Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones is one of the better known passages in that book. It is found in the first half of chapter 37. God raises the dead to new life.

But where did those bones come from? The answer is found earlier in Ezekiel. Specifically, we find in chapter 6:

The word of the LORD came to me: “Son of man, set your face toward the mountains of Israel, and prophesy against them, and say, You mountains of Israel, hear the word of the Lord GOD! Thus says the Lord GOD to the mountains and the hills, to the ravines and the valleys: Behold, I, even I, will bring a sword upon you, and I will destroy your high places. Your altars shall become desolate, and your incense altars shall be broken, and I will cast down your slain before your idols. And I will lay the dead bodies of the people of Israel before their idols, and I will scatter your bones around your altars. Wherever you dwell, the cities shall be waste and the high places ruined, so that your altars will be waste and ruined, your idols broken and destroyed, your incense altars cut down, and your works wiped out. And the slain shall fall in your midst, and you shall know that I am the LORD.”

So they nation is not just dead; they have been judged for idolatry. And God is still able to bring them back.

In the third year — the year of judgment and resurrection — God told Elijah to show himself to Ahab. So, Elijah set out from Zarapheth in Sidon (he’d been hiding in Jezebel’s home territory!) and came toward Samaria.

He met Obadiah, Ahab’s Prime Minister, and told him to find Ahab. Here is how the conversation might have gone:

Elijah: “Well, behold the compromiser! Hey, puppy, tell your master I want to see him.”

Obadiah: “Listen, you fanatic! Because of you a lot of good people have been tortured and killed. Don’t call me a compromiser; I managed to keep a hundred of your fellow prophets alive after you left town! It’s extremists like you who make it harder for all the rest of us.”

Elijah: “Look, if all you softies would come out on the front lines and be counted, maybe we could accomplish something. But no, not you! You’ve got a cushy job with Jezebel. You want that nice retirement. As long as people like you stay in your liberal churches and try to `work in the system,’ we’re never going to get anywhere. Naked confrontation is the only way.”

Obadiah: “Oh, yeah? Well, let me just tell you something, Mr. Hero. Last month Ahab was about to put to death about five hundred of your people, and I talked him out of it. These people were under suspicion because of you and your activities. It was I who saved them. You’re needlessly stirring things up.”

Wait, wait! That’s not how it went, is it? Sadly, though, I imagine if a modern Elijah and a modern Obadiah met, that is probably how it would go.

You see, Elijah knew that he was only part of the solution, and so did Obadiah. God needed both the insider and the outsider. He needed both the prophet and the chamberlain. Is there something here for us, today?

via Biblical Horizons » No. 5: Elijah’s War with Baal.

I think there is something here for us. In fact, I think Jesus believed there was something in it for him.

We here many times about following Jesus in the Gospels–not as a term for faith and conversion but for literally following Jesus around the countryside:

Passing alongside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you become fishers of men.” And immediately they left their nets and followed him. And going on a little farther, he saw James the son of Zebedee and John his brother, who were in their boat mending the nets. And immediately he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired servants and followed him (Mark 1:16-20 ESV).

We find out from the first chapter of John’s Gospel that Jesus already had a relationship with Peter, Andrew, James, and John. They had been prepared for the day Jesus would tell them it was time to go “full time.” Still, as written, this scene reminds us of Elijah again. While he had no argument against Obadiah, when he called Elisha to be his disciple, Elijah expected him to leave all other jobs behind.

So he departed from there and found Elisha the son of Shaphat, who was plowing with twelve yoke of oxen in front of him, and he was with the twelfth. Elijah passed by him and cast his cloak upon him. And he left the oxen and ran after Elijah and said, “Let me kiss my father and my mother, and then I will follow you.” And he said to him, “Go back again, for what have I done to you?” And he returned from following him and took the yoke of oxen and sacrificed them and boiled their flesh with the yokes of the oxen and gave it to the people, and they ate. Then he arose and went after Elijah and assisted him (1 Kings 19:19-21 ESV).

But if Elijah did not demand the same response he got from Elijah, perhaps Jesus had Obadiah’s in his own campaign in Israel.

It seems he did. As Obadiah served Ahab while remaining faithful, so in Jesus’ campaign there were others who helped him but remained embedded in ‘the establishment.”

TO BE CONTINUED

Job is clearly some kind of king. He is the leader of his community. He is the Chief Cornerstone, while Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar are his “three mighty men,” the other corners of the realm. It is because Job is the king that the other men arrive to try and force him to step down.

(The Hebrew word for “army commander” is “corner.” For other examples of chief corners and three other corners, consider David and his three mighty men, Daniel and his three friends, and Jesus with Peter, James, and John. On “corners” and “three mighty men,” see Biblical Horizons 121. Compare also Jesus with the Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate, as discussed above.)

