboam devoted to Maacah radiated to Abijah who honored that love with a towering respect for his father. In 2 Chronicles 13:7, he defended his father’s honor when he faced Rehoboam’s archenemy, Jeroboam king of Israel:

“Some worthless scoundrels gathered around him and opposed Rehoboam son of Solomon when he was young and indecisive and not strong enough to resist him.”

Patrick Escudero/Hemis/Corbis

Abijah turned out to be a God-fearing king with an impregnable faith that held God as his leader (verse 12). He came up to Jeroboam with an army of 400,000 against the latter’s 800,000, which got subdued “because (Abijah) relied on the Lord, the God of their fathers” (verse 18). In the verses that followed it is said that Abijah wrested some important towns and villages from Jeroboam’s control and that Jeroboam, after this event, never regained power again during the time of Abijah (verse 19 to 20). The king of Judah, however, “grew in strength” and acquired for himself fourteen wives and by them had twenty-two sons and sixteen daughters (verse 21). In our explanation of “many wives,” we can have some liberty in saying that Abijah’s—and Rehoboam’s—polygamy was within the limits of his ability to control. From the family line touched by Maacah, daughter of Absalom, son of David, Abijah chose Asa, whose great reforms in Judah brought peace throughout the kingdom for three decades (2 Chronicles 11:5 to 6).

[Told you there was more. And there's more!]

[And a lot more there's been! Just finished updating the article with more inserts. Enjoy!]

The King After God: All the King's Horses

2011-10-04T21:22:00.000-07:00

Sandro Vannini/Corbis

In Deuteronomy 17:16, God warned the future king against setting his heart in amassing a great number of horses for himself. Apparently, horses had been a great obsession among ancient royalty. As history will testify, the horse by this time had just been added to military science and, oh, how it revolutionized the way man made war. It was therefore easy for a king to lose sight of God as the Source of his victory and focus instead on his array of war horses and get self-deceived and call himself invincible.

Robert Harding World Imagery/Corbis

Of all the countries singled out for Israel never to establish any trade agreement in exchange for its horses, God zeroed in on Egypt. He cautioned, “The king…must not…make the people return to Egypt to get more of them (great numbers of horses), for the Lord has told you, ‘You are not to go back that way again’” (Deuteronomy 17:16). In principle, an ancient king owned everything within the limits of his realm. But while he would dismissively allow his subjects to claim property of items within and surrounding their households, only he had the right to assert ownership of the military. And the item closest to his heart was the horses of his cavalry.

National Geographic Society/Corbis

The king of Egypt owned a cavalry so celebrated of the terror it brought in the battlefield to its breathtaking beauty that captures the fancy of romantic splendor, as sung in Songs of Solomon 1:9: “I have compared thee, O my love, to a company of horses in Pharaoh’s chariots” (King James Version). Because it owned the greatest army of fighting horses in the Near East, many nations chose to ally themselves with Egypt, among which later included Israel. Around 600 B.C. the southern Israelite kingdom of Judah decided it had enough of Babylonian dominance and sent envoys to Egypt “to get horses and a large army” (Ezekiel 17:15). In other words, Judah turned to Egypt to help trounce the proud Babylonian rising tide. Centuries before this, King David made his decision to “trust in the name of our God” than to trust in “chariots and…in horses” (Psalm 20:7). In 586 B.C. the battle-tested horses of Egypt did not prevail against the lightning hooves of the Babylonian steeds, and the kingdom of Judah came to an end.

Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

The best chariots and the most powerful horses in ancient Egypt belonged to the Pharaoh. The Pharaoh was a steed collector, the kind of king God told the future Israelite monarch never to become. King Saul fulfilled this principle and so did his successor David. Solomon, however, was known to have “accumulated chariots and horses” (1 Kings 10:26). The account was that “he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem.” And where did all these horses come from? Scholars are divided on whether the king imported them from Cilicia up north or from Egypt (verse 28). Solomon not only assembled a great cavalry at peacetime (for his reign was marked with peace, 1 Kings 4:24), and not only did he probably disobey the mandate never to turn to Egypt for its horses, but like Egypt Solomon entered the international chariot-making and -exporting industry and chose the Hittites and the Arameans as trade partners. This began when he approved the importation of an impressive Egyptian chariot worth (verse 29).

CORBIS

During the Second Intermediate Period of the early sixteenth century B.C., a subtly invading group of Semitic people called the Hyksos introduced into Egypt the use of the horse, along with the chariot. It was not until the Empire Period (1600-1100 B.C.), however, when the horse exploded in popularity across the realm. Rameses II, one of the kingdom’s most powerful pharaohs, was known to have kept a massive herd in an elaborate complex of stables he had constructed in the northeast of Cairo, by the Nile Delta (http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/egypt_animals.html).

Michael Nicholson/Corbis

Biblical references indicate that King Solomon, despite all his God-given and innate splendor, seemed to fashion himself like an Egyptian pharaoh and even endeavored to seek the esteem of his Egyptian counterpart. In 1 Kings 3:1 it is clear that “Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter,” whom he honored by constructing for her a precious cedar palace (7:8), similar in beauty as Solomon’s “throne hall, the Hall of Justice, where he was to judge” (verse 7). It seems like whatever the pharaoh had, Solomon wanted the same, whether it was herds and herds of war horses and magnificent chariots (1 Kings 10:26), a holy Temple (Chapter 6), a splendid royal palace (7:1-12), an unspeakable annual net worth measured in gold (10:14), golden shields (verses 16 to 17), a throne so great “inlaid with ivory and overlaid with fine gold” (verse 18 and subsequent specifics from verse 19 to 20), wives and concubines (11:1), and a subtle buildup of a pagan pantheon (verse 2 to 7). It was an ambitious and nauseating attempt identical to nothing more than a former slave seeking the respect of an equal in the eyes of its former master. This was the mortification, among others, that God wanted to save Israel from. God wanted to establish Israel’s dignity apart from the shame of its Egyptian slavery. The miracles and the fear He promised to inspire upon every nation that hears about the Israelites (Exodus 23:27) were to eradicate the slave in anything Israelite. But because of Solomon’s admiration for the Egyptian pharaoh, the period of Israel’s greatest glory was also an ironic re-association with her old slave master.

National Geographic Society/Corbis

An ancient Egyptian on horseback was not really the standard. As shown from historical finds, the most common use of the beast was to pull chariots. From the military cavalry to royal pageants and parades, Egypt followed the two-horse chariot as standard.

Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

The King After God: Chosen From Above

2011-09-28T21:50:00.000-07:00

The Stapleton Collection/Corbis

The day the elders came to the Prophet Samuel and demanded for Israel's very first king never took God by surprise. He knew it would come even before His children ever stepped into the Promised Land. In Deuteronomy 17:14, God foretold, “When you enter the land the Lord your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, ‘Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us….’” Notice that God introduced His announcement with a “when,” not an “if ever.” To God, the coming of the people’s king was inevitable.And so, in order for them to maintain their Israelite identity and not be like their neighbors in adopting their method of appointing their leader, God instituted His standard for Israel to implement.

Tetra Images/Corbis

The king must be the one whom God chooses: “be sure to appoint over you the king the Lord your God chooses” (Deuteronomy 17:15). From being the first and only Theocratic Head of His people, God was not about to relinquish His rule to some flesh and blood bound to corruption following some leadership style substandard to His and subject to the limitations of the physical environment and the decisions of every human being sharing the world around. God the Creator and the One who sees all from above knows the origin and destination of all things; He therefore knows which way is the best to take in a life that to us is a maze of traps, errors, and regret. That’s the general consideration.

Now, because His people’s insistence of adopting the carnal model of leadership requires them to physically see to identify themselves with their leader, God must appoint a physical representation of Himself and arm this agent with authority to rule. It was therefore essential for God find “a man after his own heart” (1 Samuel 13:14) to lead His people as He expected, in largely His terms. For this, God “changed Saul’s heart” (10:9) and gave him His heart, a heart inclined to obey.

Lebrecht Music & Art/Corbis

The very reason why God laid down the ground rules for His people in choosing a king is to ensure that all variables have been aligned and streamlined for His chosen one to emerge. It was then appropriate for the Israelites to have brought their demand for a king to the Prophet Samuel. In 1 Samuel 8:4 to 5 it says that “all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel” and said to him, “appoint a king to lead us.” It was, however, very ironic that they came to the Prophet Samuel in full confidence knowing he perfectly knew the will of God but would not accept any other result from the Divine but the satisfaction of their demand for a king.

He must be an Israelite: “He must be from among your own brothers. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not a brother Israelite” (Deuteronomy 17:15b). An essential stipulation adopted by most cultures is that a king must come from the same people he must rule. This regulation facilitates the implementation of the prior in that God’s chosen king can only come from among the Israelites.

Images.com/Corbis

During this period, the monarchial government system had become so ubiquitous that it seeped into and modified the cultural fabric of many people, including the Israelites. Later on, God’s Spirit would adopt the concept of the king in presenting His promise of the Messiah. The prophet-for-hire Balaam, in Numbers 24:7, in attempted to bring down a curse on the Israelites, was instead compelled to prophesy about the people’s “king” who “will be greater than Agag.”

Sandro Vannini/CORBIS

Apparently the Amalekites were among the most feared people in the region where the Israelites traversed. “Agag” may have probably been a title of the kings these people had, similar to the “Caesar” of the Romans who came much later. It can be recalled that the Amalekite king whom Saul captured alive in 1 Samuel 15:8 was named Agag.

Moses’ prophecy in Deuteronomy 33:5 picturing Him as “king in Jeshurun” was an embryonic allusion to Jesus Christ. Later in King David’s life, God Himself foretold of the “offspring to succeed” him (2 Samuel 7:12), the one who would “come from [his] own body” (Ibid.), whose kingdom He would establish forever (verses 12 to 13). Around two thousand years later, Jesus came. Though He walked the earth, not yet as King but as a servant to die for the sins of many, He did not deny the fact that He was the King of the Jews (Matthew 11:27; Mark 15:2,12; Luke 23:3; John 18:33-37).

Heritage Image/CORBIS

“Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him” (Matthew 2:2). Before Pontius Pilate ever asked the question, King Herod early in his reign shuddered on the throne he usurped when the Parthian magi came to him with the question, "Do you know where the real King of the Jews is?--'Cause according to our calculations, you ain't!"

The mandate to choose the king from among the people was almost observed without partiality. After the death of Solomon, however, a fourth king arose in Israel whose parentage was not of pure Israelite origin. Cited in 1 Kings 14:21 and 31, Rehoboam was born of a mother named Naamah, “an Ammonite,” apparently one of the hundreds of foreign wives loved by his father Solomon (11:1). If the modern Jewish standard of determining pedigree can be applied with Rehoboam, it may yield that this king was not Israelite. During Rehoboam’s reign occurred the most ominous episode in Israelite history: the split of the kingdom. Three days after being crowned king, he decreed a more stringent policy on the political opponents of his father Solomon than accept their plea of conciliation and understanding (1 Kings 12:1-15). The result was a civil war leading to a secession of ten tribes, altogether establishing themselves as the independent Northern Kingdom (verses 16 to 17, verse 21); Rehoboam was left with the tribes of Judah and Benjamin (verses 17, 21, and 23), as the Southern Kingdom.

Corbis

It was also during Rehoboam’s reign when Jerusalem succumbed to a raid successfully launched by the Pharaoh Shishak of Egypt. In 1 Kings 14:26 it says that Shishak “carried off the treasures of the temple of the Lord and the treasures of the royal palace [of Solomon], [taking] everything, including all the gold shields Solomon had made.” In all the seventeen years he ruled in Jerusalem (verse 21), he adulterated Jehovic worship with pagan Ammonite “sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and every spreading tree” (verse 23), male prostitutes, and all other practices “of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites” (verse 24).

[Yep. More to come.]

The King After God: Power from Above

2011-09-21T00:44:00.000-07:00

Photo: Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

It is understood in 1 Samuel 9:15 to 17 that it was God Himself who chose Saul to be Israel’s first king. God revealed this in a word of prophecy that came to the Prophet Samuel the day before Saul came to visit the prophet to ask regarding some lost donkeys (1 Samuel 9:15). when Samuel presented Saul before all the tribes of Israel, except for a few troublemakers, everyone there agreed that there was no one like him among all the people (10:24). From the time he was introduced in the Scriptures, his “impressive” stature always deserved highlight: “an impressive young man without equal among the Israelites—a head taller than any of the others” (9:2).

Many cultures around the world hold charisma as a fundamental qualification of a king. In its simplest concept, a king is a hero, a culture’s champion whose example in flesh and blood comes close to the ideals held by a people. Ideals, in turn, are based on the human urge to survive. To start with, an individual dealing with survival recognizes death as a—or perhaps the—conclusion of all life. The Sumerians understood this and so did the Egyptians. To the Babylonians, all hopes drained into death. This idea is reflected in Job 10:21 where the grave is described as “the place of no return”; Ecclesiastes 9:2 calls it “a common destiny” for “the righteous and the wicked.” In spite of this, however, no one from the ancient days held a way of life that promoted a passive, submissive advocacy to death and decay. All cultures the world around are an expression of the universal right to live. All cultures have been a search for a path that led to survival and to the ideals that lay above survival. And the ones who etched these paths were leaders variably known as heroes, champions, trailblazers, or kings.

Photo: Robert Landau/CORBIS

A king embodied a people’s ideals of survival. He was the understandable picture of the prosperity romanticized by his people. He was the specimen of what his people are or to become. His life and words are to advocate the superiority of his culture and the importance of keeping it pure and set apart from the inferior lifestyles of the other nations which lead to nowhere but death. A king must live, and lead the life aspired by his people; basically, therefore, he must look it. This is called charisma, the embodiment of authority, integrity, reliability, and credibility.

Saul towered at an impressive height: a head higher above the average Israelite. When he stood, he commanded the respect and obedience of his people. Or, at least, he was supposed to. To a Philistine, an Amalekite, or any pagan tribe, this quality may have worked tremendous wonders of authority, but not to the people of God. Though God chose someone as impressive as Saul, the authority to be obeyed, respected, and believed nevertheless came from Him. This principle was cited by Jesus in His conversation with Pilate when He said, “You would have no power over me if it were not given to you from above” (John 19:11). Or if it were taken away from you by the Above, just as what happened to Saul when he rebelled against mandate to destroy the Amalekites, as expressed in 1 Samuel 15:23,26 and 28:

“Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king. You have rejected the word of the Lord, and the Lord has rejected you as king over Israel. The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you today and has given it to one of your neighbors—to one better than you.”

Photo: Araldo de Luca/CORBIS

The persuasion of physical beauty expresses perfection of ideals. The sight of a leader’s physical beauty declares to his people the hope that their culture holds and the glory they will become. The physical beauty of a leader will testify of the superiority of a people. Through his beauty, a king will convey to a subject who beholds his splendor that their being born into their nation or tribe was no mistake. This was the belief held by the nations outside the realm of the Israelite Theocracy. Israel, on the other hand, understood what it was like to be ruled by tribal chiefs and by an unseen God with prophets or judges, like Moses and Samuel, as His human intermediaries; but never by a king—a single human entity that embodied all their standards and desires. And one day, after a couple of hundred years of living in the Promised Land, the Israelites suddenly had a thought: Why not try out that government style that every nation’s been talking about—the one with a king; the one that’s been around even the time before their forefather Abraham; the one that made Sumeria, Babylonia, and Egypt great!

Photo: Sandro Vannini/Corbis

They knew exactly what a king was; they have made treaties with them; one Hebrew even worked as the right-hand man of the Egyptian pharaoh; but never have they been under a king of their own. From their father Abraham of Ur, the Hebrews began existence as nomads, until Joseph, son of the patriarch Jacob. When he became viceroy of Egypt, a severe famine struck the Egyptian-Canaanite region, prompting him to open the fertile Egyptian district of Goshen for his father and brothers to relocate into (Genesis 45:12,17-18; 47:5-6,11). Here, for several hundred years, the Hebrews found a home and relatively became settlers for about a century and a half, until “a new king, who did not know Joseph, came to power in Egypt” (Exodus 1:8). Now they were known as slaves. For four hundred years, as foretold by God to Abraham (Genesis 15:13), this new Egyptian order mistreated the very people they sheltered in the “best part” of their land (Genesis 47:11) until a man came along to lead them back to Canaan. At that point they abandoned being slaves and re-donned their status as nomads for about what they believed to be eleven days until they reach the Promised Land (Deuteronomy 1:2). But what was supposed to be an eleven-day travel protracted into a forty-year meandering ordeal because of the unholy grumbling they voiced against God (Numbers 14:27,34). Throughout all the four difficult decades, their national dream of greatness remained an ethereal concept as they watched how nations of Egyptians, Amalekites, Midianites, Edomites, and Canaanites found their niche of power in the world around them, with their king to thank for, while the Israelites remained nomads lost in a vast blazing desert.

