The Boaz column focuses upon Israel’s renewed dominion of the earth. But to do so, it must first wipe the slate of rebellious man clean as God did in the days of Noah.
Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here.
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.
Boaz re-creates what was destroyed, so the sevenfold biblical pattern now runs forwards. Both pillars begin with Babylon, but while Jachin rummaged through the past in its demolition of the old order, Boaz looks to the future.
 Creation | Babylon, Edom & Arabia Judged (Initiation – Genesis – Sabbath) | (Isaiah 21) |
 Division | Jerusalem Judged (Conquest – Vindication – Atonement) | (Isaiah 22) |
 Ascension | Tyre & Sidon Judged (Presentation – Leviticus – Firstfruits) | (Isaiah 23) |
 Testing | The Judgment of the Land (Purification – Numbers – Pentecost) | (Isaiah 24) |
 Maturity | The Resurrection of the Land (Transformation – Deuteronomy – Trumpets) | (Isaiah 25) |
 Conquest | The Redemption of Israel (Vindication – Joshua – Atonement) | (Isaiah 26) |
 Glorification | The Succession of Israel (Representation – Judges – Booths) | (Isaiah 27) |
Although the second pillar concludes with “new creation” symbolism (the judgment of the dragon and the removal of the curse), it emphasizes the Conquest thread of the pattern. The reason is that Jachin’s reversal of Israel’s national Creation was not only a ritual cleansing of impurity; it was also a legal repossession of the Promised Land as threatened in the Law of Moses (Leviticus 26:27-33; Deuteronomy 28:45-68).
So the re-creation—or better, earth-quaking resurrection—of the nation in the Boaz pillar is also a reconquest of the Land. Of course, it was not the same as the conquest of Canaan under Joshua but a repossession of Israel’s spiritual office, one that anticipated the spread of the Gospel of Christ.
The relationship between the old body of Israel and the new was like that between Jesus’ body and His resurrection body. This difference-despite-continuity is the same as that between “Israel according to the flesh” and the Church, which, as the Body of Christ, is Israel according to the Spirit.
In all cases, the natural precedes the spiritual. Just as the “resurrection” of Israel from the furnace of Egypt in a new and more glorious form was an example by which the people of God could understand the “resurrection” of Israel from Babylon, the emancipation from Babylonian tyranny was an example by which the transformation of first-century Israel into an entirely spiritual people might also be understood.
The outward glory of Jerusalem would never match the physical splendor kingdom of Solomon, but the inward glory of a people who cherished and studied the Word was, in God’s eyes, sweeter than honey, and better than silver and gold. In this way, the restoration of Israel and Judah after the exile prefigured the Church (Jeremiah 31:31-34; Hebrews 8:8-13).
So when the New Testament cites texts from the prophets and refers to them as being “fulfilled,” it is not overlooking the original purpose and contemporary fulfillments of those prophecies as many interpreters do. Instead, under the inspiration of the Spirit of Christ, it highlights the typological foundations laid by those earlier fulfillments. The apostles understood Israel’s latter days (the era between the captivity and Christ) as a crucial “halfway house” between Solomon’s physical Temple and the spiritual temple that is the Church.
Whereas Isaiah’s main focus is the death and resurrection of Israel, Ezekiel’s theme is the destruction and rebuilding of the Temple. As we know, nothing even close to the grandeur of the temple described in Ezekiel 40-48 was achieved after the captivity, or even under the Herods. So to what does the prophecy refer? Many believe it describes an edifice that is yet in the future, but the chiastic structure of Ezekiel, like that of Isaiah, indicates a fulfillment in history.
This mystical temple was an architectural representation of the ministry of the Jews amongst the nations under the Persian empire. The vision served the same purpose as the detailed description of the Church as a “new Jerusalem” in Revelation. It was a building made out of people—both Jews and Gentiles. Our God loves architecture, which is why the Word of God employs structure, such as Jachin and Boaz, to communicate its message.
As the priestly column, Jachin focused upon Man’s failure to submit to heaven. It condemns those who “exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things” (Romans 1:23).
As the kingly column, Boaz focuses upon Israel’s renewed dominion of the earth. But to do so, it must first wipe the slate of rebellious man clean as God did in the days of Noah.
So the Lord said, “I will wipe from the face of the earth the human race I have created—and with them the animals, the birds and the creatures that move along the ground—for I regret that I have made them.” (Genesis 6:7 NIV)
Once again, the symbolism has geographical, historical, and religious aspects.
