Bully's Blog

“Once prosperous (gold), we forgot God and dismantled marriage (girls) and then relied upon military power rather than God’s protection to maintain peace with our enemies (guns).”

In Deuteronomy 17:14-20, Moses gave Israel three laws for her future kings. As moderns who wrongly assume the Bible is merely “propositional truth,” we not only fail to see these three laws as a continuum, and thus fail to identify them in Bible history, we also fail to interpret contemporary history in their brilliant “triune” light.

As expected, the laws themselves follow the Covenant pattern (precisely the same patterns we have been observing in Galatians), and are thus a microcosm of the entire book:

TRANSCENDENCE

Creation (Genesis – Ark of the Covenant)

This first stanza predicts the pattern of events to come, and they are “sacrificial architecture.” However, Israel was not yet humble, not yet ready for kingdom. Their sin was the same sin as that of Adam. They saw kingdom (equality with God, Phil. 2:6-7) as something to be grasped, not something to be received as a gift after being qualified through humble obedience.

The symmetry between the gift of the Land from God in line two and the king in line 6 shows that even the king was to be a gift from God, His legal representative, His “image,” authorized to carry out judgments from His great white (ivory) throne.

HIERARCHY

Division (Exodus – Veil/Circumcision)

Just as the Laws concerning Israel’s kings were decreed by God, so the act of choosing a blameless king (Hierarchy) would follow the process of sacrifice. The king would be set apart from his brothers (as a substitute/mediator) just as Israel was set apart from the nations. We can see the Ethical/Social/Physical nature of the world here as Seed/Flesh/Skin: Christ/Israel/Gentiles. Israel was a skinned sacrifice, a “peeled fruit” which carried the seed. If the king was a Gentile, there would be no Covenant Succession. This goes beyond the circumcision of the flesh to the circumcision of the heart (Leviticus 26:41). Saul was rejected because he acted like an uncircumcised Gentile king, an authority unto himself.

Notice that the king was the centre of stanza 1 as the source of Law (Day 4), but in stanza 2 the command of the Lord is at the centre. And there is no line 7, no Succession. Israel’s problem was kings who did not act like brothers, but who behaved like Pharaoh, one who did not know Joseph, Israel’s brother. This brings us to…

ETHICS

Ascension (Leviticus – Bronze Altar)

The people were not to return to Israel Ethically (in their hearts, desiring a golden calf), Socially (through intermarriage with idolaters), or Physically (which was included as part of the curses in Deuteronomy 28:68, fulfilled under Titus in AD70):

And the Lord will bring you back in ships to Egypt, a journey that I promised that you should never make again; and there you shall offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but there will be no buyer.”

Israel’s destiny was to “serve the nations” as priests (as in The Feast of Booths), not as slaves to their gods (the Book of Judges).

This explains why Egypt appears at the “Deuteronomy” step in this legal stanza, representing both the “swarms” of Day 5 and the plagues upon Pharaoh. The horses at Conquest match the ones at Division. For Joshua, they were not the chariots of Pharaoh but the chariots of the Captain of the Lords hosts.

Ascension has two stanzas, the second one presenting the Covenant scroll, although here it is not sevenfold but fivefold, which means it is not an inheritance as it is in Revelation 5, but a stone tablet.

(Leviticus – Table of Facebread)

What is interesting is that when we get to this point in the Revelation, Jesus opens His inheritance scroll to knock off Pharaoh (Herod) and claim the nations, and the four “Spirit horses” of the Gospel ride out! By chapter 19, He has multiplied horses, but they are not Egyptian ones. They are the saints as the Lord’s hosts, no longer angelic but glorified men.

Interestingly the “return” at the Levitical step of the Bronze Altar is still at the Levitical step here, which reflects the relationship between the fivefold pattern of Moses and the sevenfold pattern of Israel (see these charts from Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key for more on that. It’s amazing).

Testing (Numbers – Lampstand)

Well, that covers the “guns,” now we get to the girls and the gold. I had expected the “Guns, Girls and Gold” to be the threefold Ethics in this cycle but the horses have been connected to the Conquest of the Land, borders which God would protect. If Israel was faithful, God would keep the nations at bay and she would have no need of horses. If she was unfaithful, God would first allow the Land to be invaded, and finally the City and then the Temple destroyed.

Women and gold appear at the centre for typological reasons. Gold and fire (desire) are represented by the Lampstand. The gold represents the godly king, the Adam (who is wiser than a bronze “earthy” serpent because he is holy) and the fire his legal love for the Woman. The book of Israel’s harlotry is Numbers, the book of Testing by serpents and a serpentine king, whose false prophet caused Israel to commit adultery with idolaters.

