John’s Gospel’s Re-Presentation of the Four Women of the Red Line of Hope

John’s Gospel’s Re-Presentation of the Four Women of the Red Line of Hope

The previous appendix discussed how John’s Gospel recasts the David Story, and strives to show motifs of Salvation for all or some of the characters therein. It also demonstrates how John’s Gospel is making a powerful commentary on the refrain of Paul, that “We are all parts of each other.” (Ephesians 4:25; Romans 12:5)

This chart shows how the four women of the Red Line of Hope’s segment from the Hebrew Scriptures—Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba—are all re-presented in stunning new ways in John’s Gospel.

 

Mother of Jesus (Mary), John 2                             Bathsheba (mother of Solomon)

First verse of chapter highlights importance of Mary, by saying that she is at the wedding, before the text even says that Jesus is there (John 2:1)	Bathsheba’s importance is highlighted by Solomon setting out a throne for her. The women of the RLH paved the way before Solomon arrived.
Jesus and his disciples invited to the wedding celebration (John 2:2)	Adonijah holds a feast to celebrate his appointing himself as king (1 Kings 1)
Wine runs out	David kills Uriah, destroys marriage of Uriah and Bathsheba
Woman, what to you and to me?	David’s refrain to the three sons of Zeruiah, discussed above.
Do whatever he tells you	Solomon basically says to Bathsheba: I will do what you tell me to do…. (1 Kings 2:20)
Jesus’ response, has, to this point, rejected Mary’s implied request. Then he does what she has asked him to do.	Adonijah wrongly assumes that Solomon will do whatever his mother tells him to do. So he tries to get Bathsheba to get Solomon to give him Abishag, David’s last mistress. Bathsheba tells Solomon that she has a request for Solomon the king. Solomon says that he will do whatever his mother asks him. She presents Adonijah’s request. Solomon, instead, executes Adonijah.
The master of the feast (a Wisdom figure) compliments the groom’s plans for the feast	The Queen of Sheba (a Wisdom figure) compliments Solomon on his table, court, and more.
“The good wine.” Jesus is a far better development for humanity than Solomon.	Solomon was extraordinary for his time.

 

 

Samaritan Woman at Well, John 4                                  Rahab, Book of Joshua

Initial discussion of Baptisms, around the Jordan River, by Jesus and/or his disciples, in John 4:1	In the beginning of the Book of Joshua, the Israelites crossed the Jordan, and the spies met Rahab at Jericho, near the Jordan.
Jesus comes to Samaritan city of Sychar, and meets the woman at the well	2 spies come to Jericho and meet Rahab
The main body of the party, the disciples, is missing and arrives later	The main body, the Israelites, is missing and arrives later
The land that Jacob gave to Joseph his son…. (John 4:5)	The patriarchs settled in the land of Canaan. Then, Joseph went down into Egypt, and his father Jacob followed him. More than 400 years later, Joshua will recommence the Israelite occupancy of Canaan, picking up where the story left off at the end of Genesis.
Woman at well is an outcast in her society;   After meeting Jesus, she will become an apostle to her people	Rahab is an outcast in her society;   Rahab remains on the outside also of Israelite society, all the way up to the Samaritan woman’s time….
Jesus was tired from the journey (John 4:6)	When the two spies arrive at Rahab’s house after their journey, “they lay down there.” (Joshua 2:1)
Woman speaks to the people after encounter; she becomes an evangelist of the Logos, the Word, Jesus	Rahab speaks to the men of the city; lies to save the spies, ensuring the destruction of Jericho
Jesus stays there for two days….	The two spies stay there, and then sneak away
Jesus is alone; he has sent the Apostles ahead to get food for the journey.	The two spies are alone; they have been sent ahead by the journeying Israelites to scout the land and prepare to destroy Jericho.
Jesus converts the city of Sychar.	The Israelites destroy Jericho.
Woman has a bucket and a rope to draw water	Rahab lets spies down the rope, then puts another cord, the shani (literal “Red Line” in the Red Line of Hope), and saves their lives.
She feels tension with Jesus because he’s a Jew; then she becomes a believer and an apostle, leading her people        (John 4:9ff)	Rahab knows about YHWH; but the people of Jericho are annihilated by the Israelites
She does not have a husband now	At the time, Joshua did not have a wife; Matthew says he married Rahab, see above
“I know that Messiah is coming (the one called Christ); when he comes, he’ll announce all things to us.”	“I know that YHWH has given you the land….” (see Joshua 2:9-13)
Enter into labor of others	Evidently, God promises Israelites that they will despoil the labor of others

 

 

Mary, sister of Lazarus, John 11 & 12                                Ruth, Book of Ruth

11:2   Using dramatic foreshadowing, John tells us that this is the same Mary of Bethany who will anoint Jesus in the following chapter. Acts and discussion of anointing/washing will happen in Chapters 11, 12, and 13, when Jesus imitates Mary in washing the disciples’ feet. This episode will end with a sweet odor filling the house.	Using dramatic foreshadowing, the inspired author of the Book of Ruth, in the book’s final verses, points forward in time to the birth of David.         The tragic initial chapter of Ruth will lead to a glorious development in the house of Perez, foreshadowing David.
Mary’s brother Lazarus died, but Jesus raised him to life. This will lead to Jesus’ death, followed by Jesus’ Resurrection.	Ruth’s husband died; she finds a new husband, Boaz, and they are important to Salvation History
He stayed/abode in the place he was for two days (John 11:6)	Elimelech and his family “stayed” (Ruth 1:2) in Moab; additionally, in Chapter 1 of Ruth, forms of the word “two” appear nine times. -Naomi departed from the “place” where she had been.
Let us go to Judea (11:7)	Naomi tries to dissuade her two daughters-in-law from going with her to Judea. Ruth goes with her nonetheless.
The disciples warn him about returning to Judea, because the Jews are seeking to stone him. (11:8)	Naomi hears that the drought in Judea is over, and so decides to return to Beth Lehem (house of bread) because God had given lehem (bread) to his people. (1:7)
If anyone walks in the day he does not stumble because he has the light of the day. (11:9)	Ruth leaves the threshing floor of Boaz just when the early light is appearing, but before people could be recognized in the light. (3:14)
Lazarus’ “sleep” is interrupted, and Jesus is going to “wake him.” (11:11)	Boaz’ sleep is interrupted by Ruth (3:8)
“Then Thomas, called the Twin, said to his fellow-disciples, ‘let us go, even us, that we may die with him’.” (11:16) The name “Thomas” is from the Hebrew word “ta’am,” meaning twin; his Greek nickname Didymus also means “twin.”	At the end of the Book of Ruth, the twin Perez is oddly highlighted, twice, as the beginning of a new lineage.
The people console Mary and Martha (11:19)	Her two daughters-in-law console Naomi
“Therefore Martha, when she heard that Jesus is coming, met him; But Mary was sitting in the house.” (11:20)	After the night with Ruth, Boaz goes to the gateway of the city to meet the other potential legal ‘redeemer’, and has him “sit down here.” (4:1)
A bit later, Martha “called her sister Mary secretly, saying….”           (11:28)     The Gospels, Acts, and the Letters of the New Testament are full of hints and hidden lessons of many new modes of communication with the Holy Spirit.	“And she (Naomi) saw that she (Ruth) had strengthened herself to go with her, and she ceased to speak to her.” (1:18) There may have been a deeper level of communication developing between the two women here. Naomi may have been teaching her new spiritual modes of communication.
Jesus “…troubled himself. And he said, ‘Where have you put him?’”   (11:33-34)	Boaz “trembled…. And he said, ‘Who are you?’” (3:8-9)
Lazarus is raised from the tomb in one of the most shocking and open miracles of the New Testament. Jesus has explicitly prayed to God before the miracle, asking God to do this.	God stays entirely silent during the Book of Ruth, except for the slightest spiritual hints. And God blesses everyone. Everyone in this story becomes happy. Later, the New Testament is a handbook for learning the new, quiet, very powerful communication of the Holy Spirit.
Lazarus emerges, “his feet and hands having been bound with sheets, his face being bound with a cloth.” (11:44) Jesus then orders him to be untied, freed.	Ruth uncovers Boaz’ feet.   (3:7)
Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, who had died, whom he had raised from the dead. (12:1)   As Bruno Barnhart shows in The Good Wine, Jesus is recreating the Creation in six new days. Parallel to Genesis 1, woman and man are being recreated on the Sixth Day of the New Creation. Specifically, Jesus’ four encounters with women in John 2, 4, 12, and 20 together comprise the Sixth Day.	Boaz pours six measures of barley seed into her garment. (3:15, 17)   When Boaz awakes from his sleep (like Adam), it is as if a new Creation is happening, and he asks the woman the beautiful and mysterious question, “Who are you?” The Book of Ruth may have been written much later than the books that surround it in the Hebrew Scriptures. It points forward to the radical surges of compassion that Jesus and the New Testament will bring to humanity.
Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with oil	Ruth uncovers Boaz’ feet.   (3:7)
Mary pours the oil	Boaz pours the seed into Ruth’s garment
Lazarus has new life	Ruth has a new husband, resulting in new life, the birth of Obed, who leads to David and Solomon
God gives new life to Lazarus	God kills Onan for spilling his seed (or for treating Tamar badly).   (Genesis 38)   God rewards Boaz for his kindness to Ruth and Naomi. Boaz marries Ruth, and becomes an important part of the lineage of Judah, leading to Jesus. Boaz has an important place in Salvation History because of his kindness.
Sweet odor in the house (12:3)	Blessing of house of Boaz (and Naomi, and Ruth)

Near the end of the Book of Ruth, when the elders and people gathered at the gate witness Boaz when he says that he will redeem Naomi and marry Ruth, they say, “May YHWH grant the woman who is coming into your house (be) as Rachel and Leah, of whom both built the house of Israel.” These sisters, Rachel and Leah, are like Martha and Mary, friends of Jesus who help build the early Church. A bit later the people say, “And let your house be like the house of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah.” We see here a moving, a progression, a focusing, from the entire people of Israel to the tribe of Judah. This will lead to the Christ Event, to Jesus. We also see the author of the Book of Ruth make a knowing nod to the Red Line of Hope, and the growing development of the Feminine in humanity and in society that will also lead to the Christ Event.

 

Mary Magdalene, John 20                                                Tamar, Genesis 38

Mary Magdalene goes to tomb, later searches for Jesus’ body (20:1; 11-18)	Tamar goes to see age of Judah’s son Shelah (Genesis 38:14)
Mary Magdalene is like a widow searching for her lost husband.	Tamar is a widow, searching for her promised husband, Shelah. Later, Judah will send someone to search for his signet ring, bracelet, and staff.
Mary did not recognize Jesus (20:14)	Judah did not recognize Tamar (38:15)
Mary mistakenly, though innocently, thinks that Jesus is the gardener of the garden.	Judah mistakenly thinks that Tamar is a whore (zonah), and is later wrongly told that Tamar has played the whore.
2 angels are seated, wearing white garments	Tamar had been wearing mourning clothes for a long time (black clothes) and puts on other clothing to view Shelah.
There are two angels in the tomb.	Tamar’s first two husbands, Er and Onan, had died.
Woman, why are you weeping? Whom do you seek?	“Let her be burned.” Judah’s response upon hearing of Tamar’s pregnancy.
From whom he cast out 7 demons (Luke 8:2)   Jesus tells Mary not to hold him physically yet. Jesus mentions a time very soon when he will ascend to his Father in heaven.   Jesus tells Mary not to hold him yet.	Demon Asmodeus killed 1st 7 husbands of Sarah. Then Archangel Michael and Tobias cast Asmodeus out, and the marriage is consummated. Archangel Michael returns to heaven.     Judah is not intimate again with Tamar, upon realizing that she has borne him sons through which his lineage shall grow, all the way to Jesus.
Jesus gives Mary a message for his brothers (20:17)	Er, Onan, and Shelah were brothers, all sons of Judah
6 days of Creation; 6th day	Creation, fall, recreation

 

How John’s Gospel Incorporates and Saves the David Story

How John’s Gospel Incorporates and Saves the David Story;

Appendix [….] of The Red Line of Hope

 

The authors of John’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel have woven the David Story very deeply into their own Gospels. In John’s Gospel, this is most readily apparent in the Farewell Discourse, Passion, and Resurrection events. These connections are strongly present also in Luke’s Gospel, particularly in Chapters 7 & 8.