Many English translations use “blot out” or “destroy” to describe the annihilation of the world in Genesis 6:7, but the Hebrew word means “wipe.” In geographical terms, the three-step priestly section of kingly Boaz wipes from the east to the west like the rising of the sun—from the desert regions (Babylon, Edom and Arabia) via Israel (Judah and Jerusalem) to the coastlands of the sea (Tyre and Sidon). In Edenic terms, it erases the gate of God in the Garden, the house of David in the Land, and the intermarriage with Jezebel in the World.
This almighty wipe also recapitulates, in broad historical terms, the “rise” or ascension of Israel to the present day in the time of Isaiah. Like Abram, it leaves Ur of the Chaldees to dwell in tents, then travels to Salem, the city of Melchizedek, to receive God’s endorsement. The old rulers are eventually thrown out and replaced with the dynasty of King David. But after the apostasy of Solomon, the faith of Hiram of Tyre ultimately degenerates into the idolatry of Jezebel of Sidon.
In religious terms, the entire Boaz sequence follows the pattern of a sacrifice by fire—the means by which Levite priests made all things new (see page 124). The first three steps (Creation, Division, Ascension) put a representation of the old order on the altar as a whole burnt offering. The sacrifice is chosen (Initiation), is set apart and cut (Delegation), then placed upon the altar (Presentation). Only then can the fire fall that not only consumes the enemies of God (as dust and ashes that fall into the altar), but also vindicates the Sons of God (who ascend to God as a fragrant savor) (Purification).
As the result of this offering, the remainder of the column is relatively straightforward. Israel rises again from the “Great Flood” of Babylonian troops as a “resurrection body,” a holy host (Transformation). The Atonement step is once again a song of redemption, one that celebrates both the goodness and severity of God in His just and merciful cleansing of the Land (Vindication). And finally, Israel’s spiritual ministry of teaching and testimony among the nations, now restored and expanded in these latter days, is described in terms of the natural promises to Abraham—a reversal of the Edenic curse upon the land and the womb (Representation).
For this reason, the Boaz column begins with an oracle of “Abrahamic” barrenness in the east. Babylonia in the north-east, in comparison to the land of the Assyrians further north, was flat and dry. To its south, Edom, Dedan, and Kedar were nations of the desert.
This barrenness ties together the promise to Abram of a fertile womb and a fertile land, and the barrenness that came upon Bethlehem (“the house of bread”) after the shedding of innocent blood at the end of the Book of Judges.
It was the faithful obedience of mighty Boaz that removed the curse of the Law of Moses and restored Abrahamic fertility, not only to Bethlehem, but also to the Messianic line. The Book of Ruth ends with a genealogy from Perez, son of Judah, to David.
The godly marriage of Boaz and Ruth prefigured the union of Jew and Gentile in the Christian Church, so the location of Moab in Jachin also hints at an Edenic motif in the entire construct of Volume 2.
In the two tablets of the Ten Words, the Priesthood tablet is about Adam and the Kingdom tablet is about Eve (see pages 80-81). Likewise, another aspect of the two trees in Eden and the two pillars of Solomon’s Temple is their representation of the Man and the Woman. It was through the Lord’s blessing of Eve that the priest-kingdom of Adam would multiply and take dominion over the earth.
So although Jachin was razed to the ground, he was only put into a deep sleep. A Moabite “rib” taken from the side of the old order would begin the construction of the new, in the same way that Gentile blood restored the anemic faith of Bethlehem under Boaz, and Israel under Christ in the first century. The spiritual marriage implied in the “bridal” pillar of Boaz reversed the incest of Moab’s mother, and the adultery of Israel with Midianite women at the behest of Moab.
Since Moabites were among the pagan wives of Jewish men whose marriages were condemned after the exile (Nehemiah 13:23-27), this “rib” is only symbolically Moabite. It represents the faithful remnant of adulterous Israel upon whose dry bones the Lord would place new flesh (Ezekiel 37:4-6).
As an illustration of the “bridal” aspect of Israel’s death and resurrection, raising these dry bones to life was a reversal of the scattering of the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem before the sun, moon, and stars whom they loved—including Chemosh (Jeremiah 8:1-3). Their bodies lay prostrate before their idols in death, and their bones were scattered around their pagan altars in order to defile them (Ezekiel 6:1-7).