Job as king is the “greatest of the men of the east” (Job 1:3). He employed hundreds of people and fed the poor. The disaster that overcame his household was, thus, a disaster upon the entire realm. The poor were starving, and hundreds of people were either killed or out of work. The sores on Job’s body were a sign of the lesions on the body politic of which he was the head, a point no ancient reader would miss.

This realm or political “house” has fallen because the Chief Corner, Job, has fallen. The other three corners, thus, step in to try and repair it. Their fallacy is not in seeking to restore their society, but in the way they seek to do it. Their desire is for Job to step down by admitting fault, so that one of them can replace him. God’s intention, however, is to take Job and this society through judgment and resurrection, and to reconstitute a new and better society afterwards (as happens in chapter 42).

Job’s position as king or leader of his people has been skillfully analyzed by Rene Girard in Job: The Victim of His People, translated by Yvonne Freccero and published by Stanford University Press in 1987. Despite the many flaws in this book, it makes clear that the attack upon Job came not because he was an ordinary person, but because of his preeminent position in this community, which had fallen into chaos seemingly as a result of God’s judgment upon Job, their “king.”

The book of Job, then, is not just about the sufferings of a righteous man, though it is that in part, and can be preached that way. It is also about chaos in the body politic, and the position of the suffering king within that chaos.

That Job is about kingship links it with three other “wisdom” books, produced by Solomon. Job is about the suffering of the king. Ecclesiastes is about the aged wisdom of the king. Canticles is about the marriage of the king to his people. Proverbs is advice to the king’s son, that he join himself to the company of the wise (personified as Lady Wisdom in chapters 1-9 and 31), and avoid the company of the foolish (personified as Harlot Folly) – something Solomon’s son Rehoboam foolishly failed to do.

While law and obedience are associated with the Sinaitic Era, wisdom and skill are associated with the Kingdom Era. The books of Law are given through Moses, while the books of wisdom are given through Solomon. It seems very likely, then, that Solomon was the author of Job. Indeed, the 28th chapter of Job might just as well be part of Proverbs or Ecclesiastes. Thus, while we cannot know for certain, Solomon is the most likely author of Job.

via Biblical Horizons » No 130: Was Job an Edomite King? (Part 1).

I’m not going to go into details here, but if you read about David in the book(s) of Samuel, you know that he committed some serious sins as king. And these sins led to opposition and rebellion in which his kingdom was endangered.

To take one specific instance: we learn in 2 Samuel 23.34 of “Eliam the son of Ahithophel of Gilo,” Eliam was one of David’s mighty men and Ahithophel was David’s counselor who sided with his son Absalom when Absalom attempted to take his father’s throne (and, as part of that transition, kill David).

Why would Ahithophel turn against David? How about this: Bathsheba was his granddaughter (2 Samuel 11.3). Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s other mighty men, was his Son-in-law, before David got him killed and took Bathsheba for himself. This might shed light on how Ahithophel came up with the idea that Absalom should publicly take ten of David’s concubines… on the roof, where David had first spied Bathsheba.

My point in this little story is that it was no secret. And yet the congregation of Israel sang songs by David. Some acknowledged his sins (most obviously, Psalm 51). But others sounded like this:

O Lord my God, if I have done this,
if there is wrong in my hands,
if I have repaid my friend with evil
or plundered my enemy without cause,
let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
and let him trample my life to the ground
and lay my glory in the dust. Selah

Arise, O Lord, in your anger;
lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
over it return on high.

The Lord judges the peoples;
judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.

Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!
My shield is with God,
who saves the upright in heart.
God is a righteous judge,
and a God who feels indignation every day.

If a man4 does not repent, God5 will whet his sword;
he has bent and readied his bow;
he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
making his arrows fiery shafts.

Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
and is pregnant with mischief
and gives birth to lies.
He makes a pit, digging it out,
and falls into the hole that he has made.
His mischief returns upon his own head,
and on his own skull his violence descends.

Now I’m not sure what to make of all this. Job seems the opposite of David in that everyone knew that David could not claim to have never sinned in these ways. (Is this Psalm only allowable because it was written before Bathsheba? Or is there also a reminder of David’s own exile and the losing of the son he loved? It is interesting that the first Psalm attributed to David (Psalm 3) is explicitly about Absalom.) But certainly many took his troubles and his fleeing from Jerusalem as a sign that God was finally condemning him for his sins and removing him from his office.

But they were wrong. God vindicated David in the end, just as Job was vindicated against his “friends.”

There has to be something to that. I just am not sure how to work it out.