Above we discussed how the enthronement scene of Solomon, and the consolidation of his kingdom, and the appearance of a momentarily integrated humanity in the dual throne of Solomon and the Feminine, is a high-point of the Hebrew Scriptures (Old Testament). And we considered how the dialogue of Jesus on the Cross in John 19 is an empowered refashioning of that scene, a realization, an event that promises and delivers both human development and great spiritual gifts to all of humanity.

The Hebrew term remez means a ‘hint’, particularly, a literary hint. These deft allusions happen throughout the Scriptures, and, by their very nature, they have a lot to do with intertextuality, that is, with different parts and different books of the Scriptures speaking with each other. Such hidden dialogues happen on every page of the New Testament, in its conversation with the Old Testament. Some of these are obvious and easy to identify, as when the Evangelists call Jesus “the son of David.” There are many ways in which we can and should interpret such New Testament allusions to earlier Scriptures.

Other instances of remezim are harder to identify. These operate by creating a mood or a situation, or sometimes a physical motion, that reminds us of something from an earlier Scripture. Often, there may be a repetition of just one or two words to cue us to make the connection. The slightness of some of these connections make them harder to identify.

Many of these remezim in the New Testament remain undiscovered, by and large.

Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, chooses his 12 Disciples and delivers the Sermon on the Plain. After this, his ministry expands greatly into new territory.

Some very subtle allusions to both the David Story and the early chapters of Solomon’s reign appear at the end of the Sermon on the Plain and throughout Chapters 7 & 8 of Luke. These serve to connect Jesus to Solomon’s accomplishments, and to also highlight how much greater are Jesus’ gifts to humanity and the cosmos than are Solomon’s.

John knows well what Luke has done in his Gospel. It is after Jesus’ very challenging Bread of Life Discourse in Chapter 6 that John begins to deftly place more allusions to the David Story in his Gospel. The intensity of the Davidic allusions increases in Chapters 11 and 12, at the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. Then, adding to the drama of the Paschal Events, there are powerful culminations of the Johannine reenactment of the David Story in the Farewell Discourse (John 13-17), the Passion, and the Resurrection events.

This chart shows connections between the Gospel of John and the David Story, specifically with 2 Samuel and early 1 Kings, although episodes from early 1 Samuel are here too:

 

John’s Gospel                                                            David Story

1:12 Tabernacled among us. (The Logos (Word) became flesh.)	Solomon built the temple, beit, house
1:14 born of God	-the births of David and Solomon are accomplishments of the Red Line of Hope. (Luke 7, born of women, Kingdom of Heaven; also, Luke 7:35, where Lady Wisdom is a mother to Jesus and John the Baptist)
1:14 we beheld his glory, only-begotten of Father	Solomon, son of David, is for a quick moment one of the more glorious people of the Hebrew Scriptures.
1:29 Lamb of God	Absalom had his hair sheared annually, like a lamb. (See 2 Sam 14:26)
1:48 I saw you under (hupo) the fig tree	Absalom suspended in the tree. (See 2 Sam 18:9-15)
1:49 you are the King of Israel	Echoes of the recognition of Solomon as king.
2:1 The marriage at Cana, and the mother of Jesus there with his disciples.   Master of the Feast	Solomon’s coronation; Feminine integration; the arrival of Lady Wisdom/Bathsheba to Solomon’s Court. The Master of the Feast is a male reflection of Lady Wisdom, who, in Proverbs, prepares her feast. So too do the wise women of the Red Line of Hope prepare Solomon to be a wise leader.
2:4 what to you and to me, Woman?	This echoes David’s three statements to Joab and his brothers, “What do you sons of Zeruiah (David’s sister) have to do with me?” (Or variations on that statement)
2:10 “kept good wine until now.” History, positive, good developments, evolution. Good Feast of Human Growth. Lady Wisdom’s Feast. And the joys of life in society.	Absalom’s servants kill his brother Amnon at the feast when his “heart is good with wine.”
2:12 mother and brothers and disciples   Jesus’ family and friends get along much better with each other than did David’s family, and Solomon’s.	Solomon’s brothers mentioned much in early 1 Kings action that’s required to solidify the kingdom
2:15 Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple.	Priests had to leave temple, when the Glory of God (Shekinah) entered the temple at its dedication (hanukkat). 1 Kings 8:10-11 -temple Solomon built now corrupt
2:21 temple of his (Jesus’) body	With Pentecost, the human person and human community become the temple of the Holy Spirit. (See Appendix [….])
2:24 knew all	Solomon’s wisdom
2:25 knew what was in humanity	Solomon knew how the two women would react in the situation he planned. He also knew what the rebels were thinking and planning.
3:3 Unless one is born from above, one cannot see the Kingdom of God.   (There are early hints here of the languages of the Holy Spirit. This teaching will be greatly expanded later in the Fourth Gospel.)	-themes of blindness in early Red Line of Hope. -Solomon establishes a strong kingdom. He becomes one of the early children of Lady Wisdom, as well. (See Luke 7:35, where Jesus and John the Baptist are, shockingly, said to be children of Lady Wisdom.)
3:4 Can one enter a 2nd time into the mother’s womb and be born?	Zerah’s birth, where he’s born about 1½ times. -More importantly, there are multiple kinds of birth and development a person must traverse to mature and to arrive at the Kingdom of God. -Childish thinking of Nicodemus, who will grow greatly as an individual over the course of John’s Gospel.
3:5 Unless one is born of water and Spirit, one cannot enter the kingdom of God.	Beyond the integration of the anima, of the Feminine, in the individual and in society, there is also a new birth in the Spirit. The New Testament is largely about this.
3:8 Spirit blows/breathes where it wills…. You hear the voice of it….	This teaching of Jesus becomes more available to humanity after the Pentecost. Pope Saint John XXIII says that the time of Vatican II, which is today, is a New Pentecost, a new immediacy of the Holy Spirit to us. That is a shocking thing for a Pope to say.
3:14 serpent in wilderness lifted up   (This is an allusion to Moses placing the bronze serpent on the pole during the Exodus. If the rebellious Israelites looked upon it, then they would be healed of the poisonous bites of the snakes that God sent among them.)	-Humanity looks up to the truths of the elevation-stories of Solomon and of Absalom to grasp the story of human growth. -Humanity looks to Jesus on the Cross, and to Jesus’ Resurrection, to enter more deeply into belief and into the possibility of a deeper relationship with the Holy Spirit.
3:17 not to judge the world	Solomon is a wise judge and a king who uses violence to consolidate his kingdom. Jesus does not use violence. This too shows human evolution.
3:29 friend of bridegroom	Friend of David; friend of Solomon; see below
3:34 He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; he gives the Spirit without measure	1 Kings 3:28 They perceived God’s wisdom was in him [Solomon], to render Justice
3:35 the Father loves (agapai) the Son	2 Sam 12:24-25 God loved Solomon, Jedidiah
3:36 disobeying the Son, wrath of God on him	See Psalm 2.
4   Women, water, and wells	Jacob and Joseph are mentioned, and both patriarchs had encounters at wells.
4:9 “how do you talk with a . . . woman?” Then, the talk goes internal! More so than ever before in the Scriptures, or in human history.	Early improvements in relations between women and men, as per RLH. E.g., David comforts Bathsheba 2 Sam 12:24
4:11 the well is deep, bathu -the woman is a well, a spring -the women is water, in a sense -monastic psychology and much later Jungian psychology will associate the Feminine with water, psyche	The Greek word bathu reminds one of Bathsheba. John did this intentionally.   The woman mentions the vessel, and implicitly, the rope, that are needed to draw water from the well. The Red Line of Hope is imaged here.
4:16 go, call your husband	David to Uriah, go to your house (& wife)
4:18     Five husbands, one now not husband   I perceive you are a prophet.	David stunned by nabi Nathan; 2 Sam 12 (At slightly greater remove, more postmodern and fractured; reassembling and realigning her troubled past and turning it into an instrument of Evangelization. This happens to David’s family’s life all through John’s Gospel.)
4:27 marveled he was speaking with a woman	David’s comforting Bathsheba, anachronistic
4:28 left waterpot (and its rope) w men, Goes to city and talks to people; Man who told me all I did….	A fruit of the RLH is that women become Evangelizers too. End of Gospel, Mary Magdalene becomes Apostle to the Apostles.
4:36 sower and reaper rejoice together	Name repetitions at beginning and end of the RLH story! And this whole chapter, John 4, is about RLH themes.
4:38 you’ve entered into their labor	What Solomon, and later people, inherited from RLH, from earlier humanity, from our ancestors; more recently, from David
4:39-42 he stayed there two days; They said to the woman, “No longer because of your words that we believe…. After two days he left….	Fruit of the RLH
4:46   Child of royal person (basilikos) healed   –WHOLE (Greek: hole) house believed	First infant of Solomon and Bathsheba reunited with them, actually, in heaven. -This is an early moment of Jesus’ healing of David’s whole family, his whole house, with startling intimacy, care, and precision
4:52   7th hour, son began to heal	Allusion to Psalm 147, and the Mystical Psalm Structures, to be addressed in a future essay.
5:4 angel descending to the pool     (38 years immobile, top of Ladder/pool steps, Psalm 138)	2 Sam 2 and the knife fight at Pool of Gibeon, which is a negative parody of the Mystical Psalms Ladder; Yet John 5 is another positive Johannine image of the Ladder, and more specifically, a rehabilitation of the Pool of Gibeon parody image.
5:7 Jesus speaks to him about becoming ‘sound’ (similar to ‘whole’) six times.	Process of healing humanity. This healing will be superseded by that of the blind man in Chapter 9.
5:47 Moses wrote concerning me	Also, the whole David Story is retold and healed in John’s Gospel.
6:15 knowing they were to make him king	Absalom and Adonijah made themselves king
6:60 hard is the word	David to sons of Zeruiah, three times: “You are too hard for me,” or variations of that.
Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel: Jesus performs a miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. In the latter part of the chapter, he gives the challenging bread of life discourse, and says that we must eat his body and drink his blood. This is very Eucharistic, of course.	At Absalom’s banquet for the king’s sons, Absalom has his servants slay his older brother, Amnon, “when his heart is good with wine.”         (2 Sam 13:28)

At this point in John’s Gospel, the most exciting parts and the tragic parts of the David Story come into much closer harmony with each other and with John’s Gospel, with echoes from David’s adventures and tragedies appearing far more frequently throughout the Johannine text. Most of these Davidic parallels have to do with his battle with Absalom, his son.

Additionally, there are numerous resonances to the early years of Solomon’s reign, especially to the actions he took to solidify his kingdom, and the threat of his brother Adonijah usurping the throne.

7:24 Do not judge by sight, but by righteous judgment judge.       7:25 Is not this the man whom they seek to kill?   7:26 Christos (anointed one)	1 Sam 16:7 God says to Samuel, the Judge, when Samuel guesses wrongly about David’s brother, before David’s anointing as king: “Do not look on his appearance….”   Between David’s first anointing and his becoming king, Saul tries to kill him often.   David becomes king, eventually
7:38 rivers of living water will flow from him	Proverbs 21:1, king’s heart, now available to all people; again, Jesus taking Solomon event, makes it better, transforming it into something for all people who assent and desire it.
7:42 “Has not he Scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?” 7:43 “So there was a schism….” 7:44 “They desired to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him”	The David Story     (David’s flights from Saul; later, his flight from Absalom’s rebellion)
7:46 never did a person speak like this person speaks (soldiers won’t arrest Jesus)	God’s response to Solomon’s prayer, no one before or after you…. -Saul’s soldiers refuse to kill priests of Nob
7:53 and each went to his own house.	-a refrain in the David and Solomon stories

This alternation between community/ communal events, and the fairly frequent return to their own homes for their own reflection, is a part of the process of evolution, during which we develop both more as individuals and more as members of the community. The growth of our own souls and self-understanding, and the growth of our skills as members of our communities, complement each other.