If the assertion of a Moabite “rib” sounds far-fetched, note that the restoration of the covenant after Israel’s failure in the wilderness was ratified not at Sinai but in the land of Moab.
These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab, besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb. (Deuteronomy 29:1)
Babylon, Edom & Arabia Judged
The process of sacrificial renewal begins with a Genesis theme. The “desert of the sea” casts an anti-Garden, anti-Creation pall over the entire wilderness region through which the Euphrates flows to the Persian Gulf. The oracle’s journey south, from Babylon, to Edom, to Kedar, is a geographical tumble, an Adamic Fall.
The prophet links—or chains—the three nations together in a reprise of the condemnation of the primeval Garden, Land, and World. The two-part vision mulls over the “cosmic” interplay between light and darkness in the moral realm, and riffs on the twin Edenic curses upon the fruit of the land and of the womb. Even more enlightening is the fact that this oracle not only harkens back to the Bible’s beginning, but is also a premonition of its end.
For the murder of his brother, Adam’s firstborn, his natural heir, was cursed with barren ground. So this arid eastern strip of the symbolic “dry land” represents the universal spiritual barrenness in the time of Isaiah. This divine sanction likewise resulted from the shedding of innocent blood—the practice of child sacrifice.
The so-called “birthplace of civilization” had a long history of human sacrifice, including children, especially in its later years. So the likening of bloodthirsty Babylon’s sudden fear to the distress of a woman suffering birth pangs is a bitter mockery.
The action shifts from the whirlwind of desolating Medes to the swift-as-wind horsemen who bring the “gospel” of Babylon’s fall to the watchman stationed by the prophet at God’s command.
The “threshed son on the threshing floor” who is comforted by the news is the dynasty of David, the lineage of the Messiah, whose house has been threshed of its chaff under the Law of Moses.
This “son” was conceived on the threshing floor of Boaz, and he purchased a threshing floor on Mount Moriah. It was the site of the Temple that had been razed by the Babylonians. So the place where Abraham offered Isaac was also now a barren ruin.
As a symbol of sight—light amidst the darkness, or a vision in the night—the watchtower motif is also the bridge to the final part of the oracle. But the message now is not one of comfort.
As in Genesis 12, the focus has shifted from the global to the local. Via the watchman in Judah, the action moves to judgments upon the descendants of Esau and Ishmael. These were the first of the natural heirs of Abraham who were overlooked by God in favor of spiritual heirs—younger brothers like Jacob, Joseph, and David.
The prophecy is not two oracles but one of two distinct parts: darkness despite immanent light, then a tragic enlightenment in the darkness. This “evening and morning”—or is it “morning and evening”?—Day of the Lord is a coruscating twofold angelic sword. It epitomizes the rejection of the warnings of the prophets and the subsequent vindication of their words when judgment falls. And its call for a man to discern between moral light and darkness in a world where truth is deliberately laced with serpentine falsehoods is highlighted by its punctuation with twinkling ambiguities.
The error concerning the unity of this two-episode oracle stems from each internal part having its own title. But while the first use of massa is the “burden” of the prophet, the second is a pun—the “journey” or “breaking camp” of the very same inquisitive Edomite as a scout into the desert. There he will lodge with Dedanites and witness King Nebuchadnezzar’s conquest of the desert traders—including the sons of the Ishmaelites who sold Jacob’s spiritual firstborn, Joseph, into slavery (Genesis 37:25-28).
The second twist is also in the main title. “Dumah” is a pun on Idumea (Edom) that means “silence.” The watchman gives the man no answer but a directive that amounts to “Go see for yourself.” Like King Saul, who consulted the prophets when the Philistine armies approached, the Lord refuses to answer him (1 Samuel 28:6, 15). Since he has never listened (that is, obeyed) in the past, he receives no light from God in the present distress. Instead, like Saul in the witch’s dark domain, he is given a vision of his doom. Isaiah and his sons were sent as signs to enlighten Israel, not the mediums and necromancers. For ignoring the prophets, the nations would all be thrust into a thick gloom (Isaiah 8:16-22).
The watchman makes an example of the seeker from Seir as a warning to all the nations who were willfully dwelling in darkness. This “great light” that dawned in the words of Isaiah was not a salvation but a condemnation. The rebel himself—in a terrifying irony—is made the “son” through whom the prophetic fiat lux that he desired will be spoken (John 1:1-5). The man is made the Man who was called to be the light of the world but insisted on learning the hard way. This Edenic barb continues the prophets’ punning of Edom with Adam. Like Esau, Edom is a symbol of the natural man.