Photo: Lebrecht Music & Arts/Corbis

In this context, one can somehow come to understand how eager the Israelites were to finally produce a king of their own. While it is true that God made Himself vitally known to His people, dwelt with them in their midst in a specially designed compartment in a tent, God understood that the corrupting of sin will prove its grip stronger than His spiritual reality as their minds fall trapped within the realm of the flesh—the visible, the obvious, the instant gratification, the now, the simply understandable logic that “man is man, God is God.” Even with the representation of Moses as God’s intermediary to the people, the corruption of sin and its influence over their philosophy will keep their ideals ensnared by the seduction of a master in the flesh than keep their faith in an eternal God. There were, however, those who genuinely understood the rule of God, envisioned the benefit of its uniqueness from other nations, and took faith in the truth of His promise to bring Israel into glory. This is what made Moses raise his staff many times against Egypt and then at the Red Sea at the command of God; this is what electrified Caleb and Joshua when they explored the Promised Land for the first time (Numbers 14:7-9); this is what made the Levites rally beside Moses and slay the disobedient who celebrated the golden calf (Exodus 32:24-29); this was the zeal that took over Phinehas when he impaled with a spear a man caught fornicating with a Midianite woman (Numbers 25:7-8).

Photo: Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

But the corruption of sin will never be denied its share in human nature and entrench many in its culture of decay and impermanence, for after Joshua’s generation “had been gathered to their fathers, another generation grew up, who knew neither the Lord nor what he had done for Israel” (Judges 2:10) and no sooner did the Israelites, recently wresting Canaan from its natives through a stunning string of decisive victories, wallow in the same poison that brought Divine judgment to the Canaanites.

“…they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths. In his anger against Israel the Lord handed them over to raiders who plundered them. He sold them to their enemies all around, whom they were no longer able to resist them. Whenever Israel went out to fight, the hand of the Lord was against them to defeat them, just as he had sworn to them. They were in great distress” (Judges 2:13 to 15).

In a place opposite Gilgal, the site where a covenant with God was sealed through circumcision, the angel of the Lord imposed another promise in consequence to the disobedience of an entire nation He calls His people:

“I said, ‘I will never break my covenant with you, and you shall not make a covenant with the people of this land, but you shall break down their altars.’ Yet you have disobeyed me. Why have you done this? Now therefore I tell you that I will not drive them out before you; they will be thorns in your sides and their gods will be a snare to you’” (Judges 2:1-3).

Photo: Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

And as the occupying Israelites tolerated the existence of the Canaanite natives as slaves instead of obliterating them as they were Divinely charged, they absorbed elements of pagan culture, from the use of the olive oil lamp, worshiping of alien deities, to the aspiration for their own king. And in the turbulent years that followed, the frequent conquests crashed and wore away the Chosen People’s respect for their One True Theocratic Head. While judges rose to deliver the people at the point of their greatest need, for every invasion that followed as a result of the death of a judge, the idea of a king crystallized until the day they came before the Prophet Samuel, the judge at the time, and finally asked him for a king.

[And as before, there's more! Oh, shall it ever end?]

The Pursuit of Peace

2011-08-08T20:59:00.000-07:00

We have seen peace mostly as a river; some of us have no problem seeing it as a protective wall. Very, very few of us, however, see it as a blessing that holds all the other blessings of God in place. Notice that the vital requirement of prosperity is peace. It is almost inconceivable for us to have prosperity without peace. A nation at war, for example, is stuck in the present with all its resources struggling to stay above critical level. Conflict has the power stagnate a nation. Note the United States, however, after World War 2: an unexpected prosperity flooded the nation that influenced a sudden unprecedented growth in the population, the generation being called the Baby Boom era.

Peace is the consolidator of all natural elements for the blessings of God to come together. It is best to view peace as the strap that wounds around a sheaf of grain during harvest time.

We can also say that peace is the table upon which our meals are set upon. I spoke with someone before who told me: "Dude, God loves you! God loves you so much, in fact, that He gives you everything you ask for in prayer! But if you ask for something, make sure you've got somewhere to lay His blessings on!" I didn't get the specific gist of what he was telling me until I got hold of this concept of peace. Back then, I was a zealous Christian who went for every opportunity for God by heart, but with not much brains to back it up. I never took time to consolidate and thank God for many things. I just wanted to go. One day, I got a hold of the Book of Genesis in my devotions where it said, a lot, that "he saw that it was good" after completing a step of His project of Creation. God could have created the heavens and the earth in one day, no problem! But He decided to do it with the light first, then the separation of night and day, and then, this, then that. Notice, however, that after one creation, the Bible said that He looked at what He made and "saw that it was good." It did not take Him one entire day to make, say, the light. He just spoke it, and it was so. Then after that, He looked at His creation for one whole day and "saw that it was good." God celebrated each step of His work with rest, with peace. Some of us just need to learn to relax!

For prosperity to enter, there must be peace. For healing to come, there must be peace. And it is not difficult to find peace since we can find it in Jesus. He promised us: "Peace I leave you; my peace I give you" (John 14:27). He already had given us His peace. All we need to do now is use it. And in using it, we must preserve it, for He entrusts this peace in stewarding hands.

There is an interesting story in 2 Kings 23:29 that invokes the question as to why did not bless the godly King Josiah with success when he decided to come against the Pharaoh Neco of Egypt. The story is given more detail in 2 Chronicles 35:20–21:

"Neco, king of Egypt went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah marched out to meet him in battle. But Neco sent messengers to him, saying, 'What quarrel is there between you and me, O king of Judah? It is not you I am attacking at this time, but the house with which I am at war. God has told me to hurry; so stop opposing God who is with me, or he will destroy you."

Just a thougt: Did God really speak to Pharaoh Neco? During this time, Egypt was allied with Assyria. This battle would later be called The Battle of Megiddo, an important encounter that delayed the Egyptians in aiding the Assyrians against the Babylonians. The Battle of Megiddo later led up to the Battle of Carchemish that wiped out Assyria and the Egyptian army against, mainly, the Babylonian force. Because Egypt and Assyria were allied, the first one adopted the latter's style of how it intimidated and blackmailed their victims into surrendering. Notice how the Assyrian king Sennacherib tried to threaten Judah into surrendering:

National Geographic Society/Corbis

"...have I come to attack and destroy this place without word from the Lord? The Lord himself told me to march against this country and destroy it" (2 Kings 18:25).

See any difference in the way the Pharaoh Neco spoke to King Josiah?

But King Josiah stood his ground. He refused a peaceful transit of Assyria's ally. The King knew that the Assyrian empire was now in its downfall and was greatly impelled towards a dream of reuniting all Israel once again. It was, however, God's decision to send the ten tribes of the North to exile a little more than a century before this, and that it was God's will for Judah to remain still while the transition of world power was at its most turbulent. Josiah would not keep off his saddle. It was a rude realization for all Judah and her king to find that God was not in the battle to give them the victory.

Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

God wanted Josiah out of the war. Judah during this time was experiencing a tremendous time of peace and prosperity following a wonderful revival of Judaism after the Law of Moses was rediscovered in the holy Temple. Spiritual truths were beginning to take root once again; significant festivals like the Passover last celebrated during the time of the Prophet Samuel back in the tenth century was once again being held. The Word of God was prospering in the land, so much in Judah that outreaches were already being made to the lands of the former Northern Kingdom of Israel.

The aftermath of the Battle of Megiddo, however, left a wide gaping hole of opportunity for Pharaoh Neco to seize. King Josiah's mistake caused the people to wiggle out of the security of the peace of God and into the feeble comfort of their own ability. King Josiah gets mortally wounded and dies (2 Kings 23:29); his twenty-three-year-old son Jehoahaz is placed on the throne. Neco makes an appearance in Jerusalem, carries Jehoahaz away, appoints Judah the king he wished, and imposes a heavy tax levy on the holy kingdom. The subsequent kings were no longer like Josiah was "did right in the eyes of the Lord." Four kings after Josiah, in 586 B.C., the Kingdom of Judah is carried into Babylonian captivity.

Francis G. Mayer/CORBIS

King David said it many generations before in Psalms 34:14, and Saint Peter, centuries later, seconded it in 1 Peter 3:11: "seek peace, and pursue it."

OTHER PHOTO CREDITS:
   1. ©Owain Kirby/Illustration Works/Corbis
   2. ©David Arky/Corbis
   3. ©Darren Kemper/Corbis

Peace On the Night He Was Betrayed

2011-08-07T21:44:00.000-07:00

No, this is not about Saul. We're taking a break from the first Israelite king and getting down into something more basic, something more light.

For the longest time, we have conceived of peace as a large white cloud or puff of smoke descending vertically from Heaven and everyone it settles upon goes into a high, like, “Peace, man!” It’s about time we kicked away that outdated hippie concept, including why we need to maintain a peaceful lifestyle.

We have always defined peace as the absence of conflict. And for as long as I could remember, this definition had always elicited immediate responses like “uh-huh,” or “ohh…kay,” or “I ssseeee,” all indicating a doubtful and incomplete agreement that, because it’s so obvious, to further elaborate on the statement is generally pointless.

There are, however, some of us who have at one point rebelled against this point of view and have kindly demanded elaboration, but all we got was a restatement of the meaning delivered in a sterner tone. In our gut, we have always felt that peace is something more than just an absence of something. Understanding peace in its framework against confrontation is downright limiting, in the same was as we would call “white” as the opposite of “black,” or “red” as not the other colors in the color wheel.

The most popular definition of peace is contentment. With this, it is pictured as a river running across a lush green nature garden where various species of creatures great and small thrives. Because of the abundance promoted by the eternal water, there is an absence of slaughter, struggle, and disenfranchisement. Because of the river, there is a harmonious interaction of species in that local system and the welfare of all is secure. Through, therefore, the context of contentment, we fit the virtue of “counting our blessings” instead of pursuing that which we have not. Ideally, this will bring peace, or a stillness, in our lives as we detach ourselves from selfish aspirations.

But alas, we also agree that we are creatures of needs, that our bodies will always be dependent on the basic attention of the environment. So long as the water keeps flowing, the peaceful cooperation of the creatures in the environment will perpetuate. But what if for some reason, the water stops flowing? We picture the entrance of distrust, discord, territorialism, the hedging of one’s own interest. By then, the stillness and the security will be gone, peace therefore threatened. There will be a struggle to control the remaining resources; those not strong enough to withstand will leave in search for the same environment watered by a “river of peace."

Is this the peace that Jesus promised His disciples in John 14:27 where He said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not be afraid”?

It was that significant night, the night of the last supper of Jesus, when this statement was made. What was supposed to be a time of jolly fellowship of feasting was sat in distasteful restiveness. On that night, Jesus predicted His betrayal (John 13:18, 26), and Peter’s denial (verse 38); Thomas wanted to know where He was going (14:5), and Philip—speaking for the group—requesting to see the Father in a way to still the trouble in their hearts (verse 8). It was a very unsettling time. For the disciples, that is. Jesus, on the other hand, was in perfect peace, as living up to the Scriptural fulfillment (as always!) of Isaiah 26:3: “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee”—the very essence of which He condenses into a command for His disciples, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me” (verse 1).

But was there really peace? In the ensuing events, Jesus gets arrested in the garden of Gethsemane and Peter draws out a concealed sword and successfully chops off one of the arresting deputy’s ear (18:10), Peter denies his Master three times (verses 17, 25 to 27), Jesus was shackled like a criminal (18:12), bounces from one judge to another and ends up dead on a cross. In a span of a few hours after that night of the last supper, it seems like the river quickly ran dry and all that depended on the life it promoted had since then “scattered” (Zechariah 13:7, Matthew 26:31). To them who see desolation as peace, then there was peace. A counterfeit type of peace, that is.

In our illustration of that ecosystem with the river running through it, we made notice of the relationship of those benefiting from the water. When Jesus spoke peace during the last supper, He spoke to all His disciples, who were all present (except for Judas Iscariot who earlier took off to consummate the betrayal). He revealed Himself to be the Source of peace: “Peace I leave with you.” So that peace is a river then? Not exactly, and this is a part of our spiritual lives where we miss a lot of those good things we are supposed to be thankful to God for.

Do you remember that story about Jesus and the storm? Let’s take the version in Mark 4:36 to 41. The scene begins with Jesus concluding a long day of teaching with parables, thoroughly teaching a “crowd…so large” that Jesus had to stand on a boat as a pulpit since the people all thronged “along the shore at the water’s edge” (Mark 4:1). Now, Jesus was no fisherman, so you can understand how rather unfamiliar He was with boats, that Jesus had to fight for balance every time He shifted His weight just a little to assume a momentary posture that relieved the strain of another. And He was teaching them “many things” (verse 2). In addressing a large crowd, He shouted every word He uttered, making sure that they understood “as much as they could” (verse 33). In addition, He continued to elucidate His teaching “when he was alone with his own disciples” (verse 34). So you could understand that when evening came, Jesus was sapped. This explains why Jesus was sleeping soundly on a cushion in the stern in the middle of a “furious squall” that threatened to drown the vessel and everyone in it!

Notice the cry of the disciples in verse 39: “Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?” It’s just like the Psalmist who said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning” (Psalm 22:1). Honestly, there were times when we felt that God, in our ordeal, just stood there, and by not “doing anything” had made Himself invisible and as deaf and motionless as an idol. Think of how that would make you feel if your daughter whom you love with all your heart and soul said thatto you! By doubting God of His very concern to save you in your time of need is virtually an insult to His character!

Now, think of how you’d feel if you were Jesus being told, “Yo, Jesus, we’re drowning here! Whatever’s wrong with you can probably wait!” But Jesus, thank God, was—and is—one who understands. He was also, at that time, physically exhausted: probably His arms and hips hurt after all that strain to hold the boat steady; His neck was yearning for a massage, His jaw wanting to shut for a month, and His voice sore. But He gets up and addresses the wind and the waves: “Shut up!” And the elements shut up! In this account, He says nothing to His disciples whether before or after He rebukes the storm. In Matthew 8:26, He encourages them with an emphatic: “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” In Luke 8:25, it was “Where is your faith?” The accounts are very clear: Jesus delivered one rebuke and it was to the storm, not to the disciples. If we were to understand, it was to go as such: “It’s okay, guys, just relax. Everything’s gonna be just fine.” And it was this assurance—this peace—that Jesus delivered to the disciples on the night of the last supper.

On that evening on the stormy lake, the stability of the disciples’ peace was like a line attached to Jesus as an anchor. Their faith was there, but it was predisposed to be buffeted by the wind and the waves of life. In John 14:27, Jesus delegated the peace that their faith was anchored to into their very hearts because He was about to leave them (John 14:1–4). How did He do this? By promising the “Counselor” from the Father, to be with them forever (verse 16). You could say that He was “leaving a part of Him in their lives.” But it was really more than a part of Him; He was appointing His Spirit to “live with [them] and will be in [them]” (verse 17). Very reassuringly, He says: “I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you” (verse 18). And by that promise, He left them His peace. It was then up to the disciples to take care of that peace, as good stewards.

Peace is one of the promises God had always guaranteed to all who put their trust in Him. Not all who put their trust in Him, however, understand that, like prosperity, peace is something that must be upheld. God had already provided His guidelines for peace in His Word, that is, the Bible. And in it, the procedures of preserving it must also be observed through lifestyle. The Apostle Peter in his first epistle charged the believers to “seek peace and pursue it” (1 Peter 3:11); centuries before him, King David said the same thing in Psalms 34:14. The Apostle Paul taught that to have peace, one must first choose to live in peace (2 Corinthians 13:11). It was, to him, a simple equation: you choose it, you’ll have it. It is therefore clear that peace is already present, and all we need to do is use it! Jesus had left us His peace since that night of the last supper.

Jesus, along with Peter, Paul, and David, almost a thousand years before, discovered and shared a concept of peace that what most of us to this day conceive of something as a situation, which shatters at the slightest rumor of conflict.

After discovering peace, using it, and finding that it works, we are told to “pursue it,” or maintain it. The most pervasive reason why many choose and maintain peace is because we’re scared of conflict. By this, our illustration of peace transforms from the life-giving river into a life-preserving wall. But there’s also another reason why we see peace as a protecting wall. The walls of peace convey power, confidence, and sovereignty. A very good supporting example for this is how painstakingly and vigilantly Nehemiah rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem to get rid of the distress and reproach of Israel (Nehemiah 2:17).

