Post 3: Why Jesus Paralleled David’s Story: To Be the Greater King and Conqueror

Introduction

This is the third post in a series about Jesus’ cry from the cross, the quotation from Psalm 22:1.  In Part 1, I analyzed John Stott’s interpretation of the cry, stating the case that Stott seriously mishandles both the original Psalm and Jesus’ use of it.  In Part 2, I analyzed Psalm 22 itself, and its place in the Book of Psalms.

Aragorn, Heir of Isildur, and Jesus, Heir of David

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn labors in the long shadow cast by his ancestor Isildur, a shadow all of Middle Earth hopes will lift one day.  Aragorn is King Isildur’s heir, heir to the throne.  In that sense, Isildur is the archetype – or heroic type – for Aragorn.  Yet Isildur is the king who, because he was weak and imperfect, seized the Ring of Power when he had the chance to destroy it.  The shadow of evil descended on Middle Earth because of that fateful choice.  So in that sense, Isildur is the anti-type – or villain – for Aragorn.  Aragorn must walk the path of his ancestor and confront the same evil within himself, but be victorious over it.  Whether others knew it or not, their fondest hopes rested on the choices Aragorn would make.

Similarly, David served as both archetype and anti-type to Jesus.  He was the anti-type to Jesus in the sense that David, too, gave into the corruption of sin in his fallen human nature.  So did every single one of his royal heirs.  The simple interpretation of the Book of Kings is:  Once again, this man was not the king we hoped for.  But David was also the archetype for Jesus, his ultimate messianic heir.  Jesus, as the true hero of the story, had to retell David’s pre-enthronement story – complete with trials, suffering, and rejection – and endure it better than David did.

Unfortunately John Stott does not consider this.  Stott’s argument goes astray because he thinks Psalm 22:1 has to do with being human in a generic way.  Stott says:

‘Jesus had been meditating on Psalm 22, which describes the cruel persecution of an innocent and godly man, as he was meditating on other Psalms which he quoted from the cross…’[1]

But the first interpretation of Psalm 22:1 is not as a generic human experience, but the specific experience of David prior to his enthronement.  Jesus was invoking David’s journey of rejection before enthronement.  His point is that if David suffered at the hands of the Gentiles on his way to the throne (Ps.22), how much more would the heir of David, the one even greater than David?

Consequently, Stott disconnects Jesus from the figure of David, the lineage of David, and the real meaning of that lineage.  Stott is, of course, aware that David was God’s covenant partner and recipient of God’s promise to establish the eternal kingdom on earth through a human descendant.  But Stott fails to consider the role of the line of David in relation to God’s ultimate defeat of human evil through David’s heir.

By contrast, N.T. Wright, in his brief treatment of the topic Evil and the Justice of God, points out:

‘The Old Testament isn’t written in order simply to ‘tell us about God’ in the abstract.  It isn’t designed primarily to provide information, to satisfy the inquiring mind.  It’s written to tell the story of what God has done, is doing and will do about evil.’[2]

With this short but very accurate introduction to the Old Testament, Wright positions the goal of God, atonement, ministry, and mission very differently than does Stott.  The problem is not God or an attribute of God like His holiness, wrath, or supposedly retributive justice.  The problem is not within God.  It is within us:  evil.  How does God solve the problem of evil, and in particular, human evil?  Through the line of David.  Wright continues:

‘It is quite clear on the one hand, particularly in the Psalms, that David and his dynasty are to be seen as God’s answer to the problem of evil.  They will bring judgment and justice to the world.  Their dominion will be from one sea to the other, from the River to the ends of the earth.  And yet the writers are all too aware of the puzzle and ambiguity of saying such a thing.  The greatest royal psalm, Psalm 89, juxtaposes 37 verses of celebration of the wonderful things God will do through the Davidic king with 14 verses asking plaintively why it’s all gone wrong.  The psalm then ends with a single verse blessing YHWH forever.  That is the classic Old Testament picture.  Here are the promises; here is the problem.  God remains sovereign over the paradox.  Split the psalm up either way, and you fail the catch the flavor of the entire corpus of biblical writing.  God’s solution to the problem of evil, the establishment of the Davidic monarchy through which Israel will at last be the light to the nations, the bringer of justice to the world, comes already complete with a sense of puzzlement and failure, a sense that the plan isn’t working in the way it should, that the only thing to do is to hold the spectacular promises in one hand and the messy reality in the other and praise YHWH anyway.’[3]

This is the introduction we need as we look at Jesus with eyes sensitive to his original Jewish context.

