№ 13: This Joyful Eastertide

The intertwined stories of Jacob, David, and Jesus, weird numbers, and much besides.

Dear all,

Our last Substack post was nearly a month ago, so this update is long overdue! We’ve primarily been at home, throwing ourselves into work.

David’s Lamb

Alastair: There are realizations that can represent huge breakthroughs in our study of a particular part of Scripture. One such breakthrough for my reading of 1 Samuel was recognizing the Jacob saga being replayed throughout it. Once you really see it, it is nearly impossible to unsee.

Saul, David, Jonathan, Michal, Nabal, and Abigail are all examples of figures who play shifting parts in this, corresponding to characters like Jacob, Esau, Laban, Isaac, Rebekah, and Rachel. The result is a dense and rich intertextual framework for reading the David story.

Part of the effectiveness of the framework is that there isn’t any one-to-one correlation. The characters in the David saga almost all relate to more than one character in the Jacob saga and never exactly to any single one. The same is true of the characters in the Jacob saga, almost all of whom relate to two or more characters in the David saga. This isn’t a regurgitation of an old story with different names attached, then, but a multifaceted development and exploration of motifs.

The person who reads 1 Samuel carefully, alert to this intertextuality, will also reread Genesis differently, seeing things within it that they might not have seen before. It might, for instance, unsettle a simplistic identification of Esau as straightforwardly the bad guy. David has characteristics of both Esau and Jacob. While typically strongly associated with Jacob, both Esau and David stand out in being described as red/ruddy. In chapter 25, we also see David coming with 400 men for vengeance, yet pacified by waves of gifts. Indeed, recognizing 1 Samuel’s portrayal of David as a sort of combination of the warring twins might even suggest a quasi-Jungian reading of 1 Samuel, with David needing to incorporate Esau as Jacob’s ‘shadow’, yet without falling prey to Esau’s sins.

Saul also relates to multiple characters. At points he is like Laban, for instance, in mixing up his daughters in a promised marriage. At others he is like Isaac, in blindness recognizing David’s voice—“Is this your voice, my son David?” (24:16; 26:17, cf. Genesis 27:22)—and declaring that he will receive the blessing. At yet others he is like Esau, lifting up his voice and weeping when he knows that he has lost the blessing (24:16; cf. Genesis 27:38).

Jonathan also complicates our reading of Esau by presenting us with a good version of Esau. Jonathan gives his garments to David, so that David will receive the inheritance. His greeting of David in 1 Samuel 20:41 recalls the meeting of Esau and Jacob in Genesis 33:3-4. Jonathan is Esau at his best, Esau as he should and could have been.

This is only scratching the surface of the intertextual relations between these stories. We could also get into supporting characters like Nabal and his relation to Laban (notice that Nabal is ‘Laban’ backwards, in Hebrew as in English) or Michal and how she recalls both Rebekah and Rachel (the use of goat’s hair and teraphim in deception) in 1 Samuel 19:11-17.

While most pronounced in 1 Samuel, some of these connections continue into 2 Samuel, as I discuss here. As Hazony argues, sophisticated exploration and contrasts of types is a manner by which Scripture can advance elaborate ‘philosophical’ positions in the medium of narrative. When we consider such intertextual thematic exploration and juxtaposition of types, much can open up, not least the manner in which Scripture can engage in and provoke deep reflection through the (to us) unlikely medium of narrative.

If the David saga uses earlier scriptures as a framework for its narratives, later scriptures do the same with the David saga. Besides being a powerful and poignant story, not least as it can be seen as partly fallout of David’s sin concerning Uriah and Bathsheba, 2 Samuel’s account of Absalom’s coup and his death is charged with suggestive details. David unwittingly casts judgment upon himself in his response to Nathan’s parable concerning the poor man and his ewe lamb: “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity” (12:5-6). David will end up losing four sons (the unborn son of Bathsheba, Amnon, Absalom, and Adonijah).