This biblical trope also explains why the offspring of Jacob’s natural firstborn is singled out for special vengeance later in the book. God makes an example of Edom in a terrifying parody of child sacrifice. Just as Israel was “God’s firstborn,” Edom as the spiritual “anti-firstborn” is put to the sword and passed through the fire at a divine gathering of all the pagan nations (Isaiah 34; 63:1-6).
This theme culminates in Jesus’ anti-sacrificial vengeance upon first-century Jerusalem. Having slain the Christians, the Sons of God, the Edomite-ruled city at the end of the “Adamic” world has become a spiritual Babylon, the barren harlot seated upon many waters. In response, Christ makes an example of “Edom” before a gathering of idolatrous nations for an anti-Feast of Booths.
Revelation portrays the ritual slaughter of the Herodian “anti-Christ” as a “son of the herd” in a scathing parody of the Levitical ascension offering. This human sacrifice defiled and destroyed the corrupted Temple, annihilated the priesthood, and finished forever the stream of sacrificial blood in the Garden of God; it also avenged the blood of Abel and all the subsequent “little brothers” of history.
This scenario also sheds light upon the Apostle Paul’s pairing of Esau and Pharaoh in Romans 9:6-17. The rulers of Jerusalem would be “hated” (an idiom for the rejection of a natural heir), yet God had raised them up for the same reason He raised up Pharaoh, the king whose nation’s firstborn the Lord slew in a single night: “…that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”
In the blazing fires of its utter destruction, Mount Moriah was “un-Zioned” and transmogrified into Mount Sinai in Arabia. Like the seeker from Seir, “Edomite” Jerusalem magnified the severity of God and was unwittingly made a glorious light to the world.
The watchman’s replacement of morning with night inverts the order in Genesis 1, and the prophet puns Arab (Arabia) with ereb (evening). The Edomite will lodge “by evening” or “in Arabia” and see the face of the God of Jacob (Genesis 33:9-10; Exodus 33:18-20).
The hidden meanings of The Oracle of Edom and The Oracle of Arabia are thus The Burden of Silence and The Journey to Darkness.
As a unit, Isaiah 21 describes a windswept world of dumb idols and fruitless spirituality where there is no true word and no true light. In Hebrew, “If you will enquire, enquire” evokes the sound of the Hebrew for “formless and void” in Genesis 1:1.
As in the Book of Revelation, Babylon is like Babel, and Edom is like Adam, the foolish man who lacked the light of the Spirit of God, and who failed to foresee the coming wind of judgment that would scatter Mankind from the Gate of God.
The oracle ends with a command for Edom to provide bread and water to the remnant of the Kedarites. It is a veiled reminder of his mistreatment of brother Israel in the wilderness (Numbers 20:14-21), his recent gloating over the razing of Jerusalem (Psalm 137:7-8) and his wicked betrayal of the survivors (Obadiah 1:10-14).
Under Babylon, both geographically and militarily, these two rejected heirs of Abraham (the curse upon the womb) would be disinherited of their kingdoms (the curse upon the land).
Jerusalem Judged
The oracle against Jerusalem has an Exodus theme—the coming of the sword and the protection of the house. The approaching threat to “God’s firstborn” is the armies of King Sennacherib. If the house of David is lost, the Messianic line will be cut off.
As the Division step, the uncovering of Judah corresponds to the tearing of robes, the mourning to the confession of sin in the liturgy, and the sackcloth to the darkness of the firmament.
The Passover element explains the puzzling inclusion of the palace intrigue concerning the doorkeeper. Shebna, the self-exalting secretary, would be removed from office and replaced with Eliakim, the faithful household steward. Shebna would be “uncovered” and his robe of office given to Eliakim.
This judgment was a sign to Judah and Jerusalem. In Passover terms, Shebna was the “son” who died so that Eliakim might be the “son” who was redeemed. Shebna pictured the coming humiliation and expulsion of the old rulers (death), and Eliakim the restoration of the house of David in the new World order (resurrection).
In that day, the names of the household gods and the gods of the nations would be forgotten; but the words of God would be taught to the sons of Israel and written upon the doorposts of every Jewish house across the empire that the judgment of God might pass over them (Deuteronomy 6:4-15).