Jesus as Son of David in Matthew’s Gospel

In Matthew and Mark, Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 22:1 fits into the sustained parallel Jesus made between himself and David’s pre-enthronement story, and scholars of various disciplines concur.[4]  What are the contours of that parallel?  Matthew’s introduction is programmatic for introducing Jesus as ‘Son of David.’  He names Jesus by his identity as ‘Son of David’ right from his genealogy (Mt.1:1, 17), even going so far as to remind us that Joseph was a ‘Son of David’ (Mt.1:20) who passed down to Jesus not just genetic descent from David, which Mary, daughter of David through Nathan, also provided to Jesus (Lk.3:23 – 30), but the title to the Davidic throne, as Joseph was specifically part of the royal line through Solomon.  But whereas Moses delivered Israel out of Egypt, and there are striking parallels between Moses and Jesus as well, Jesus as final and true heir of David would deliver Israel out of ‘exile.’  The exile had begun under Babylon (Mt.1:17), but God had not yet reversed it.  Jesus would represent Israel in himself, substituting for them his own obedience and faithfulness, to regain the Adamic authority that humanity as a whole and Israel both lost (Mt.28:18 – 20; cf. Dan.7:13 – 14; Gen.1:26 – 28).  Of course, Jesus would have to resolve the underlying reason for the primordial, and more fundamental, exile:  the corruption of sin within human nature.

Like David, Jesus was anointed king (at his baptism) by John the Baptist who played the role of Samuel as Jesus played the role of David (Mt.3:13 – 17).  Like David, after being anointed, Jesus defeated a ‘Goliath,’ Satan in the wilderness (Mt.4:1 – 11).  But unlike David, Jesus never gave into temptation.  Jesus succeeded in every area where David was weak.  David had a lust for women, especially married women (!); Jesus fought to keep himself totally pure in body, thought, and emotion.  David was, at times, overzealous in his self-promotion and the defense of his own honor; Jesus refused the adulation of crowds starting from the satanic wilderness temptation, and turned the other cheek.  David demonstrated impatience and seized authority prematurely; Jesus did no such thing, again starting from the wilderness temptation.  David exhibited either cowardice or favoritism or both, which led him to fail to rebuke the sins of those closest to him; Jesus never gave in to cowardice or favoritism.  Jesus is certainly being portrayed as a greater David, the true ‘royal son,’ beginning with his baptism and wilderness temptation.

Like David, Jesus was chased by those in power with murderous intent, which is why Jesus referred to David’s life on the run in 1 Samuel 21 – 22, when Jesus and his disciples picked grain on the Sabbath (Mt.12:1 – 4; Mk.2:23 – 27; Lk.6:1 – 4).  After Jesus made that comparison to David, the wondering crowds make the point, just in case the reader missed it.  ‘All the crowds were amazed, and were saying, ‘This man cannot be the Son of David, can he?’’ (Mt.12:23)

In fact, this reference to David taking five loaves from the tabernacle sanctuary serves as an anchor point from which to interpret Jesus’ mirror image miracles of multiplying bread.  Jesus took five loaves in Jewish lands (Mt.14:13 – 21; Mk.6:30 – 44; Lk.9:11 – 17; Jn.6:1 – 15) and then seven loaves in Gentile lands (Mt.15:29 – 39; Mk.7:31 – 8:10), and multiplied those loaves.  As Mark Drury notes, five, seven, and twelve are Davidic numbers.[5]  When David was being hunted and hounded, he went into the tabernacle sanctuary and took five loaves (1 Sam.21:1 – 6) from the twelve which rested in the presence of God (Lev.24:5).  Jesus deliberately recalled that episode and, as mentioned above, drew the curiosity of the crowd about his lineage from David.  David, anointed king yet fleeing persecution from the established leadership, encountered twelve loaves and took five, leaving seven.   Jesus, anointed king yet fleeing persecution from the established leadership, went the other direction numerically:  he encountered five loaves and produced twelve basketfuls of bread (Mt.14:13 – 21).  The apostle John tells us that the Jewish crowd recognized what we as readers might not understand:  Jesus was making a claim to be a king like David, because from that moment, they wanted to make him king by force (Jn.6:15).  Not only did Jesus reenact David’s care for his followers by using five loaves, which was a kingly gesture, he performed a miraculous multiplication instead of straight subtraction.  Jesus made the loaves become basketfuls.  This gesture was not simply the gesture of a claimant to the Davidic throne.  It was a claim to be, indeed, something greater than the temple (Mt.12:6) where the bread is merely replenished.  Jesus was disclosing himself to be a new temple, a new dwelling place of God, a new source of life who is never depleted.

