IT has been often and truly said that coming events cast their shadows before themselves. Those very carefully tabulated and preserved family records retained their importance until the descent of the Messiah from Abraham (Matt. 1), and the full list of all the progenitors of the Son of Man in a direct line up to Adam (Luke 3), could each be duly registered. Even before, for our instruction, the Spirit employed the pen of Matthew to write the first, and that of Luke to transcribe the second. Connected with John the Baptist and his powerful ministry, we have a very marked foreshadowing of the fact that the old order was on the point of passing away, to be succeeded by that which was new and infinitely better.
John's father had occupied a position of some distinction in his service as a priest of the course of Abijah. His mother was of the daughters of Aaron. So that in this “man sent from God,” we have one qualified by birth and physical perfection to officiate as a priest, who neither dressed in priestly attire, nor performed priestly service in the temple, nor ate of the holy things in the holy place.
Crowds “went out to see” a man who was neither shaken by adverse circumstances, nor drawn aside by indulgence in luxuries, from the due performance of his great mission.
“Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him, O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Begin not to say within yourselves, ‘We have Abraham to our father:’ for I say unto you, That God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.” Thus did he shatter at one blow all their preconceived notions as to the spiritual advantages of birth and parentage, upon which they had grown so accustomed to pride themselves.
The forerunner having leveled all such distinctions, it remained for Him Who came after him to draw the attention of “the seventy” to one infinitely higher, and subject to no such leveling process, by saying to them on their return, after having fulfilled their mission, “Notwithstanding in this rejoice not that the spirits are subject unto you; but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven.”
To those who had been taught from their earliest infancy to consider it one of the direst of calamities for an Israelite to be cut off without posterity, how very comforting these words of our Lord Himself must have proved, when fierce persecutions raged! For James was slain by the sword, and Stephen stoned to death, and many otherwise suffered martyrdom.
That register, kept on high, of all those called with an heavenly calling, rendered it to such a matter of no importance to trouble further about preserving earthly family registers. In the Gospels we frequently find the father's name given, as in the case of Peter; but after Pentecost, even this was dropped. The surname Barnabas, given to Joses (Acts 4:3636And Joses, who by the apostles was surnamed Barnabas, (which is, being interpreted, The son of consolation,) a Levite, and of the country of Cyprus, (Acts 4:36)), was an evident departure from the rule almost invariably adopted in the case of Old Testament saints. As for Paul, he himself mentions quite incidentally that he was of the tribe of Benjamin; but we are no where told the name of his father. More than this, Paul by the Spirit, warned his beloved sons in the faith (1 Tim. 1:44Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do. (1 Timothy 1:4); Titus 3:99But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. (Titus 3:9)) against giving heed to “endless genealogies.” For though a believer in Christ were in a position to prove his descent from David, or Aaron, this gave him no right to claim higher position in the church than that occupied by another member of the body, who happened to be descended from Ammon or Moab, or even the cursed Canaan. In the assembly therefore no distinctions of this character were to be observed, since all were one in Christ.
Our citizenship is in heaven; and none shall have the privilege of entering within the gates of the holy city, new Jerusalem, “but they which are written in the Lamb's book of life “; that heavenly register of saints, called with an holy calling, which is not subjected to periodical cancellations, as are those oftentimes faulty burgess-rolls of earthly citizens.
Yet there is another family record, as brief and concise in its wording, as it is full of pathos, while most exquisitely tender in the manner in which it clearly expresses the Lord's unwearied and unweakened personal affection for His earthly people. “I am the root and offspring of David” —saith He Who now sits exalted at the right hand of the Majesty on high.
Surely this redounds to the praise of the glory of His grace; that, while occupying His present exalted position, He forgets not, nor is ashamed to acknowledge, those ties of relationship as existing between Himself, the Perfect Man, and the children of Israel; even though the natural branches of the olive tree have been long since broken off, and that nation has for many centuries past been experiencing the bitter consequences of the carrying out of the solemn prophetic sentence— “Not-My-people.”
They acknowledge Him not; still is He to Israel (who will yet mourn for Him, as a man mourneth for his only son) the pledge of the fulfillment of every promise made before unto the fathers by the prophets. Rich and abundant blessing is in store for Israel. “Now if the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles; how much more their fullness!”
This brings us to the consideration of those family records, which once again in the future, as in the past, will have an importance which they do not now possess. “The lost ten tribes” has become a proverbial expression; no man living knows who they are or where definitely to be found.
We have adequate scriptural authority for proceeding into minuter details, as we point out that the house of David will be known as such, and that the house of Nathan will be as clearly distinguished from the former, as each will be distinct from the house of Levi and of Shimei (Zech. 12:11-1411In that day shall there be a great mourning in Jerusalem, as the mourning of Hadadrimmon in the valley of Megiddon. 12And the land shall mourn, every family apart; the family of the house of David apart, and their wives apart; the family of the house of Nathan apart, and their wives apart; 13The family of the house of Levi apart, and their wives apart; the family of Shimei apart, and their wives apart; 14All the families that remain, every family apart, and their wives apart. (Zechariah 12:11‑14)).
In a former paper was pointed out the great contrast in matters of detail between 1 Chron. 20 and 32. We would now add that 2 Chron. 34 presents as great a contrast to both as those two chapters do to each other.