A series of ugly events are set in motion by Amnon’s rape of his half-sister Tamar (Absalom’s full sister), a horrific act that follows and amplifies the pattern set by David in sleeping with Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. Absalom is connected with his sheepshearers and has his vengeance upon Amnon at the time of sheepshearing (13:23-33). Absalom himself might remind us of a sacrificial sheep. He was a man without blemish who cut his hair annually and weighed it (14:25-26). Absalom died after being caught by his head in a tree and pierced by the men of Joab (18:9-15). The ram-like Absalom, caught in a tree by his head, might recall the ram caught in the thicket by its horns in Genesis 22, the ram that was the substitute for Isaac. Absalom, the son of David, ended up substituting for his father’s sin, the ram that suffered the death that his father deserved.

The Evangelists recognized the thematic power of the story of Absalom and his coup and explored its themes in various ways. Ralph Allan Smith observes the way that the gospels all develop the analogy between Ahithophel’s betrayal of King David in Absalom’s coup with Judas’s betrayal of Jesus. Ahithophel is the man referred to in Psalm 41:9, quoted by Jesus in reference to Judas’s betrayal (John 13:18). As Judas would later do, Ahithophel ended up hanging himself (2 Samuel 17:23). Smith notes the way that John developed the association between King David’s mournful departure from Jerusalem and Jesus’s departure to the Mount of Olives, highlighting the importance of John’s reference to Jesus’s crossing of the brook Kidron in John 18:1 against the backdrop of 2 Samuel 15:23 and 30:

And all the land wept aloud as all the people passed by, and the king crossed the brook Kidron, and all the people passed on toward the wilderness… But David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, barefoot and with his head covered. And all the people who were with him covered their heads, and they went up, weeping as they went.

Further connections can be drawn. Much as Ziba, the servant of Mephibosheth, ministered to David just past the summit of the Mount of Olives in his retreat from Jerusalem (2 Samuel 16:1-4), an angel ministered to Jesus on his journey towards his arrest in the garden (Luke 22:43). David prevented his right-hand man Abishai from acting upon his desire to kill Shimei, when Shimei came out against David near the Mount of Olives; Jesus prevented Peter from violence against those arresting him in a similar manner.

Intertextuality invites us to look at familiar stories from new angles. John’s gospel in particular invites us to consider parallels between David’s sorrowful departure from Jerusalem and Jesus’s. It also highlights parallels between Ahithophel’s betrayal and Judas’s. Matthew’s gospel, by presenting the deaths of Jesus and Judas on trees within the same chapter invites us to relate and contrast the two, a juxtaposition heightened by recognition of parallels with the hanging of the false counsellor and of the son of David in the Absalom narrative. That recognition, coupled with consideration of the sacrificial themes we have already noted in the story of Absalom in 2 Samuel itself—“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”—bring to the foreground an arresting association: that of Jesus and Absalom.

Eric Robinson writes:

Absalom represents Israel, to be sure. From the time of the divided kingdom, Absalom’s life is a precursor of Israel’s fate. And not just in his hatred for his brother, northern Israel, and his rebellion against his Father-God, the great King, who eventually transitions into God incarnate in King Jesus. Even as Absalom-Israel forces his f/Father-k/King from his earthly throne—through the Kidron and onto the Mount of Olives—he seamlessly transitions into the Christ figure, himself, moving toward his own death pierced on a tree. Why? Because all Israel is taken up in Jesus (Isaiah 53:6; Hosea 6:1-2). His death on the tree is for all of the true Israel of God (Romans 11:26). In him are all those who rebelled and sought to take control of His kingdom as their own. He bears all of us who spurned the lordship of the Father and took what was rightfully his because of his great humility that allowed such a terrible transgression in light of even greater exoneration.

Absalom is the rebellious son of David who suffers the judgment due to his father (note the contextual association between the law of the rebellious son and the cursed state of the man hanging on the tree in Deuteronomy 21:18-23). In Jesus, the greater Son of David takes upon himself the parts of the rejected King David and of the ram-like son who died for David’s sins.

If you would like to consider the books of Samuel further, I cannot recommend the work of Peter Leithart and James Jordan highly enough. I have also produced free audio commentaries on 1 Samuel and 2 Samuel, within which I discuss some of these themes.