Not content to leave the seven remaining loaves out of his story, Jesus gathered seven loaves from the second crowd and produced seven ‘large basketfuls’ leftover (Mt.15:29 – 39) – and not ordinary baskets, but unusually large ones, because this crowd, this gesture, and this creational number represented the rest of the world, the Gentiles.  In Matthew, Jesus performed these miracles on mountains (Mt.14:23; 15:29; Mk.6:46; Mark curiously omits this detail with the second feeding), which is very significant because mountains invoked Mount Zion and the temple in Jerusalem.  Jesus was depicting his own statement, ‘Something greater than the temple is here’ (Mt.12:6).  What better place to do that but on mountains?  Without words, but with actions, Jesus surfaced the link between the heir of David and the rebuilding of ‘the temple,’ so prominent in Jewish hopes of the first century because it was rooted in the Prophets.

In Matthew, Jesus’ second bread multiplication is preceded by an encounter with a Gentile woman who called him by his kingly title, ‘Son of David’ (Mt.15:22).  Matthew perceives great significance in this meeting and positions it in a very strategic place literarily.  Matthew calls her by her ethnic lineage which a Jewish audience would find striking:  Canaanite.  Mark, by comparison, identifies her by her geography:  Syro-Phoenician (Mk.7:26).  Matthew’s choice of identifiers seems motivated by his presumably Jewish or Jewish-Christian audience.  The history of Jewish interaction with Canaanites was certainly filled with negative interactions.  However, there are positives as well.  Tamar (Gen.38) and Rahab (Josh.2; 6) were Canaanite woman, and Matthew names them as two of the four women – and unusually so by the standards of the day – in his genealogy (Mt.1:3).  Both Tamar and Rahab had unusual hope and faith in God.  Tamar’s faith led her to have a child by Judah, even while pointing out the shortcomings of Judah himself, and thus she was firmly incorporated into the tribe of Israel from which Jesus came.  Rahab’s faith led her and her family to receive the two Israelite spies, defect from the Canaanite city of Jericho, and become incorporated into Israel via the tribe of Judah also.

The Defeat of the Canaanites in the Old Testament, Re-Envisioned by the Old Testament

Matthew may also be drawing on the model of the Canaanite Gibeonites, which, in the Old Testament canonical development, provide insight into the hopes and expectations assigned to the messianic heir of David.  The Gibeonites were a Canaanite tribe who hid their identity at first in order to make a peace treaty with Israel, despite God’s previous instruction to Israel not make any such treaties.  Moses said they should instead be ‘utterly destroyed’ (Dt.20:17), which is probably hyperbolic language of victory when compared to Exodus 23:27 – 30, where they are pushed out gradually and not decimated.  When found out, the Gibeonites confessed, and Joshua said, ‘You shall never cease being slaves, both hewers of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God’ (Josh.9:23).  Joshua bound this Canaanite tribe to the sanctuary in which God dwelled.  This act is striking.  The remainder of the book, Joshua 12 – 24, is a recounting of the land being apportioned to Israel as their inheritance, and Joshua’s closing words.  Given their placement in the book of Joshua, the encounter between the Gibeonites and Israel seems to be the high point of the Joshua narrative (Josh.9 – 11).

Matthew is depicting Jesus as a messianic ‘new Joshua’ or ‘greater Moses’ leading a new movement from a mountain to claim his inheritance (Mt.28:16 – 20), which was not land, but people (Ps.2:8).  The story of the Canaanite woman immediately preceding the story of the second multiplication of bread among the Gentiles serves as a literary ‘hinge’ in a similar way that Joshua 9 – 11 serves as a literary ‘hinge’ between the first part of the book – which is mainly about battling and incorporating Canaanites – and the second – which is mainly about claiming the inheritance.  As Jesus asserts his Davidic identity, prior to his enthronement, he offers himself to the Gentiles and is confessed by them as the messianic king.  Consequently, the Gentiles too become servants of the ‘new temple,’ in the ‘new temple,’ Jesus himself.