This fivefold stanza follows the Covenant pattern, with the Transcendent Law at the beginning, an uncircumcised heart at Hierarchy, a deceived heart at Ethics, plunder (a Covenant blessing) allowed to become a plague (a Covenant curse) at Sanctions, becoming a false inheritance of earthly riches at Succession.

The word “multiply” is used repeatedly, and true “multiplication” is not supposed to come until Maturity, from the hand of God. The multiplication of guns, girls and gold (symbols all sourced in Adam’s theft of kingdom from God’s right hand) is a form of sorcery. It is an attempt to gain God’s blessings without prior obedience. That is, to gain success without following God’s directions. This is where the glorious “swarms” of Day 5 become locusts who eat the Pentecostal harvest, and the clouds of incense become clouds of sulphur.

It is interesting that these five lines also echo the architectural progression of the Ten Words (above, beside, below):

How beautiful is that? Silver always seems to turn up at that point. It is the point where the Bride is either redeemed or sold, harking back to Adam’s failure to protect Eve, to Abraham’s purchase from Ephron for Sarah’s burial, and also Achan’s theft of gold, silver and a robe.

Maturity (Deuteronomy – Incense: Legal Witness)

James Jordan notes that the reason the wisdom literature is so mysterious to us is that we have not had the books of Moses and Samuel drummed into us. The kings of Israel had to copy out the Law for themselves, which I had never noticed before. For instance, Jordan sees Ecclesiastes as a mediation on the Feast of Booths. [2]

What is really excellent here is that Maturity is the “Deuteronomy” step, which means “Second Law,” because Moses repeated the Law to a new generation. It was the macrocosm of the second set of tablets given to old Israel after her golden calf sin at Sinai. Not only this but the phrase “a copy of this law” appears at the centre. The king was to be a son of God, an image of the Father. His obedience was to be a sign of the goodness of God: Israel’s God not only spoke (unlike idols), He was worthy to be obeyed.

I love the fact that Maturity concerns “legal witness,” and here the king shows his submission to God through his submission to Levitical priests. As the king watched over Israel (as her shepherd), so God watched over the king through his priestly angels “filled with eyes.”

SANCTIONS

Conquest (Joshua – Mediators)

This is the “Day 6″ of the cycle, and the theme is Adam in the Garden of God, humbling himself that he might be given kingdom, the second tree, as a gift, and therefore have God’s complete blessing to subdue the Land, instead of the partial one which Adam received. The fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom, appears at the center of numerous Covenant cycles, sometimes as “trembling.” Instead, Adam feared a lesser authority. Jordan observes that Solomon, with his interest in studying nature, “naming biology,” is presented as a greater Adam.

SUCCESSION

Glorification (Judges – Representing God to the Nations)

Finally, we come to Covenant Succession, the inheritance of the faithful man. This one is explained by my subheadings, but I would also note that the “right hand or left” is a reference to Kingdom and Priesthood, both of which are under the authority of the Prophet. It is at this step (Maturity) that Moses sits on a rock and Aaron (Priest) and Hur (of Judah: King) hold up his arms. All three were there at Ascension, but not yet united (separate elements, stoicheia). At Maturity, Priest, King and Prophet are one (a holy hybrid, the High Priest) [3]. Hence, Ehud’s faithful left-handed stabbing of Eglon was a priestly act, not a kingly one.

History:

In his downfall, Solomon actually reversed the order of the three Laws, which began a process of “de-Creation.” He amassed 666 talents of gold so that silver became commonplace (hence the symbols 666 and “wisdom” are used to signify the temple-building Herods in the Revelation), he took many idolatrous wives, and then became a trader in Egyptian horses. His fall was Ethical, Social, then Physical, as the Land was taken away.

Application:

We can apply this to modern Western Culture. Faithfulness to God brought global conquest, faithfulness in marriage, then prosperity and great wisdom (science). Once prosperous (gold), we forgot God and dismantled marriage (girls) and then relied upon military power rather than God’s protection to maintain peace with our enemies (guns).

As one commentator said today, regarding the possibility of another brutal intervention into a brutal civil war in the Middle East, instead of sending soldiers we ought to be sending missionaries. Instead of sending a swarm of sulphuric locusts, we should be sending heavenly birds and schools of fish.
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[1] See Esther and the Ten Words.
[2] See How To Read the Bible.
[3] See Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key for more on this fascinating subject of “holy mixtures”.