8:1 Mount of Olives           Jesus about to die, but will return.   (Judas is a conspirator, a traitor.)     Judas hangs himself (Mt 27:1-10)   Field of blood	“But David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot; and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went….”   David fleeing, but will return.   “Ahithophel was among the conspirators….” (2 Sam 15:30; 31b)   Ahithophel hangs himself (2 Sam 17:23)   Joab tricks and murders Amasa, who is wallowing in his own blood, and gets moved to a field to die (2 Sam 20:12)
8:3 woman in adultery, standing her in middle	Tamar almost burned; Bathsheba alone on roof
8:9 “by their conscience being convicted”   -these fellows quit their violent plans of false justice, begin earnest repentance.	-David completely convicted by Nathan. David’s anger towards false justice converted into repentance. (Also, Daniel soundly convicts the wicked elders (judges) in Book of Daniel.)
8:15 you judge according to the flesh	Again, God’s words to Samuel about judging
8:21-22 I go, and you will seek me	David’s flights; several times echoed in John
8:23 I am not of this world	Solomon’s wisdom given by God
8:31 If you continue in my Word	Solomon’s warnings to Adonijah and Shimei
8:40 what I heard beside God	Lady Wisdom, beside God   (Proverbs 8:30)
8:42 if God were your father, you would love me. God wants to share the status, which Solomon alone had, with all people, except that the status is now so much more real and divine. Jesus makes us all children of God.	Psalm 2   The battles for kingship in the Hebrew Scripture stories are to determine the one-and-only king and heir to the throne.
8:56 Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.	Midrash [….] states that Solomon’s ancestor Ruth saw him enthroned as king. John the Evangelist knew this midrash.
8:59 In the previous verse Jesus says “I AM.” “Then Jesus was hidden, going through the midst of them, and passed by thus.” Jesus leaves the temple building. We find here multiple echoes of Paul’s “You are the temple of God.”	The Shekinah, God’s presence, leaves the house Solomon built.
John 9 is about the healing of the man born blind. The parents of the blind man are in the story too. 9:34 “You were born wholly in sins, and you are trying to teach us?” Of course, at the beginning of the chapter, Jesus says that neither this man nor his parents sinned.	In the Book of Tobit, the Archangel Raphael instructs Tobias how to heal his blind father Tobit. This is largely about healing marital relations, including Tobit’s own. After David, in lust, destroyed Uriah and his marriage: Psalm 51:5 “Indeed, in guilt was I born, a sinner was I conceived.” Psalm 51 has an explosion of language about the human interior. Jesus is about the healing and expansion of the human person.
10:9 will go in and go out, find pasture	David as military leader under Saul, lead the people in and out; and he was also a shepherd
10:22 Feast of Dedication	Hanukkat allusion; Dedication of Human Person as new temple
10:23 Porch of Solomon	1 direct mention of Solomon in John’s Gospel
John 11 is about the raising of Lazarus, and the ensuing plot to kill Jesus.   11:3 Lord, the one who you love (phileis) is ill. The word/names ‘Yonatan’ and ‘Lazarus’ are similar poetically. Each have 3 syllables, with the accent on 1st syllable, making a pair of dactyls.   See multiple rows below, where we discuss Martha and Mary, and Merab and Michal.   In both situations, Jesus and David learn…….	There are several levels of comparison going on here.   Jonathan and David were great friends. David laments Jonathan’s death at the beginning of 2 Samuel.   But it’s also about David and Saul, and David bringing a deeper love, agape, to the human community, or at least opening that possibility, which Jesus will then make available to all humanity. from the Feminine. Crossing to new things.
11:2 Mary, sister of Lazarus, rubbing the Lord with myrrh, wiping his feet with her hair, or, the early prediction of this event that will occur in the next chapter, Chapter 12; And Jesus will imitate this in Chapter 13, washing disciples’ feet             11:8 seeking to stone you         11:10 “walks in the night”….this is David’s nighttime mission of mercy alluded to here!!!!	Abigail’s mission of mercy in 1 Sam 25, imitated by David in next chapter, when David visits Saul’s camp by night not for violence, but for forgiveness and peace.   John’s bodily anointings and cleansings of Chapters 12 and 13, being foreshadowed in Chapter 11, is more echoing of the connection between the Abigail-David missions of mercy with the Mary-Jesus actions of mercy.   Saul had been seeking to kill David through several chapters, which reached a finale and a reversal in David’s mission of mercy. Recall also in 1 Sam 14 that Saul wanted to kill his own son, Jonathan. The people stopped him. Back to David and Saul; Saul trying to kill David too, not only Jonathan
11:3 phileis, the one that Jesus loved. 11:11 “Our friend (philos) Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I’m going to awaken him.”   Reviving someone from the dead is a large event, and a cause of Jesus’ death.	-Luke, little girl is asleep….Jesus is mocked -her spirit on-turns; Luke 8:55 -Literally, David woke Saul up in the middle of the night, to show mercy and forgiveness. -the camp-visit night of great human evolution, woke to agape, and ennobled philia
11:5 “Jesus loved (agapa) Martha and her sister and Lazarus.”	–Martha and Mary also remind us of Saul’s 2 daughters, both of whom David marries or was engaged to, and both of whom are stolen from him by Saul: Michal and Merab. And their brothers, Lazarus and Jonathan, are both dactyls, poetically. The word/names ‘Yonatan’ and ‘Lazarus’ are similar poetically. Each have 3 syllables, with the accent on 1st syllable, making a pair of dactyls. The inspired Evangelist John is setting the scene very intentionally.
The sisters scold Jesus about Lazarus’ death. Palm Sunday follows soon after.	Michal scolds David for dancing naked before the Ark of the Covenant as it is brought into Jerusalem. David’s dancing is a forerunner of the Incarnation. (And of John the Baptist leaping in the womb, before the Ark of Mary, Mother of God.)
11:6 remained in place he was     Heard he was sick	David and Jonathan’s archery communication, David hiding; strange ploy at first reading….   David’s sick-ploy to escape Saul’s troops, his wife helping him to escape.
11:15   let us go to him (Lazarus)	David and Abishai night mission to Saul’s camp, to perform an early healing of Humanity.
11:16 Thomas the Twin says, “let us go die with him!”	Echoes of Perez and Zerah -1 Sam 18, Jonathan’s commitment to David, and they shared a soul…. (This will be developed more in a future essay.)
11:27 Martha says: “I have believed that you are the Christ coming into the world.” -again, ‘anointed’, with kingly implications	Feminine version of Peter’s great confession of faith in the Synoptics: also, Peter at end of Ch 6.
11:31 consoling Mary	David comforts Bathsheba, when infant dies
11:32 if you were here, my brother would not have died; some guilt implied	The guilt of David’s sins against Bathsheba and Uriah; as if Bathsheba had said: “If you had not seduced/raped me and ordered my husband’s death, Uriah would still be alive.”
11:33 groaned in spirit, troubled himself….	Mourning of David, prematurely, for baby…. Time is warped throughout both stories! There is a strange play of cause-and-effect in the David story at the death of the infant of Bathsheba. And there is temporal foreshadowing of several kinds in the 2 chapters about Lazarus and Martha and Mary….   -2 Sam 18:33 “The king was deeply moved” (at Absalom’s death). David’s authentic mourning. The new heart that David requested in Psalm 51 has been delivered to him, and it works—he weeps uncontrollably.
11:35 Jesus wept.	David wept deeply for Absalom -David eulogizing Jonathan, 2 Sam 1….
11:39 he already stinks….   He’s in the tomb/cave	David at his worst in the early stages of the Bathsheba episode. The low points of humanity. -also, 1 Sam 24, cave mercy scene
11:41 lifted stone; nuptial scenes, well scenes	1 Sam 14:33 Saul, “roll a large stone before me”
11:41 lifted eyes upward -Lazarus, come out; “one having died”	-David follows Saul out of cave   -David wakes Saul’s camp in middle of night
11:46 some went to Pharisees, and told them what Jesus had done.   11:50 one man to die for nation, prophetic; -discussed more below	Saul consults Urim and Thummim; Saul condemns Jonathan to death   -the plan of Ahithophel to kill only David, and return the people to Absalom; see below
11:52 scattered children of God he might gather into one	1 Sam 14 the people of God unify and rise up to prevent Saul from killing Jonathan
11:57 inform, so they might seize him (Jesus)	David on the run from Saul
12:3 house filled w odor of myrrh   The outrages and sins of human history are redeemed by the story of Evolution, and by mature, evolved love, Philia and Agape	Forgiveness and healing of everything in David’s family and from his life. (also, temple, beit, filling with Shekinah; temple becomes Humanity) (That Mary’s hair now had myrrh is a sign that Absalom, like the infant, would meet the family again in Paradise….)
12:13 branches of palm trees	The posterity of the Tamars (palm trees), [The Forest of Ephraim, of Absalom’s death] The rewards of the martyrs in Revelation.
12:13 King of Israel	David & Solomon’s battles for kingship
12:19 Behold, the world has gone after him!	Absalom’s rebellion, when many flock to him; Forces David out of Jerusalem. 2 Sam 15:13, “The hearts of the Israelites have gone after Absalom!” -Also, Saul’s jealousy of David, whom all loved
12:27 soul agitated	2 Sam 18:33 “The king was deeply moved” (at Absalom’s death); David’s mourning has levels
12:31 ruler of this world thrown out	Eventually, Absalom defeated
12:32 When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people (and all things) to myself.	Absalom’s does draw many Israelites to himself when he falsely elevates himself to the throne. He is lifted again in the oak tree, suspended “between heaven and earth,” in a powerful image of the Crucifixion of Jesus.
12:35 one walking in darkness	Again, night mercy raid on Saul’s camp….
12:36 become sons of light	Become people of mercy, as David strove for
12:40 blinded their eyes	Lack of integration at Sodom and Gomorrah etc
12:42 many of the leaders believed in him	Solomon still had many strong supporters. As did David when he fled.
12:47 again, I came not to judge the world….	A maturing effect on the interpretation of the Torah. Much of the writing of Don Benedetto Calati was about this: a more mature interpretation of the Torah.
12:47 but that I might save the world	A quiet Joseph/Genesis allusion
13:1 knowing that hour had come to move from this world…. Loving his own (idious) in the world, loved them to the end (telos)	1 Kings 1, David on death bed, ensures transition of kingdom to Solomon, and teaches Solomon more things.
13:2 devil put it into heart of Judas….	“You know in your own heart all the evil that you did to my father David.” (1 Kings 2:44) Shimei cursed David badly when David was fleeing from Jerusalem.   -Rebellions of Absalom and Adonijah
13:4 lays aside his garments   This is also preparing for the robe of light, Resurrection. Intertestamental literature speaks of this too.	Near the end of his life, David loaded with garments to keep warm. 1 Kings 1:1
13:5 water in the basin	Solomon’s temple, bronze ocean. temple transferred to the human person.
13:5 washes feet	Nathan and Bathsheba bow to ground before David in 1 Kings 1 -also, David bows to new king, Solomon

It has been said that the Johannine footwashing scene is about the forgiveness of sins. When David is trying to cover his sin by calling Uriah back from the battlefront and getting him to go to his own house, his words to Uriah are, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” (2 Sam 11:8a) This is a low point of David’s treachery and abuse of power. (Yet even this can be forgiven by Jesus.) This is one example of how the mystical chords of Real connections are felt and maneuvered in the Body of Christ. The exquisite care and sensitivity that Jesus shows to David’s family will be shown to all of us.