Maintaining peace is a mandate Jesus had provided all Christians to pursue. He left His peace into our stewardship. Stewardship? Now, there’s a word we have always associated with prosperity, but not really with peace! We understand stewardship in the context of a parable where three servants were left with certain amounts of money to develop while their employer was away on a long journey (Matthew 25:14–30). In the story, the money loaned to them was carefully measured according to the ability of each to generate profit. It was a fair deal. The first two produced the expected revenue; the last one kept it in a hole in the ground. This last scheme is what some of us do with peace.

Jesus taught, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God” (Matthew 5:9). But what do many Christians do? They sue each other “before the ungodly for judgment”—meaning, before courts of law—“instead of before the saints” (1 Corinthians 6:1)—or, settling the dispute before the elders of the local church who know what is best for the flock. Jesus told us to promote peace as we would the Gospel, calling us “peacemakers,” in addition to “Christians.” First, He makes known that “the kingdom of God”—to which all believers belong to—“is…a matter…of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.” Then, He commands us to “make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification” (verse 19). He adds: “anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and approved by men” (verse 18). If there is something the people of God and the world share in understanding, it’s “peace” through “mutual edification.” The only—big—difference is that to the people of the world, peace and mutual edification is a slippery, if not unattainable, ideal; to the people of God, however, they are realistic, livable perspectives.

As peacemakers, Christians are not to be a source of turbulence, controversy, intrigue, or anything that provides hatred, doubt, and disrespect for the Name of Jesus. Peacemakers promote unity in the Body of Christ and in the way they conduct their lives in the sight of the unbelievers, even subservience, compliance and respect toward temporal authority (Romans 13:1–7), the concept and fire of the zealot of Jewish nationalism, the Apostle Paul abandons and discourages all believers to adopt. There should be no trace of rebellion or agitation against established authorities, in the local church or in a country’s government. That personal goes for us who have mostly or entirely lived our lives in a democracy thinking it perfectly fine to speak against the government without any responsibility or accountability of whether we have planted a seed of rebellion or discord in anyone who happened to be listening to us.

Perhaps the final thing (as of yet) that could be said about peace, which we have not really completely grasped, is that it is the agent that holds all the other blessings of God in place. If we go back to our illustration of peace as a river, we will notice that there was a place for the species to gather on while the source of life ran in the midst of them. What kept the opportunity for unique growth and proliferation was their positioning, that without the careful positioning of each life according to their capabilities, only a few forms would endure: probably aquatic and amphibian, and even some reptilian. What secured this opportunity for the mammals to join the system was the physical channel, the confinement of the river into a specific body. Peace functions in the same way: it is the entrenchment by which the blessing of God’s prosperity flows through.

[There's more on peace--I know, I know! I know you're thinking that every article I make never ends! Well, this one's gonna--on our Part II of this subject on Peace. So...peace!]

Photo Credits:
   1. David Barnet/Illustration Works/Corbis
   2. Frans Lanting/Corbis
   3. Atlantide Phototravel/Corbis
   4. Brooklyn Museum/Corbis
   5. Brooklyn Museum/Corbis
   6. Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis
   7. Frans Lanting/Corbis

Saul, the Soldiers and the Servants

2011-08-06T00:48:00.000-07:00

Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

Saul’s loss of control over his soldiers was a frequent feature of his account. Before the incident with Jonathan in 1 Samuel 14:45, the distress created by Saul’s rash vow was so great that it drove his soldiers mad with hunger and exhaustion that they “pounced on the plunder and, taking sheep, cattle and calves, they butchered them on the ground and ate them, together with the blood” (verse 32). Fortunately, Saul was able to recover them to their senses and discipline them accordingly (verses 33 to 35).

But the costliest failure to rein his men was during the very important mission to annihilate the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15. The order was, as we already know by now from several articles we’ve discussed, to “totally destroy everything that belongs to them…not [to] spare them [but] put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” (verse 3). Saul and his force slew the women, the children, the infants, most of the men except for the Amalekite king Agag, and the weak of the cattle and sheep. Why? Saul explained:

Ultimate Bible Picture Collection

“I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king. The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them to the Lord your God at Gilgal” (verses 20 and 21).

And in boasting he claimed, “I did obey the Lord” (verse 20).

After this, the Spirit of God departed from Saul, opening him to the attacks of evil spirits. The first one in 1 Samuel 16 haunted and severely terrorized him that paralyzed him from his kingly duties. The fear may have begun to take its toll on his health when this bright idea was suggested by the royal attendants:

SuperStock/Gettyimages

“Saul’s attendants said to him, ‘See an evil spirit from God is tormenting you. Let our lord command his servants here to search for someone who can play the harp. He will play when the evil spirit from God comes upon you, and you will feel better’” (1 Samuel 16:16).

We cannot help but consider the hand of God that the attendants knew exactly what the king needed and whom exactly to turn to:

“One of the servants answered, ‘I have seen a son of Jesse of Bethlehem who knows how to play the harp. He is a brave man and a warrior. He speaks well and is a fine-looking man. And the Lord is with him” (verse 19).

It was as if they were on to David’s Facebook profile, or something! And how about the servant who had something to offer the Seer Samuel for the sake of the lost donkeys? Simple servants whose involvement opened the door to the most monumental chapters of Saul’s life and of the annals of the Israelite nation as well. Usually their roles are unnoticed as they lend support to the all-prominent figures of Saul and David, but many years after they have sank back to obscurity, Israel’s greatest monarch would sing in one of his world famous psalms that he “would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of the wickedness” (Psalm 84:10).

The Golden Gate of the Temple Mount at present time.

In the ancient world, the youngest child of the family, also called “the least,” received the brunt of all domestic menial work, at a certain point of his life. He was virtually the family servant. He was the one Jesus alluded to when He one day jumped in the middle of an argument among His disciples to settle “who would be the greatest” (Luke 9:46):

Exactostock/SuperStock

“Jesus knowing their thoughts, took a little child and had him stand beside him. Then he said to them, ‘Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For he who is least among you all—he is the greatest” (verses 47 to 48).

The message of the “greatest least” became a recurring theme throughout His three-year ministry, telling and showing all Israel that, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all” (Mark 9:35); and, “…whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:43 to 45).

And the life of a least did His earthly ancestor live his young days, a shepherd of the flocks of his father Jesse (1 Samuel 16:11) until a simple chore brought him to the right place at the right time.

The Bridgeman Art Library/Gettyimages

“Now Jesse said to his son David, ‘Take this ephah of roasted grain and these ten loaves of bread for your brothers and hurry to their camp. Take along these ten cheeses to the commander of their unit. See how your brothers are and bring back some assurance from them.’ Early in the morning David left the flock with a shepherd, loaded up and set out, as Jesse had directed” (1 Samuel 17:17 to 18, 20).

It was the last errand he would ever make. On that day, he singlehandedly shuts the mouth of the Philistine champion permanently and captures the awe of every Israelite, from King Saul to the singing women who celebrated “his tens of thousands” slain (18:7 and 8).

David was introduced into Saul’s life as a servant. He was Saul’s private harpist who performed a very unique form of exorcism by playing his harp (16:18, 23). And it pleased Saul to have him in his court:

Bettmann/CORBIS

“David came to Saul and entered his service. Saul liked him very much, and David became one of his armor bearers. Then Saul sent word to Jesse, saying, “Allow David to remain in my service, for I am pleased with him” (verses 21 to 22).

Saul’s fondness for David would not last, however. Of all Saul’s servants whom he afforded a measure of respect, David was the most loved, the most feared, and the most abused. Shortly after David shot to fame, his popularity galled the king who at once “kept a jealous eye on David” (18:9). With the Spirit of God gone from his life, “an evil spirit from God came forcefully” (verse 10) and possessed him to draw his spear and twice attempt to “pin David to the wall” (verse 11). The twelfth verse explains how fearful Saul grew of David that he promoted him from harp player into a commander over a thousand men who victoriously led the troops in their campaigns (verses 13 and 14) “because the Lord was with him.” For this, there was nothing heard in Israel but David’s fame, and Saul, who wanted nothing more but the adoration of all Israel to ensure his and his posterity’s position on the throne, drove him in an insanity that bordered between the bitterness and fear of his former harpist. His attempts to extinguish the kingdom-wide craze called David went from spearing the boy twice in the privacy of his royal home to putting him in the lead of a thousand-man troop in hopes of getting him killed in battle with the Philistines (verse 17). Saul even went to absurd lengths in deceiving David by maneuvering him “to take revenge on his enemies” (verse 25) and bring back “a hundred Philistine foreskins” (verse 25). David the Circumciser? But even in this seemingly ludicrous quest, “the Lord was with David” (verse 28) and granted him “with more success than the rest of Saul’s officers, and his name became well known” (verse 30).

SuperStock/Gettyimages

Because of David, there were those who would suffer and die. While the Lord covered him in the shelter of His wings during the time when Saul obsessively lusted after his life and pursued him across the Israelite landscape, the little town of Nob would get wiped out in one of Saul’s temper tantrums because he insularly suspected that this humble settlement of priests had set its loyalty on David and not reveal his whereabouts (22:11 to 16). In this episode, the instigator was another servant by the name of Doeg, an Edomite.

Charles & Josette Lenars/CORBIS

Now, if you’ve read Chapter 21, you would probably remember an Edomite by the name of Doeg, who may strike some of us as a weasel, cowardly and shady. He was King Saul’s “head shepherd” (v. 7). It seems that in this chapter, Doeg was given special mention with a standalone paragraph of a verse dedicated to him and what he was doing in Nob:

“Now one of Saul’s servants was there that day, detained before the Lord; he was Doeg the Edomite, Saul’s head shepherd.”

A number of foreigners living in Israel, specifically in royal service, have been mentioned in the Bible; and they have been noted for godly things. Uriah the Hittite in 2 Samuel 11, Bathsheba’s original husband, was among these foreigners whose name has been highly held in the Scriptures. As for Doeg, the Edomite, 1 Samuel 21:7 says that he was “detained before the Lord” the day David visited Nob. What a royal herdsman was “detained before the Lord” at Nob for is yet unclear to us. We can speculate, however, that this foreigner was undergoing ceremonial cleansing proceedings prescribed for aliens living among Law-abiding Israelites. Yet there is a more pressing fact relating to his detention with Nob bearing a massive significance.

Photodisc/Gettyimages

Nob was a levitical city. A city of priests. In Numbers 35, God commanded Moses and the children of Israel to provide cities for Levites where they can live in along with a common land around those cities, “a thousand cubits all around” the city wall (vv. 4–5), that they could raise their livestock. In verse 6, God prescribed six of these towns and cities to be for the purpose of local asylum: “to which a person who has killed someone may flee.” In verse 15, however, God purposed these six points to be “for Israelites, aliens, and any other people living among them, so that anyone who has killed another accidentally can flee there.”

When the time came for the Israelites to appoint the levitical cities of refuge, Nob was not one of them. Joshua 21:17 to 18 enumerates its neighbors—Gibeon, Giba, Anathoth, and Almon—being cities of refuge. But in Numbers 35:6, God also expressed to “give” the Levites “forty-two other towns,” for their herds. It could be that throughout the years, Nob had become an additional satellite refuge of any of the original four mentioned.

SuperStock/Gettyimages

It might also be that Doeg had killed somebody and was seeking asylum in Nob. For such reason, he was “detained.” And while Doeg stayed in Nob, he had the opportunity to witness the entrance of David into the city, speak to the priest Ahimelech, and ask for assistance. Doeg observes how Ahimelech takes the consecrated bread used in holy ceremonies (verses 4–6) and give it to David for consumption; and sees the sword of the Philistine giant Goliath pass into the hands of the young warrior as well (verse 9). Doeg must have thought, “If this were not assistance, I don’t know what is!”

How he found his way into the king’s service is as unclear in the passages as how he coincidentally appeared in Nob at the time David arrived there. It can be assumed that Doeg was carried off as part of the plunder in one of Saul’s operations against Edom, as the one sparsely mentioned in 1 Samuel 14:47, which occurred at the beginning of Saul’s campaign against all of Israel’s “enemies on every side.”

After some days later, Doeg springs out of Nob and is found in King Saul’s presence in chapter 22 verse 9, and successfully raises royal tantrum to a frightening level with his report: “I saw the son of Jesse come to Ahimelech son of Ahitub at Nob. Ahimelech inquired of the Lord for him; he also gave him provisions and the sword of Goliath the Philistine” (verses 9 and 10).

Immediately the king sends for Ahimelech “and his father’s whole family, who were priests at Nob” (verse 11). The last clause, “who were priests at Nob,” is included for a purpose because King Saul orders these people hacked to death in front of him, hacked to death by none other than by the hand of Doeg the squealer. Then the unthinkable takes place:

“Then the king ordered the guards at his side: ‘Turn and kill the priests of the Lord, because they too have sided with David. They knew he was fleeing, yet they did not tell me.’ But the king’s officials were not willing to raise a hand to strike the priests of the Lord. Then the king ordered Doeg, ‘You turn and strike down the priests’” (verse 17 to 18).

In the passage that follows, this idiot did what no Israelite soldier would do. Doeg was an Edomite, a foreign fool who harbored no hesitation in butchering that day all the “eighty-five men” of Ahimelech’s household, including Ahimelech himself.

And as if that were not enough, the paragraph includes the nineteenth verse stating how Doeg in his lonesome, fueled with his berserker’s bloodlust, penetrated deeper into Nob and slaughtered the entire populace—“men and women, its children and infants, and its cattle, donkeys, and sheep”! It comes to show a tradition of rage flowing from the highest point of authority—the king—down to the scum feeding on the soles of royal hierarchy. Though the Israelite guards knew better and did nothing to accomplish the king’s order and lay a strike down the priests of the Lord because of their love for their Israelite way of life, it was no surprise that Doeg the Edomite, who had no regard for and hated Israelite way of life, made good the command.

There is a significant note we need to see here regarding the fulfillment of God’s judgment which He pronounced against the house of Eli, the judge and high priest who raised the boy Samuel in Tabernacle service. A part of the prophecy held that God would “cut short [Eli’s] strength and the strength of [his] father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in [his] family line” (1 Samuel 2:31). The judgment stated:

“Although good will be done to Israel, in your family line there will never be an old man. Everyone of you that I do not cut off from my altar will be spared only to blind your eyes with tears and to grive your heart, and all your descendants will die in the prime of life” (verses 32 to 33).

Ahimelech was a descendant of Eli. His son was Abiathar, Nob’s sole survivor, who “escaped and fled to join David” (1 Samuel 22:20). He successfully caught up with David and reported the massacre. This man went on serve David as high priest (1 Samuel 23:6, 9 to 12), even sharing the position with Zadok (2 Samuel 8:17). Through thick and thin with David Abiathar was faithful (2 Samuel 15:24 to 29). He even went daringly undercover for David during Absalom’s usurpation (2 Samuel 15:34 to 36). His end, however, did not come as pleasant. At the end of David’s reign, he shifted alliances to a usurping prince named Adonijah (1 Kings 1:7,9). But the hand of God was upon another prince, Solomon, who immediately deposes him (1 Kings 2:26, 27, 35), thus ultimately ending Eli’s influence in the priesthood.

But God will not forget Ahimelech. In verse 20, a son of this brave priest named Abiathar, And when he had successfully caught up with this king, Abiathar reported of the massacre. What is more heartbreaking, however, is in verse 22 wherein David said, “That day, when Doeg the Edomite was there, I knew he would be sure to tell Saul. I am responsible for the death of your father’s whole family.” Photo credit: American Colony Photographers/National Geographic Society/Corbis

We cannot help but feel sorry for Abimelech. As readers of a different time and cultures, we view his death as something that had happened needlessly, a result of the senseless rage and paranoia of a demon-minded king. We cannot help but lament for this Old Testament martyr who could have been saved should have David prayed and sought the Lord’s instruction and not merely relied on his own wisdom. But on the other hand, we need to realize that at this point of David’s life, he had nothing but the hand of God as his only guide and shield. Even in his life as a fugitive, the statement in 1 Samuel 18:14 rang true, that, “In everything he did he had great success, because the Lord was with him.” And by the very hand of God, he was led into Nob, not only to be aided, but to be ceremonially consecrated and confirmed as the next king of Israel whose house would “endure forever” (2 Samuel 7:15). What happened in Nob was Abimelech, Eli’s descendant, fed the consecrated bread to David, who in his insistence gave this interesting argument:

“Indeed women have been kept from us, as usual whenever I set out. The men’s things are holy even on missions that are not holy. How much more so today!”