Numberology Notes

Alastair: Teaching the Theopolis workshop on ‘Numberology’ with James Bejon has been very stimulating, especially with an unusually informed and interactive group of students. The scope of the subject is far greater than we can do justice to within the constraints of the course, but we have been able to cover a lot of ground so far. The following are a few random lines of thought that the course has thrown up for me so far. As these notes should make apparent, the course is a broader treatment of the use of numbers in Scripture, not merely numerological symbolism narrowly considered. We are arguing, among other things, that the narrative use of numbers is very much of one piece with the wider literary artistry and theological purpose of the Scripture more generally.

1. I’ve long been fascinated by the book of Judges, and have commented upon aspects of it in other Substack posts; in two recent instalments, I discussed numerological issues related to its closing chapters. Revisiting it in the context of our course, I’ve been reminded of some of the neglected brilliance of Judges as a book and its intertextual playfulness. For instance, there are recurring images in the book, such as a woman defeating a sleeping man by acting upon his head: Jael piercing Sisera’s head with a tent peg in chapter 4 and Delilah cutting Samson’s hair in chapter 16. In Judges 7, Gideon defeats the Midianites with 300 torch-bearing men who lap like dogs and, in Judges 15, Samson sends out 300 foxes bearing torches into the fields of the Philistines. E.T.A. Davidson’s Intricacy, Design, and Cunning in the Book of Judges, a book I’ve mentioned here before, has much more on such intertextual connections.

2. In the context of Holy Week and Easter, James and I decided to give special attention to certain biblical narratives that work with or develop three day or third day symbolism. In 1 Corinthians 15:4, the Apostle Paul says that Christ was raised on the third day ‘in accordance with the scriptures.’ Many interpreters of Paul have been puzzled by what scriptures might predict the raising of Christ on the third day more particularly. However, with a typological reading of Scripture, rich yet neglected seams of scriptural evidence reveal themselves and lines of scriptural evidence that are explicitly used in the New Testament start to make much more sense.

For instance, we might consider something such as Jesus’s use of the sign of the prophet Jonah in Matthew 12:40: ‘For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.’ When the story of Jonah is understood as a sign of exile (for instance, note the numerical association between the big fish and the city of Nineveh itself—Jonah 1:17; 3:3), the power of the analogy with Christ’s resurrection is greatly strengthened. Jonah’s three days in the belly of the big fish symbolized the exile that the people would experience and Jesus’s three days in the heart of the earth is the darker exile of Death itself.

Third day symbolism most naturally takes us back to Genesis 1 and the third day of the creation, when the land was brought up out of the deep and the firstfuits of vegetation were brought forth. In his resurrection, Christ comes out of the abyss of Sheol as the firstfruits of its dead. The imagery of the third day of creation is elsewhere developed in its relation with events such as the Red Sea crossing, serving as a synecdoche for the entire deliverance of the Exodus and comparable to Christ’s resurrection.

James wrote a post on the third day in the book of Esther which gets into some of the material that we covered.

3. The gospels heighten our sense of the importance of the number three and of the third day by their repeated use of the number three and the rule of three in their Passion and resurrection accounts. Jesus prays three times in Gethsemane. Three times he finds his disciples sleeping. Three times in Matthew he says ‘you have said so’ (Matthew 26:25, 64; 27:11). Three times Peter denied Jesus. Three people were crucified. Three times Peter was asked about his love for Jesus in his restoration. Etc.

Such narrative foregrounding of key numbers is found elsewhere. Having recently discussed the issue in class, I was interested to receive a question from a reader of my material, independently asking what I made of the preponderance of twos and pairings in the Joseph narrative: two dreams of Joseph, two seduction attempts, two ‘pits’, two places named after two wells or cisterns, two prisoners with Joseph, two dreams of the prisoners, two dreams of Pharaoh, two phases in the dreams, etc. The number three also becomes prominent in chapter 40: three elements in both prisoners’ dreams, two sets of three phases in the cupbearer’s dream (1. the budding, blossoms shooting forth, clusters ripening; 2. taking the grapes, pressing them into the cup, placing the cup in Pharaoh’s hand), the third day as Pharaoh’s birthday.