This pattern also indicates that conversion counted as ‘destruction,’ though not vice versa, has bearing on how we understand Jesus’ quotation of Psalm 22:1 while on the cross as a kingly, Davidic motif.  Most books of the Old Testament – Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel most of all – seem to anticipate the same principle of ‘conversion as destruction.’  They say that God will destroy the enemies of Israel, of course.  But they also say that He will also circumcise them and make them into priests and Levites of the sanctuary (Isa.66:21) and give them a share of the land inheritance (Ezk.47:21 – 23)!  Which means that their old identity is destroyed.  Their new identity is to become part of God’s people.  That counts as ‘destruction.’

Not only can I make that argument within each of the books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel; I can make the argument because there is already a literary and theological development in the Pentateuch and Joshua, so that every book that attaches itself canonically to Moses and Joshua must be read in the same double-meaning-filled, open-ended way.  The understanding of David’s heir and his expected activity reaches astonishing clarity because of this canonical control, helping us see how Jesus retold David’s story.  John Sailhamer, an OT scholar who specializes in literary-canonical study of Scripture, following in the canonical approach of the great biblical exegete Brevard S. Childs, argues that the same dynamic is seen in placing Amos and Obadiah together.[6]  On the face of it, Obadiah simply announces God’s ‘destruction’ of the Edomites.  But at the very end of the book of Amos (Am.9:11 – 12), Amos says that ‘the booth of David’ will possess the remnant of Edom in the messianic age.  How can both be true?  How can David’s house possess the remnant of Edom, and yet God destroy all of Edom?

Significantly, the prophecy of Amos seems to have occupied the minds of the Jerusalem Council in 49 or 50 AD, since the apostles and elders at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 interpret the unfolding Christian mission to the Gentiles using the prophecy of Amos; they quote Amos 9:11– 12 in Acts 15:15 – 18.  Moreover, not too long afterwards in 53 – 57 AD, the apostle Paul seems to have been reflecting on Amos when he wrote 1 Corinthians, which has thematic, literary, and structural parallels to Amos.[7]  If the apostles were accustomed to reading God’s promises to Israel as being fulfilled in Jesus as the true Israelite, the Davidic messiah who represented all Israel, then they would have had no problem seeing Jesus as the one who would possess Obadiah’s ‘mountain of Esau.’  But what happened to the Edomites historically and theologically?  Obadiah’s reference to there being ‘no survivor of the house of Esau’ (v.18) is curious.  King Herod the Great was an Edomite, so the house of Esau was still in existence by the time of Jesus.  While it may be true (albeit unlikely) that the descendants of Esau become extinct by the time of Jesus’ return, I support another interpretation.

In the New Testament, the principle of ‘conversion as destruction’ is applied.  Paul says to the Corinthian Christians that they are ‘no longer Gentiles’ (1 Cor.12:2) but that they have become part of ‘Israel’ and Israel’s story (1 Cor.10:1 – 13).  Paul refers to the Corinthians Christian as Gentiles no longer (1 Cor.12:2):  ‘when you were ethne.’  Henceforth, in Christ, these former Gentiles are part of Israel’s story and have become spiritual children of Abraham and Sarah.  Indeed, when Paul discusses the Exodus event, he includes the former Gentiles in the family of God:  ‘Our fathers were all under the cloud’ (1 Cor.10:1).  Yes, God has destroyed His enemies, quite ‘literally,’ by turning His enemies into His children.  So, too, in Romans:  God has made a way to kill ‘the old self’ (Rom.6:6) of each person, condemning the sin in each person’s flesh (Rom.8:3), via the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  This is surely the most foundational kind of ‘destruction.’  Hence I believe the Edomites are not ethnically eliminated from the earth in some kind of slow or quick death, but rather lose their previous identity qua Edomites and gain a new identity as the Messiah’s possession.  So will many other peoples.  The vision of Amos interacts with the vision of Obadiah, perhaps because (as I suspect) Obadiah was not as specific as Amos about the fate of Edom.  Amos begins with God’s judgment upon the nations roundabout the Jews, spilling into the southern kingdom of Judah and the northern kingdom of Israel, and ends with a reversal:  God’s restoration of the house of David and its messianic possession of the nations.  By placing Amos and Obadiah together, side by side, in a canonical order, the Jewish sages were anticipating that authentic conversion to the messiah would count as the destruction that God intended, even to the extent that the meaning of Amos governs the meaning of Obadiah.  What is implicit in Obadiah is made explicit by Amos.

