The Shape of Matthew 24-25: Analysis – Part 5

Following the crushing of the serpent by a better Man, the Sanctuary would finally be safe for the Woman.

Read the Overview.  Read Part 1.  Read Part 2.  Read Part 3.  Read Part 4.

Just as the two trees of Eden are found at the center of Genesis 2, followed by God’s desire to make a suitable helper for the Man, so an assessment of “daughter Israel” follows the “two pillar” structure of the previous parable. For the fifth step of the sequence, Jesus combines wedding customs with numerous biblical bridal images to describe the “hosts” of Israel. That fact that He achieves this multifaceted allusion with such effortless simplicity shows a familiarity not only with the Old Testament but also with its inspired internal logic.

The ten lamps correspond with the fifth feast listed in Leviticus 23 (Trumpets), which was also known as the “ten days of awe” leading up to the Day of Atonement. This, in turn, referred to the intended ten day journey from Egypt to Canaan before the “atonement” of the conquest of Jericho. These ten virgins with lamps are an image of the troops of Israel prepared for conquest. Of course, the unreadiness of Israel to “enter into God’s rest” despite the memory of the recent conquest of the Egyptian army under the pillar of fire and smoke was being repeated in the first century.

The ten virgins also correspond to the ten lampstands in the Holy Place of the Temple of Solomon (2 Chronicles 4:7). Ten lamps with seven lights each is a total of seventy lights, so the “sun, moon, and five planets” rulers of the single menorah in the Tabernacle were now expanded into an “angelic” military troop that represented the seventy nations of the world (Genesis 10). These seventy lights served a similar purpose to the seventy elders who dined upon Sinai (Exodus 24:9) and the seventy palm trees of the “Edenic” oasis of Elim (Exodus 15:27). The readiness of Israel for the imminent return of Christ would be an eternal witness to the nations for whom Israel mediated.

All glorious is the princess in her chamber, with robes interwoven with gold. In many-colored robes she is led to the king, with her virgin companions following behind her. (Psalm 45:13-14)

Who is she that looketh forth as the morning, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners? (Song of Solomon 6:10)

Besides picturing the nation as being “awesome as an army with banners,” a bridal host bearing the torches of Gideon, this gathering is divided into light and darkness, just like the cloud that accompanied Israel from Egypt to Canaan. Just as the previous parable gives us the priest and king “doorposts,” so this parable gives us the “third pillar,” the prophetic body, the bridal, heaven-and-earth Shekinah waiting upon the threshold of the Temple (Ezekiel 9:3).¹ This pillar presents the Jews as mediators between heaven and earth—those would heed the words of Christ and shed light upon the nations, and those who would disbelieve His warnings and be exiled to outer darkness (Matthew 8:12). The lamb “with seven eyes” as the Lampstand of Moses would come for His multipled counterpart, the hosts of Solomon’s Temple, the covenant Head desiring the covenant Body. This is the same image as the Ark being received once the new house was complete, and the mention of both light and darkness.

And when the priests came out of the Holy Place, a cloud filled the house of the LORD, so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the LORD filled the house of the LORD. Then Solomon said, “The LORD has said that he would dwell in thick darkness. I have indeed built you an exalted house, a place for you to dwell in forever.” (1 Kings 8:10-12)

As “suitable helpers” for the ministry of the Levites, these virgins (including the daughter of Jephthah, Judges 11:37-40) served as “living sacrifices,” picturing the bridal city who awaited the true Lamb of God. Just as the Levites bore the curse of barrenness upon the land (Genesis 3:17-19; Deuteronomy 10:9), so these virgins bore the curse upon the womb (Genesis 3:16). This is implied in the name of the prophetess Anna (Luke 2:36-38), a reference to the barren womb of Hannah, the woman who vowed that a son from God would be a Nazirite from birth and serve in the Tabernacle (1 Samuel 1:1-22). The “bridal element” of the Tabernacle was the fragrant Incense Altar, and that is where Samuel slept as a boy (1 Samuel 3:3). As with the external pillars, these internal pieces of furniture imaged the Triune Office: the Table represented Priesthood, the Lampstand Kingdom, so the natural resting place for Samuel the Prophet was in front of the Incense Altar.

The division of the virgins into five and five represents the fingers of two hands, thus corresponding to the division of the Gentile “sheep and goat” nations of the oikoumene later in the chapter. The numbers ten and fifty are military in nature (Exodus 18:21, 25; Deuteronomy 1:15; 1 Samuel 8:12; 1 Kings 18:4; 2 Kings 1:14; Mark 6:40). Boaz also took ten elders of the city to serve as legal witnesses to his dealings with the kinsman of Elimelech (Ruth 4:2).