As a unit, the sequence works through the heptamerous Creation and Harvest patterns simultaneously, but the contents are all in the negative—curses instead of blessings.
However, upon closer inspection this Exodus Cycle also works as two sevenfold pillars. The twist in this instance is the reversal of the order of Jachin and Boaz. Kingdom comes first with the barrenness of “Eve”—a city besieged. Priesthood follows with the death of “Adam”—the supplanting of its keeper. In an ironic sense, the Lord comes as an enemy. Like the serpent in Eden, He works his way inwards: an attack upon the “bride” leads to a condemnation of the feckless Adam.
Both columns describe a threat from God with a narrow escape. That means they are a warning of inescapable judgments to come, but also a sure promise of hope. The message is that the Passover deliverance of Jerusalem under Hezekiah is a promise of salvation via a wilderness; not a deliverance from death but an earnest of national resurrection.
The restoration of Jerusalem would correct the inverted pattern that resembled the Adamic corruption in Eden. Ezra the Levite (bread) would re-establish true worship (Priesthood); Nehemiah the cup-bearer (wine) would rebuild the city walls (Kingdom).
Tyre & Sidon Judged
Tyre and Sidon together symbolized the Gentile “Sea,” the “waters under the Land” of Israel. But here, the two ancient port cities—the rock and the fishing station, represent the land and sea of Day 3.
The Leviticus theme is found in its condemnation of spiritual prostitution for material wealth. As mentioned, Ezekiel’s censure of actual Tyre shifts to spiritual Tyre—the king of Judah and the High Priest (Ezekiel 26-29). The connection is reprised in Revelation to describe first-century Jerusalem, the proud city that behaved like Jezebel, the princess of Sidon (1 Kings 16:31). Instead of believing like the humble widow of Sidon (1 Kings 17:8-24; Luke 4:26), she sat like a queen and declared, “I am no widow…” (Revelation 18:7).
Day 3 symbolism is inverted in the warning that there would be no escape for Tyre either by Land or by Sea. The Ascension theme is inverted in the Lord’s shaming of the pompous of the Land. But Day 3 (nature: grain and fruit from the earth) is often a promise of Day 7 glory (culture: the sacramental bread and wine of the priest-king who mediates before heaven). So despite the spoiling of the ships filled with grain, the stronghold of the sea would rise again from the deep, restored by God for the sake of the Temple.
Once the seventy years of Israel’s stolen sabbaths were repaid, Tyre would return to her trade. But her commerce would now furnish the true worship of the priestly people of God. Israel would no longer compromise with idolaters to enjoy prosperity, but would trust in God and receive it as a gift: the wealth of Tyre would come to the Temple as it did at the hand of Hiram. Under Persian rule, the Temple was rebuilt and the Jews were vindicated before all nations. This is yet another echo of the lesson of the sacramental trees: submission to heaven (Jachin) brings dominion on earth (Boaz).
The Judgment of the Land
The mention of the seventy years in the preceding oracle leads to the final judgment upon the whole Land. Babylon had wasted the kingdoms of the earth, so Babylon would likewise be wasted.
This whole land shall become a ruin and a waste, and these nations shall serve the king of Babylon seventy years. Then after seventy years are completed, I will punish the king of Babylon and that nation, the land of the Chaldeans, for their iniquity, declares the Lord, making the land an everlasting waste. (Jeremiah 25:11-12)
As the fourth oracle in the sevenfold Boaz pillar, this “universal” judgment corresponds to Numbers as a comprehensive cutting off of the old generation.
In festal terms, it is Pentecost, the giving of the Law under which the people would be judged if they transgressed. As at Mount Sinai, when Israel worshiped the golden calf, the jubilant singing would be silenced by the judgment of God.
In Creation terms, even the host of heaven, including the sun and the moon whom the idolaters on earth worshiped would be punished and shamed.
Jachin and Boaz are also hidden in the text, but in reverse order. The judgment topples the culture (Kingdom), and then proceeds to invert nature (Priesthood). Not only is the World being returned to the wild; the reverse order is God turning the World upside down. He is debasing the proud and exalting the humble.
Just as Job was stripped of his kingly wealth (clothing) and then his priestly health (flesh), this judgment of the whole Land shakes not only the pillars of culture (cities and houses), but also the pillars of nature (trees and huts).