4. We’ve returned on several occasions to the ways that numbers can be conceived of in more structural ways. For instance, as triangles, squares, or cubes. We’ve thought about the way numbers map onto the body in various ways. We’ve also thought about the way that certain numbers can be broken down, or built up. For instance, the number seven as the full complement of the days of creation is built up by two paralleled sets of three, with a crowning seventh (three days of forming, three days of filling, and the Sabbath day of rest). In the various dreams and visions of Daniel, the four successive kingdoms are associated with the numbers 1, 2, 4, and 10 in succession.

Genealogies can also be structured around numbers. The genealogy of Matthew 1 is structured around the number 14, among other things the gematria of the name of David. The list of those descending into Egypt in Genesis 46 is structured around the number 7. The genealogies of Genesis 5 and 11 are structured around patterns of ten generations, concluding with division into three branches. In our most recent class, James explored the way that the genealogies of 1 Chronicles are structured around numerical and other patterns. He shares some of his argument in this recent Substack post.

5. One of the more challenging passages for numerical symbolism in Scripture is Genesis 5. The passage tantalizes its hearers with a set of numbers that seems anomalous and non-random. Genesis 5 gives us 28 numbers, four of which are round hundreds, far more than we would ever expect to appear at random. All the numbers end with the digits 0 (eleven numbers), 2 (four numbers), 5 (eight numbers), 7 (three numbers), or 9 (one number), the 2 arguably resulting from 12 or 5+7 and the 9 from 5+5+7 (see James Jordan’s discussion in section 21 of this booklet).

Other numbers stand out. Like his namesake in chapter 4, Lamech seems to be connected with the number 7, living 777 years (cf. 4:24; note also that the Lamech descended from Cain was the seventh in that line starting with Adam). While all the figures died between the ages of 777 and 969 years, Enoch (the seventh from Adam—a Sabbath man), who was taken by the Lord, lived for the same number of years as there are days in a solar year—a sort of ‘year of years’, perhaps analogous to the Sabbath year as a ‘week of years’. Also, while all the other figures beget their sons before the age of 200, Noah’s are dated from the five hundredth year of his life. Later, in 9:28, we are told that Noah’s lifespan after the Flood was 350 years (more literally ‘three hundred years and fifty years’). The years of Noah’s postdiluvian life correspond with the dimensions of his Ark, three hundred cubits by fifty cubits (6:15).

Recent Work

Alastair

❧ The fact that we’ve had four episodes of Mere Fidelity since our latest Substack post is an indicator of how long it has been! Over the past month, we discussed AI with Jason Thacker and neo-Calvinism with Cory Brock and Gray Sutanto, we got the whole cast together to explore the subject of analogies for God, and Matt, Derek, and I had an Easter-themed discussion of resurrection bodies.

❧ On the Theopolis Podcast we started a new series on the book of Deuteronomy and we are now four episodes into it: introduction to the book, Israel thrown into reverse, the wilderness years, and the defeat of Sihon and Og.

❧ I had the privilege of a conversation with Yoram Hazony on Scripture as political philosophy. Within the conversation, we discussed recently renewed appreciation for the Bible as a political text and its importance within the political philosophical tradition. We talked about how it is possible to read narrative texts as philosophy and some of the literary means by which scriptural texts do this. We explored some of the key biblical themes, tropes, and narrative threads whereby it develops its political reflection. We considered the way that the scriptural text brings together a diversity of voices and political impulses—represented in part by the different tribes of Israel—in mutually sharpening conversation, and in polities that recognize the strengths, weaknesses, and necessity of each. We concluded by considering how there need not be any conflict between reading Scripture as a text concerned with matters of political philosophy and as fundamentally a text about God. You can listen to our discussion here.

❧ Leah Savas is the co-author with Marvin Olasky of The Story of Abortion in America: A Street-Level History 1652-2022. Susannah and I interviewed her for my podcast.

❧ For Holy Week, I joined Susannah and Peter Mommsen on the PloughCast, encouraging listeners to reread the Passion narratives of the four gospels. We covered a surprising amount of ground in under an hour.

❧ I was interviewed by the Youtube channel What Your Pastor Didn’t Tell You on water symbolism in the Bible.

❧ I made a (baby blue) scarf for Susannah, attempting brioche knitting for the first time.