The handing of the consecrated bread over to David from the priest was symbolic of the dismantling of the high priesthood and its surrender to David who represented the real High Priest, soon to emerge from his lineage as God would promise as soon as he assumed kingship:

Marc Garanger/CORBIS

“The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son. When he does wrong, I will punish him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men. But my love will never be taken away from him, as I took it away from Saul, whom I removed from before you”(2 Samuel 7:11 to 15).

Soon after the consecrated bread was given to David, Abimelech handed David Goliath’s sword, the symbol of David’s greatest victory and Israel’s popular approval of his ascent to national leadership. The house of Eli would faithfully assist David throughout his reign until the end (1 Kings 2:26 to 27).

Then the Prophet Samuel died, and while all Israel mourned for him, Saul mourned for himself. For all his life, he depended on the counsel of this great judge and now that Samuel was dead, the only channel of God’s guidance in his life was cut off (1 Samuel 28:6). For a while he was relatively calm about it but when he caught the sight of the Philistine army assembled at Shunem, he lost all hope of salvation. Thoughts began to run through his mind, and then…

Corbis

“Saul then said to his attendants, ‘Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her” (verse 7).

There is something we can note from these “attendants.” In 16:15 and 16, they knew exactly what was bothering Saul, they knew exactly what he needed, they knew exactly who to help him, and they knew exactly were to find him. Israelite Facebook, I’d say! Now…

“’There is one in Endor,’ they said” (Ibid.).

Ka-ching! Like I said….

We have studied a lot about that night in Endor—and will study more about it! But what we need to see at this time was the protection Saul gave to the witch who held the door of his fate wider to destruction. Instead of executing sentence to this witch whose trade was outlawed by the Law of Moses, he proposed absolution:

“Saul swore to her by the Lord, ‘As surely as the Lord lives, you will not be punished for this” (1 Samuel 28:10).

At the end of the traumatic séance, Saul made good his promise; and the witch, who now owed her life to her royal client, offered him a little piece of advice: “eat” something (verse 22). Saul listened to the witch.

“He got up from the ground and sat on the couch. The woman had a fattened calf at the house, which she butchered at once. She took some flour, kneaded it and baked bread without yeast. Then she set it before Saul and his men, and they ate. That same night they got up and left” (verse 23 to 25).

The next day, Saul was with a different type of servants: his soldiers, the ones who would not comply with his wishes at all times. And even in defeat and him in the face of death, defiance would yet get the better of his armor-bearer when he was told to run his king through the blade (31:4).

Bettmann/CORBIS

“But his armor-bearer was terrified and would not do it; so Saul took his own sword and fell on it. When the armor-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him” (verse 4 and 5).

The soldiers of Saul killed many in their lives, but none in the Scriptures is found that their blades were stained by the blood of their fellow countryman. The armor-bearer chose to stain his blade with his own blood over the guilt of murdering his master.

That was the end of the armor-bearer along with Saul’s three sons, but not Saul. In the first chapter of 2 Samuel, a figure of tattered clothes and with dust on his head came running to David’s camp in Ziklag. He explained that he had “escaped from the Israelite camp” (verse 3), apparently an aide of Saul or one of his soldiers. When asked of his background, the aide explained:

Alessandra Bennedetti/Corbis

“’I am the son of an alien, an Amalekite,’ he answered” (verse 13).

From the very race God ordered wiped out. The death of Saul had finally given testimony of his disobedience.

[More.]

Saul and Symbols: The Servants

2011-08-03T21:27:00.000-07:00

Brooklyn Museum/Corbis

When God’s presence turned from the crucified Jesus Christ, the anguished cry “Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani?” was heard echoing from the cross. I bet King Saul wailed this same phrase out many times in his private. And just as with Jesus, the cry merely rose and dissipated in the sight of an empty sky. Yet for both these kings, there was, in truth, no need to raise the question, except through despair. They knew exactly why God abandoned them; both, however, for different reasons. With Jesus, it was His obedience; with Saul, disobedience. And in the days that followed after being withdrawn the kingship did Saul’s life plunge into psychological hell.

Brand X Pictures/Gettyimages

The disobedience of Saul stands before a background of irony in that at the beginning of his account, he was one never seen with the slightest thread of rebellion. His first appearance in 1 Samuel 9 presents him as a good son whom his father trusted to find and bring back their lost donkeys (verse 3). Unknowingly, he embarks on a spiritual journey of destiny that leads to the first royal throne of Israel. As he and his servant meandered into Ephraimite territory, it was as if they were bring strung along to cross paths with “a man of God…highly respected” whose every word “comes true” (1 Samuel 9:6). At that moment, Saul’s mission gained a new objective: to seek and consult this “seer” (verse 11). The rest of the story from verses 11 to 19 came like a swift cascade of events as one turn “up the hill to the town” of Zuph (verses 5 and 11) brings him face-to-face with the seer and the offer of kingship (10:1). At this point, God begins to unravel His plan for Saul’s life. Note that God does not reveal His plan for one’s life in an explosion of instant information, but as Proverbs 4:18 explains, “like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.” It is a condition that requires one to abide in Him in obedience and perseverance through the early steps and stages necessary in the foundation of His design, faithful with the early hints and pieces that build up in time to the perfection of His vision.

Stapleton Collection/Corbis

When God promised to His people the land of Canaan to possess and occupy, He did not supernaturally translate them from the gates of Egypt and into borders of the land flowing with milk and honey. On the contrary, through Moses He guaranteed to “drive out those nations…little by little” (Deuteronomy 7:22). In the rest of the passage, He elaborates: “You will not be allowed to eliminate them all at once, or the wild animals will multiply around you.”

Saul had nothing but questions, inquiries, for this are what his name stood for: literally, “asked.” The Hebrew shâ’ûl is a past participle of shâ’êl, meaning “to inquire, to request” and to a greater extent, “to demand.” And throughout his account, it is very interesting to note that the most significant milestones of his life were not without the initial insinuation of a servant. And Saul in all these welcomed them.

From the beginning of his story, it was a servant that gave him the idea to consult a seer to help them locate the missing donkeys:

“’Look, in this town there is a man of God; he is highly respected, and everything he says comes true. Let’s go there now. Perhaps he will tell us what way to take’” (1 Samuel 9:7).

Charles O'Rear/CORBIS

It is interesting to note that it was the servant who had something to give and willingly volunteered to give the seer (verse 8). For a moment a thought may jut into a reader mind as to who between Saul and the servant actually owns the donkeys!

“’Look,’ [the servant] said, ‘I have a quarter of a shekel of silver. I will give it to the man of God so that he will tell us what way to take.’”

In 1 Samuel 13:11, Saul admitted that his fear was compounded when he saw his soldiers scattering in panic at the sight of the great Philistine army assembled at Micmash. In other words, he did what everyone else on his side did and, as a result, lost the favor of God and the chance for his name to be established over Israel for all time (verse 13 to 14).

“Saul replied, ‘When I saw that the men were scattering…I felt compelled to offer the burnt sacrifices’” (1 Samuel 13:11-12).

In the fourteenth chapter, Saul could do nothing but bend to his soldiers’ protest against Jonathan’s execution.

“Saul said, ‘May God deal with me, be it ever so severely, if you do not die, Jonathan.’ But the men said to Saul, ‘Should Jonathan die—he who has brought about this great deliverance in Israel? Never! As surely as the Lord lives, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, for he did this today with God’s help.’ So the men rescued Jonathan, and he was not put to death” (verses 44 to 45).

The soldiers continued to be faithful to Saul, but there was more to lose that day than a moment’s spark of mutiny. Saul was about to take the battle to enemy territory, an act that would significantly neutralize the Philistine military strength to regroup and invade. Instead, “Saul stopped pursuing the Philistines, and they withdrew to their own land” (verse 46). In this context, this is why, “All the days of Saul there was bitter war with the Philistines” (verse 52). The forty-seventh and forty-eighth verses seem to romanticize Saul’s heroic prowess as he “fought against [Israel’s] enemies on every side” (verse 47); that “wherever he turned, he inflicted punishment on them” (Ibid.); and “he fought valiantly and defeated the Amalekites, delivering Israel from the hands of those who had plundered them.” The passages portray the king as a merciless and relentless butcher of pagans. And he should have truly been such. For failing to bring the fight into enemy territory, the Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zobahites, Amalekites, and the Philistines must have been as common as a landscape feature arrayed every now and then taunting Saul with their war chants to engage them on the battlefield.

National Geographic/Gettyimages

Saul never broke the power of Israel’s belligerent neighbors, an ominous indication of the Prophet Samuel’s prophecy coming to past: “…your kingdom will not endure, the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command” (1 Samuel 13:14).

Saul’s loss of control over his soldiers was a frequent feature of his account. Before the incident with Jonathan in 1 Samuel 14:45, the distress created by Saul’s rash vow was so great that it drove his soldiers mad with hunger and exhaustion that they “pounced on the plunder and, taking sheep, cattle and calves, they butchered them on the ground and ate them, together with the blood” (verse 32). Fortunately, Saul was able to recover them to their senses and discipline them accordingly (verses 33 to 35).


Sandro Vannini/CORBIS

But the costliest failure to rein his men was during the very important mission to annihilate the Amalekites in 1 Samuel 15. The order was, as we already know by now from several articles we’ve discussed, to “totally destroy everything that belongs to them…not [to] spare them [but] put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” (verse 3). Saul and his force slew the women, the children, the infants, most of the men except for the Amalekite king Agag, and the weak of the cattle and sheep. Why? Saul explained:

The Fall of Saul: The Betrayal

2011-07-30T21:46:00.000-07:00

Saul was a slave to fear. It was easy for him to wallow in its torment. In 1 Samuel 13:12, panicking at the sight of the Philistine army assembled at Micmash, he was forced to illegally offer the burnt sacrifice only the Prophet Samuel was authorized to offer up to God. It was then on known as the triumph of fear, changing the course of Saul’s life forever. From that point, God merely tolerated Saul as king. The Prophet Samuel was very clear that the next king of Israel would not come from any of Saul’s family.

“You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you; if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time. But now your kingdom will not endure, the Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him leader of his people, because you have not kept the Lord’s command.”

moodboard/Corbis

What looks like a coincidental pile of rocks to us today is actually what God prescribed to anyone building a monument in Biblical times, particularly in His Name. It could also be similar to the one Saul build in his honor.

At that point, Saul no longer saw any future for him or his posterity to rule the people of God. Saul’s attitude changed from then on. Stripped away of God’s favor, he was left with his pride, his lust for power, and a frightening inability to discipline his vehemence that toggled between fear and rage. As a man who saw no future as God’s former anointed, we can now understand why he had no qualms in disobeying His orders to “totally destroy” the Amalekites (15:3). We can also understand the monument he had set up in his own honor in verse 12. A few years after him, Absalom, a son and usurper to King David’s throne would likewise erect his own monument, officially name it after himself and explain, “I have no son to carry on the memory of my name” (2 Samuel 18:18).

Saul knew what he was doing when he decided to disobey and set up his monument in his honor, and in 1 Samuel 15:15 and 20 to 21, he was ready to defend it before the Prophet Samuel. Saul understood that God was behind his action, a dilemma which could be solved with the sacrifice of some pretty fat sheep and livestock. Through disobedience, Saul snatched back the control of his life from the hands of God. He believed that his survival, most especially his kingship, depended no longer in God, but in himself. That night, the Lord came to confide His grief with the Prophet Samuel: “Saul…has turned away from me” (verse 10). “Turned away” in a word meant “betrayed.”

Judas Iscariot

SuperStock/Corbis

One person who saw no future in an immediate governing authority was Judas Iscariot. Being an apostle of Jesus Christ, he was under the immediate governing authority of the Messiah Himself. And being an apostle, he was among the core of Twelve, out of the multitude, that placed their faith that Jesus was the Christ; and in the event that a falling away would occur due to disbelief that He was the Son of God, the Twelve was expected to remain, such as what happened in John 6:66 to 69.

All of Israel during the oppressive Roman period were desperately anticipating the descent of the Messiah who would finally take His place on David’s throne (Psalm 45:6-7), rule the world with peace (Isaiah 9:6-7), bring in everlasting righteousness (Daniel 9:24), introduce the new covenant between God and Israel (Jeremiah 31:31-34), bring Israel to its rightful place of world power (Isaiah 61:1-2). But when Jesus began teaching about His death (Matthew 16:21, 24-28; 20:17-19; 26:11-12; Mark 8:31; 10:33-34; 14:7-8; Luke 9:22; 18:31-33; John 12:7-8, 23, 28, 35-36), Judas’ anticipation for a glorified Israel systematically crumbled. As a matter of fact, the time when Jesus rebuked Judas for disputing the “waste of perfume” (Mark 14:6) was during one of His teachings about His death:

Bettmann/Corbis

“She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial” (verse 8).

Jesus’ reprimand was a slap to Judas’ face. Yet Jesus never meant to embarrass His erring disciple. Though the story in John 12:4-5 holds that Judas instigated the issue of the “wasted perfume,” the version in Mark 14 notes “some of those who were present” agreeing with Judas to the point of rebuking the woman anointing Jesus with particular harshness. Jesus was not about to have the woman get verbally ripped apart by misguided opinion, so He protects her:

“Leave her alone…. Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me” (Mark 14:6).

Jesus’ counterattack did not single out Judas, but was meant to stop the entire group from castigating the anointing woman, who in John 12:3 was identified as Mary, sister of Lazarus. For Judas, however, it was all personal. Verses 10 to 12 of Mark 14 reveal the weakness of Judas’ personality. In contrast to Simon Peter’s character, Judas was a weakling. Simon Peter received worse rebukes from Jesus in the past—like in Matthew 16:23 where Jesus, looking straight at his face, rebukes away Satan as if the disciple was Satan-possessed with him knowing about it—but, except for the denials on the night of Jesus’ arrest, Simon Peter never sent Jesus to His demise.

Fine Art Photographic Library/Corbis

The night at Bethany where He was anointed with the woman’s oil, was a crucial juncture for both Jesus and Judas. In Mark 14:10, Judas was recounted going to the chief priests “to betray Jesus to them.” The chief priests offered him money (verse 11) upon the consummation of the plot, and Judas joined the team that sought for an opportunity to hand them the Christ (verse 12).

Except in the parts of the gospels where Jesus’ disciples were introduced, Judas’ name was largely associated with money. In a Holy Week teaching entitled “School of the Cross,” Reverend David E. Sumrall of the Cathedral of Praise in Manila, the Philippines, asserted that a betrayal is born out of a perceived need of self-development.

[Just when you thought you've heard the last of ol' Saulster! And there's more! ]

The Illumination of the Urim and the Thummim

2011-07-28T21:55:00.000-07:00

There was only one word to describe the New Testament temple priesthood: dead. Jesus would call them “wicked and adulterous” (Matthew 16:4) in their face. He would even deride them in their fraud when He taught the disciples to “be careful” and “be on…guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees” (verse 6). Jesus, in truth, had a good time slapping them with their own stupidity with such phrases as “you are in error because you do not know the Scriptures” (22:29) and “have you not read what God said to you” (verse 31). In His time, the high priesthood was shared and swapped between to known men of a single family named Annas (Luke 3:2) and Caiaphas (John 18:13 and 24). Their priesthood was no spiritual force but one political party made fat in Roman cronyism.

National Geographic Society/Corbis

And where were the Urim and the Thummim in all these? In 586 B.C. the Babylonians headed by Nebuchadnezzar trampled over the kingdom of Judah and exiled its people into captivity; and everything they found of treasure, “all articles from the temple of God both large and small” (2 Chronicles 36:18), which meant articles as large as the Ark of the Covenant and those as small as the Urim and the Thummim, were ransacked and carried away by the invaders before or as they tore down the Temple. The Babylonian Captivity ended a great regiment of Temple worship. In Babylonia, Jehovic worshippers had to move on and do away with the Urim and the Thummim, the Ark, the Temple and the Promised Land it stood on. It was in fulfillment of a prophecy made by Jeremiah stating that “’the ark of the covenant of the Lord’…will never enter their minds or be remembered; it will not be missed, nor will another one be made” (Jeremiah 3:16).