13:10 he having bathed….	David’s sin against Bathsheba, whom David spotted while she was bathing. Peter, in the NT, is often cast in a similar light to David, although his sins are lighter than David’s, and his Spiritual gifts are far greater than David’s (thanks to Jesus).
13:12 reclining again	-The second night that Uriah spends camped out in from of David’s palace, instead of his own house, shortly before his death. -David on death bed, before the transference of the Kingdom to Solomon.
13:21 agitated in spirit	2 Sam 18:33 “The king was deeply moved” (at Absalom’s death); mourning multiple losses
13:23 one Jesus loved, reclining on breast	1 Sam 12, Nathan’s story about the ewe lamb reclining on man’s chest, stolen by David.
13:34 new commandment, Love one another	Joab’s anger about David’s love of enemies, after Absalom killed. David is surprisingly Christlike in attitude here. -David’s parting commands to Solomon, however, are not too Christlike. Counsels him to arrange the murder of Joab and of Shimei.
General discussion of God the “Father” and love	Solomon’s many spoken references to his father, David, are mirrored and advanced by Jesus’ discourse about God, his Father.
14:1 Don’t let heart be agitated	2 Sam 18:33 “The king was deeply moved.” All the mourning in the Hebrew Scriptures.
14:3 Father’s house, many dwellings -I go to prepare a place for you	-Solomon building house for God -Before arranging Shimei’s death, Solomon commands Shimei to build himself a house in Jerusalem, and never to cross the Wadi Kidron.
14:5 we know not where you go	David’s hidden flight from Jerusalem; his pursuers trying to track him and his messengers. When younger, David’s long flights from murderous Saul in the wilderness.
14:16 I will petition the Father, and another Paraclete he’ll send you	Solomon’s prayer to God, and the gift of Lady Wisdom to Solomon. Jesus does not keep his Holy Spirit to himself, but liberally shares the Spirit with all of us who desire the Spirit.
14:26 Holy Spirit will teach you everything.     16:30 now we know you know all things	Lady Wisdom; and Solomon, great wisdom, knows very much, according to Queen of Sheba   The Wise Woman of Tekoa says to David: “But my lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God to know all things that are on the earth.” (1 Sam 14:20b)
14:27 not as the world gives peace do I give peace	2 Sam 8:15 and 1 Kings 4:20,25 are the heights of the Davidic and Solomonic reigns. The peace of Christ is different even than the peace established by the blessed reigns of David and Solomon
14:30-31 ruler of this world is coming….   Rise, let us be on our way. [Very Peaceful]     crossing Kidron Valley (18:1) (see 18:1 again below)	David’s flight from Absalom. Psalm 3.   “Rise up! Let us flee, or there will be no escape from Absalom!” 2 Sam 15:14   David crossed the Kidron Valley on his flight from Jerusalem. 2 Sam 15:23
15:2 the good branches he prunes….	David’s flight for his life! Spiritual humor.
15:3 you are now clean because of the word I have spoken to you	David’s merciful treatment of Shimei during David’s flight, when Abishai wanted to lop his head off, pleased God, and furthered human evolution yet more. -David’s moments of evolutionary mercy are what pleases God more than anything else in David’s life, even his conversions back to God after his sins, or his singing and celebration with God.
15:13 greater love than this no one has, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends	“Oh Absalom, that I had died instead of you!” 2 Sam 18:33     Except Jesus does actually die for us. David expressed a wish to do so after-the-fact, because he has learned more about love and reality.
15:15 I no longer call you servants but friends	-Absalom mocks “friend” of David, Hushai. 2 Sam 15:37; 16:17.   -friend of Solomon: “Zabud son of Nathan was priest and king’s friend.” 1 Kings 4:5b
15:27 And you also witness, because from the beginning you are with me.   The previous verse speaks of the arrival of the Holy Spirit to humanity, in a far more complex way than the Ark approached Jerusalem: “And when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, who will witness concerning me. “And you also witness, because from the beginning you are with me.”	Solomon’s words to Abiathar as he pronounces his expulsion to him, and why he let him live: “The king said to the priest Abiathar, ‘Go to Anathoth, to your estate; for you deserve death. But I will not at this time put you to death, because you carried the ark of YHWH God before my father David, and because you shared in all the hardships my father endured.’ So Solomon banished Abiathar from being priest to the Lord, thus fulfilling the word of the Lord that he had spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh’.”                                                (1 Kings 2:26-27)

Jesus is very subtle in his words. He seemingly tells his disciples that they have been with him from the beginning, although in regular terms of human relationship, the disciples have only been following Jesus for two or three years. Jesus’ words about primordial connections to a shared beginning speak volumes about the overcoming of deep troubles between people, both individuals and far larger communities. The ancient possible sin of David in visiting slaughter upon Ahimelech and the priests of Nob, and his son Abiathar’s eventual treachery against David’s son Solomon, are caringly picked up, massaged, and healed here. Where Abiathar served God, but eventually betrayed David’s posterity, Jesus takes broken humanity and connects our mission of mercy and healing to the deepest service of God. Jesus is the healer of the deepest wounds. The comments below this chart speak more of this. (See also Appendix [….], “The Abimelech Errors.”)

16:1 These things have I spoken so that you may not be scandalized.	St. John of the Cross: “Let nothing scandalize you.” See commentary below the chart, on how messy things happen in life, because of our evolution, and how Everything gets redeemed and ennobled and incorporated into the tapestry of life divine.
16:4 These things I have spoken to you so that when the hour comes, you may recall that I told you these things.	Solomon’s entrapment and eventual execution of Shimei, with a discussion of words. (1 Kings 2:36-46)
16:21 The woman has grief when she bears, for her hour has come; but when she brings forth the child (paidion) she no longer remembers the distress, because of the joy that a [adult] human being (anthropos) was born into the world.*	The victorious births of Tamar’s twins and Ruth’s child. And Hannah’s son Samuel. And Solomon, after their first baby died.   The emergence of Solomon, first integrated person…. This is a great work of the women of the Red Line of Hope. Humanity shown, in one verse, moving from childhood to maturity, integration. Jesus alludes here to the women of the Red Line of Hope. Particularly, this has to do with the specific details of the emergence of Solomon, and his dazzling appearance at his enthronement. See immediately below:
16:23 Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.	Adonijah assumes that Solomon will do whatever his mother Bathsheba requests. So Adonijah asks Bathsheba to ask Solomon is he can take David’s last mistress, Abishag. Solomon executes Adonijah.   (This also shows Solomon’s own progression from child to man, and also shows Solomon’s mature detachment from his mother, with whom he still works closely.)

*This birth scene also goes much farther back, to 1 Sam 4:19-22. After Eli’s wicked son Phineas is killed in battle, his wife gives birth, and there are many allusions to this birth scene in the brief Johannine commentary by Jesus. See the comments below the chart. Even after Israel has lost its glory and the Ark of the Covenant, and when its leaders are corrupt, and the birth of a child seems pointless and insulting, even this low point is converted into a victory in Christ, as described by John’s Gospel. The child’s name, Ichabod, means “the glory has departed [from Israel],” but this is only short term.

The Ark of the Covenant was lost in the battle that killed Eli’s sons, Phineas and Hophni, when Ichabod was born. However, the Ark found its way back to Israel a short time later. So too, Jesus, who was born in the New Ark, Mary, will be killed in mere hours, but will return in glory a few days later.

16:25 I will plainly reveal….	Solomon’s wisdom, see 1 Kings 4:29-34
17:1 he looked up to heaven   The Priestly Prayer of Jesus, John 17	-Solomon’s dedication of the temple: “Solomon stood before the altar of the Lord in the presence of all the assembly is Israel, and spread out his hands to heaven.” (1 Kings 8:22)   -Solomon’s prayer to God, and before that, for wisdom to lead the people
17:11 that they may be one, as we are one	Solomon loved the Lord (1 Kings 3:3); Solomon’s organized kingdom….
18:1 Jesus went forth with his disciples across the Wadi Kidron, towards Jesus death….	David flees and crosses Wadi Kidron -Solomon forbids Shimei, who cursed David on his flight, from ever crossing the Wadi Kidron
18:2 Judas knew the place	Hushei actually tricks Absalom, while Absalom thinks that Hushei is a traitor to David (2 Sam 5-14)
18:3 So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers	Absalom’s armed invasion of Jerusalem. -also, Adonijah’s posturing.
18:10 Simon Peter draws sword, cuts off ear of the servant of the high priest     -Judas betrays Jesus, leads priests’ soldiers to Jesus.   -Jesus tells Peter to put sword in sheath.*     -Jesus has just crossed the Wadi/Valley Kidron.   -Jesus tells Peter that he must “drink the cup.” This is very Eucharistic. And while John’s is the only Gospel without an official “Institution of the Eucharist,” John 6, and John 13-17, and many other parts of the Gospel are Eucharistic.   (John 7:32; 45-49) The temple police of the chief priests and the Pharisees refuse to arrest Jesus, because never has anyone spoken like him.	David, fleeing Saul, visits Nob and chief priest Ahimelech. Saul then executes these priests. (1 Sam 21-22)   -Doeg the Edomite betrays David and actually kills the priests at Saul’s command.   -David takes the sword of Goliath from Ahimelech, which is in a cloth behind the ephod. -Ahimelech reminds David that he slew Goliath in the Valley of Elah.   -David and his men eat the holy showbread. (See also Matthew 12:1-8, where Matthew makes a fascinating interpretation of this scene at Nob. John was familiar with Matthew’s discussion of Nob.)     1 Sam 22:17 Saul’s soldiers refuse to kill Ahimelech and the priests of Nob. So Saul has Doeg the Edomite kill them.

*A more powerful resonance to Jesus’ command to sheath the sword is when David unsheaths Goliath’s sword to cut his head off. At 1 Sam 17:51, David “took his [Goliath’s] sword and drew it out of its sheath,” and dispatched Goliath. In this scene in John 18, Jesus is signaling a major paradigm shift in humanity, and pointing forward to a time of non-violence, and is already moving in that direction. He is here actively reversing the human instinctual response of violence, and replacing it with love, forgiveness, and awareness of God’s plan for us.

(See also 2 Sam 20:8, for Joab’s sword-out-of-sheath treachery.)

(Finally, in the Johannine scene, a person’s ear is cut off. Perhaps this shows that violence hurts our capacity to listen, which is a most important skill for us to have if we are to become closer friends and co-operators with the Holy Spirit. So violence is anti-Spiritual and anti-evolutionary. Violence is most often a regression for people working with the Holy Spirit.)

18:13 the high priest	high priest Abiathar supporting the rebellion of Adonijah (1 Kings 1)
18:14 And Caiaphas was the one who advised the Jews that it was advantageous for one person to perish for the people.	“’I will strike down only the king, and I will bring all the people back to you as a bride comes home to her husband. You seek the life of only one man, and all the people will be at peace.’ The advice pleased Absalom and all the elders of Israel.” (Ahithophel’s counsel at 2 Sam 17:2b-4)
18:15 courtyard of high priest; Woman who guarded the gate     You are not one of this man’s disciples, are you? Peter protests, and says he doesn’t know Jesus.	2 Sam 17:17 servant girl brought news to David’s messengers; another woman hid David’s messengers, saving them and David.   -David’s friend Hushai outwits Absalom, and says that he has left David, and serves Absalom now. Hushai helps save David.
18:33 Are you the King of the Jews?	The contests and battles about who is king
18:36 If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting….	This is a big difference from earthly kingdoms
19:2 crown of thorns and purple robe	Absalom, his head and hair, in tree
19:3 Hail the King of the Jews!	Absalom and Adonijah hailed as king, falsely. David and Solomon were rightly hailed.
19:5 Behold the man!                      (Jesus is innocent)	You are the man!           (2 Sam 12:7) (David is guilty, utters Psalm 51)
19:6 chief priests and officers cried, “Crucify him!”	David urges restraint for Absalom, that his life might be spared. (2 Sam 18:5)
19:11 You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.   Another lesson from this: Jesus’ actions mirror actions by almost everyone in the David Story. Jesus identifies with EVERYONE. Even Adonijah, Absalom, and others. Such is the depth of Jesus’ understanding, redemption, and forgiving sacrifice. Again, this is a Johannine teaching of Paul’s image of the Body of Christ.	Adonijah says to Bathsheba, “You know that the kingdom was mine, and all Israel had set their faces toward me to reign; yet the kingdom has been turned around, and is my brother’s, for it was his from Yahweh.” (1 Kings 2 :15)
19:13 sat on the judge’s bench	Absalom, before rebellion, sitting by the road into the gate, making judgments and wanting to administer justice, according to himself (2 Sam 15:1-6); insults the reign of the king, his father David.
19:15 we have no king but Caesar	Antagonists of Psalm 2
19:16 handed him over 19:17 place of the skull (Golgotha)	After Absalom’s rebellion, head of rebellious Sheba tossed over wall by wise woman (of Abel of Beth-maacah) to Joab and army. -Also, the Hebrew of 2 Sam 18:9 says that Absalom is caught in the tree by his head.
19:18 this side and that	More echoes of David between the two gates, awaiting word of his son
19:25 his mother; 3 or 4 women total, the Greek supports either reading	The four women of the Red Line of Hope, right before the most important verses of all:
19:26-7 when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother.’ And from that hour, the disciple took her into himself….*	This is the central Scriptural moment for the topics of the Red Line of Hope. Its parallel is Solomon’s enthronement scene, and the adjacent throne being set up for Bathsheba, on Solomon’s right. Soon after this, Solomon reunites the male child with his mother.
19:28-30 Knew all was finished, delivers up Spirit to his disciples.	David knew his death was imminent, crowns Solomon as King. (1 Kings 1-2)

Also in 19:25, there are three or four women in the scene, and at least three of them have the name “Mary.” This is, among other things, a chiastic connection to the three Tamars of the Red Line of Hope.

