In an ironic reprise of the table of nations in Genesis 10, Isaiah’s “kill list” in chapters 13-27 is a twin set of Mosaic tables. On behalf of the seventy nations, these peoples would be shattered by Yahweh in the way that Moses broke the tablets of the Law after Israel’s idolatry at Mount Sinai.
This three-part article is from the forthcoming second book of my Isaiah commentary series. Book 1 is still available to read complete online for a limited time here.
Two Bloodied Doorposts
In the second volume of Isaiah (chapters 13-27), the focus expands from the trials of God’s people to the fate of the nations. Judgment was coming in waves, not only upon the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, but also upon the entire world order of the day.
Judgment begins at the house of God (1 Peter 4:17). This is because the Lord is a faithful father who disciplines His sons (Hebrews 12:11). If God’s people hear the words of the prophets and return to Him, the judgment ends there, and the outflow of such revival is the conversion of the nations.
However, if God’s people refuse to repent, the evil in the world is not only not restrained, it is also increasingly incited and enabled. Instead of the “beast” nations submitting to God in the way that the beasts submitted to Adam and Noah, they become stronger, more bloodthirsty, and more numerous.
The wild beasts that God gradually drove out of Canaan signified the nations that were dispossessed under Joshua. When Israel behaved like Canaanites, “beasts” would return and the people would be taken captive. The Land that God cultivated God would return to its natural, savage state.
“And I will let loose the wild beasts against you, which shall bereave you of your children and destroy your livestock and make you few in number, so that your roads shall be deserted.” (Leviticus 26:22)
The bears that devoured the children of Bethel (a center of idolatry, home to one of King Jeroboam’s golden calves) who mocked Elisha were a sign of the ravenous nations that would come to discipline the sons of Jacob. And in response to the wickedness of those Gentile invaders, the divine judgment that began in the Garden and the Land would necessarily spread to the World, as it did in the days of Noah.
This background highlights the importance of the purity of Israel’s worship for the sake of the nations. Like the Tabernacle of Moses, the Temple of Solomon was the true spiritual center of the world—its Garden of Eden. This new Sanctuary was decorated accordingly, with carvings of cherubim, palm trees, and open flowers. The High Priest was the “Adam” who obeyed the Lord in the Garden, and Solomon was the “Adam” who ruled for the Lord in the Land—a humble king with an interest in classifying—naming—God’s flora and fauna (1 Kings 4:33).
Under Moses, Israel made sacrifices for the seventy nations, and, albeit in limited ways, Gentile believers were welcome to participate in worship. But Solomon’s permanent and more glorious edifice put the Sanctuary of God on the world stage, inviting patronage and regular pilgrimages from every tongue and tribe. The true worship became truly international.
The purpose of Nimrod’s Tower had been to magnify man instead of God, making a name for its builders instead of their Creator (Genesis 11:4). But as a house for God’s name, the Temple upon Zion promoted His glory and reputation—not just among the twelve tribes of Israel, but also among all peoples (2 Samuel 7:13). The Temple was thus an anti-Babel.
However, like Babel, the Temple was an invitation to peace via unity in worship, an expansion of the cultic unity between the tribes of Jacob. As a house of prayer for all nations (Isaiah 56:7, Matthew 21:13, Mark 11:17), it would be the place where God’s priests not only mediated for the Gentiles, but also where the privilege of invoking God’s name and learning of His ways was extended to all who believed.
As we have seen, by Isaiah’s time Judah’s worship had become mere lip service (Isaiah 1:10-15). The Sanctuary had become a den of thieves, a consortium of men like Adam (Jeremiah 7:11; Matthew 21:13; Luke 19:46). The Garden now served the interests of the Land. Instead of enjoying the blessings promised to Israel by God if they loved and obeyed Him, fruitfulness and prosperity were appropriated through trade with pagan nations. This was the national equivalent of the sin in Eden and the later practice of honoring household gods. The house of God was now a shrine to idols because it had become a marketplace for devils to peddle their wares.