Burstein Collection/CORBIS

More than fifty years past and the Jews had given their religion a new look with synagogues, to replace the Temple, and “lengthy prayers” (Luke 20:47) for the ritual sacrifices. The prescribed Mosaic furniture, which became symbols of permanence, became nothing but relics so that when the Jews returning to Jerusalem decided to re-erect the Temple and reestablish its worship, they had to make considerable adjustments to compensate with the missing aspects that had long been lost since the Babylonian Capitivity. The passages of Ezra 2:63 and Nehemiah 7:65 had to deal with the missing Urim and Thummim that the governor, Nehemiah, ordered the descendants of the original priesthood “not to eat any of the most sacred food until there was a priest ministering with the Urim and the Thummim.” As we have already learned, it was through the use of the sacred lots that the priestly duties were delegated.

http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection

Yet while we never hear of the Ark of the Covenant appearing in the New Testament, the function of the Urim and the Thummim makes a comeback in Luke 1:9 when it sets up a priest named Zechariah, “who belonged to the priestly division of Abijah” (verse 5) to “go into the temple of the Lord and burn incense” (verse 9). This was a very important moment as Zechariah came before an angel of the Lord standing at the right side of the altar personally informing him of the birth of John the Baptist.
At this point we can suspect two scenarios, whether the original Urim and the Thummim were rediscovered after some time around the time the Temple was rebuilt or they were recreated for the sake of their role of bringing the enlightenment of God’s will and in matters of ritual. Yet as far as John the Baptist and Jesus Christ were concerned, the scenarios did not matter. The Temple Nehemiah rebuilt was again to be, in one way or another, phased out, and the Urim and the Thummim were to lose the glow to the role of the Holy Spirit.

Alfredo Dagli Orti/The Art Archive/Corbis

In one way or the other, the Temple Nehemiah rebuilt was again to be phased out. The moment Jesus gave up His Spirit on the cross, the thick beautiful holy Temple veil that shielded the Ark of the Covenant in its chamber was “torn in two from top to bottom” (Matthew 27:51). The significance of this phenomenon revealed the end of the human high priesthood. The Book of Hebrews’ “great high priest” (4:14), Jesus Christ, claimed all functions and fulfillment of every Temple trapping and furniture, from the least to the greatest. Before His death, He pictured the death of His physical body with the destruction of the Temple. Later on, the Apostle Paul would use the analogy of the Temple for the physical body of every believer (1 Corinthians 3:16). But on the other hand, there is a specific prophecy Jesus made that referred to the actual destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem. In Matthew 24 as He and His disciples were storming out of the Temple, He said, “I tell you the truth, not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down” (Matthew 24:2). In 70 A.D. the Romans did destroy the Temple along with the massacre of 600,000 defenseless Jewish civilians.

Elliot Elliot/Johner Images/Corbis

The Hanukkah menorah is a tradition straight out of the Maccabean period 167 to 63 B.C., a turbulent period of Jewish history when Greek oppression reached blasphemous extent that King Antiochus IV erected an altar of Zeus in the Temple of God where pigs were ordered sacrificed.

Almost three decades after Ezra successfully led home the second wave of Jewish repatriates from the Persian Empire, the voice of God was never heard, not through His prophets; and His will could never be divined, not even by the Urim and the Thummim. For four hundred years, the entire nation of Israel lived each day like the final moments of Saul: seeking and inquiring of the Lord in vain, answering them not by dreams or Urim or prophets. Because of this the trappings of the Temple lost their appeal to many; and though the furnishings continued to maintain the respect of all Israel, they failed to keep the people’s confidence in the matters of God’s will. It was in this setting that spurred the popularity of the Pharisaic sect and for many to abandon the Temple culture. But there was another sect the rise of which had silently revealed in part to the priest Zechariah; and in this sect would rest the power of the sacred emblems to again unveil the will of God.

The word urim means “lights,” significant for the illumination that the sacred emblems brought. Urim is also the plural of ur, or flame. On Pentecost the Holy Spirit appeared in the form of “tongues of fire that separated and came to rest on each of” the disciples and the believers who were assembled in prayer (Acts 2:3).

Jesus had explicitly instructed His disciples “not [to] leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift…promised” (Acts 1:4), by which He meant the baptism of the Holy Spirit (verse 5). Before they ever did anything for God—“preach the good news” (Mark 16:15), “make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything” Jesus had commanded them (Matthew 28:19)—the disciples had to be first empowered by the Holy Spirit. There was, however, one thing they carried out before the awaited event. It was to fulfill the prophecy in Psalm 109:8 about filling the place of leadership vacated by the fallen Judas Iscariot. Because this affair preceded the arrival of God’s promised gift, the eleven apostles had to resort to the Old Testament means they were familiar with: the drawing of lots. These were clearly not the Urim and the Thummim but headed with a prayer and in their divine tradition, the lots, perhaps for the last time, spoke for God:

“Then they prayed, ‘Lord you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of the two you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.’ Then they drew lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:24 to 26).

The Urim and the Thummim provided counsel and illumination to matters of the Scripture not easily estimated. This was the role described by Jesus when He spoke to His disciples about the Holy Spirit:

“But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you” (John 15:26).

The Spirit behind the emblems took the place of the emblems as they faded from the Scriptures after their memory was used to divine the next apostle after Judas. From then on the Spirit went with the believers wherever they were. This was the confidence Jesus conveyed to His disciples when He advised them “not [to] worry about what to say or how to say it,” (Matthew 10:19) for “at that time you will be given what to say, for it will not be you speaking, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” (verse 20). When in the Old Testament, the wisdom of the lots passed through the hands of the high priest, all the New Testament believer has to do is to “ask” (Matthew 7:7). By the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, James the brother of Jesus exhorted the believers, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him” (James 1:5). The wisdom that God provided no longer needed to be coursed through a pair of tumbling stones.

Brooklyn Museum/Corbis

In the Old Testament the illumination brought by the Urim and the Thummim served as the counsel that God promised to lavish on all His children. The sacred stones were meant to reinforce His Law, never to violate it. It was meant to complete whatever the Law may have missed out in details, as far as the human intellect was concerned. Thummim means “perfections,” a guarantee of the complete truth that united both God and man (John 4:23 and 24). Again, with truth, we cannot help but be pointed to the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus called the Spirit of truth (John 14:16, 16:13). Yet in every detail, Jesus, in His life and words, was a vast free-flowing river of truth whose refreshing waters were everyday flocked by hundreds of thirsty shepherdless sheep seeking their way home. Jesus Himself introduced Himself as “the way, the truth and the life” (John 14:6).

Francis G. Mayer/Corbis

In His memorable mountainside teaching, He said, “Do no think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them” (Matthew 5:17). Jesus, like the Urim and the Thummim, did not introduce a new idea but to complete the demands of the Law. He was God’s perfect sacrifice (Exodus 12:5) who came to complete the Law. The very Person who came take the place of the sacred lots was the will behind the lots: God Himself by His Holy Spirit.

Urim and Thummim: The Hands that Hold

2011-07-27T23:01:00.000-07:00


http://symboldictionary.net

The One Who Wore the Ephod Wielded the Lots

In the Bible, the high priest donned several ordained garment pieces, and one of these was the ephod. According to Exodus 28, the ephod was generally a linen mantel which the priest wore over him like a shirt, worked with “gold, blue, purple and scarlet yarn” (verse 6); had two shoulder pieces to ensure proper fitting (verse 7); and a waistband—two strips of the same fabric of the mantel extending somewhere from the lower corners of either the front flap or the back flap of the garment (verse 8). In all, the ephod was a single piece of no separate accessories (ibid).

Then the ninth verse features an important element that made the ephod an indispensable symbol of service. God orders two “memorial stones” (verse 12) of onyx (verse 9) bearing “names of the sons of Israel” on both.

“In the order of birth—six names on one stone and the remaining six on the other” (verses 9 to 10).

God deeply involves Himself in planning the intricate elegance of these pieces, in verse 11, and orders them to be fastened upon the shoulder pieces (verse 12) by “two braided chains of pure gold, like a rope” (verse 14).

Some experts believe that these memorial stones of onyx were the Urim and the Thummim. In certain passages above, the ephod, not the breastpiece, was present when an inquiry was made to the Lord.

In 1 Samuel 14:18 and 19 and verses 36 to 42, it was a king stipulating the method of the emblems. In referring to Exodus 28:30, however, the handling of the pair was solely ascribed to the high priest—“Aaron will always bear the means of making decisions for the Israelites…” and note the closing phrase, “before the Lord.” Saul met the “before-the-Lord” part, for he “prayed to the Lord, the God of Israel” (1 Samuel 14:41); and though there is no explicit indication, he undoubtedly allowed the acting high priest Ahijah (in verse 3, he was wearing an ephod, a high priestly garment) to manipulate the lot. The involvement of King Saul, nevertheless, dominated the implementation. Was this legit?

During the time of Joshua’s commission as Moses’ successor, Eleazar the high priest was given the complete freedom to “obtain decisions” for Joshua “by inquiring of the Urim before the Lord” (Numbers 27:21). The God Himself provided this sanction on the sacred divining method:

“This is how Joshua and the rest of the community of Israel will determine everything they should do” (New Living Translation).

The most important element of officiating the Urim and the Thummim is that it must be presided over by the high priest, like a judge today chairing over a courtroom. Back then, an individual with a query came before the high priest and briefly expressed his concern. The high priest then turned to God, whose presence by that time manifested in the form of a radiant light, known in Hebrew as the Shekinah, or the manifest glory of God’s presence. In this presence, with the Urim and the Thummim in his possession, he presented the problem to God and gained His answer through the sacred lots. Needless to say, the one inquiring had to meet the high priest in a non-sanctified location, like the Tabernacle courtyard, where the clergy and the common people converged. After this, the high priest withdrew into a secluded chamber to cast the lots. This was on account of the Shekinah. Although God revealed Himself through this theophany for all the Israelites to behold, no one, but the high priest or Moses, was allowed to approach the Shekinah in the dread of instantaneous death.

Yet in the incident with Saul’s rash vow in 1 Samuel 14:41 to 42, the proceeding was successful in spite of his involvement. An explanation for this takes us back to the third chapter of 1 Samuel where God loses respect for Eli the high priest (verses 11 to 14). After his death, God diminishes the role of the high priest. An evidence of this is presented in 10:9 to 27 and 11:12 to 15, during Saul’s inauguration as king when it was the Prophet Samuel who inducted him and not the high priest. By this time, the last known high priest was Eli who had by then died, thus explaining why there was no high priest present in Saul’s initiation rites. It was very much unlike in Numbers 27:21 where the Prophet Moses and Aaron the high priest had their roles in installing Joshua as Israel’s leader. In the relegation of the role of the high priest, the stewardship of the Urim and the Thummim passed to a lower priest delegated in wearing the ephod.

The Role of the Lots Was to Bring God Closer to His People

Known not to anyone in the kingdom, there was a bigger plan unfolding that came with the dismantling of the high priesthood, the institution of the Israelite monarchial system, and the deputation regarding the Urim and the Thummim. It was a plan of God to bring Him closer to His people. From the time God created man, it has been His expressed desire to commune with someone who bears His image and His likeness (Genesis 1:26). From the time He created Adam, He proceeded to create a house with Adam as its head. Now that house has grown into a nation, a nation which He named Israel. And through the ages, God had been gradually advancing His desire to dwell among His people. From Israel’s wandering days, God said:

http://www.revelationillustrated.com

“Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them” (Exodus 25:8).

Then, again in 29:45 to 46, after promising the Tent of Meeting, the altar of sacrifice, and Aaron and his children to serve as priests: “Then I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. They will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them.” In blessing the tribes, Moses sang: “Let the beloved of the Lord rest secure in him, for he shields him all day long, and the one the Lord loves rests between his shoulders” (33:12).

God Himself described the mode of how He resided during the desert wandering days in 2 Samuel 6:6 and 7:

“I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Whenever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers who I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’”

But even before the Hebrews left Egypt, long before Jacob ever entered Egypt, “God spoke to Israel in a vision at night and said…’Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt…. I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back again’” (Genesis 46:2, 3, and 4). It was not by accident or against the will of God that Israel floundered into Egypt; God Himself went with Israel into the Land of Ra. Four hundred years later, God was with the Israelite nation when they emerged from Egyptian bondage, leading the way:

“See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared. My angel will go ahead of you and bring you into the land of the Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites,Canaanites, Hivites and Jebusites, and I will wipe them out.” (Exodus 23:20, 23).

Now make no mistake that the “angel” mentioned here was no ordinary member of the heavenly army but Jesus Christ pre-incarnate Himself. In the Old Testament, the term “angel” was used for a heavenly being that appeared in the likeness of a man. Keep in mind that no angel is entitled to or even deserves worship; the angel in this passage, however, does:

“Pay attention to him and listen to what he says. Do not rebel against him; he will not forgive your rebellion, since my name is in him. If you listen carefully to what he says and do all that I say, I will be an enemy to your enemies and will oppose those who oppose you.”

God’s strict and lavish endorsement of this angel can be found in the New Testament when Jesus emerged from the waters of baptism with the sight of heaven opening, the Spirit of God descending like a dove and shining over Him with a heavenly voice saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Matthew 3:16 to 17; Mark 1:10 to 12; Luke 3:22; John 1:32 to 34). Another revealing proclamation was during the night of Jesus’ transfiguration when God says, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!”(Matthew 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35)

SuperStock/Gettyimages

And with Jesus in the picture, a prophecy made hundreds of years before Him called Him “Immanuel” (Isaiah 7:14).

Now the Urim and the Thummim were devices used to know the will of God, and any individual in need of consultation came to the high priest as sanctioned by God, in Numbers 27:21:

“This is how Joshua and the rest of the community of Israel will determine everything they should do” (New Living Translation).

But there was the problem: it was only the Joshuas of the Israelite community availing of the opportunity to consult. With only the high-profile figures of the nation approaching the Urim and the Thummim, it seemed like the system was bordered by an exclusive clientele. And because God chose to be a part of the community, He was not about to distance “the rest of the community of Israel” from His will behind layers of leadership and a possible labyrinth of little laws that may evolve. The One True Head of the Israelite Theocracy had to clip away some red tape. And one of the primary tasks in leadership streamlining is to pinpoint obsolete, nonfunctioning, or malfunctioning agencies and policies that cannot be saved and are considered dead weights in the system. God did not have to look far.

The Dismantling of the High Priesthood

For two hundred years since its institution, the high priesthood had been stained with abuse. Its very first priest was guilty of establishing a short-lived Cult of the Golden Calf right at the foot of Mount Sinai even while the summit was obscured by menacing black clouds laced with thunder and lightning that cloaked the conference between God and Moses. Aaron knew that God and his brother were up there; neither was it a mystery to the entire Israelite community. They just were not sure whether the only human in that convention was still alive!

“When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, ‘Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him’” (Exodus 32:1).

God and Aaron

Design Pics/Darren Greenwood/Gettyimages

God had special plans for Aaron. Aaron was gifted with a special charisma of eloquence worthy of leadership position. During the last days of the Hebrew’s Egyptian bondage, Aaron was with Moses giving his younger brother a boost in expressing God’s command to the Pharaoh:

“…your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to say everything I command you, and your
brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country” (7:1 to 2).

We never find any account of Aaron protesting or revising God’s words. He was true to his task of being the divine mouthpiece, the “prophet.” Because of this, God never forgot Aaron. On the third month after leaving Egypt (Exodus 19:1), as they beheld trembling at the spectacular sight of God’s majesty descending on the peak of Mount Sinai, God commanded Moses: “God down and bring Aaron up with you” (verse 24). Though Moses alone approached God in all His glory (24:2), Aaron, his sons, and the seventy elders of Israel were also privileged to behold God (verses 9 and 10). They even noted the ground He stood on transform into a “pavement made of sapphire, clear as the sky itself” (verse 10). What joy must have it been for these personalities to have not only stood in the overpowering presence of the Almighty God, who “did not raise his hand against these leaders of the Israelites,” but also eat and drink (verse 11)—for six days (verse 15)! On the seventh day, the Lord “called to Moses from within the cloud” (ibid.) to hand the “tablets of stone, with the law and commands [God had] written for [the Israelites’] instruction” (verse 12). Moses, in his absence, entrusted community leadership to “Aaron and Hur” (verse 14).

But to think that all the wonder and amazement witnessed in fear and trembling will have its in-stopping effect is to underestimate the enslaving influence of sin over the human flesh. Forty days and forty nights without Moses drained all the respect for the God of Sinai. And Aaron, being a leader who was supposed to use his God-given eloquence and authority to bring the community to its spiritual senses, well, here’s what happened—exactly:

“Aaron answered them, ‘Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.’ So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’ When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, ‘Tomorrow there will be festival to the Lord.’ So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry” (32:2 to 6).