1 He also spoke a parable to them that they must always pray, and not give up, 2 saying, “There was a judge in a certain city who didn’t fear God, and didn’t respect man. 3 A widow was in that city, and she often came to him, saying, ‘Defend me from my adversary!’ 4 He wouldn’t for a while, but afterward he said to himself, ‘Though I neither fear God, nor respect man, 5 yet because this widow bothers me, I will defend her, or else she will wear me out by her continual coming.’”

6 The Lord said, “Listen to what the unrighteous judge says. 7 Won’t God avenge his chosen ones, who are crying out to him day and night, and yet he exercises patience with them? 8 I tell you that he will avenge them quickly. Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on the earth?”

9 He spoke also this parable to certain people who were convinced of their own righteousness, and who despised all others. 10 “Two men went up into the temple to pray; one was a Pharisee, and the other was a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed to himself like this: ‘God, I thank you, that I am not like the rest of men, extortionists, unrighteous, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week. I give tithes of all that I get.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far away, wouldn’t even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other; for everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.”

via World English Bible Luke 18.

Why wouldn’t these two parables be about the same thing? The widow bothering the judge is the tax collector asking for mercy. The Pharisee boasting in himself is the oppressive adversary.

39 But he answered them, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, but no sign will be given it but the sign of Jonah the prophet. 40 For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. 41 The men of Nineveh will stand up in the judgment with this generation, and will condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and behold, someone greater than Jonah is here. 42 The queen of the south will rise up in the judgment with this generation, and will condemn it, for she came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon; and behold, someone greater than Solomon is here. 43 But the unclean spirit, when he is gone out of the man, passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and doesn’t find it. 44 Then he says, ‘I will return into my house from which I came out,’ and when he has come back, he finds it empty, swept, and put in order. 45 Then he goes, and takes with himself seven other spirits more evil than he is, and they enter in and dwell there. The last state of that man becomes worse than the first. Even so will it be also to this evil generation.”

via World English Bible Matthew 12.

This parable is told (in Matthew’s version) after Jesus has cast out a demon from a man that made him mute and blind. He then warns his hearers over how they use their speech and their eyes.

Demon possession and exorcisms are metaphors for the situation of the whole nation in that generation.

I used to think Jesus was cleansing his own generation but warning them about the future.

I now think, following N. T. Wright in Jesus and the Victory of God that Jesus is saying that they were delivered in the past and now the demons have returned. He is explaining why, now, there is so much demon possession in the nation. A spirit was once expelled but has returned with worse company.

When was it expelled? What was the historic event? Wright does not know. But I have a suggestion. When the return from exile had begun Zechariah had a vision (chapter 5):

Then the angel who talked with me came forward, and said to me, “Lift up now your eyes, and see what is this that is appearing.”

I said, “What is it?”

He said, “This is the ephah basket that is appearing.” He said moreover, “This is their appearance in all the land (and behold, a talent of lead was lifted up); and this is a woman sitting in the midst of the ephah basket.” He said, “This is Wickedness”; and he threw her down into the midst of the ephah basket; and he threw the weight of lead on its mouth.

Then lifted I up my eyes, and saw, and behold, there were two women, and the wind was in their wings. Now they had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the ephah basket between earth and the sky.

Then I said to the angel who talked with me, “Where are these carrying the ephah basket?”

He said to me, “To build her a house in the land of Shinar. When it is prepared, she will be set there in her own place.”

When the first exiles went in to Babylon, Ezekiel chapter 1 records a vision of God’s presence from the Temple coming with them to the foreign land. Ezekiel sees a throne carried by cherubim described in a way that would remind readers of the Ark of the Covenant, a box with a gold lid that was carried in a similar fashion by the Levites. This “ephah basket” with a lid made of lead is an anti-Ark. The stork is an unclean bird (Leviticus 11.9; Deuteronomy 14.18; etc). The stork-winged women function as anti-cherubim taking the anti-Ark back to Babylon where the Israelites are not longer captive as exiles.

The storks are returning from the wilderness of Shinar.

…we do not mean that if doctrine is sound it makes no difference about life. On the contrary, it makes all the difference in the world. From the beginning, Christianity was certainly a way of life; the salvation that it offered was a salvation from sin, and salvation from sin appeared not merely in a blessed hope but also in an immediate moral change. The early Christians, to the astonishment of their neighbors, lived a strange new kind of life—a life of honesty, of purity and of unselfishness. And from the Christian community all other types of life were excluded in the strictest way. From the beginning Christianity was certainly a life.