*The Beloved Disciple took the “mother of Jesus” (Mary, the Feminine, Wisdom, anima-integration) into himself, as discussed above. Lady Wisdom is a ‘type’ of the Holy Spirit. This movement of the Holy Spirit into the heart of humanity is a great development at the end of a long process. Recall that the Ark of the Covenant traveled with Israel for 40 years in the desert. It traveled with them in Canaan, as they settled and integrated there. Later, David gloriously led the Ark to Jerusalem. Then Solomon led the Ark to the newly built temple, and housed it (semi-permanently) in the Holy of Holies. Then, a long time later, a new Ark, Humanity, is built up and is prepared to receive the Holy Spirit. In the light of John 19:26-7, let us review again the moment of the housing of the Ark in the new temple’s heart, the Holy of Holies: “Then the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the Holy of Holies, underneath the wings of the Cherubim. For the cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the Ark, so that the Cherubim made a covering above the Ark and its poles.” (1 Kings 8:6-7) There are powerful parallels between the housing of Jesus’ mother in the heart of the Beloved Disciple, the Pauline teaching of the new temple of the Holy Spirit as being Humanity, and the earlier housing of the wooden ark of the covenant in the stone temple.

19:29 branch, with sponge, raised to Jesus’ head for him to drink on the Cross	Absalom’s head in “thick branches of a great oak” (2 Sam 18:9)
19:30 bowed his head	David bowed his head to King Solomon
19:34 pierced his side with spear.	Joab killing Absalom in tree with javelins in heart.
Gave up the Spirit   Here, and in John 20, Jesus breathes and gives the Holy Spirit to the Church, the Body of Christ	Shekinah leaving Solomon’s temple….
19:39 Nicodemus, 100 pounds, linen cloths	2 givers of gifts to David and army in retreat
19:41 burial of Jesus	Burial of Absalom
20:1 stone removed from tomb	Saul, before preparing to kill his son Jonathan, orders a stone to be rolled for an altar -also, various nuptial encounters at wells with cover stones needing to be moved away, in the Hebrew Scriptures.
20:4 the two disciples were running together; One outran the other	This is very important about human evolution! The two messengers running to David, with news of victory/ Absalom’s death. The messenger to Adonijah, of Solomon’s enthronement. Also, where Adonijah thinks messenger has good news, but it’s bad news for him. This parallels David’s expectations of Ahimaaz (2 Sam 18:27-30). Messengers, and angels, all through John and the David Story. (Also, the two messengers running at night to bring spy information to David, during Absalom’s rebellion.)
20:6 Simon Peter goes in, sees sudarion separated from the other linens.   20:12 Two angels sitting in perhaps adjacent places to the two groups of cloths, at the head and feet of where the body of Jesus had been.	Both of these separations, of various burial cloths and of the parallel angels, are reminiscent of David being between the two gates, as he waited for the (two) messengers, one of whom explicitly carried word of the death of Absalom. (2 Sam 18) Absalom himself was caught in a very “in-between” situation, for when he was in the heart of the oak tree, he was “between heaven and earth,” just as the crucified Jesus was.

While rules are important in many ways, there are times in life when rules are not at the forefront of our thought. Good conversation, making art, thinking, etc., are times for freedom from some of the constraints of rules. However, rules enabled us to get to the place where those higher developments of life could happen. There is a creative tension between Peter and the Beloved Disciple (whom many consider to be John, Apostle and Evangelist). The younger and more spiritually-connected John arrives at the tomb first. But then he waits, to allow the leading, authoritative Apostle, Peter, to enter the tomb first. Peter also represents the Institution of the Church and its rules and hierarchies. John represents individual fruition and the freedom of life in the Spirit that Paul speaks of so much. John also represents Spiritual intuition, and the direct following of the guiding suggestions of the Holy Spirit (rather than legislated laws). Something about this scene points to a time, especially in the future, when rules can lessen, because humanity will know discipline (as the highly-disciplined Jesus did) and we will know, all of us, a far-more-full relationship with the Holy Spirit. Of course, Peter and John are two great friends on the same mission for the Church—there are two angels in the place where the Resurrection happened. Pope Francis’ beautiful Amoris Laetitia is an example of the mature Church, in the light of Vatican II’s New Pentecost, beginning to bring into the decision-making processes of the Church a more acknowledged presence of the Holy Spirit, and a more immediately translatable input of the quiet suggestions of the Holy Spirit.

This very positive development is foreshadowed by another development in the David Story. After the battle against Absalom, Ahimaaz son of Zadok has an interesting conversation with Joab about being the messenger to David the King, regarding the victory in the battle, and the death of Absalom. Then, Ahimaaz takes off after the first messenger, already sent by Joab, and overtakes him, arriving to David first. David, informed of his imminent arrival while he is yet running, says, “He is a good man, and comes with good tidings.” (2 Sam 18:27) (In 1 Kings 1:42, during Adonijah’s insurrection, Abiathar’s son Jonathan brings him bad news, while Adonijah expects him to bear good news; rather, Adonijah’s ruse to take the crown has failed.) The two messengers, in these two rebellions, Ahimaaz and Jonathan, are sons of the two priests Zadok and Abiathar, respectively. Earlier, both Ahimaaz and Jonathan were the most effective spies for David during Absalom’s rebellion. However, during their jobs not as spies but as messengers, they both carry seemingly bad news for David or Adonijah. Ahimaaz, however, does not deliver the full report, regarding Absalom’s death, to David. He allows the following messenger, whom he has overtaken on the way, to do that. Rather, his secret news is actually good, but in a different way than David might expect; It has to do with the ongoing purification of humanity, as we are being prepared to receive the Holy Spirit.

Not long after Absalom’s death, something understated but positively miraculous happens in the preparations for the minor rebellion of the Israelite named Sheba, a Benjaminite and a “scoundrel.” Prior to this, at the battle against Absalom’s forces, Abishai rises almost to a position of equality with Joab, the leader of the army (see 2 Sam 18:2). Abishai leads 1/3 of the army, as does Joab. Later, during the rebellion of Sheba, is when the new development occurs: It is Abishai, who for one brief shining moment, is actually leading David’s army! At 2 Sam 20:6-7, Abishai is actually the one who leads out “Joab’s men” to the battle. However, in the action to surround the city with Sheba, Joab falls back into command, and receives the head of Sheba from the wise woman of that city, and the rebellion is over.

Recall that Abishai is the one of the three brothers, the three “sons of Zeruiah,” who is the most pliable to the intelligent and often spiritual leadership of David. Asahel, the animal-like “gazelle,” was killed by Abner with the backwards end of a spear. Joab was treacherous. But Abishai on several occasions actually learns from David, and becomes a better human being. Abishai represents the growing portion of the human will that can be brought into harmony with the Will of God, as expressed to us today by the Holy Spirit.

This event of Abishai momentarily taking control could be seen as merely David being angry with Joab for killing his son Absalom, and therefore demoting Joab for a short time. However, it represents enormous advance, and potential future advance, for our relationship with God, in the growth of our soul and our moral intelligence. Abishai did lead, if only briefly. It may be one of the most important culminations of the Old Testament, and it’s hardly noticeable at first reading. All of this is also in the background as the Beloved Disciple and the Saint Peter are sent by the message of Saint Mary Magdalene in a race to the tomb of Jesus at her word of the Resurrection.

20:11 Mary stood at the tomb weeping outside	David weeping
20:12 Mary and 2 angels	David & 2 ‘messengers’ (word also for ‘angels’)
20:13 Woman, why are you weeping?	2nd Tamar weeping, Absalom’s dumb question -Eli’s question to Hannah, mother of Samuel -Joab to David, about David’s mourning
20:14 Sees “disguised” Jesus standing there	Dissembling, lying messenger to David “stood there” after told to do so by David….
20:19 doors locked	Tamar, Amnon; Also, faint regression to man-pack of Sodom and Gomorrah, but in a much more innocent way, obviously….
20:19 Peace to you	David’s blessing to Absalom before his trip, on which the war of rebellion began; -words between Bathsheba and Adonijah
20:22 receive the Holy Spirit	Shekinah going into Solomon’s temple. In this Johannine scene, of course, the human person has already replaced the temple as the locus of God’s dwelling.
20:24 Thomas….called the Twin	Perez and Zerah (not Rebecca’s twins)
20:26 again, passes through locked doors -peace be with you (3rd time) -2nd time, a week apart, that Jesus appears in this way	Healing of the locked doors of Amnon’s inner chamber, and of harm done by Sodom and Gomorrah and the harm done by the Benjaminites of Gibeah to humanity.
20:27 Thomas the twin puts his “hand” through the wound of the risen Christ (into the Spirit womb of Christ).	Zerah puts his “hand” through the birth canal, and then is pulled back into the womb. This is a very powerful chiastic closure with the entire story of the Red Line of Hope. -Thomas, whose Hebrew name Ta’am means “Twin,” and who is given the Greek nickname of Didymus, also meaning “Twin,” here balances and reciprocates the action of Zerah, who has on his “hand” the original Red Line of Hope, placed there by the midwife to Tamar. -Note also how there are allusions, within verses of each other, to the two Tamars, at the beginning and end of OT’s discussion of the Red Line of Hope story.
20:28 My Lord and my God, said by Thomas       21:2 Thomas, called the Twin, and Nathanael mentioned, right next to each other.	Chiastic closure with beginning of Gospel, Nathanael’s proclamation “you are the son of God, you are the King of Israel” (John 1:49). [Also, Psalms 5 & 145, “my King and my God” -more chiastic symmetry] More resolution and chiastic closure.
Distance between Peter and Christ; they’re close, despite Peter’s minor betrayal	Distance between David and Saul, 1 Sam 26; very great distance, as David evolves and grows far beyond Saul’s major betrayals.
Breakfast—unlike anything in earlier Scripture
Peter’s final complaint—like siblings arguing; also a mature discussion on the faith.

 

What does all this mean? What is this about? Why does John limn so many connections to the David Story, the Red Line of Hope, and the early “Solomon story” into his own Gospel?

Certainly, the religious and literary meanings of the Johannine echoes of these Old Testament accounts are supremely important in themselves.

But could there be another set of things occurring here?

Recall that throughout the Farewell Discourse (chapters 13-17), Jesus spoke about how the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, would come to us, and would teach us “all things.” (John 14:26)

And when he was dying on the Cross, he “delivered up the Spirit,” giving us the Holy Spirit in his final breath. (19:30)

And when he visited the Apostles after his Resurrection, he breathed upon them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (20:22)

So while John never explicitly writes of the Pentecost, it appears at junctures in his Gospel. Jesus gives us the new relationship with Holy Spirit, as John depicts in many ways.

Pursuant to this, now we all have to skillfully shift gears: The Holy Spirit communicates directly with us. We can learn how to read the Spirit’s signs and languages. We can become better interlocutors with Divine inspiration, better conversationalists with, and far more effective agents of the Holy Spirit as we learn how to read these signs. Synchronicity, for example, is a language of the Holy Spirit. Psalm-based arithmetic is another. There are many languages of the Holy Spirit.

And these languages of the Holy Spirit are a new world that John’s Gospel wants to teach us. This is especially the case in the light of Vatican II’s New Pentecost, today, in this moment.

 

Image Recognition

              All of these sets of allusions to earlier Scriptural accounts, especially to the David Story and the Red Line of Hope, serve as practice for us in learning how to read the signs of the Holy Spirit.

All of these allusions are stocked with meaning, imbued with deep lessons that the Scriptures want to impart to us. Many of these lessons have to do with our living lives today.

Plato speaks of image recognition. (And Mark’s Gospel specifically speaks of one of Plato’s dialogues.) We, in the school of the Holy Spirit, become better at recognizing. When comparing two different Bible passages, or when comparing a Bible passage to one of our lived experiences, we recognize repetitive situations, word echoes, parallel actions, similar emotions, and much more. We enter into deeper, and more constant, communication with the Holy Spirit.

In our own lives, when there are coincidences, or when things remind us of something else, or déjà vu, or Synchronicity, it may be that the Holy Spirit is inviting us to consider these things, and so to discern a lesson that we can learn therein. Such lessons are brimming over with human and Spiritual content.

All of these duplications, echoes, resonances, repetitive patterns, and situational rhymes that we discover in the Bible are training us to recognize the communication of the Holy Spirit in our lives today. While becoming more skilled in these recognitions, we’ll be better agents for the Holy Spirit in the world.

Much of our life’s work has to do with healing the violent tendencies within us, such as the tendency to separate ourselves from others. And many of the connections between the David Story and the Gospel of John are arcs, beautiful grand arches, that show us ways of transformation, growth, maturity, healing, and empowerment, as we transform these deep energies within us away from violence, and towards love, mutual care, and concern for our neighbor, our community, and our world.

Jesus Christ is the perfect human being who is also God. Matthew’s Gospel and the New Testament begin by saying that Jesus is also a new and vastly better take on the person of David, who was king, priest, and prophet.