SuperStock/Gettyimages

Except for the golden idol and the debauchery implied in the passage, the Israelites could have chosen to party instead of cowering in the presence of God while He stood in a pillar of dark cloud with pealing thunder and flashing lightning. As long as they were within limits from the mountain, they could have eaten and drunk as the contingent of leaders called forth by the Lord. It could have been wonderful to have matched the noise of the heavenly clash with the sound of rejoicing from the Israelite camp—of which they were capable to produce! In verse 17, Joshua, from far up the Sinai Mount, could hear the strain of singing from the Israelite camp that he almost mistook for reverberations of war, either of victory or defeat (verse 18).

Moses descends from Sinai, catches the people in the act, automatically gets ticked off and not only breaks the tablets of God’s law in his hands but takes the community calf of gold, burns it, grinds it to powder, creates a solution out of it, has all the people drink it, and then confronts Aaron. Aaron’s defense proved nothing more than ridiculous:

“’Do not be angry, my lord,’ Aaron answered. ‘ You know how prone these people are to evil. They said to me ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.’ So I told them, ‘Whoever has any gold jewelry, take it off.’ Then they gave me the gold, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf!’” (verses 22 to 24).

And this was the man who would later be entrusted the Urim and the Thummim (28:30). Why he nevertheless goes on to become Israel’s first Mosaic high priest can only be explained in the light of God’s mercy.

The Troubled Priesthood

SuperStock/Gettyimages

The high priesthood, and its lower hierarchy as well, had its shortcomings, shortcomings that were nevertheless understood by God and were worked around by specific regulations He imposed in the Law given to Moses. All that was therefore needed was a willing heart, seasoned and disciplined in His fear, to carry out these regulations with the strictest care in the desire of God to dwell with His people. But alas, flesh is flesh, and the Apostle Paul’s remark regarding the corruption of the carnal human will always be true to its plainest:

“I know nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep doing” (Romans 7:18-19).

But the Apostle’s dissertation does not end there. In the last verse of the seventh chapter of Romans, he could not just wait to burst out in praise: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” And as if in continuation in another epistle, he states: “Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (2 Corinthians 4:16). What the Apostle was pointing out was the trust God has continued to lavish on His earthly children—the salvation provided by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And in Hebrews 4:14, he proclaims Jesus as our “great high priest,” One who is “not…unable to sympathize with our weaknesses [which includes the limitation of our corruption], but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet without sin” (verse 14 to 15).

This is the reason why God was so strict in upholding the Old Testament high priesthood. This is why God never tolerated the willful sins of Nadab and Abihu by consuming them with fire out of His Presence (Leviticus 10:1 to 2). God held great respect for the high priesthood, and expected His chosen servants to honor it with the same, for it symbolized the flawless service Jesus Christ would give His life to. Sadly, the high priesthood would not live up to God’s expectation and He would dismantle it after Eli. Eli failed to discipline his sons who, like Nadab and Abihu, corrupted their Tabernacle duties (1 Samuel 2:22 to 25). Because of this, an unnamed prophet proclaimed the Lord’s judgment that ends the earthly high priesthood:

“I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be an old man in your family line and you will see distress in my dwelling. Although good will be done to Israel, in your family line there will never be an old man. Every one of you that I do not cut off from my altar will be spared only to blind your eyes with tears and to grieve your heart, and all your descendants will die in the prime of life” (1 Samuel 2:31 to 33).

The priests of Nob under the murderous hand of Doeg the Edomite under Saul's sanction.

In 1 Samuel 4:11, Eli’s sons were slain in battle and the Ark of the Covenant they brought was carried away by the Philistines. In 22:18 to 19, the priests who dwelt in the town of Nob were slain by Doeg the Edomite, as ordered by King Saul. And its only survivor, Abiathar, who served faithfully under David’s command (1 Samuel 23:6, 9-12), was finally removed from the priesthood by the newly installed King Solomon for choosing to support David’s usurping son Adonijah (1 Kings 2:26 to 27). In the New Testament, the priesthood was so corrupt that its existence was completely spiritually inconsequential.

Urim and Thummim: Pieces of the Earth

2011-07-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

Viking rune stones. Anyone in Israel caught plying or availing the service of any of such defiling (Leviticus 19:31) and detestable (Deuteronomy 18:12) rituals will “be put to death” by stoning (Leviticus 20:27). Did God consider stoning the fitting method of execution for diviners because of the offense’s spiritual identification with the ground?

The story of the Israelite custom of lot casting may have had its origins from a mysterious pair of words that literally mean “lights” and “perfections” that seem to predate Moses. The Bible calls it the Urim and the Thummim, an aspect of the ancient Israelite civilization that we virtually know nothing about.

Whether they are objects, devices, or methods of scrying, the Scriptures are very sketchy in detailing what the Urim and the Thummim truly refer to. The two words are distinct in meaning yet may refer to a singular idea. In actual history, however, the terms are discretely represented as two stones with each word inscribed in Hebraic text on the surface. In the Bible, the words occur seven times, all in the Old Testament: five times, in which order the Urim is mentioned ahead of the Thummim; two times, the Urim appears without the Thummim (Numbers 27:21 and 1 Samuel 28:7); and once, the Thummim is cited ahead of the Urim (Deuteronomy 33:8).

The words first appear in Exodus 28:30 as a part of a holy directive to incorporate them in the High Priest’s breastpiece. In reading the context of the passage, we could be easily convinced that the Urim and the Thummim were stones, as many of today’s experts believe. Beginning in the seventeenth verse, the breastpiece was prescribed by God, through Moses, to be mounted with “four rows of precious stones” in the following order: ruby, topaz, and beryl for the first row; turquoise, sapphire, and emerald for the second; jacinth, agate, and amethyst for the third; and chrysolite, onyx, and jasper for the fourth (verses 17 to 19). They were to represent the Twelve Tribes of Israel, with each stone bearing an engraving of the name of one tribe (verse 21). God stipulated that the breastpiece be securely worn by the High Priest as he conducts his duties in a sacred chamber called “the Holy Place” (verse 29). God wanted to see the high priest bearing the “names of the sons of Israel over his heart…as a continuing memorial before the Lord.” By the end of this verse, the Urim and the Thummim are significantly mentioned to be “put…in the breastpiece, so they may be over Aaron’s heart whenever he enters the presence of the Lord” (verse 30). Consequently:

“Thus Aaron will always bear the means of making decisions for the Israelites over his heart before the Lord.”

As the Twelve Tribes of Israel were ordered to be represented with gemstones, so we quickly conclude that the Urim and the Thummim were likewise symbolized. And because it was a “means of making decisions,” coupled with our understanding of simplified emblems that go in almost any method of divination, the Urim and the Thummim were portrayed as an ancient form of cleromancy. And because of the incorporation of this pair upon the vestment, the breastpiece became known as the “breastpiece of decision” (New International Version) or “breastpiece of judgment” (King James Version).

Judging by the Scriptures alone, it may not be entirely inaccurate to see the Urim and the Thummim as stones. In the last passage above, these were prescribed to be “put…in the breastpiece.” In Leviticus 8:8, Moses, while dressing up his brother Aaron as an initial part of his ordination as high priest, “put the Urim and the Thummim in the breastpiece.” In the original Hebrew and Greek Septuagint renditions of 1 Samuel 14:41, King Saul employs the “stones” in divining an individual guilty of breaking faith, who later turns out to be his own son Jonathan:

“Why have you not answered your servant today? If the fault is in me or my son Jonathan, respond with Urim, but if the men of Israel are at fault, respond with Thummim.”

Then proceeding to the latter part of the verse, regular translations plainly state that “Jonathan and Saul were taken by lot, and the men were cleared.” And finally the succeeding verse: “Saul said, ‘Cast the lot between me and Jonathan my son.’”

At least in this instance, the Urim and the Thummim were treated as sacred lots. The New Living Translation of the Bible follows this impression in dealing with the relics, as can be seen in Numbers 27:21, Deuteronomy 33:8, 1 Samuel 14:41 to 42, 28:6, Ezra 2:63, and Nehemiah 7:65.

In being sacred lots, therefore, the mode of consultation would naturally be in a yes-no format. This was the way David sought God’s specific guidance—twice, the second time for confirmation, which God graciously granted—in 1 Samuel 23 when he battled the Philistines:

Vetta/Gettyimages

“he inquired of the Lord, saying, ‘shall I go and attack these Philistines?’ The Lord answered him, ‘Go, attack the Philistines and save Keilah.’ Once again David inquired of the Lord, and the Lord answered him, ‘Go down to Keilah, for I am going to give the Philistines into your hand’” (verses 2 and 4).

In the same chapter, David made another inquiry, again twice: “’Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me to him? Will Saul come down, as your servant has heard? O Lord, God of Israel, tell your servant.’ And the Lord said, ‘He will.’ Again David asked, ‘Will the citizens of Keilah surrender me and my men to Saul?’ And the Lord said, ‘They will’” (verses 11 to 12).

Then in the thirtieth chapter, David consults the stones: “’Shall I pursue this raiding party? Will I overtake them?’ ‘Pursue them,’ he answered. ‘You will certainly overtake them and succeed in the rescue’” (verse 8).

By the second chapter of Second Book of Samuel, there no longer was any doubt that David kept using the stones, this time for his coronation as king: “In the course of time, David inquired of the Lord. ‘Shall I go up to one of the towns of Judah?’ he asked. ‘The Lord said, ‘Go up’” (verse 1).

The passage following this is very intriguing in that God, through the stones, identified precisely where David was supposed to go, responding to David’s detailed question: “’Where shall I go?’ ‘To Hebron,’ the Lord answered.”

Another similar response is found back in 1 Samuel 10, when the leaders inquired where Saul was as he purposely hid himself in timidity during his coronation as king: “’Has the man come here yet?’ And the Lord said, ‘Yes, he has hidden himself among the baggages’” (verse 22).

In 2 Samuel 5: 23 to 25, God provides specific instructions on routing the Philistine army: “’Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them and attack them in front of the balsam trees. As soon as you hear the sound of marching in the tops of the balsam trees, move quickly, because that will mean the Lord has gone out in front of you to strike the Philistine army.’”

It will, therefore, be entirely inaccurate to believe that the “stones” only responded to the yes-no mode. The information on how the accurate answers were ever gleaned may have been largely lost along with the stones, probably in one of the major destructions of Jerusalem, beginning with the Babylonian invasion in 586 B.C.

Gallo Images/Gettyimages

Any inquiry made to the Lord from the time of the institution of the high priesthood was mostly done through the use of the Urim and the Thummim. In most of the passages above, there was a priestly vestment that needed to be present in order for the Urim and the Thummim to be managed: the ephod. [There be more!]

Saul and Sorcery: Pieces of the Earth

2011-07-21T21:18:00.000-07:00

It is almost settled that the witch of Endor used a jar (or, jars) of clay to divine the Prophet Samuel’s ghost. It was a method that may have originated from the Egyptians. It was not, however, the only fashion in town, and Saul, as revealed in 1 Samuel 28:8, seemed to have expected the witch to utilize a divining method popular among his people during his time. He told the witch, “I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up, who I shall name unto thee” (King James Version). “Divine” in this passage was the Hebrew word qacam which meant, “to determine by magic scroll or lot.”

Martin Meyer/Corbis

Despite the sanctions against it, the esoteric art of divination, whether for good or for bad, have had its part in Israelite history and culture. Cleromancy, or the casting or drawing lots, was the most popular methods of divination employed by the common folk when deciding difficult and doubtful matters. Although Deuteronomy 18:10 expressed the uncompromising and relentless hostility God has waged against the one who “practices divination or sorcery, interprets omens… or who is a medium or spiritist or who consults the dead,” the lot was given Divine sanction in Numbers 26:55 in partitioning Canaan among the Israelite tribes. The verse following this implies the indisputable conclusiveness of the lot.

The system of the lot as shown in Joshua 7:14 to 19 was used to pinpoint an offender from out of all the twelve tribes of Israel. This was God’s divine instruction to Joshua:

“In the morning, present yourselves tribe by tribe. The tribe that the Lord takes shall come forward clan by clan; the clan that the Lord takes shall come forward family by family; and the family that the Lord takes shall come forward man by man.”

It was also in this way Saul was chosen as king: “When Samuel brought all the tribes of Israel near, the tribe of Benjamin was chosen. Then he brought forward the tribe of Benjamin, clan by clan, and Matri’s clan was chosen. Finally Saul son of Kish was chosen” (1 Samuel 10:20 to 21).

In choosing what army among the twelve tribes would lead an assault, the lot was also consulted in Judges 20:9: “We’ll go up against it as the lot directs.”

SuperStock/Gettyimages

Among the priests the lot was referred to in determining what ministerial function to perform. This was seen in Luke 1:9 when Zechariah was tasked to serve in the Temple. In Leviticus 16:8, the choice of the ceremonial scapegoat depended on the lot. As we know today, the scapegoat represented Jesus, God’s “sin offering” (verse 9). On the day of His crucifixion, lots were cast over His garments (John 19:24).

In the New Testament, the Apostles elected Matthias as Judas Iscariot’s replacement to fulfill the prophetic requirement stated in Psalm 109:8, through lot preceded by a prayer for guidance: “’Lord you know everyone’s heart. Show us which of these two [Joseph called Barsabbas (also known as Justus) and Matthias] you have chosen to take over this apostolic ministry, which Judas left to go where he belongs.’ Then they drew lots, and the lot fell to Matthias; so he was added to the eleven apostles” (Acts 1:24 to 26).

Corbis

Probably the most celebrated use of the lot was the one that tossed the Prophet Jonah overboard into the Mediterranean to get swallowed by a giant fish.

“Then the sailors said to each other, ‘Come let us cast lots to find out who is responsible for this calamity.’ They cast lots and the lot fell on Jonah” (Jonah 1:7).

There are experts who believe that the art of lot casting came from the pagans. The sailors in Jonah 1 were foreigners each of who worshiped and “cried out to his own god” in the wake of the squall (verse 5). The soldiers who gambled for Jesus’ garments were Roman pagans whose over familiarity with the lot led them to toy with its significance and serve their own gain. It may also be, on the other hand, a coincidence that this trapping appears in both the cultures of the Israelites and the foreign neighbors.

The story of the Israelite custom of lot casting may have had its origins from a mysterious pair of words that literally mean “lights” and “perfections” that seem to predate Moses. The Bible calls it the Urim and the Thummim, an aspect of the ancient Israelite civilization that we virtually know nothing about. [We got more so stay tuned!]

[Also, I keep forgetting this, the passages of Scripture you see in the articles are lifted from the New Internation Version--nice piece of translation--unless otherwise indicated, coz we just gotta use the others like the King James Version, the New International, New King James, and when I get the cash I'll be purchasing the Wuest and all those cool versions!]

Saul and Symbols: The Spear of Destiny

2011-07-19T21:17:00.000-07:00

De Agostini Picture Library/Gettyimages.com

The ground symbolized Saul's corruption. Another thing that came to be identified with Saul was his spear.

Though not as significant as the sword, the Bible also provides a unique symbolic worth to the spear, particularly in relation to judgment. The name Methuselah literally holds the meaning “he holds a spear.” Methuselah is the man in the Bible who held the oldest length of years alive, at 969, outliving his son Lamech by 374 years. He lived in the time of his grandson Noah, who coincidentally was born in the year Adam died. Some Bible scholars attest that while Methuselah lived, he guided Noah in the ways of the Lord, the way Adam did with Noah’s fathers.

While Noah’s name meant “comfort,” Methuselah’s implicated judgment. His name was launched from the hand of God like a spear through the ages, keeping the integrity of Godly worship alive in a world that sank deep into corruption through the influence of the House of Cain. In the year of his death, the Noahic Flood fell. The Methuselah spear had hit its mark.

Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

While the sword and the spear were common in the ancient world, a private citizen would favor the first one over the latter to have in his hand and home. A spear was long with a length that can only be useful in the wideness of the battlefield, not in the constricted confines of a home or the crowded streets and tight backstreets of a city. A common civilian wielding a spear in a fight would be in more trouble than when unarmed. In the grip of a trained soldier, however, the spear was a thing of terror.

In prophesying about the destruction of Jerusalem, the Prophet Jeremiah foretold of an army coming from the north, “armed with bow and spear” (Jeremiah 6:23), cruel and merciless, a suddenly descending destroyer (verse 26). And as surely as the sword causes terrible destruction, the spear in the hands of an invading force sent as judgment brought appalling brutality:

Alinari Archives/CORBIS

“Charging cavalry, flashing swords and glittering spears! Many casualties, piles of dead, bodies without number, people stumbling over corpses—“ (Nahum 3:3).