There was nothing inherently wrong with trade. As James B. Jordan observes, the primeval world was set up for such exchanges. The springs and rivers of Eden brought natural life to the world, and in response, the holy nations that descended from an obedient and wise Adam would glorify the Sanctuary with cultural life—gifts of precious metals and gemstones from the Land to be worked and integrated by Spirit-inspired artisans (Genesis 2:10-12; Exodus 31:1-5).1
But Adam had not been obedient and wise, so instead of generating a united priest-kingdom, the priestly and kingly lines diverged after the murder of Abel. The Cainite people, as sons of humanity’s firstborn, were still endowed with the royal wisdom and talents required to take dominion of the earth—in agriculture, metalwork and the arts. But the glory resulting from this “Land” strength established a culture whose fruits enticed and corrupted the Sethite people of the Garden.
Likewise, the kings of Israel were enticed by the glory of the nations, and the bonds they built to obtain the riches of the Gentiles were strengthened through religious intermarriage, that is, spiritual compromise—a Babelic unity. Nothing they proposed to do would be impossible for them (Genesis 11:6).
In contrast, Moses had received the riches of Egypt from the hand of God, and they were used in the construction of the Tabernacle. Likewise, Hiram of Tyre donated materials and labor for the construction of the Temple (2 Samuel 5:11-12, 1 Kings 5:1-12). Moreover, his wisdom as an artisan was instrumental in the construction of its bronze components, including the two famous pillars (1 Kings 7:13-47).
Although the circumstances around the Tabernacle and the Temple were different, the cultic cargos in both cases were given voluntarily.
The reward for humility and fear of the Lord is riches and honor and life. (Proverbs 22:4)
But now, the lesson learned by Solomon at the beginning of his reign was entirely forgotten. Man was once again stealing what God was keeping in trust for him as an inheritance, as a gift, if only he would trust and obey.
This explains the strange details in Ezekiel’s oracles against the prince and king of Tyre (Ezekiel 28:1-19). These are in fact ironic prophecies against the rulers of Jerusalem—namely, the apostate Davidic prince in the Land and his idolatrous High Priest in the Garden. In the same way that Revelation refers to Jerusalem as Sodom, Egypt, and Babylon, the reference to a Gentile city was spiritual name-calling on Ezekiel’s part.
The so-called “prince of Tyre” was in fact a Davidic king who considered himself to be like Solomon but had sold his inheritance for the riches of the nations. He was no god, only a man, so he would die the death of the uncircumcised at the hands of the foreigners with whom he was in league.
The title “king of Tyre” is even more damning, since it alludes to Adam’s refusal to humble himself before God. The High Priest considered himself an anointed cherub guarding the mountain of God. Although covered in fiery gemstones like Aaron, he would be cast down like the serpent.
The ensuing oracle against Sidon is also a prophecy against Jerusalem, the city whose religion was now that of Jezebel, daughter of Ethbaal the priest-king of Tyre and Sidon.
These three prophecies are cultural expositions of the judgment upon the Man, the serpent, and the Woman in the Garden of Eden. Revelation makes a similar Edenic allusion in its exposure of the first-century conspiracy against Christ between the False Prophet, the Beast, and the Harlot.
Revelation also reprises Ezekiel’s condemnation of “Tyre” and its merchants, using commercial symbolism to describe the spiritual compromise of first-century Jerusalem with the Gentiles in order to maintain its power (Revelation 18:11-20).
The mark of the beast upon the hand and forehead was a reference to the phylacteries worn by the Pharisees (Matthew 23:5; Revelation 13:16-17). The tradition was based upon commands in the Torah (Exodus 13:9, 16; Deuteronomy 6:8, 11:18), but it is used to highlight the hypocrisy of those who willingly renounced Christ in order to maintain their loyalty to Herod’s Temple and thus avoid persecution by the Jews. The commercial language of “buying and selling” also relates to the Temple, namely the corruption of the money changers. This, too, was a symbol for the spiritual compromise of Jews who desired the honor and riches of the Gentiles. It was more subtle than the old idolatry, but at heart it was the same sin.