David is a very alive human being, who clearly pursued God in his life and often strove after virtue. He tried to be the best person he could be, even if there were troubles both in the world and in David’s childhood and memory. David was punished for his sins and also received many gifts from God, and rewards for the great things he did.

In a sense, David was a model for humanity, especially an earlier humanity, closer to his time. He grew closer to God in his life. There were many good events in his life, and his son Solomon was another amazing fruition of his development. Solomon became the great wise king, even if this did not last for long and the kingdom began to disintegrate. He was an integrated human being, and this allowed for his wisdom to reach profound new levels.

So the trajectory of David’s life, including the positive developments in his son Solomon’s life, show a sort of merger, a slow and gradual coming together of the divine and the human.

Jesus, of course, takes this reality to a totally new level. He is God and he is human.

All human lives are invited to grow in holiness. All humans are invited to welcome the Holy Spirit’s direct communication and presence into their own lives, in the light of the Pentecost. Athanasius said that God became human so that humans might become divine. Iranaeus said that the glory of God is a human being fully alive. And the 2^nd Letter of Peter says that we are invited to be partakers in God’s own nature! A major part of Eastern Christian theology (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Western Christianity too) are the many teachings of deosis, in which a main purpose of humanity is to grow closer to the Divine and to join the Divine.

Great. So we are invited to grow in perfection, and to scale the heights of the Divine.

But then a reality hits us, sometimes hard. Our lives are messy, often, and the world has gross unfairness and difficulties. So is it even possible to aim for perfection and constant growth in virtue, in the fallen world and situations in which we find ourselves?

John’s Gospel gives us hope.

The Fourth Gospel reaches, with profound depth and precision and care and respect, into the troubled lives of David, Bathsheba, Solomon, Joab, Absalom, Tamar (all of the Tamars), and the people of Israel, and shows the way forward to integration and wholeness. By taking the brutal violence and treachery of the characters in Israel at the time of the David Story and the Hebrew Scripture portions of the Red Line of Hope, John’s Gospel is doing multiple things.

First, it’s showcasing our human evolution, and the beauty of our progress. We owe our ancestors a great deal of respect and gratitude, especially the ones who persevered through ice ages by being better at extracting bone marrow from animal carcasses than other early folks were. They had so many difficult times. So too we see amazing and beautiful throes of life’s growth in the life of David. His bad times are gathered and exemplified by Absalom, who is stuck between heaven and earth, as he’s hanging pitifully in the oak tree—the agonized icon of evolution. David’s accomplishments and good times are exemplified by, and brought to a fruition by, the elevation of Solomon at his coronation.

All of this is brought to a greater development and fruition by Jesus’ Crucifixion and the events at the Cross in John 19. A major purpose of this present book has been to show this.

These developments shows both evolution and Spiritual progress in the guidance of the Divine.

Directly related to this is another development that speaks to all of us: The redemption of the characters of the David Story, much later, in John’s Gospel, are speaking to us today! These healings of David and his family, friends, and peers are about the redemption of our own lives, here and now.

John’s Gospel has taken the mucky parts of the David Story and the Hebrew Bible and transformed them into parts of the most beautiful and intimate 11 chapters that humanity has known (Chapters 11-21 of John’s Gospel).

David’s treacheries and Joab’s bloodlust and the Tamars’ hurts and Absalom’s misplaced sense of justice and Phineas’ wife’s birthing Ichabod in misery, all of which are painful and horrible, all get transformed into intimate scenes and parts of the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection. In the light of the Resurrection and of the glory of our evolution in the light of Christ and the arrival of the Paraclete to us, even the Crucifixion, in John’s Gospel, becomes a place of glory, a dynamic center of reconciliation and joyful human development.[1]

God remembers the least and most forgotten and the most backwards, lost, and misdirected of people. Again, even the wicked lout Phineas, the son of Eli, whose wife gave a difficult delivery to his son after his death in battle, gets somewhat redeemed. The passage about the difficult birth of Phineas’ son Ichabod (1 Sam 4:19-22) is rehearsed and transformed into joy in John 16:21, as the above chart discusses. The sheer panic of David’s flight from Jerusalem, when his son Absalom was trying to murder him, when David screams to all in the palace, “Let’s get the heck out of Jerusalem!” is converted into Jesus’ gentle and firm, “Rise, let us go hence….”

One thousand years after Solomon, Paul writes, twice, that “We are all parts of each other.” (See Ephesians 4:25 and Romans 12:5)

John’s Gospel, by converting and transforming the most troubling episodes of the Old Testament into joyful and intimate new reality, shows us meaning and shows us the way forward as humanity, as a human family.

And the Holy Spirit gives us new languages to help us, which we can learn starting now.

The lives of each one of us are to be found in the Gospel. Not only is the David Story found in the Gospel, but so is Your Story and My Story.

God loves us and wants us to grow into the glories that God is planning and preparing for us.

Isaiah talks about the scarlet quality of some of the sins of people. These can be forgiven and transformed.

Our lives, no matter how fallen and bad they were in the past, can be rescued and our actions can become loving and meaningful. Before “the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken,” the thread of our life is right now being sought after by God to be woven into our meaningful evolution (Ecclesiastes 12:6). God rescues the storyline of our life. God the divine weaver is desiring the strand of your life and mine. Each one of our lives can become a thread, a red and multi-colored line of hope in the tapestry of creation and salvation.

[1] Metropolitan Bishop Kallistos Ware’s brilliant The Power of the Name concludes by calling on us to be “dynamic centre[s] of reconciliation.”

How John’s Gospel Incorporates and Redeems the David Story

How John’s Gospel Incorporates and Redeems the David Story;

An Appendix of The Red Line of Hope

              The authors of John’s Gospel and Luke’s Gospel have woven the David Story very deeply into their own Gospels. In John’s Gospel, this is most readily apparent in the Farewell Discourse, Passion, and Resurrection events. These connections are strongly present also in Luke’s Gospel, particularly in Chapters 7 & 8.

Above we discussed how the enthronement scene of Solomon, and the consolidation of his kingdom, and the appearance of a momentarily integrated humanity in the dual throne of Solomon and the Feminine, is a high-point of the Old Testament. And we considered how the dialogue of Jesus on the Cross in John 19 is an empowered refashioning of that scene, a realization of a promise, an event that promises both human development and great spiritual gifts to all of humanity.

The Hebrew term remez means a ‘hint’, particularly, a literary hint. These deft allusions happen throughout the Scriptures, and, by their very nature, they have a lot to do with intertextuality, that is, with different parts and different books of the Scriptures speaking with each other. Such hidden dialogues happen on every page of the New Testament, in its conversation with the Old Testament. Some of these are obvious and easy to identify, as when the Evangelists call Jesus “the son of David.” There are many ways in which we can and should interpret such New Testament allusions to earlier Scriptures.

Other instances of remezim are harder to identify. These operate by creating a mood or a situation, or sometimes a physical motion, that reminds us of something from an earlier Scripture. Often, there may be a repetition of just one or two words to help us to make the connection. The slightness of some of these connections make them harder to identify.

Many of these remezim in the New Testament remain undiscovered, by and large.

Jesus, in Luke’s Gospel, chooses his 12 Disciples and delivers the Sermon on the Plain. After this, his ministry expands greatly into new territory.

Some very subtle allusions to both the David Story and the early chapters of Solomon’s reign appear at the end of the Sermon on the Plain and throughout Chapters 7 & 8 of Luke. These serve to connect Jesus to Solomon’s accomplishments, and to also highlight how much greater are Jesus’ gifts to humanity and the cosmos than are Solomon’s.

John knows well what Luke has done in his Gospel. It is after Jesus’ very challenging Bread of Life Discourse in Chapter 6 that John begins to deftly place more allusions to the David Story in his Gospel. The intensity of the Davidic allusions increases in Chapters 11 and 12, at the home of Lazarus, Martha, and Mary. Then, adding to the drama of the Paschal Events, there are powerful culminations of the Johannine reenactment of the David Story in the Farewell Discourse (John 13-17), the Passion, and the Resurrection events.

This chart shows connections between the Gospel of John and the David Story, specifically with 2 Samuel and early 1 Kings, although episodes from early 1 Samuel are here too:

 

 

John’s Gospel                                                            David Story

1:12 Tabernacled among us. (The Logos (Word) became flesh.)	Solomon built the temple, beit, house
1:14 we beheld his glory, only-begotten of Father	Solomon, son of David, is for a time one of the more glorious people of the Hebrew Scriptures.
1:29 Lamb of God	Absalom had his hair sheared annually, like a lamb. (See 2 Sam 14:26)
1:49 you are the King of Israel	Echoes of the recognition of Solomon as king.
2:24 (Jesus) knew all	Solomon’s wisdom
3:8 Spirit blows/breathes where it wills…. You hear the voice of it….	This teaching of Jesus becomes more available to humanity after the Pentecost. Pope Saint John XXIII says that the time of Vatican II, which is today, is a New Pentecost. That is a shocking thing for a Pope to say.
3:34 He whom God has sent speaks the words of God; he gives the Spirit without measure	1 Kings 3:28 They perceived God’s wisdom was in him [Solomon], to render Justice
3:35 the Father loves (agapai) the Son	2 Sam 12:24-25 God loved Solomon, Jedidiah
4   Women, water, and a well	Jacob and Joseph are mentioned, and both patriarchs had encounters at wells.
4:9 “how do you talk with a . . . woman?” Then, the talk goes internal! More so than ever before in the Scriptures, or in human history.	Early improvements in relations between women and men, as per RLH. E.g., David comforts Bathsheba 2 Sam 12:24
4:11 the well is deep, bathu -the woman is a well, a spring -the women is water, in a sense -monastic psychology and much later Jungian psychology will associate the Feminine with water, psyche	The Greek word bathu reminds one of Bathsheba. John did this intentionally.   The woman mentions the vessel, and implicitly, the rope, that are needed to draw water from the well. The Red Line of Hope is imaged here.
4:16 go, call your husband	David to Uriah, go to your house (& wife)
4:18     Five husbands, one now not husband   I perceive you are a prophet.	David stunned by nabi Nathan; 2 Sam 12 (At slightly greater remove, more postmodern and fractured; reassembling and realigning her troubled past and turning it into an instrument of Evangelization. This happens to David’s family’s life all through John’s Gospel.)
4:27 marveled he was speaking with a woman	David’s comforts Bathsheba, anachronistic
4:28 left waterpot (and its rope) w men, Goes to city and talks to people; Man who told me all I did….	A fruit of the RLH is that women become Evangelizers too. End of Gospel, Mary Magdalene becomes Apostle to the Apostles.
4:46 Child of royal person (basilikos) healed   –WHOLE (Greek, hole) house believed (The time of the healing, the 7th hour, could refer to Psalm 147, in which God heals the broken-hearted.)	First infant of Solomon and Bathsheba reunited with them, actually, in heaven. -This is an early moment of Jesus’ healing of David’s whole family, his whole house, with startling intimacy, care, and precision
5:47 Moses wrote concerning me	Also, the whole David Story is retold, and healed, in John’s Gospel.
6:15 knowing they were to make him king	Absalom and Adonijah made themselves king
6:60 hard is the word	David to sons of Zeruiah, three times: “You are too hard for me,” or variations of that.
Chapter 6 of John’s Gospel: Jesus performs a miracle of the multiplication of the loaves. In the latter part of the chapter, he gives the challenging bread of life discourse, and says that we must eat his body and drink his blood. This is very Eucharistic, of course.	At Absalom’s banquet for the king’s sons, Absalom has his servants slay his older brother, Amnon, “when his heart is good with wine.”         (2 Sam 13:28)

At this point in John’s Gospel, the most exciting parts and the tragic parts of the David Story come into much closer harmony with each other and with John’s Gospel, with echoes from David’s adventures and tragedies appearing far more frequently throughout the Johannine text. Most of these Davidic parallels have to do with his battle with Absalom, his son.

Additionally, there are numerous resonances to the early years of Solomon’s reign, especially to the actions he took to solidify his kingdom, and the threat of his brother Adonijah usurping the throne.