But how was the life produced? It might conceivably have been produced by exhortation. That method had often been tried in the ancient world; in the Hellenistic age there were many wandering preachers who told men how they ought to live. But such exhortation proved to be powerless. Although the ideals of the Cynic and Stoic preachers were high, these preachers never succeeded in transforming society. The strange thing about Christianity was that it adopted an entirely different method. It transformed the lives of men not by appealing to the human will, but by telling a story; not by exhortation, but by the narration of an event. It is no wonder that such a method seemed strange. Could anything be more impractical than the attempt to influence conduct by rehearsing events concerning the death of a religious teacher? That is what Paul called ‘the foolishness of the message.’ It seemed foolish to the ancient world, and it seems foolish to liberal preachers today. But the strange thing is that it works. The effects of it appear even in this world. Where the most eloquent exhortation fails, the simple story of an event succeeds; the lives of men are transformed by a piece of news.

Paul, in his letter we know as “To the Ephesians,” reminds them,

that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

via Ephesians 2.12 NASB.

This statement is situated in the first half of the letter (chapters 1-3) and is sandwiched by other passages proclaiming a new commonwealth in exchange for the one that excluded Gentiles.

He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him with a view to an administration suitable to the fullness of the times, that is, the summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.

And then:

By referring to this, when you read you can understand my insight into the mystery of Christ, which in other generations was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed to His holy apostles and prophets in the Spirit; to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of His power. To me, the very least of all saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unfathomable riches of Christ, and to bring to light what is the administration of the mystery which for ages has been hidden in God who created all things; so that the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known through the church to the rulers and the authorities in the heavenly places. This was in accordance with the eternal purpose which He carried out in Christ Jesus our Lord.

In both 1.10 and 3.9 the word “administration” translates oikonomia–more literally: economy

And then the word for “commonwealth” is politeuma related to that word we all know and love: politics.

The Gospel is the declaration of, as well as the means of forming and growing, a new political-economy, a new civilization.

In Snoring as a fine art: and twelve other essays by Albert Jay Nock (Google Books), we read

I wish to remark that the gift (I call it a gift only for convenience, to save words) which we are discussing is not only dissociated from intellect, but also from conventional morals. Certain Old Testament characters who unquestionably had it, and on occasion let it put itself to good use, were nevertheless what by our conventional ethical standards we would call pretty tough citizens; our old friend Balaam, for instance, and Elisha. It has been said, and I believe it is accepted in some quarters—of course there is no knowing—that Joan of Arc was not in all respects a model of sound peasant character; but granting it be so, she still most conspicuously “had the goods.”

Kutusov himself, like Lieutenant-General Bangs in Kipling’s amusing ballad, had the reputation of being “a most immoral man.” At sixty-three, very big, very fat, with one eye blinded and his face scarred by a bullet in one of Suvo-rov’s wars, he seems somehow to have kept his attractiveness to the ladies, for his friendships with them—some of high degree, some not so high—were many and close. Even during his fourteen months’ stay in Bucharest while he was starving out the Turks, he passed his enforced idleness in dalliance with a handsome and spirited Wallachian gal; rumors whereof got back to Petersburg, to the great scandal and discomposure of Alexander’s court, for which he seems to have cared not a button. “The Spirit breathes where it will,” said the Santissimo Salvatore; and oftentimes the breath of its most intimate inspiration blows upon persons whom we, in our modesty, would at once put down as morally disqualified.

Obviously, Nock should not have included Elisha in his list. But just as obviously Balaam proves his point about “gifted” people.  We’re all happy about Tebow but we know God has granted amazing athletic ability and performance to people who don’t recognize Him and don’t care about doing anything but using the fruits of that gift for a variety of sins. It is true in sports, music, and many other areas of life. We Christians might notice problems where sin breaks down society. But every day we also depend on God’s gifts to sinners as we drive in traffic, drink water, and do a host of other daily activities that show faith in the totally depraved.

And there is no reason to think that this is limited to a few carefully restricted areas. Nock was a skilled writer of beautiful essays. He was also an apostate ex-clergyman and deadbeat dad. Why wouldn’t God allow us to see his generosity, his continual, gracious, generosity to Nock his entire literary career?

I thought of this today in the orthodontist’s office (not for me) when I leafed through a Newsweek because my daughter wanted to use my Kindle. I ran across the print version of this essay:

The GOP Candidates Read Wacky Books

Dec 19, 2011 12:00 AM EST

Anti-Christian odes to selfishness? Crypto-Confederate manifestos? On the wacky study habits of the Republican candidates.

…Predictably, the current GOP nominees have more.?.?.eclectic tastes. National Journal has reported that Ron Paul quotes Ayn Rand on the House floor more than any other member. Rand was a virulently anti-Christian über-libertarian whose turgid prose and supremely selfish philosophy has inspired decades of trust-fund kids to smoke dope at boarding school and mock homeless people…