A New Land
Analysing the repeated structures of Scripture can bring some insights. Most interpreters would call these speculation, but that’s like saying Middle C is not the same note as High C. Such an attitude renders very sharp people obtuse. And these structures are repeated many more times than there are octaves on the piano.
The Promised Land failed to support Abram during the famine. It also failed to support the flocks of both Abram and Lot. Only after the Lord “purified” the Land with a sacrifice was it again a garden for the people of God. Like Adam, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, but it was animal substitutes that were divided.
An analysis of the structure of this passage shows that the animals are divided at Passover. The ‘wilderness’ centre is God’s prediction of the Hebrews’ slavery in Egypt (Pentecost). At Atonement (Covering), in the darkness of the Most Holy Place, a smoking firepot and flaming torch pass through the divided pieces of the animals.
Luke 4:14-30 follows the same pattern. But it is the unbelieving Jews who are divided from the believing Gentiles. God saved the Sidonian widow from the great famine1, and Naman the Syrian from the ceremonial uncleanness of leprosy.
When they heard these things, all in the synagogue were filled with wrath. And they rose up and drove him out of the town and brought him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they could throw him down the cliff. But passing through their midst, he went away.
Which then, in my nebulous thinking, brings us to Zechariah 14, and its parallel in Revelation 16. The last bowl completed the de-Creation begun by the first. The Lord’s feet stood on a purified Altar-mountain. The old worship was split in two at the birth of the new. Jesus passed through the midst of a divided Judah like a blazing torch, creating a new Promised Land, free of famine. Abraham finally received his heavenly country.
Then Jesus’ glory departed.
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1 The Jewish rulers would end up behaving like that other Sidonian woman, Jezebel, killing God’s prophets.