The center of the greater Boaz pillar (21-27) is thus the tearing down of the two pillars of the “old creation” order, the World that was judged under the “deluge” of Babylonian troops. This is an allusion to the placement of Adam’s Pentecost, the giving of the law concerning the two trees in the Sanctuary of Eden at the center of Genesis 2 (see page 383). That was the establishment of the Social order, and this is a destruction of the Social order.
The sacramental trees were the Garden precursors of the bread and wine of the prophetic priest-kings. The prophet confiscates the “wine” of the nations in its description of the end of commerce, culture, music, celebration, and the supply of actual wine. He then denies access to the Tree of Life in a confiscation of the staff of bread. As in Eden, the presumptious prodigal wine of celebration becomes the meager bread of suffering.
At the beginning of Isaiah 24, the Lord promises to empty the Land. By its end, the heavens and the earth are emptied out, and He even switches off the Lights. The prophetic journey, like that in Genesis 1-5, and that of the High Priest on the Day of Atonement, is an ascent to heaven that deposes godless rulers, then a descent back to a primordial earth that has been washed clean.
The glory departs, the Land is stripped bare, and all are rendered naked before God. But the glory of the Lord that had departed “Egypt” as a pillar of fire would return—not to Sinai, the Pentecost mount of death, but to Zion, the Trumpets mount of resurrection. And that leads us into the restoration of Israel in chapter 25.
This structure of the Episode itself is not sevenfold. It follows the fivefold Covenant pattern as an allusion to the Pentateuch. But it omits the final step. Its four Cycles correspond to Genesis (the land made formless and void), Exodus (rejoicing turned to mourning), Leviticus (testing for saints, terror for sinners), and Numbers (the old rulers are cut off). But like those whose bodies fell in the wilderness, the World is denied its Deuteronomy—its Succession.
The Resurrection of the Land
The Trumpets/Deuteronomy step musters the remnant of Israel.
While a fivefold pattern is vertical (from heaven to earth), the fourfold pattern of this Episode is horizontal—the compass points or “corners/wings” of the Land. The four horns of the Bronze Altar “earth” were bloodied in judgment. God’s people are now gathered by the four winds of heaven to the Incense Altar of fragrant burial spices for a reconstruction of the army of dry bones.
The four Cycles correspond to the four faces of the cherubim of the Lord’s chariot of wrath—the faces of a lion, an ox, an eagle, and a man (Ezekiel 1:10). This motif appears numerous times in the Bible, and the order of the faces gets rearranged as required in order to make a point.1
The Face of a Lion:
The Lord is the conquering king who has subdued all the beastly kings of the earth (Psalms 18:47-88; 47:3).
The Face of an Ox:
He is a compassionate priest, a stronghold for the poor, a mighty ruler who is also a humble servant.
The Face of an Eagle:
He is a winged avenger who lifts the people to a celebratory feast at the mountain of God (Exodus 24:9-11).
The Face of a Man:
Finally, He is the true heir of the earth, the son born to patient Abraham in a barren land, not the son born to impatient Lot who suffered ruin in the cities of the fertile plain.
These four faces were the banners of the tribes at the corners of the arrangement in Numbers 2. This was a cruciform “ziggurat” pegged out upon the ground, with the Tent of God at the center as the Garden Sanctuary as the peak of a symbolic holy mountain. This mobile construct prefigured Zion and its “chariot” Temple, a mountain which, unlike Sinai, could be ascended by all.2
The Redemption of Israel
The theme of this chapter is the Covenant Sanctions—the Day of the Lord for which the righteous patiently wait.
As a two-edged sword, this day brings both blessings and curses. The righteous are vindicated, “passed over” while God judges the Land. Under a new covenant, their sins will be covered (atoned for) and they will inherit the promises (Jeremiah 31:34). But the wicked be exposed, shamed, and cut off.
The prophet represents Moses by giving Judah a song in the Oath section of the chapter (26:1-8). He then turns to face the Lord as the representative of the people, and continues the song as a Davidic psalm, interceding for the righteous and imprecating the wicked.
Bearing the flaming sword in this “Garden” rite, he is liturgically “rebuilding the tabernacle of David” in the Land (Isaiah 16:5, Amos 9:11), raising the old Sanctuary in a new form. The Ark is returned but the Law is no longer hidden in a box; it is written on the hearts of the people (Jeremiah 31:33). And the blessed submission of Obed-Edom the Gittite (“servant” of “red” from Gath) is the greater subduing of the Garden, the Land, and the World under the rules of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Mordecai (2 Samuel 6:12; Esther 9:3-4).