Since Israel’s prosperity under Uzziah and other kings was the result of spiritual theft, Isaiah dispossesses both kingdoms of everything they had stolen. The Lord was publicly rejecting their tokenistic sacrifices, which meant that their sins were not covered and His wrath was not appeased.
Worse, the addition of pagan gods and their abhorrent rites was akin to the offering of “strange fire” by the sons of Aaron. For this, the Lord would again break out from the Sanctuary to consume the people as He did in the wilderness.
But because the Temple, unlike the Tabernacle, was a house for all nations, the judgment would not end there. Due to Israel’s syncretism with idolatry in the “Garden,” and its reliance upon statecraft instead of the Lord to keep its enemies at bay in the “Land,” the surrounding nations of the “World” remained in bondage to idols.
This religious and commercial exchange promised a Babelic strength. But Israel’s treaties with Gentiles not only bore argosies of earthly fortune to Judah, they were also conduits for increasing spiritual corruptions in the Sanctuary.
Ever-cunning, God used that very network to bring about its own downfall. The bonds of compromise became channels of cursing that flowed from Zion’s divine court into the courts of every Gentile king. Instead of the living water of the Word bringing life, the scorched-earth salt of God’s judgment would sterilize and purify with death.
The fall of Israel’s priesthood (the Tree of Life: submission to heaven) resulted in the fall of Israel’s kingdoms (the Tree of Knowledge: dominion on earth). But the authority of the prophets extended beyond the Garden and the Land into the nations of the World. If this international corruption were not contained, another global deluge was on the horizon.
But it was contained, and by a safeguard that was illustrated in the inspired design of Solomon’s Temple. The two great pillars resembled not only the “sacramental” trees in Eden, but also the burning-bronze legs of a guardian angel whose job it was to guard and keep the rainbow promise made to Noah.
Then I saw another mighty angel coming down from heaven, wrapped in a cloud, with a rainbow over his head, and his face was like the sun, and his legs like pillars of fire. He had a little scroll open in his hand. And he set his right foot on the sea, and his left foot on the land… (Revelation 10:1-3)
Unlike the Tabernacle, in which the Bronze Laver was located “above” the Bronze Altar in the ascent to God, the two items were side by side in Solomon’s Temple. One pillar-leg “stood” upon the Altar-Land, and the other upon the Bronze Sea.
Likewise, the Jewish “Land” and Gentile “Sea” were themselves an architectural representation, a social model of the world before the Great Flood (see page 97). In the same way that the Sanctuary was a model of the cosmos that was built to bear the judgment of the world via the atoning blood of sacrificial substitutes, this greater model was set up by God to bear the punishment of Man’s failures if the sacrifices failed. It would be destroyed as the legal representative, a sacrificial substitute, for the entire globe. While it lasted, the bifurcated Abrahamic “Land and Sea” was a bulkhead that would contain the destruction and thus avoid another global catastrophe.
The “intermarriage” of priestly Israel with pagans violated the Abrahamic divide. It corrupted the social model in the same way that the intermarriage of the two family trees before the Flood corrupted all the dry land. After all avenues of warning and reconciliation had been exhausted, the only remaining remedy for such a universal corruption was to decreate and recreate the world—in this case, its localized model. That explains the allusions to global judgment in the warnings of utter destruction in chapter 24.
In both Hebrew and Greek, one word can mean either “earth” or “land,” and the intention is defined by the context. In the case of God’s promise to make the earth/land “empty” (Adamic decreation), to “open the windows of heaven” (Noahic destruction), and “scatter its inhabitants” (Babelic confusion), the ambiguity also serves as a sort of substitionary pun.