SuperStock/Gettyimages

Death through the goring spear is a humiliating way to die. King Saul, in his murderous fantasy, dreamt the last years of his life on the throne impaling David with his trusty stick.

“Saul had a spear in his hand and he hurled it, saying to himself, ‘I’ll pin David to the wall’” (1 Samuel 18:10-11).

SuperStock/Gettyimages

On three occasions, Saul transformed his home into a dart gallery; on the first two setsDavid was the bulls’ eye; on the last, the King’s Prince Jonathan. On those three occasions, the spear missed its intended mark. Apparently, the weapon was not intended on David or Jonathan, but on someone else. Yet from then on, it almost seemed like Saul and that spear became inseparable, be it on a hill outside his home in Gibeah (1 Samuel 22:6) or on a countrywide tour in vicious pursuit of David. One was safe to suspect that Saul may have even christened that oversized toothpick with a name such as The Impaler (or Vlad). The farthest distance his spear had gone from his hand was a few inches from his head while he lay asleep on the hill of Hakilah (1 Samuel 26:7). On that night, David and one of his men snuck into the middle of the camp, came within a whisker’s distance to the King and kidnapped Mr. Spear.

Saul’s devotion to the spear was symbolic of his obsession to several things, his disobedience to God being foremost. His lust for the throne was another. Even when it meant certain death, Saul proved that there was nothing that would make him relinquish his grip on the power of being the firstborn over all Israel. His heart was so hardened that not even a slap on the face with a demonic spirit during worship (1 Samuel 18:10) would give him a clue that God had abandoned him.

On the night before he died, Saul risked his life and the lives of his two men by plunging into Philistine territory incognito to find a witch who would conjure up the ghost of the Prophet Samuel. The passage in 1 Samuel 28:5-7 recounts the desperation of Saul:

“When Saul saw the Philistine army [gathered at Shunem, adjacent his camp at Gilboa], he was afraid; terror filled his heart. He inquired of the Lord, but the Lord did not answer him by dreams or Urim or prophets. Saul then said to his attendants, ‘Find me a woman who is a medium, so I may go and inquire of her.’”

The Bridgeman Art Library/Gettyimages

Just as he was inclined on several occasions to hurl the spear at David, the Lord’s anointed, Saul’s rebellion had gone full circle when he launched out, like a spear in the night, to Endor. On the next day, as Israelite losses mounted all the way to their camp on Gilboa, an eyewitness gave an account of Saul “leaning on his spear, with the chariots and riders almost upon him” (2 Samuel 1:6). Even in death, that spear remained in his hand.

The spear of Saul was never heard of again after his death in Gilboa. It might have appeared that his spear had finally struck its mark: the mark God intended for the rebellious King Saul.

On several important junctures in the Scripture, it took a spear to pronounce the judgment

of God. In Numbers 25:7, the Hebrew priest Phinehas drove a spear through the bodies of a fornicating Israelite and his consort to turn the wrath of God against His idolatrous people. According to the story, this act of Phinehas stopped a God-sent plague that had by then killed 24,000 people (verses 8 and 9). A great reward was lavished on Phinehas that day: God promised “making a covenant of peace with him” (verse 12), that the man “and his descendants will have a covenant of a lasting priesthood, because he was zealous for the house of his God and made atonement for the Israelites” (verse 13). But at the opposite end of this tribute, God commanded Moses to “treat the Midianites as enemies and kill them” (verse 17) for luring all Israel into false worship to the false god of Peor and the matter regarding the Israelite and his Midianite paramour.

Gallo Images/Gettyimages

In the eighth chapter of Joshua, God commands the Israelite general to attack the city of Ai. Through His Spirit, God provides Joshua with the scheme on how the invasion will be executed: by ambush (verse 2). Upon completing the first phase of the plan to lure the soldiers of Ai out of the city, God told Joshua to hold out toward Ai the spear that was in his hand (verse 18); Joshua did as commanded. Later in the account, it was said that “Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai” (verse 26). This was how the carnage went down:

“As soon as [Joshua] did this, the men in the ambush rose quickly from their position and rushed forward. They entered the city and captured it and quickly set it on fire. The men of Ai looked back and saw the smoke of the city rising against the sky, but they had no chance to escape in any direction, for the Israelites who had been fleeing toward the desert had turned back against their pursuers. The men of the ambush also came out of the city against them, so that they were caught in the middle, with Israelites on both sides. Israel cut them down, leaving them neither survivors nor fugitives. When Israel had finished killing all the men of Ai…all the Israelites returned to Ai and killed those who were in it. Twelve thousand men and women fell that day—all the people of Ai. So Joshua burned Ai and made it a permanent heap of ruins, a desolate place to this day. He hung the king of Ai on a tree and left him there until evening” (verses 19-20, 22, 24-25, 28-29).

Gianni Dagli Orti/CORBIS

Another effective use of the spear is for blocking the path of an enemy. In Psalm 35:3, an impassioned King David called on God to “brandish the spear and javelin” against his pursuers. An invasion of spearmen, therefore, meant no escape. Hence, when God told Joshua to lift up his spear against Ai, Joshua understood that the judgment upon the city was irreversible. On the other hand, to those who put their trust in God, the spear “shatters" at his command (Psalm 46:9) and turns it back to “pierce [the] head” of the one who brings it (Habakkuk 3:14).

The final mention of the spear is in John 19:34. On the day Jesus died, a spear pierced His side “bringing a sudden flow of blood and water,” fulfilling two prophecies published hundreds of years before:

“These things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken,’ and, another Scripture says, ‘They will look on the one they have pierced’” (verses 36 and 37).

The prophetic passages are found in Exodus 12:46, Numbers 9:12, and Psalm 34:20 for the first one; and Zechariah 12:10 for the second.

SuperStock/Gettyimages

According to Isaiah 53:8, it was “by oppression and judgment” that Jesus was “taken away…cut off from the land of the living.” The unalterable role of the spear in judgment had stretched so far, all the way to the top of Golgotha to pierce the side of our Mighty Savior. It was the final act of punishment inflicted upon Him. The prophecies that predated His incarnation never missed Him being pierced, which was, according to the Prophet Isaiah, “for our transgressions” and our healing (Isaiah 53:5).

Throughout the ages of seeking the life of David who was never meant to die by it, the spear had hit its mark—on the side of his Descendant, the Firstborn from among the dead (Colossians 1:18).

Saul and Sorcery: The Ground

2011-07-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

Photo: Chris Hellier/CORBIS

In the unraveling of Saul’s life, one can be reminded of the story of the earth. The day God created the earth, He “saw that it was good” (Genesis 1:10). He beheld the seamless completion of His design as He commanded the water under the sky to gather to one place to call up the dry ground which He called “land (verse 9). But on the day sin entered Creation, the ground was cursed with corruption and the womb that delivered the “living creatures, according to their kinds” (1:24) became mankind’s destiny (3:17-19). The earth of God changed from the day of Adam’s disobedience and all its goodness and perfection fled as the ownership of this side of Creation shifted to Satan (John 16:11) and his fallen angels (Ephesians 6:12); and as it aged, it drifted deeper into decay and perdition (Genesis 6:11). For this, God’s heart was “filled with pain” (verse 6), for there was no other recourse to quell the rising tide of putrefaction but to “wipe mankind…from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air” (verse 7). But the Flood that He sent for this destroyed, not the earth, but “all living creatures” (8:21). The Flood did change the earth, life continued to thrive and, a few more years after the great cataclysm, the stain of sin continued to be detected, unerased by the Flood.

Photo: Charles Krebs/CORBIS

Like the earth, Saul allowed corruption to fill his heart. When he should have abdicated the throne to the stewardship of the Prophet Samuel, he obstinately held on to popular opinion’s false power while he saw no future for him in abiding with God: It could be remembered how his disobedience when he illegally offered the Prophet’s burnt and peace offerings cost his posterity any future chance of succeeding him (1 Samuel 13:13 to 14). Because God had refused to establish his rulership over Israel “for all time,” he later found his opportunity to “set up a monument in his own honor” (15:12) and purposely turn away (verse 11), or betray, God. And just like beholding a rotting antediluvian earth, it “grieved” the Lord (verses 10 and 35).

Photo: Raymond Gehman/CORBIS

God hates corruption. God pronounced judgment over all corruption. He created all things “good” and perfect and He holds a strong aversion to perdition, which is in every way the opposite of His eternal nature. But because of the presence of corruption, He maintains a law requiring the destruction of the corrupt and the corrupted in order to restore the perfection of the latter. This principle is seen in the Scriptures. The corrupted antediluvian earth was drowned the Flood to restore it into the postdiluvian world we now know. By the same principle, because of the corruption of the postdiluvian earth, our world is “reserved for fire” (2 Peter 3:7), when “the elements will be destroyed by fire, and the earth and everything in it will be laid bare” (verse 10), before it can be restored as the “new earth” along with the “new heaven” written about in Revelation 21:1.

The human body which welcomed sin had also welcomed and therefore been subject to death in Genesis 3:19. Then because of the wanton violence it embraced, its length of life had been curtailed to “a hundred and twenty years” (6:3), bringing death closer. And as the corruption of sin continued to fester in the postdiluvian culture, God had pronounced destruction on anyone who defiles his own body (1 Corinthians 3:17), which God considers “sacred” (verse 18). The Apostle Paul taught that the human body is “a temple of the Holy Spirit” (6:19), and anyone who “sins against his own body” (verse 18) brings the judgment of destruction upon himself. The Apostle Paul taught that such corruption will hand the offender over to “Satan, so that the sinful nature [that his body] may be destroyed and his spirit saved on the day of the Lord” (5:5). What grieves the Lord is that He gets to watch His creation go down to destruction first before He could raise it up in perfection again:

Photo: Darren Greenwood/Design Pics/CORBIS

“…flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: ‘Death has been swallowed up in victory’” (15:50,53 to 54).

The Apostle Paul continues to teach that it was for this principle that God established “the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:2) to bring corruption to its full circle, then sent His son Jesus to die on the cross and rise incorruptible from death to “give life…to mortal [or corrupted] bodies through his Spirit” (verse 11).

Now where do Saul and the earth fit in all this? The spirit of the Prophet Samuel uttered a very curious passage during Saul’s last night in Endor: “The Lord will hand over both Israel and you to the Philistines, and tomorrow you and your sons will be with me” (1 Samuel 28:19). Also consider the fact that the Prophet came up out of the ground (verse 13). For the last time in Saul’s life, God visually presented Saul his destiny for his betrayal. It was a destiny of judgment that relentlessly chased him down until he finally gets slain by, not the Philistines, but an Amalekite slave he kept alive in his camp (2 Samuel 1:10).

Saul died a humiliating death, but it was not all for nothing. The Prophet Samuel promised that Saul and his sons would be with him, and while it largely meant going down to the grave, it may have also meant waking up in the afterlife delivered from the corruption he surrendered his life to. During the last part of his earthly life, Saul was noted seeking God through “Urim or prophets” (1 Samuel 28:6); before this, he developed the habit of “prophesying in his house” (18:10), even when it no longer mattered in his relationship with God. There indeed was a relationship; in the middle of this relationship, however, was a fix called death, and according to God’s mandate, Saul needed to pass through death in order to bury the corruption in his life and continue the relationship now in the place, no longer in the material sphere, but in the afterlife.

Photo: Lee White/CORBIS

The earth did not react well to the presence of sin. It was not created with any defense system to resist it and the death it brought. The embrace of sin covered the entire planet with death covering the skies and seeping down to the depths beneath the ground. No longer on its own initiative did the ground produce for man what he needed to survive without the “painful toil” (Genesis 3:17) he had to apply, to violently beat, carve, and disrespect the ground, for the morsels of life left hidden beneath its crust. The edible, delectable, and the pleasurable yields that Adam and Eve enjoyed of the ground turned into “thorns and thistles” (verse 18) that resisted their domination. The ground hated man, its relative formed by the hand of God. It saw man not as the Creator’s spiritual favorite but as the pile of lifeless dust of which he was before it felt the touch and the breath of God. Nevertheless, he shall “return to the ground” (Genesis 3:19), man’s cruel realization of his ultimate place in Creation, in sin. And so begins the humility of man who looks up to God. No longer does he see himself “a little lower than the heavenly beings” (Psalm 8:5), but in the words of Abraham in Genesis 18:27: “I am nothing but dust and ashes.”

Photo: Pascal Deloche/Godong/Corbis

It is therefore more than a coincidence that a “crown of thorns” (Matthew 27:29, Mark 15:17, John 19:2 and 5) found its way on Jesus’ head hours before He was killed on the cross.

It was the humility that Saul forgot in regards to him being chosen as Israel’s king in 1 Samuel 15:17:

“Although you were once small in your own eyes, did you not become the head of the tribes of Israel? The Lord anointed you king over Israel.”

The corruption of Saul began in his life when he was king, apparently after his lust for the prestige of it. Yet it could be said that had not Saul been chosen as king, he could have made at a certain measure a prophet, for it was in this unique manner how he responded to the touch of God’s Spirit. It was a special spiritual predisposition held by only a select few, as was stressed by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 in his teaching concerning church leadership:

“And in the church God has appointed first of all apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, also those having gifts of healing, those able to help others, those with gifts of administration, and those speaking in different kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles?” (verses 28 to 29)

Photo: The Gallery Collection/Corbis

In the respect of being a king with the inclination of prophecy, Saul was like David. But while David was a shepherd (1 Samuel 16:11), Saul was a farmer (11:5). This evaluation of their backgrounds lures us to the early pages of the Scriptures where a “tiller of the ground” (Genesis 4:2, King James Version) and a “keeper of sheep” (Ibid.) came before the Lord to seek His favor. Just like Saul, the tiller of the ground fell from grace. And in the same way as the ground refused the toil of the tiller (verse 12), Saul’s goals and ambitions fell to the ground in utter failure. The tiller incurred the curse of God and lost his right as firstborn; Saul lost his right as king, the honor of being Israel’s very first king, the firstborn among all the kings of God’s people. In the story of the tiller, his brother, the keeper of sheep who was also the next heir of God’s favor, gets invited for a walk in the fields and gets slain by the tiller. This murderous scene revolts God so much that when He saw the tendency repeated between Saul and David, He seems to avenge the blood of His favored shepherd by granting David the talent and opportunity to escape Saul’s clutches, and even two chances to turn the tables to death on the one who lusted after his death. Saul’s life pictured what it would have been like if the tiller failed to extinguish the life of the sheep keeper.

Saul and Sorcery: The Omen of the Ground

2011-07-17T21:14:00.000-07:00

The earth was a recurring image in Saul’s life that bore the portent of failure. It was as if an inanimate feature of the material sphere was prophesying or maliciously mischieving against him. But then again, even Jesus hinted on the earth’s power to “cry out” (Luke 19:40) in praise and glory. It was a lesson God was willing to provide should His people choose to disobey. And disobey Saul did!

Photo: Steve Kaufman/CORBIS

In 1 Samuel 24, Saul was by then deep in the depravity of his apostasy when his kingly duties were being preoccupied with his lust for David’s head. In the second verse, he and his royal contingent decide to stop a place called the Crags of the Wild Goats for the king to fulfill his faithful duty to contribute to the ground’s productivity. In the third verse, Saul chooses a cave to defecate in. It was a cave where David and his men were hiding deeper in its recess. Anybody with him, and later even Saul, could see that it was David’s golden moment to strike down his tormentor. It was the perfect time and the perfect place provided by the presence of the hollowness of that single piece of gigantic earth. David refused in that he saw his tormentor as “the anointed of the Lord” (verse 6).

But David did more than just spare the life of Saul. Spiritually, it seemed that David acted as a monkey wrench to jam the trend of destruction that the omen of the earth had been indicating. And he not only did it once, but twice. On the second occasion, David was presented with the opportunity to slay the persistently pursuing king as he snuck into Saul’s camp and found him “lying asleep…with his spear stuck in the ground near his head” (1 Samuel 26:7). If during the first time David clipped off a corner of the king’s cloak (24:4), this time he carries away the spear and the water jug that were near Saul’s head (26:11). Then by the time the camp rose to begin another day of murderous hunt, David, from a safe distance, cried out to Saul and pleaded to him to give up the chase by bringing to his attention the missing spear and water jug. Then in the words of David the portent of the earth comes into play:

“Now do not let my blood fall to the ground far from the presence of the Lord. The king of Israel has come out to look for a flea—as one hunts a partridge in the mountains” (1 Samuel 26:20).