The Kingdom step (Isaiah 26:13-15) is Adamic: the Lord is a greater Solomon who has increased the borders of the Land via spiritual influence. He is contrasted with the dead kings of the nations (Isaiah 14:18) whose names have been blotted out of history.
The Prophecy step (Isaiah 26:16-19) is “bridal”: the spiritual wilderness, windswept and barren, would give birth to the dead of Israel. Judah’s barren queens are constrasted with fragrant Hadasseh (“myrtle tree”).
The Episode ends with a call to the Jews to close the doors while the Lord passes over the houses of the Persian empire in a final purge of the remnant leaven of the old Canaanite order.
The Succession of Israel
The two-tree Hierarchy section of Isaiah concludes with an “Edenic” promise that God will rescue Israel from her draconian captors. The same scenario is played out in John 8:2-11 as a reprise of the failure in Eden. Jesus delivers the Woman caught in adultery from the cold-blooded accusers who deceived her in order to attack the Man.
The Episode is fivefold, implying the restoration of the Mosaic Covenant before the reconquest of the Land.
The slaying of the sea dragon created in Genesis is the end of the threat of total extermination by Gentile powers—the swallowing up of the Land by the Sea, as in the days of Noah.
Edenic imagery in the Exodus Cycle alludes to the multiplication of Jacob’s seventy and the construction of the Tabernacle as a new Sanctuary for the World. The absense of thorns is the result of the removal of the curse of Israel’s blood-drawing “Cainite” brothers.
The altars of the pagan fertility gods have been replaced with an altar to the true God in the Leviticus step, a sign of spiritual fruit thanks to the pruning accomplished by the captivity.
A reflection on Numbers brings a lament over the ruins of Jerusalem for its idolatries and adulteries, and a promise that she whom God had cursed would again be blessed.
The promise of the Deuteronomy step removes the curse of the Jachin sequence, from Babylon to Egypt.
The double uses of “In that day…” in 27:1-2 and 27:12-23 suggest a secondary structure, a doxological “word-and-response” based on the Ten Words. The priest proclaims the odd number steps (as Greater Adam) and the people respond in the even number steps in “bridal” song (as Greater Eve). Each dyad corresponds to a book of Moses, so this Episode, as the end of the Exodus Volume, is also a new set of tablets to replace what was broken (Jeremiah 31:32).
The Missing Lintel
Since the two bronze pillars of Volume 2 of Isaiah represent the colossal doorposts of an international Passover event, what of the missing lintel?
“Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it.” (Exodus 12:7)
The blood daubed on the lintel—between the tops of the doorpost “legs”—signified a circumcised house. It was a claim upon the promises to Abraham concerning the preservation of his seed. But it was also a claim upon the promises to Moses, the infant who was saved from the sword of Pharaoh.
At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision. (Exodus 4:24-26)
Moses’ marriage to the daughter of a Noahic priest-king was a reminder of Israel’s mediation for the nations. But Israel was now uncircumcised in heart, so there was no protecting blood.
There was still blood, however—the “cup of curses” of the jealous inspection for adultery (Numbers 5:11-31). As in Eden, and in the days of Noah, the godless union of the Priestly and Kingly peoples resulted in a denial of the Prophetic office to Man. So God ordained Jeremiah to bloody the lintel.
Instead of a circumcision between the legs, there was an outpouring of wine—an unstoppable issue of menstrual blood under a curse of barrenness (Luke 8:43). Like Jerusalem the harlot, all the idolatrous nations would drink from this cup of judgment, and they would stagger and fall. Babylon, the first to rebel, would be the last to drink (Jeremiah 25:15-29).
In the new order, redeemed Israel would write the words of the Lord upon the “Adamic” doorposts of their houses and upon their “bridal” gates (Deuteronomy 6:8-9; 22:13-21).
And Gentile believers, both Adams and Eves, would ascend the mountain of God. Notice that Syria (Naaman) and Sidon (the widow) are at the Ascension steps of the mighty legs.
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- See Appendix 6: Peter J. Leithart, “Cherubic Order.”
- See Appendix 7: Michael Bull, “Jacob’s Ziggurat.”