7:42 “Has not he Scripture said that the Christ is descended from David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?”	The David Story of the Hebrew Scriptures
8:1 Mount of Olives     Jesus about to die, but will return. (Judas is a conspirator, a traitor.)   Judas hangs himself (Mt 27:1-10)   Field of blood	“But David went up the ascent of the Mount of Olives, weeping as he went, with his head covered and walking barefoot; and all the people who were with him covered their heads and went up, weeping as they went….” David fleeing, but will return. “Ahithophel was among the conspirators….”          (2 Sam 15:30; 31b)   Ahithophel hangs himself (2 Sam 17:23)   Joab tricks and murders Amasa, who is wallowing in his own blood, and gets moved to a field to die (2 Sam 20:12)
8:3 woman in adultery, standing her in middle	Tamar almost burned; Bathsheba alone on roof
8:9 “by their conscience being convicted”   -these fellows quit their violent plans of false justice, begin earnest repentance.	-David completely convicted by Nathan. David’s anger towards false justice converted into repentance. (Also, Daniel soundly convicts the wicked elders (judges) in Book of Daniel.)
8:40 what I heard beside God	Lady Wisdom, beside God   (Proverbs 8:30)
8:56 Your ancestor Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day; he saw it and was glad.	Midrash [….] states that Solomon’s ancestor Ruth saw him enthroned as king. John the Evangelist knew this midrash.
10:23 Porch of Solomon	one direct mention of Solomon in John’s Gospel
John 11 is about the raising of Lazarus, and the ensuing plot to kill Jesus.   11:3 Lord, the one who you love (phileis) is ill. The word/names ‘Yonatan’ and ‘Lazarus’ are similar poetically. Each have 3 syllables, with the accent on 1st syllable, making a pair of dactyls.   See multiple rows below, where we discuss Martha and Mary, and Merab and Michal.	There are several levels of comparison going on here.   Jonathan and David were great friends. David laments Jonathan’s death at the beginning of 2 Samuel.   But it’s also about David and Saul, and David bringing a deeper love, agape, to the human community, or at least opening that possibility, which Jesus will then make available to all humanity.
11:2 Mary, sister of Lazarus, rubbing the Lord with myrrh, wiping his feet with her hair, or, the prediction of this event that will occur in the next chapter; And Jesus will imitate this in John 13, washing disciples’ feet             11:8 seeking to stone you         11:10 “walks in the night”….this is David’s nighttime mission of mercy alluded to here!!!!	Abigail’s mission of mercy in 1 Sam 25, imitated by David in next chapter, when David visits Saul’s camp by night not for violence, but for forgiveness and peace.   John’s bodily anointings and cleansings of Chapters 12 and 13, being foreshadowed in Chapter 11, is more echoing of the connection between the Abigail-David missions of mercy with the Mary-Jesus missions of mercy.   Saul had been seeking to kill David through several chapters, which reached a finale and a reversal in David’s mission of mercy. Recall also in 1 Sam 14 that Saul wanted to kill his own son, Jonathan.   Back to David and Saul; Saul trying to kill David too, not only Jonathan
11:3 phileis, the one that Jesus loved. 11:11 “Our friend (philos) Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I’m going to awaken him.”   Reviving someone from the dead is a large event, and a cause of Jesus’ death.	-Luke, little girl is asleep….Jesus is mocked -her spirit on-turns; Luke 8:55 -Literally, David woke Saul up in the middle of the night, to show mercy and forgiveness. -the camp-visit night of great human evolution, woke to agape, and ennobled philia
11:5 “Jesus loved (agapa) Martha and her sister and Lazarus.”	–Martha and Mary also remind us of Saul’s 2 daughters, both of whom David marries or was engaged to, and both of whom are stolen from him by Saul: Michal and Merab. And their brothers, Lazarus and Jonathan, are both dactyls, poetically. The word/names ‘Yonatan’ and ‘Lazarus’ are similar poetically. Each have 3 syllables, with the accent on 1st syllable, making a pair of dactyls. The inspired Evangelist John is setting the scene very intentionally.
11:31 consoling Mary	David comforts Bathsheba, when infant dies
11:32 if you were here, my brother would not have died; some guilt implied	The guilt of David’s sins against Bathsheba and Uriah; as if Bathsheba had said: “If you had not seduced me and ordered my husband’s death, Uriah would still be alive.”
11:35 Jesus wept.	David wept deeply for Absalom, and his own sins; David eulogizing Jonathan, 2 Sam 1….
11:39 he [Lazarus] already stinks….   He’s in the tomb/cave	David at his worst in the early stages of the Bathsheba episode. The low points of humanity.
12:3 house filled w odor of myrrh   The outrages and sins of human history are redeemed by the story of Evolution, and by mature, evolved love, Philia and Agape	Forgiveness and healing of everything in David’s family and from his life.   (That Mary’s hair now had myrrh is a sign that Absalom, like the infant, would meet the family again in Paradise….)
12:13 King of Israel	David & Solomon’s battles for kingship
12:19 Behold, the world has gone after him!	Absalom’s rebellion, when many flock to him. Forces David out of Jerusalem. 2 Sam 15:13, “The hearts of the Israelites have gone after Absalom!” -Also, Saul’s jealousy of David, whom all loved
12:27 soul agitated	2 Sam 18:33 “The king was deeply moved” (at Absalom’s death); many meanings
12:31 ruler of this world thrown out	Eventually, Absalom defeated
12:32 When I am lifted up from the earth, draw all people (and all things) to myself.	Absalom does draw many Israelites to himself when he falsely elevates himself to the throne. He is lifted again in the oak tree, suspended “between heaven and earth,” in a powerful image of the Crucifixion of Jesus.
13:1 knowing the hour had come to move from this world…. Loving his own (idious) in the world, loved them to the end (telos)	1 Kings 1, David on death bed, ensures transition of kingdom to Solomon, and teaches Solomon more things.
13:2 devil put it into heart of Judas….	“You know in your own heart all the evil that you did to my father David.” (1 Kings 2:44) Shimei cursed David badly when David was fleeing from Jerusalem.   -Rebellions of Absalom and Adonijah
13:5 washes feet	Nathan and Bathsheba bow to ground before David in 1 Kings 1 -also, David bows to new king, Solomon

It has been said that the Johannine footwashing scene is about the forgiveness of sins. When David is trying to cover his sin by calling Uriah back from the battlefront and getting him to go to his own house, his words to Uriah are, “Go down to your house, and wash your feet.” (2 Sam 11:8a) This is a low point of David’s treachery and abuse of power. (Yet even this can be forgiven by Jesus.) This is one example of how the mystical chords of Real connections are felt and maneuvered in the Body of Christ. The exquisite care and sensitivity that Jesus shows to David’s family will be shown to all of us.

13:10 he having bathed….	David’s sin against Bathsheba, whom David spotted while she was bathing. Peter, in the NT, is often cast in a similar light to David, although his sins are lighter than David’s, and his Spiritual gifts are far greater than David’s (thanks to Jesus).
13:12 reclining again	-The second night that Uriah spends camped out in from of David’s palace, instead of his own house, shortly before his death. -David on death bed, before the transference of the Kingdom to Solomon.
13:21 agitated in spirit	2 Sam 18:33 “The king was deeply moved” (at Absalom’s death); mourning multiple losses
13:23 one Jesus loved, reclining on breast	1 Sam 12, Nathan’s story about the ewe lamb reclining on man’s chest, stolen by David.
13:34 new commandment, Love one another	Joab’s anger about David’s love of enemies, after Absalom killed. David is surprisingly Christlike in attitude here. -David’s parting commands to Solomon, however, are not too Christlike. Counsels him to arrange the murder of Joab and of Shimei.
General discussion of God the “Father” and love	Solomon’s many spoken references to his father, David, are mirrored and advanced by Jesus’ discourse about God, his Father.
14:3 Father’s house, many dwellings -I go to prepare a place for you	-Solomon building house for God -Before arranging Shimei’s death, Solomon commands Shimei to build himself a house in Jerusalem, and never to cross the Wadi Kidron.
14:16   I will petition the Father, and another Paraclete he’ll send you	Solomon’s prayer to God, and the gift of Lady Wisdom to Solomon. Jesus does not keep his Holy Spirit to himself, but liberally shares the Spirit with all of us who desire the Spirit.
14:26 Holy Spirit will teach you everything.     16:30 now we know you know all things	Lady Wisdom teaches Solomon, whose wisdom is great, according to Queen of Sheba   The Wise Woman of Tekoa says to David: “But my lord has wisdom like the wisdom of the angel of God to know all things that are on the earth.” (1 Sam 14:20b)
14:27 not as the world gives peace do I give peace	2 Sam 8:15 and 1 Kings 4:20,25 are the heights of the Davidic and Solomonic reigns. The peace of Christ is different even than the peace established by the blessed reigns of David and Solomon
14:30-31 ruler of this world is coming….   Rise, let us be on our way.     [Very Peaceful]     crossing Kidron Valley (18:1) (see 18:1 again below)	David’s flight from Absalom. Psalm 3.   “Rise up! Let us flee, or there will be no escape from Absalom!” 2 Sam 15:14   David crossed the Kidron Valley on his flight from Jerusalem. 2 Sam 15:23
15:2 the good branches he prunes….	David’s flight for his life!  Spiritual humor.
15:13 greater love than this no one has, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends	“Oh Absalom, that I had died instead of you!” 2 Sam 18:33     -Except Jesus does actually die for us. David expressed a wish to do so after-the-fact, because he has learned more about love and reality.
15:15 I no longer call you servants but friends	-Absalom mocks “friend” of David, Hushai. 2 Sam 15:37; 16:17.   -friend of Solomon: “Zabud son of Nathan was priest and king’s friend.” 1 Kings 4:5b
15:27 And you also witness, because from the beginning you are with me.   The previous verse speaks of the arrival of the Holy Spirit to humanity, in a far more complex way than the Ark approached Jerusalem: “And when the Paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of Truth, who proceeds from the Father, who will witness concerning me. “And you also witness, because from the beginning you are with me.”	Solomon’s words to Abiathar as he pronounces his expulsion to him, and why he let him live: “The king said to the priest Abiathar, ‘Go to Anathoth, to your estate; for you deserve death. But I will not at this time put you to death, because you carried the ark of YHWH God before my father David, and because you shared in all the hardships my father endured.’ So Solomon banished Abiathar from being priest to the Lord, thus fulfilling the word of the Lord that he had spoken concerning the house of Eli in Shiloh’.”                                             (1 Kings 2:26-27)

Jesus is very subtle in his words. He seemingly tells his disciples that they have been with him from the beginning, although in regular terms of human relationship, the disciples have only been following Jesus for two or three years. Jesus’ words about primordial connections to a shared beginning speak volumes about the overcoming of deep troubles between people, both individuals and far larger communities. The ancient possible sin of David in visiting slaughter upon Ahimelech and the priests of Nob, and his son Abiathar’s eventual treachery against David’s son Solomon, are caringly picked up, massaged, and healed here. Where Abiathar served God, but eventually betrayed David’s posterity, Jesus takes broken humanity and connects our mission of mercy and healing to the deepest service of God. Jesus is the healer of the deepest wounds. The comments below this chart speak more of this. (See also Appendix [….], “The Abimelech Errors.”)

16:21 The woman has grief when she bears, for her hour has come; but when she brings forth the child (paidion) she no longer remembers the distress, because of the joy that a [adult] human being (anthropos) was born into the world.*

The victorious births of Tamar’s twins and Ruth’s child. And Hannah’s son Samuel. And Solomon, after their first baby died.   The emergence of Solomon, first integrated person…. This is a great work of the women of the Red Line of Hope. Humanity shown, in one verse, moving from childhood to maturity, integration. Jesus alludes to the women of the Red Line of Hope. Particularly, this has to do with the specific details of the emergence of Solomon, and his dazzling appearance at his enthronement. See immediately below:

16:23 Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will give you.

Adonijah assumes that Solomon will do whatever his mother Bathsheba requests. So Adonijah asks Bathsheba to ask Solomon is he can take David’s last mistress, Abishag. Solomon executes Adonijah.  (This also shows Solomon’s own progression from child to man, and also shows Solomon’s mature detachment from his mother, with whom he still works closely.)

*This birth scene also goes much farther back, to 1 Sam 4:19-22. After Eli’s wicked son Phineas is killed in battle, his wife gives birth, and there are many allusions to this birth scene in the brief Johannine commentary by Jesus. See the comments below the chart. Even after Israel has lost its glory and the Ark of the Covenant, and when its leaders are corrupt, and the birth of a child seems pointless and insulting, even this low point is converted into a victory in Christ, as described by John’s Gospel. The child’s name, Ichabod, means “the glory has departed [from Israel],” but this is only short term.

The Ark of the Covenant was lost in the battle that killed Eli’s sons, Phineas and Hophni, when Ichabod was born. However, the Ark found its way back to Israel a short time later. So too, Jesus, who was born in the New Ark, Mary, will be killed in mere hours, but will return in glory a few days later.