Since “one greater than Solomon” was here (Matthew 12:42), for those familiar with all of this imagery, the question was a two-edged sword—as Solomon demonstrated at the beginning of his reign, wisdom is an outcome of faithfulness. The word used here is not sophia (cleverness or skill) but phroneo (prudence, that is, personal opinion fleshing itself out in action). The same word is used of the wise man who built his house upon the rock, a condemnation of the self-styled Temple-builder, Herod the Great, whose house was being built on an unstable political treaty between the Jewish “Land” and the Gentile “Sea.” The prudence of the wise virgins was the result of their faithfulness to the Words of Christ over the words of the human rulers of the day. Would the virgins who served at this Tabernacle be like the faithful virgins in Exodus 38:8 or the unfaithful virgins in 1 Samuel 2:22? The wise virgins were not merely hearers of the Word, but also doers. And they were not the “Martha” sort of doers—their primary concern was the bridegroom (priesthood – Oath), not the feast itself (kingdom – Sanctions).² These ten virgins were betrothed to Tabernacle service like the daughter of Jephthah, but would they be waiting for their Lord like the prophetess Anna?

This fifth step in the overall sequence corresponds to Trumpets. Like the fifth letter in Revelation, this is a wake-up call, the silver trumpets as a summoning of the bridal host of Israel. Would the armies of God be ready for conquest as “virgins” who did not sleep with women when under vows for holy war (1 Samuel 21:4-5; Revelation 14:4)? The bridal nature of Israel’s military is also related to the requirement for Nazirites (both men and women) to let their hair grow until their vow was completed (Numbers 6:1-5; Acts 18:18; Revelation 9:8). Perhaps the abstinence from sex is also a reference to the access that David and his men were given to the Tabernacle showbread: the ten tables of showbread in Solomon’s Temple were paired with the ten lampstands as priest-king “couples.”

And he made ten golden lampstands as prescribed, and set them in the temple, five on the south side and five on the north. He also made ten tables and placed them in the temple, five on the south side and five on the north. (2 Chronicles 4:7-8)

In the first century, that fire was the testimony of the Apostolic Church, a flaming sword that split Israel in two like an Abrahamic sacrifice. The fact that the lamps were divided to the south and to the north is another correspondence to the spiritual “splitting” of Olivet north-south into Gerizim and Ebal, the blessing of the beatitudes and the curses of the woes. Half of the city would go out into exile but the rest would not be cut off (Zechariah 14:1-5). This was a division of the Jews. The final parable would describe a division of the Gentiles.

Creation – Genesis

• The images here in the Creation stanza are the bridal version of the description of Jesus’ attributes in Revelation 1. The primary referent is of course the Woman being brought to meet the Man.
• The structure shows that “likening” something to something else is an act of judgment, hence the correspondence to light and the Law. Each of the seven letters to the “lampstand” churches of Asia begins with an attribute of Jesus against which the pastor of the church is “measured.”
• The placement of the heavens corresponds to the Levitical ascension offerings and the Ascension of Christ.
• The central dyad of the Ten Words is comprised of the prohibition of murder and adultery. Leviticus, a book focused on death and sex (the land and the womb) is at the center of the Torah. The kingly abuses were thus intended to be precluded by the voluntary abstinances made by the Levites and the Tabernacle virgins as “living sacrifices.”
• As in Revelation, the “multiplied” lamps appear in step 5 as “hosts.”

Division – Exodus

• The Division stanza speaks of the preparation of Israel for service to God. This corresponds to the inspection of the seven churches as a new Hierarchy that would mediate between God and the nations as examples of His goodness and His severity.
• The thread here seems to be the Tabernacle furniture as it corresponds to the Creation Week. If that is the case, then the foolish virgins did not heed the Word, the wise believed God and thus could see the unseen by faith, and the foolish trusted in the Old Covenant “bread” instead of the New Covenant abundance of the “oil and wine” of the Spirit (Revelation 6:6). The blazing torches of the wise virgins were thus a suitable counterpart to the Shekinah that was coming to fill the house.

Ascension – Leviticus

• Like Gandalf, Jesus is never late. He arrives precisely when He intends to. His arrival is timed perfectly—like God visiting Eden at just the wrong moment for Adam, or like Samuel appearing just after Saul had disobediently offered the sacrifice. It would be the same when Jesus returned and destroyed the Herods with the breath of His mouth, the same breath that He had bestowed upon the disciples, given up on the cross in His death, and send from heaven on the Day of Pentecost.
• There was nothing sinful in their being asleep. This is akin to the deep sleep of Adam, Noah, and Abraham, but contained within their role as the response to the covenant initiator, not as the covenant initiator. It was the lack of prophetic “vision” that separated the true from the false (2 Corinthians 3:12-16). In Tabernacle terms, the line corresponds to the Veil of the Temple as a symbolic death (Matthew 27:51; Hebrews 10:20). In bridal terms, the tearing of this veil is the breaking of an architectural hymen—the opening of the Veil on the Day of Atonement was for the purpose of continuing history through the mitigation of the curses on the fruit of the Land and the womb (Deuteronomy 22:15).
• The midnight cry corresponds to the call of the watchmen of the Temple.³ “Behold!” is the light of the Word in its liturgical setting at the center of the pattern of worship. “Go forth” is the mustering of the Covenant Body. At Oath/Sanctions, the blessed and the cursed correspond to the two goats on the Day of Atonement and the two women in Revelation—the bride and the whore. Notice that the sleep and the rising correspond in the symmetry—as the darkness of Passover (the call to mission) and the reckoning of Atonement after the “ten days of awe” (the assessment of the mission).
• Military “lamps” were torches dipped in fuel. These lamps, having wicks, are household items, the domain of Eve. They correspond to the trimming of the wicks by the priests in the House of God, an act carried out by Jesus as He “trims the wicks” of the “watcher (almond) trees” in Revelation 2-3.