❧ My twenty-hour video lecture series, ‘An Introduction to Biblical Wisdom’, is now available for purchase online.

❧ Leif Foged has produced transcripts of all my videos, well over a thousand of them! The transcripts, as they are generated by transcription software and haven’t been proofread, are of very uneven quality. However, if any sentence is unclear, you can click on it in the transcript and the original audio will play.

Susannah: I’ve been primarily working on Plough matters: commissioning and editing pieces, and producing a full season of our podcast. The episodes released thus far, besides the one that Alastair linked to, were

❧ An interview with LM Sacasas on why we are not AIs, examining the metaphysics and ethics of things like ChatGPT

❧ Another one with Eleanor Parker, an Oxford medievalist, on the poem The Dream of the Rood.

❧ Another one with Joy Clarkson and William Hyland, on the Oberammergau Passion Plays.

❧ Another one with the historian Tom Holland, on the difference that Christianity made to our conception of suffering.

❧ And a discussion with Peter Mommsen, Plough’s editor in chief, on CS Lewis’ two books on theodicy: the apologetic essay The Problem of Pain, and the wrenching diary of his wife’s death, A Grief Observed.

We’ve got another half dozen of these slated to come out over the next couple of weeks, and I’ve also been at work on several other projects that are due to come out shortly, which will have to wait until next issue of the Substack.

Happenings and Doings

For Alastair, the last month has been filled with teaching, oral exams and marking, recording, and writing. His course on ‘Exodus and the Shape of Biblical Narrative’ concluded and his courses on ‘Numberology’ (with Theopolis) and ‘A Biblical Theology of the Sexes’ (Davenant) began. As he is writing books on both these subjects, it has also involved a lot of writing. We also both reread C.S. Lewis’s novel That Hideous Strength, which we will likely record a podcast on at some point.

We are currently working on a book on coronation, in preparation for the coronation of HM the King and HM the Queen Consort, recording interviews with three contributors and writing our own essays. That book will be coming out soon, published by Davenant. This will continue to keep us exceedingly busy over the next week and a half, but this is a project about which we are ridiculously excited. Alastair will also be teaching on the Psalms on Friday evening and we’ll both be attending the ‘Psalm Roar’ on Saturday at St George’s Church in Shrewsbury.

A successful trip to a nearby secondhand bookstore!

We’ve made the most of some glorious spring weather, enjoying several walks in Trentham, along the canal, and elsewhere. Alastair recently bought a bike from our neighbour and last week Susannah bought one for herself too. Having recently purchased a MacBook in baby blue, Susannah has been maxing on the colour, most notably in her choice of bike. It was a glorious spring day yesterday, so we had a leisurely cycle ride along the canal. We remain committed pedestrians, but having bikes feels liberating and greatly extends the range of our exploration.

There has been a marked decline in Alastair’s father’s health. He has fallen several times recently; he had a nasty cut beneath his eye after one such fall when we saw him at church on Sunday. Over the last couple of weeks, Alastair’s brother Peter has come down to help to set up handrails in Alastair’s parents’ house and Alastair was able to help him a little. Please pray for Alastair’s parents, and for us all as we consider the best ways to go forward.

Besides the coronation book, Alastair’s other book projects, and his talk this weekend, we have several other things on the horizon that we have been working towards. Both of us have written essays that are forthcoming and Alastair has recorded more of his series of interviews on the book of Revelation with the God’s Story Podcast. Those episodes should start to be released soon.

Upcoming Events

❧ Tim Vasby-Burnie is hosting a 'Psalm Roar' at St. George's Church in Shrewsbury this weekend, on the 22nd April. The evening before, Alastair will be delivering a talk on the theology of the psalms and of psalm-singing. Find out more about the event here.

❧ Alastair will be returning to Davenant Hall to teach the summer program in June.

❧ Most of Alastair’s work is as an independent scholar, funded by Patreon donors. His primary goal is to create thoughtful yet free Christian material for the general public, most notably his largely-completed chapter-by-chapter commentary on the whole Bible (available here and here). If you would like to support his continuing research, teaching, writing, and other content production, you can do so here.

Much love,

Susannah and Alastair