The extent of this self-contained model “World” is indexed for us in this Exodus volume of the prophecy (chapters 13-27). In an ironic reprise of the Noahic, global table of nations in Genesis 10, Isaiah’s “kill list” is a twin set of Mosaic, local tables. On behalf of the seventy nations, these peoples would be shattered by Yahweh in the way that Moses broke the tablets of the Law after Israel’s idolatry at Mount Sinai.
And as soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot, and he threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. (Exodus 32:19)
Like the Ten Words, these prophecies are divided into two columns—one priestly and one kingly (see page 80). As two columns, Isaiah’s tablets are also two pillars—one priestly and one kingly, like the sacramental trees in the Garden of Eden. This links the commandments on the tablets in the hands of Moses at Mount Sinai (submission to heaven) to Israel’s claim upon Zion in the clean “feet” of the Temple of Solomon (dominion on earth). Israel was to obey the Law on behalf of the disqualified Noahic order, and the house upon Zion stood upright until that mediatory office was revoked. In this aspect, the longevity of the Temple pillars, as cultural trees, was like that of those two natural trees in the first Sanctuary.
Although the Man and the Woman were banished from the Garden, mankind still enjoyed fellowship with God via atoning sacrifices. Even though the dissolution of the Sethite priesthood resulted in a failure of that mediation, the Garden remained until the end of the primeval world. Likewise, even though Israel’s worship had been corrupted long before the Babylonian invasions, the destruction of the Sanctuary in Jerusalem was the “liturgical” end of the existing social order.
In the way that the Lord engraved the tablets of Moses, Isaiah’s prophecy inscribed the names of the rebellious nations upon two columns. They are written there as a reference to the names of Israel’s tribes inscribed upon the shoulders of the High Priest. As Aaron was the advocate for the tribes, so the Temple was the advocate for the nations. Its ten chariots with basins represented the delivery of the water of the Word to the World like the springs and rivers of Eden.
However, these inscriptions were fresh, and they were not made for the purpose of blessing. As oracles of judgment, they were carved into these doomed Trees of Eden that the names of these peoples might be blotted out in a “flood.” Having rejected the mercies of God, the nations would atone for their sins with their own blood. Their dynasties—lands and sons—would be reduced to Adamic dust.
In Isaiah’s vision of the Lord, the thresholds of the house had been shaken. But after many warnings and much long-suffering with Israel and Judah, even the great pillars of the Temple would eventually be torn down. This defacing of the door of the House of God was a sign of the end of the world—at least, the world as everyone knew it.
The root of this rebellion is found in the other inscriptions in God’s house, painted upon the walls as spiritual graffiti.
And he brought me to the entrance of the court, and when I looked, behold, there was a hole in the wall. Then he said to me, “Son of man, dig in the wall.” So I dug in the wall, and behold, there was an entrance. And he said to me, “Go in, and see the vile abominations that they are committing here.” So I went in and saw. And there, engraved on the wall all around, was every form of creeping things and loathsome beasts, and all the idols of the house of Israel. (Ezekiel 8:7-10)
The children of Israel had engraved these hieroglyphs upon their hearts of instead of the Ten Words inscribed on stone by God. The people had once again murmured against Moses and returned to Egypt in spirit.
In Exodus, the destruction of the golden calf was followed by the construction of the Tabernacle. In Revelation, Herod’s Temple is described spiritually as “the image of the beast,” an idol that was replaced by the Church. In Isaiah’s day, the idol for destruction was likewise the corrupted Temple of God.
And that brings us to what is perhaps the most terrifying aspect of these two columns, one that is only apparent in the light of the Exodus theme of the sequence. Having been defaced by the prophet with the names of the nations who worshiped the baals that squatted in the household of Yahweh, Jachin and Boaz were transformed into the doorposts of a house—a house in Egypt on the eve of Passover.
The horror was not that the Angel of the Lord was coming as an avenger, but that the names engraved on the doorposts were also daubed with blood—the blood of the children of Abraham who were sacrificed to the gods by the kings of Israel.
Read Part 2
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