But first observe that the untimely death of the wicked king Amon was an event fraught with blessing to Judah; for the throne thus suddenly rendered vacant was now occupied by a child, whose name had been announced at Bethel, several hundred years before, by the man of God that spake against the altar of Jeroboam (1 Kings 13:22And he cried against the altar in the word of the Lord, and said, O altar, altar, thus saith the Lord; Behold, a child shall be born unto the house of David, Josiah by name; and upon thee shall he offer the priests of the high places that burn incense upon thee, and men's bones shall be burnt upon thee. (1 Kings 13:2)). The blessed results of the piety of Josiah early became apparent. Yet he that attentively reads the long catalog of the abominations which he destroyed and abolished (2 Kings 23:4-204And the king commanded Hilkiah the high priest, and the priests of the second order, and the keepers of the door, to bring forth out of the temple of the Lord all the vessels that were made for Baal, and for the grove, and for all the host of heaven: and he burned them without Jerusalem in the fields of Kidron, and carried the ashes of them unto Beth-el. 5And he put down the idolatrous priests, whom the kings of Judah had ordained to burn incense in the high places in the cities of Judah, and in the places round about Jerusalem; them also that burned incense unto Baal, to the sun, and to the moon, and to the planets, and to all the host of heaven. 6And he brought out the grove from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it at the brook Kidron, and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people. 7And he brake down the houses of the sodomites, that were by the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove. 8And he brought all the priests out of the cities of Judah, and defiled the high places where the priests had burned incense, from Geba to Beer-sheba, and brake down the high places of the gates that were in the entering in of the gate of Joshua the governor of the city, which were on a man's left hand at the gate of the city. 9Nevertheless the priests of the high places came not up to the altar of the Lord in Jerusalem, but they did eat of the unleavened bread among their brethren. 10And he defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the children of Hinnom, that no man might make his son or his daughter to pass through the fire to Molech. 11And he took away the horses that the kings of Judah had given to the sun, at the entering in of the house of the Lord, by the chamber of Nathan-melech the chamberlain, which was in the suburbs, and burned the chariots of the sun with fire. 12And the altars that were on the top of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars which Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the Lord, did the king beat down, and brake them down from thence, and cast the dust of them into the brook Kidron. 13And the high places that were before Jerusalem, which were on the right hand of the mount of corruption, which Solomon the king of Israel had builded for Ashtoreth the abomination of the Zidonians, and for Chemosh the abomination of the Moabites, and for Milcom the abomination of the children of Ammon, did the king defile. 14And he brake in pieces the images, and cut down the groves, and filled their places with the bones of men. 15Moreover the altar that was at Beth-el, and the high place which Jeroboam the son of Nebat, who made Israel to sin, had made, both that altar and the high place he brake down, and burned the high place, and stamped it small to powder, and burned the grove. 16And as Josiah turned himself, he spied the sepulchres that were there in the mount, and sent, and took the bones out of the sepulchres, and burned them upon the altar, and polluted it, according to the word of the Lord which the man of God proclaimed, who proclaimed these words. 17Then he said, What title is that that I see? And the men of the city told him, It is the sepulchre of the man of God, which came from Judah, and proclaimed these things that thou hast done against the altar of Beth-el. 18And he said, Let him alone; let no man move his bones. So they let his bones alone, with the bones of the prophet that came out of Samaria. 19And all the houses also of the high places that were in the cities of Samaria, which the kings of Israel had made to provoke the Lord to anger, Josiah took away, and did to them according to all the acts that he had done in Beth-el. 20And he slew all the priests of the high places that were there upon the altars, and burned men's bones upon them, and returned to Jerusalem. (2 Kings 23:4‑20)), and also observes that it took him six years to purge the land and the house, cannot fail to form at least some faint idea of the awful magnitude of Judah's idolatry during the respective reigns of that king's two immediate predecessors (Jer. 2:2828But where are thy gods that thou hast made thee? let them arise, if they can save thee in the time of thy trouble: for according to the number of thy cities are thy gods, O Judah. (Jeremiah 2:28)).
Hilkiah the priest having found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah, its contents were read before Josiah; and this brought that pious king deep exercise of soul: he rent his clothes and wept, for he clearly saw that the wrath of God had been aroused against His guilty people. Yet he did not, like Jehoshaphat, proclaim a fast; neither did he, like Hezekiah, enter into the temple, and there personally appeal to the God that dwelleth between the Cherubim. He sent the high priest and others to Huldah, that they might inquire of Jehovah for him. This may appear strange; but still more strange is the king's command to the Levites, recorded in the next chapter, to “put the holy ark in the house.” For such a command implies that it was at that moment outside of the house! Had those who wickedly set up an idol in that house, also removed it from its resting place with sacrilegious hands? Or had certain faithful priests, desirous of preserving it from sacrilege in those terrible days reverently borne it away to some place of safety (as those Levites intended to have done when Absalom threatened the peace of Jerusalem. 2 Sam. 15:24, 2524And lo Zadok also, and all the Levites were with him, bearing the ark of the covenant of God: and they set down the ark of God; and Abiathar went up, until all the people had done passing out of the city. 25And the king said unto Zadok, Carry back the ark of God into the city: if I shall find favor in the eyes of the Lord, he will bring me again, and show me both it, and his habitation: (2 Samuel 15:24‑25))? To me it seems that this latter supposition is correct, and that Ezek. 44:15, 16; 48:1115But the priests the Levites, the sons of Zadok, that kept the charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me, they shall come near to me to minister unto me, and they shall stand before me to offer unto me the fat and the blood, saith the Lord God: 16They shall enter into my sanctuary, and they shall come near to my table, to minister unto me, and they shall keep my charge. (Ezekiel 44:15‑16)
11It shall be for the priests that are sanctified of the sons of Zadok; which have kept my charge, which went not astray when the children of Israel went astray, as the Levites went astray. (Ezekiel 48:11), refer to this pious action on the part of faithful sons of Zadok.