Photo: Dean Conger/CORBIS

It is very noteworthy that David captured the imagery of blood falling to the ground, something that should have happened way back when the king’s men devoured Philistine cattle meat in 1 Samuel 14:32. But above all, the prophetic imagery provided by David portrayed the conclusion God intended on everything Saul had set out to accomplish. Before he unilaterally decided to offer the Prophet Samuel’s burnt and peace sacrifices at Gilgal (1 Samuel 14:9), the earth was a silent and unnoticed omen in the background, only discernable to a seer. But after Saul had consummated his choice to act on his own and succumb to the deception of terror, the failure of all his tasks signified by the earth became a recurring tingle in his ear as well as a glaring figure everywhere he went. The most ominous picture the Lord subtly displayed to Saul, however, was not merely the undoing of specific plans but the ruin and humiliation of him being king, the collapse of his house, and his ignominious death in the hands of his enemies. The idiomatic phrase “fall to the earth” or “fall to the ground” that appear seven times in the King James Version of the Bible meant more than failure of effort; it spoke of death and destruction. Here are some of them:

In referring to the words spoken by the Prophet Samuel: “The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of his words fall to the ground” (1 Samuel 2:19).

Mentioned earlier, when Saul threatened to execute Jonathan for being the culprit that spoiled his rash vow and his pursuit of the retreating Philistines altogether: “But the men said to Saul, ‘Should Jonathan die—he who has brought this great deliverance in Israel? Never! As surely as the Lord lives, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, for he did this today with God’s help’" (1 Samuel 14:45).

When the newly installed King Solomon deliberated whether or not to take down his brother Adonijah: “If he shows himself to be a worthy man, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground; but if evil is found in him, he will die” (2 Samuel 1:52).

Photo: Sean Sexton Collection/CORBIS

On another note out of 1 Samuel 26, present is the irony of the water jug as it fits the apparatus that may have been used by the witch of Endor to divine the spirit of the Prophet Samuel. Saul was hungry for any message from God and he received the last one that night concerning his death. Any hope of escaping this fate fled and “immediately Saul fell full length to the ground, filled with fear because of Samuel’s words” (1 Samuel 28:20).

An example of a water jug as shown balanced above the head of an Egyptian woman.

The Prophet through his categorical declaration of Saul’s mortal defeat brought the king back to the Amalekite incident where the willful betrayal of God was accomplished. In the narrative, there was no mention anywhere of the ground or of the earth, aside from the ravine where Saul and his men set up their ambush (1 Samuel 15:5). What provided the greatest significance instead was the occurrence of “idolatry” (verse 23) in Samuel’s prophetic rebuke: “…and arrogance like the evil of idolatry.”

CORBIS

The sin of idolatry is most understood through the crafting of images; and out of all the materials that can be used in fashioning these, God, in His Ten Commandments, warned on using the earth when He decreed, “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image…” (Exodus 20:4, King James Version). What significance did God see in the earth that He made it more closely associated to idolatry than the elements of metal and wood? In one of our past study, we have seen how idolatry has been identified with the occult, that those who worship idols actually worship demons, according to the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 10:19 to 21. In the Old Testament, the psalmist sings:

“All who worship images are put to shame, those who boast in idols—worship him, all you gods!”

The word “gods” used in this passage—this we have mentioned earlier—was the Hebrew elohim or “spirits.” It has been established in 2 Kings 23:24 that idols such as household gods were an integral component in ancient pagan divination and spiritism. As a young boy who frequented the rustic regions of the Philippines, I have often heard stories of familiar spirits roaming the dark corners and the lonely landscapes after dark. When I matured and had given up all fear and belief of these campfire, gaslight, and bedtime fiction, I realized that even Bible characters—grownups, at that—never dismissed the reality of such supernatural phenomena like we do today for the sake of “reason” and “sensibility.” The disciples, for example, panicked when mistook Jesus for “a ghost” when they saw Him treading above the turbulent surface of the lake water in Matthew 14:26. Here is how the gospel writer rendered the scene:

Photo: Lebrecht Music & Arts/Corbis

“When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. ‘It’s a ghost,’ they said, and cried out in fear.”

Jesus lived during the Roman occupation of Israel. The land had just welcomed the Greek culture. Greek philosophy and idolatrous tales of its mythology became popular and even seeped into some aspects of Jewish thought. Before the Greeks, they have emerged from another idolatrous civilization whose founder, Cyrus, was even prophesied beforehand by Isaiah (Isaiah 44:28, 45:1) and Jeremiah (2 Chronicles 36:22 and 23) to liberate the Jews and to rebuild Jerusalem. It was a time of great spiritual corruption as evidenced by the demon possession that was rampant in the land. Though minimally indicated in the New Testament, Jesus’ disciples understood the sight or sound of an unclean spirit skulking somewhere out the window behind the trees or crunching on the rocky path at night. Jesus even alluded to unclean spirits roaming through “arid places seeking rest” (Matthew 12:44). Before Jesus, ghostly sightings were the only supernatural moments known to the disciples, the Jews, and, of course, the pagan world.

Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 12:43 to 45 touched on demonic possession, a phenomenon we understand when an unclean spirit torments a human individual by inhabiting his body. What is it about the human body that attracts demonic fancy? The Bible explains that demons are angelic spirits living apart from the Presence of the Lord. Because of this, they eternally lack the peace of God’s Presence experienced by their faithful counterparts. Man, on the other hand, though existing apart from heaven, maintains a spiritual peace through his physical body. The Apostle Paul taught about this as being “clothed with our heavenly dwelling” (2 Corinthians 5:2). He referred to the human body as a “tent” (verse 4). In the third verse, he spoke about the spirit without a body is “naked,” which he later consolidates into the principle in verses 6 and 8:

“Therefore we are always confident and know that as long as we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord. We are confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

Photo: Sandro Vannini/CORBIS

There are therefore two ways to feel and actually be “at home”: either by being “with the Lord” or “in the body,” a body the Apostle earlier referred to as “jars of clay” (2 Corinthians 4:7). A body fashioned out of the dust of the earth (Genesis 2:7). For this reason, the earth holds a special appeal to a spiritual being. Remember that it was on the earth where the “third of the stars of the sky” were flung (Revelation 12:4), and not just on earth but deep “down to the grave, to the depths of the pit” (Isaiah 14:15). The ground became their home, inadequate to embrace them in the peace they needed, but home nonetheless. In the story of the Gadarene demoniac in Matthew 8:30 to 32, the multitude of possessing demons pleaded to Jesus to be sent into a herd of pigs which they immediately sent to their death down a steep bank that slid into the lake. The depth of the lake was a gate called the depth (Job 28:14, 38:16, Matthew 18:6) that opened to the spirits’ home named in Hebrew tongue as Sheol.

But though it has not been explicitly stated in the Scriptures, unclean spirits may also inhabit other products of the earth, like animals; images for worship fashioned out of the earth may likewise qualify for possession, which could be a reason why idols are a fixture in the occult.

Saul embraced the earth (1 Samuel 28:20) after hearing what the spirit of Samuel had to say about his irreversible destiny when he stands to face the Philistine army by daybreak. Greatly shaken, the witch along with his men urged him to eat for he had fed on nothing in the hours before that night (verse 20). From the ground, he sat on a couch and fed on the butchered calf served to them by the witch (verses 23 and 24).

[AND...there's more! Ain't this exciting?!]

Saul and Sorcery: Whispers from the Ground

2011-07-17T00:15:00.000-07:00

“For dust you are and to the dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19).

The witch was a necromancer, a magician that summoned into the material world spirits of the human departed. In her rituals and in her very words, the most vital component of her craft involved the earth. In 1 Samuel 28:13, she claimed that she saw the Prophet Samuel coming up out of “the ground.” There is a part in Israelite culture which holds that “the grave” (Ecclesiastes 9:10), also known as “the pit,” is the “common destiny” shared by “the righteous and the wicked” (verse 2). In some way we can see where the belief of the Sadducees emerged from. For these materialists, their doctrine bore no provision for the immortality of the human soul, resurrection of the physical body, or any existence of the afterlife. For them, heaven was Israel and hell was either physical death or exile from the Promised Land. If there was any truth to a resurrection, it was in symbolism to repatriation or, in context to contemporary events, the rebirth of the Jewish state of Israel. The core of the Sadducean doctrine was tied to the land of Israel, upon which stood the cornerstone of their faith: the Temple of Solomon. Sadducean culture, according to the outstanding Jewish historian Max I. Dimont, was hewn out of “the letter of the law, not its spirit” (Jews, God and History, Mentor Books: New York, NY, 1994; p.103). It was rigidly fixed to the Temple in Jerusalem, so that when Jerusalem fell to the Roman siege in 135 A.D., the Sadducees disappeared forever.

For the witch, however, there was great respect for the existence of spirits, ancestral spirits, as far as her occult was concerned that inhabited the infernal regions of the earth. This is how she beheld “gods ascending out of the earth” (King James Version). For her ritual, the original Hebrew term for “familiar spirit,” or ôwb, hints on the use of an apparatus that helped produce a hollow sound, either a water-skin or earthen jar. For some Bible scholars and historians, the latter could have been most probably used. While the water-skin made for a good texture of the human flesh, man was more affiliated with the earth. In representing the human body, God and His writers in both the Old and New Testaments used the earth, be it as the ground or in its clay and manufactured form as pottery, as the prime symbol. In Leviticus 6:28, for example, a priestly ritual that regards breaking a clay pot on which a sacrificial meat was cooked represented the earthly body of Jesus Christ. In Leviticus 11, it was prescribed that a vessel—“whether…of wood, cloth, hide or sackcloth” (verse 32)—which any one the specified creatures in verses 29 and 30 touches “will be unclean” (verse 32). But if the vessel was a clay pot, “everything in it will be unclean, and you must break the pot” (verse 33). Figuratively, the earth became irredeemably corrupt once touched by sin; and since the human body came from the earth it received the full brunt of corruption: death (Genesis 3:19).


Photo: Marilyn Angel Wynn/Gettyimages.com

The earth, with its supple property to be shaped as a container, has been the perfect representative of man’s spiritual corruption and mortality. In 2 Timothy 2:20, the Apostle Paul speaks of vessels of dishonor, by which he probably meant portable latrines popular in households during ancient times, most were those made in clay. The analogy the Apostle Paul makes in this passage is both amazing and appalling. In the twentieth verse of 2 Timothy 2, it says that, “But in a great house here are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, some for honor and some for dishonor.” He continues in the twenty-first where he makes his point so highlighted, the shock will stick to the reader until dinner time has past: “Therefore if anyone cleanses himself from the latter, he will be a vessel of honor, sanctified and useful for the Master, prepared for every good work.” Imagine a portable latrine being “cleansed” by a Master, transforming this vessel of ignoble use into a pristine glazed pottery fit for a king to dine on on the most special of occasions. This, of course, is illustrative of the purifying power of the blood of Jesus that has been provided by God in His New Testament. In His Old Testament, well, any earthen pot was broken when ceremonially used by the priest (Leviticus 6:28) or when a lizard falls on it (Leviticus 11:32). But in these earthen jars, the Apostle Paul does not deny God’s sovereign choice to keep in them His “treasure” so that the excellence of God may be fully seen and understood by the perishing world of clay (2 Corinthians 4:7).

Photo: The Bridgeman Art Library/ Gettyimages.com

And in this earthen ware, the witch was believed to have whispered into to “bring up” (1 Samuel 28:11) “an old man wearing a robe” (verse 14).

Throughout the account of Saul, there were several elements that persistently appeared and have come to be associated with his destiny. One of these was the earth. Immediately after being crowned king, Saul went farming. Obviously, Saul loved farming. After being anointed, the Prophet Samuel gave Saul a long detailed prediction of events that the young king would encounter on his way back home. The main concern above all these encounters was Saul being baptized in the Spirit of the Lord. In 1 Samuel 10:6, the man of God briefs the king:

“The Spirit of the Lord will come upon you in power, and you will prophesy with them [the prophets]; and you will be changed into a different person.”

After this was an instruction for Saul to pursue: “Once these signs are fulfilled, do whatever your hand finds to do, for God is with you” (verse 7).

Photo: Gettyimages.com/SuperStock

For the rest of the tenth chapter, it was apparent that Saul was yet to find something specific for his hand to do. In the eleventh, he finally decides. In the fifth verse, he actually goes back to farming. This is the first association we find of him with the earth. The next implication of Saul’s relationship with the earth is in 1 Samuel 13:6 where the Israelites, upon witnessing the frighteningly massive Philistine army at Micmash, scrambled in panic to hide in “caves and thickets, among the rocks, and in pits and cisterns.” In the ninth verse, the king decides to take matters into his own hands and offer up the burnt and fellowship offerings himself; it was a task prescribed for the Prophet Samuel to accomplish, not the king. Furthermore, the sacrifice was not offered on the mandatory altar of earth prescribed by Moses in Exodus 20:24. It was during the Israelites’ sin of engorging bloodied meat in 1 Samuel 14:35 when it occurred for the first time to Saul to construct the altar of earth.

Photo: Gettyimages.com

It seems that every time the earth comes into the picture, it was during Saul’s time of spiritual weakness and compromise. The story of the Israelites devouring meat with blood still in it was another incident where the earth is mentioned yet again. Here, it appears several times. First, the battle with the Philistines started in a Philistine outpost on a cliff overlooking a pass which Saul’s son Jonathan daringly crossed to engage twenty of its soldiers (1 Samuel 14:4 to 14). To Jonathan God granted the victory, for from this great piece of towering earth, the skirmish he sparked went on to sweep over the immense Philistine camp with deadly mayhem: “…the Philistines [were] in total confusion, striking each other with their swords” (verse 20).

But while the symbol of the earth signaled wonders for Jonathan, it was sadly not the same for Saul. While the Israelites chased down the Philistines out of Micmash, Saul became so possessed with his zeal that he decided to compel his entire army under a vow of a fast until they have overtaken the retreating Philistines. Instead of zeal and rejoicing, “the men of Israel were in distress that day” because of the vow they were forced to swallow (14:24). On the succeeding verse, the Scriptures give up the portent:

“The entire army entered the woods, and there was honey on the ground” (verse 25).

Photo: Gettyimages.com/SuperStock

All of that honey which God provided to refresh His army after those days of standing in fear, famished but numb to its pangs, as they stood in the face of a force “as numerous as the sand on the seashore” (1 Samuel 13:5), from which there was no escape. Now, the sudden burst of opportunity propels them from hiding to hot pursuit and in a short moment of exploding into energy, the spasms of hunger begin kicking in. And God had just the thing for that. In a wooded region nearby a rich libation of wild honey freely flowed to the ground, bringing to life a literal depiction of how Moses and the Israelite slaves imagined the Promised Land, “a land flowing with milk and honey” (Exodus 3:8). It was just too bad that Saul’s zeal kept them from being rejuvenated. But not for Jonathan, the hero who ignited Israelite valiance. Clueless of his father’s vow, he reached out his staff at a honeycomb and lapped some life-giving honey with his hand, and “his eyes brightened,” or in other translations, “his strength was renewed” (1 Samuel 14:28). Before all the salivating Israelite soldiers, Jonathan testified: “My father has made trouble for the country. See how my eyes brightened when I tasted a little of this honey. How much better it would have been if the men had eaten today some of the plunder they took from their enemies. Would not the slaughter of the Philistines have been even greater?” (verses 29 to 30)

Saul’s reckless vow instead turned them into a mob of crazed lunatics who acted like a school of sharks in a feeding frenzy. The moment they overtook the Philistines, “they pounced on the plunder and, taking sheep, cattle and calves, they butchered them on the ground and ate them, together with the blood” (verses 32 and 33). Notice the irony: the wild honey which belonged to human lips did not land on human lips, except on Jonathan’s; the rest got soaked up by the ground. Blood which was meant to drip to the ground, did not fall to the ground but went into the consumption of a hunger-crazed Israelite army who gorged it along with animal meat in disobedient abandon for a moment’s satisfaction.

Saul’s plan to plunder the Philistines never moved on from there. The victory he prayed for in initiating the vow ran aground and almost cost the life of Jonathan. The Israelite army rose into Jonathan’s defense and in an impassioned statement, the earth appears once again, this time in their words:

“Should Jonathan die—he who has brought about this great deliverance in Israel? Never! As surely as the Lord lives, not a hair of his head will fall to the ground, for he did this today with God’s help” (verse 45).

[I'll give you a clue: The article never ends! There's more!]