Jesus is the Great Conqueror, Destroyer of Evil

Jesus, as the final and true Son of David, the greater Joshua (Heb.4:8 – 9) whose Hebrew name was, strikingly, ‘Joshua,’ was not making an exception to various Old Testament prophetic passages concerning the ‘destruction’ of Israel’s enemies.  Nor was Jesus separating the ‘renewal and restoration’ side of the prophecies from the ‘wrath and destruction’ side of the same prophecies.  ‘Dispensationalists’ claim Jesus split the prophecies down the middle and fulfilled the former while reserving the latter for later.  For instance, in the dispensationalist view, Jesus announced the ‘favorable year of the Lord’ of Isaiah 61:1 – 2 in the Nazareth synagogue (Lk.4:18 – 19), but not the ‘day of vengeance of our God’ phrase which follows, but he will return later to do that, having reserved it for a second-stage of prophetic fulfillment.  Equally problematic, in my opinion, are those in the ‘christocentric hermeneutics’ camp, who pursue a variation of the dispensationalist approach.  They argue that Jesus simply ignored and discarded the unpleasant remainder of the verse like unwanted food at a buffet, as if the Old Testament had little inherent integrity and meaning on its own, and served mainly as raw material from which Jesus chose this or that.

If I am correct, however, in perceiving the converging lines of interpretation in the Old Testament itself, prior to Jesus, then Jesus was doing neither, and not splitting the prophecies in two.  Rather, Jesus was reading the Hebrew Scripture aright and living out their true and full meaning by calling for, and receiving, the Gentiles’ allegiance as his subjects as he was the final ‘Son of David.’  Jesus did not, for instance, bifurcate his deployment of Psalm 22, intending 22:1 – 21 (cry for God’s help) for the cross and 22:22 – 31 (thanks for being vindicated over his enemies) for his resurrection, or ascension, or second coming.  Jesus’ suffering is the precise means by which he triumphed over his enemies, and ‘destroyed’ them in the most fundamental way possible, because he was condemning and destroying the real enemy:  the corruption of sin within his own human nature, so he could then destroy it in us.

[1] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1986), p.82

[2] N.T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p.45

[3] Ibid p.60

[4] Mark Drury, ‘Mark,’ edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), p.414 – 416 takes a literary approach; Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), The Conversion of the Imagination: Paul as Interpreter of Israel’s Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005), and Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2016) approaches biblical intertextuality very sensitively as a reader of both Old and New Testaments; Matthew Skinner, The Trial Narratives: Conflict, Power, and Identity (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), p.37 – 39 takes a socio-rhetorical approach based on legal culture and narrative portrayals of courtroom trials, and stresses Jesus’ vulnerability to human authority; N.T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis, MI: Fortress Press, 1992), ch.13 takes an historical and biblical approach based on second temple Judaism and early Christianity; Jerome H. Neyrey, Honor and Shame in the Gospel of Matthew (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), p.156 – 161 takes a cultural-rhetorical approach based on awareness of the rhetoric of shame and honor.

[5] Mark Drury, ‘Mark,’ edited by Robert Alter and Frank Kermode, The Literary Guide to the Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), p.414 – 416

[6] John Sailhamer, Introduction to Old Testament Theology: A Canonical Approach (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995), ch.7

[7] Kenneth E. Bailey, Paul Through Mediterranean Eyes:  Cultural Studies in 1 Corinthians (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2011); see my summary and development of Bailey in The Prophet Amos, the Apostle Paul, and the Preacher Martin Luther King, Jr.:  First Corinthians and the Shape of a Proper Liberation Theology, available online:  http://newhumanityinstitute.org/pdfs/paul_1corinthians.theme.amos.pdf