Testing – Numbers

• Located at the Testing – Numbers step, this request from the imprudent virgins is anything but innocent. It is an act of serpentine theft, like the bully who steals your homework. Handing over the oil would result in the condemnation of all the virgins. Notice that the “Word” at the center is that of “the Woman,” the bride who, unlike Eve, is not led astray because she has a better Adam (Matthew 24:24; 1 Timothy 2:14). “Suffice” appears at Maturity/Transformation as it relates to the multiplied “abundance” of plunder or plagues resulting from obedience or disobedience. The word for “foolish” (moros) is the source of the English word “moron.” This dullness is not related to intelligence but to pride. Like the intellectuals virgins were not stupid in the sense of being simple; they were stupid because they thought they could be disobedient and get away with it.
• “Those selling” is related to Jesus’ exhortation to the “Herodian” Church in Laodicea to “buy” from Him fine gold, that is, to bring riches to the Tabernacle (Exodus 38:24). The inability of the saints to “buy or sell” was the expulsion of the saints from the Temple “economy” (the money changers) which had become a den of serpentine thieves under a king who had broken Moses’ laws concerning gold (John 9:22; Revelation 13:16-18; 1 Kings 10:14; Deuteronomy 17:17).
• This stanza, in Tabernacle terms, corresponds to the Lampstand and the “seven stars” of its lights. The deep structure implies that these virgins were not children of Abraham. As James B. Jordan observes, gold is “solid light” and olive oil is “liquid light.” The oil relates to the olive wood in the Temple and the Mount of Olives as the place of the crucifixion.⁴ Olivet was also the sixth mountain in the great “Creation Week” of covenant history, which corresponds it to the Day of Atonement.⁵

Maturity – Deuteronomy

• The actual “plagues and plunder” stanza uses the “dominion” sequence of the Heptateuch (as it relates to the Testing of Adam in the Garden) to present the foolish virgins as the generation of Israel whose bodies fell in the wilderness, while the wise virgins were the “resurrected” Israel that inherited the promises. With this in mind, notice the correspondence of the wedding feast with the marriage feast at the sixth stage of the book of Revelation. In a very real sense, the faithless Jews of the first century abandoned Jesus at the altar.
• Following the Tabernacle/Feast sequence is also helpful: the bridegroom is the “flesh” sacrifice on earth that becomes “bread” on the table of heaven. Those ready are the “lampstand” saints of Pentecost with tongues of fire. They enter in a cloud of fragrant smoke like the High Priest on the Day of Atonement (Leviticus 16:12-13). Those who disobeyed are shut out of the Temple by the pillar of fire and smoke, like the armies of Egypt, or Adam outside the Garden.

Conquest – Joshua

• The use of the covenant pattern puts a clever spin upon each line. The arche, the “In the beginning” is now “afterward.” The other virgins are stuck in Passover mode, trusting in their inherited position as children of Abraham according to the flesh. Because they took the kingdom of God by force (Genesis 3:6, Matthew 4:7-8; Matthew 11:12) their authority as those who possessed the oracles of God (Acts 7:38; Romans 3:2) had been taken from them, along with the kingdom (Matthew 21:43). Jesus’ answer to them is a legal testimony, the New Covenant “Deuteronomy” of the Sermon on the Mount.⁶ What He says at Oath/Sanctions is a sword in His mouth. The “knowledge” at Glorification marries recognition with carnal knowledge, the holy nakedness of unveiled transparency in the presence of God. Thus, in Revelation, this inspection of the virgins uses the image of the “inspection of jealousy” in Numbers 5. Those who rejected the cup of Jesus and refused to examine themselves would be forced to drink it and be examined by Jesus.
• It is worth noting that in the sixth letter in Revelation Jesus promises an open door to the faithful.

Glorification – Judges

• The final stanza is only fivefold, speaking of a covenant promise that is yet unopened, ending at Deuteronomy. Those who did not believe the testimony of the two legal witnesses, the Law and the Prophets, would not believe the testimony of Jesus (Deuteronomy 19:15; Matthew 18:20; Luke 16:31; Revelation 11:11-12; 19:10).

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1. See The Third Tree.
2. See Mary and Martha: Daughters of Zion.
3. See The Final Ascent: Psalm 134.
4. See James B. Jordan, Christ in the Holy of Holies, The Meaning of the Mount of Olives.
5. See The Highest of the Mountains.
6. See Moses’ New Covenant.