18:1 Jesus went forth with his disciples across the Wadi Kidron, towards Jesus death….	David flees and crosses Wadi Kidron -Solomon forbids Shimei, who cursed David on his flight, from ever crossing the Wadi Kidron
18:3 So Judas brought a detachment of soldiers	Absalom’s armed invasion of Jerusalem. -also, Adonijah’s posturing.
18:10 Simon Peter draws sword, cuts off ear of the servant of the high priest     -Judas betrays Jesus, leads priests’ soldiers to Jesus.   -Jesus tells Peter to put sword in sheath.*     -Jesus has just crossed the Wadi/Valley Kidron.   -Jesus tells Peter that he must “drink the cup.” This is very Eucharistic. And while John’s is the only Gospel without an official “Institution of the Eucharist,” John 6, and John 13-17, and many other parts of the Gospel are Eucharistic.   (John 7:32; 45-49) The temple police of the chief priests and the Pharisees refuse to arrest Jesus, because never has anyone spoken like him.	David, fleeing Saul, visits Nob and chief priest Ahimelech. Saul then executes these priests. (1 Sam 21-22)   -Doeg the Edomite betrays David and actually kills the priests at Saul’s command.   -David takes the sword of Goliath from Ahimelech, which is in a cloth behind the ephod. -Ahimelech reminds David that he slew Goliath in the Valley of Elah.   -David and his men eat the holy showbread. (See also Matthew 12:1-8, where Matthew makes a fascinating interpretation of this scene at Nob. John was familiar with Matthew’s discussion of Nob.)     1 Sam 22:17 Saul’s soldiers refuse to kill Ahimelech and the priests of Nob. So Saul has Doeg the Edomite kill them.

*A more powerful resonance to Jesus’ command to sheath the sword is when David unsheaths Goliath’s sword to cut his head off. At 1 Sam 17:51, David “took his [Goliath’s] sword and drew it out of its sheath,” and dispatched Goliath. In this scene in John 18, Jesus is signaling a major paradigm shift in humanity, and pointing forward to a time of non-violence, and is already moving in that direction. He is here actively reversing the human instinctual response of violence, and replacing it with love, forgiveness, and awareness of God’s plan for us.

(See also 2 Sam 20:8, for Joab’s sword-out-of-sheath treachery.)

18:33 Are you the king of the Jews?	The contests and battles about who is king
18:36 If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting….	This is a big difference from earthly kingdoms
19:2 crown of thorns and purple robe	Absalom, his head and hair, in tree
19:3 Hail the king of the Jews!	Absalom and Adonijah hailed as king, falsely. David and Solomon were rightly hailed.
19:5 Behold the man!                      (Jesus is innocent)	You are the man!           (2 Sam 12:7) (David is guilty, utters Psalm 51)
19:6 chief priests and officers cried, “Crucify him!”	David urges restraint for Absalom, that his life might be spared. (2 Sam 18:5)
19:11 You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above.   Another lesson from this: Jesus’ actions mirror actions by almost everyone in the David Story. Jesus identifies with EVERYONE. Even Adonijah, Absalom, and others. Such is the depth of Jesus’ understanding, redemption, and forgiving sacrifice. Again, this is a Johannine teaching of Paul’s image of the Body of Christ.	Adonijah says to Bathsheba, “You know that the kingdom was mine, and all Israel had set their faces toward me to reign; yet the kingdom has been turned around, and is my brother’s, for it was his from Yahweh.” (1 Kings 2 :15)
19:15 we have no king but Caesar	Antagonists of Psalm 2
19:16 handed him over 19:17 place of the skull (Golgotha)	After Absalom’s rebellion, head of rebellious Sheba tossed over wall by wise woman (of Abel of Beth-maacah) to Joab and army. -Also, the Hebrew of 2 Sam 18:9 says that Absalom is caught in the tree by his head.
19:25 his mother; 3 or 4 women total, the Greek supports either reading	The four women of the Red Line of Hope, right before the most important verses of all:
19:26-7 when Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother.’ And from that hour, the disciple took her into himself….*	This is the central Scriptural moment for the topics of the Red Line of Hope. Its parallel is Solomon’s enthronement scene, and the adjacent throne being set up for Bathsheba, on Solomon’s right. Soon after this, Solomon reunites the male child with his mother.
19:28-30 Knew all was finished, delivers up Spirit to his disciples.	David knew his death was imminent, crowns Solomon as King. (1 Kings 1-2)

Also in 19:25, there are three or four women in the scene, and at least three of them have the name “Mary.” This is, among other things, a chiastic connection to the three Tamars of the Red Line of Hope.

*The Beloved Disciple took the “mother of Jesus” (Mary, the Feminine, Wisdom, anima-integration) into himself, as discussed above. Lady Wisdom is a ‘type’ of the Holy Spirit. This movement of the Holy Spirit into the heart of humanity is a great development at the end of a long process. Recall that the Ark of the Covenant traveled with Israel for 40 years in the desert. It traveled with them in Canaan, as they settled and integrated there. Later, David gloriously led the Ark to Jerusalem. Then Solomon led the Ark to the newly built temple, and housed it (semi-permanently) in the Holy of Holies. Then, a long time later, a new Ark, Humanity, is built up and is prepared to receive the Holy Spirit. In the light of John 19:26-7, let us review again the moment of the housing of the Ark in the new temple’s heart, the Holy of Holies: “Then the priests brought the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord to its place, in the inner sanctuary of the house, in the Holy of Holies, underneath the wings of the Cherubim. For the cherubim spread out their wings over the place of the Ark, so that the Cherubim made a covering above the Ark and its poles.” (1 Kings 8:6-7) There are powerful parallels between the housing of Jesus’ mother in the heart of the Beloved Disciple, the Pauline teaching of the new temple of the Holy Spirit as being Humanity, and the earlier housing of the wooden Ark of the Covenant in the stone temple.

19:30 bowed his head	David bowed his head to King Solomon
19:34 pierced his side with spear.	Joab killing Absalom in tree with javelins in heart.
Gave up the Spirit Here, and in John 20, Jesus breathes and gives the Holy Spirit to the Church, the Body of Christ	Shekinah leaving Solomon’s temple….
20:4 the two disciples were running together; One outran the other	This is very important about human evolution! The two messengers running to David, with news of victory/ Absalom’s death. The messenger to Adonijah, of Solomon’s enthronement. Also, where Adonijah thinks messenger has good news, but it’s bad news for him. This parallels David’s expectations of Ahimaaz (2 Sam 18:27-30). Messengers, and angels, all through John and the David Story. (Also, the two messengers running at night to bring spy information to David, during Absalom’s rebellion.)
20:6 Simon Peter goes in, sees sudarion separated from the other linens.   20:12 Two angels sitting in perhaps adjacent places to the two groups of cloths, at the head and feet of where the body of Jesus had been.	Both of these separations, of various burial cloths and of the parallel angels, are reminiscent of David being between the two gates, as he waited for the (two) messengers, one of whom explicitly carried word of the death of Absalom. (2 Sam 18) Absalom himself was caught in a very “in-between” situation, for when he was in the heart of the oak tree, he was “between heaven and earth,” just as the crucified Jesus was.

While rules are important in many ways, there are times in life when rules are not at the forefront of our thought. Good conversation, making art, thinking, etc., are times for freedom from some of the constraints of rules. However, rules enabled us to get to the place where those higher developments of life could happen. There is a creative tension between Peter and the Beloved Disciple (whom many consider to be John, Apostle and Evangelist). The younger and more spiritually-connected John arrives at the tomb first. But then he waits, to allow the leading, authoritative Apostle, Peter, to enter the tomb first. Peter also represents the Institution of the Church and its rules and hierarchies. John represents individual fruition and the freedom of life in the Spirit that Paul speaks of so much. John also represents Spiritual intuition, and the direct following of the guiding suggestions of the Holy Spirit (rather than legislated laws). Something about this scene points to a time, especially in the future, when rules can lessen, because humanity will know discipline (as the highly-disciplined Jesus did) and we will know, all of us, a far-more-full relationship with the Holy Spirit. Of course, Peter and John are two great friends on the same mission for the Church—there are two angels in the place where the Resurrection happened. Pope Francis’ beautiful Amoris Laetitia is an example of the mature Church, in the light of Vatican II’s New Pentecost, beginning to bring into the decision-making processes of the Church a more acknowledged presence of the Holy Spirit, and a more immediately translatable input of the quiet suggestions of the Holy Spirit.

This very positive development is foreshadowed by another development in the David Story. After the battle against Absalom, Ahimaaz son of Zadok has an interesting conversation with Joab about being the messenger to David the King, regarding the victory in the battle, and the death of Absalom. Then, Ahimaaz takes off after the first messenger, already sent by Joab, and overtakes him, arriving to David first. David, informed of his imminent arrival while he is yet running, says, “He is a good man, and comes with good tidings.” (2 Sam 18:27) (In 1 Kings 1:42, during Adonijah’s insurrection, Abiathar’s son Jonathan brings him bad news, while Adonijah expects him to bear good news. Adonijah’s ruse to take the crown has failed.) The two messengers, in these two rebellions, Ahimaaz and Jonathan, are sons of the two priests Zadok and Abiathar, respectively. Both Ahimaaz and Jonathan were the most effective spies for David during Absalom’s rebellion. However, during their jobs not as spies but as messengers, they both carry seemingly bad news for David or Adonijah. Ahimaaz, however, does not deliver the full report, regarding Absalom’s death, to David. He allows the following messenger, whom he has overtaken on the way, to do that. Rather, his news is actually good for David, but in a different way than David might expect; It has to do with the ongoing purification of humanity, as we are being prepared to receive the Holy Spirit.

Not long after Absalom’s death, something understated but positively miraculous happens in the preparations for the minor rebellion of the Israelite named Sheba, a Benjaminite and a “scoundrel.” Prior to this, at the battle against Absalom’s forces, Abishai rises almost to a position of equality with Joab, the leader of the army (see 2 Sam 18:2). Abishai leads 1/3 of the army, as does Joab. Later, during the rebellion of Sheba, is when the new development occurs: It is Abishai, who for one brief shining moment, is actually leading David’s army! At 2 Sam 20:6-7, Abishai is actually the one who leads out “Joab’s men” to the battle. However, in the action to surround the city with Sheba, Joab falls back into command, and receives the head of Sheba from the wise woman of that city, and the rebellion is over.

Recall that Abishai is the one of the three brothers, the three “sons of Zeruiah,” who is the most pliable to the intelligent and often spiritual leadership of David. Asahel, the animal-like “gazelle,” was killed by Abner with the backwards end of a spear. Joab was treacherous. But Abishai on several occasions actually learns from David, and becomes a better human being. Abishai represents the growing portion of the human will that can be brought into harmony with the Will of God, as expressed to us today by the Holy Spirit.

This event of Abishai momentarily taking control could be seen as merely David being angry with Joab for killing his son Absalom, and therefore demoting Joab for a short time. However, it represents enormous advance, and potential future advance, for our human relationship with God, in the growth of our soul and our moral intelligence. Abishai did lead, if only briefly. It may be one of the most important culminations of the Old Testament, and it’s hardly noticeable at first reading. All of this is also in the background as the Beloved Disciple and the Saint Peter are sent by the message of Saint Mary Magdalene in a race to the tomb of Jesus at her word of the Resurrection.

20:11 Mary stood at the tomb weeping outside	David weeping
20:22 receive the Holy Spirit	Shekinah going into Solomon’s temple. In this Johannine scene, of course, the human person has already replaced the temple as the locus of God’s dwelling.
20:24 Thomas….called the Twin	twins Perez and Zerah (not Rebecca’s twins)
20:27 Thomas the twin puts his “hand” through the wound of the risen Christ (into the Spirit womb of Christ).	Zerah puts his “hand” through the birth canal, and then is pulled back into the womb by his twin brother. This is a very powerful chiastic closure with the entire story of the Red Line of Hope. -Thomas, whose Hebrew name Ta’am means “Twin,” and who is given the Greek nickname of Didymus, also meaning “Twin,” here balances and reciprocates the action of Zerah, who has on his “hand” the original Red Line of Hope, placed there by the midwife to Tamar. -Note also how there are allusions, within verses of each other, to the two Tamars, at the beginning and end of OT’s discussion of the Red Line of Hope story.
20:28 My Lord and my God, said by Thomas       21:2 Thomas, called the Twin, and Nathanael mentioned, right next to each other.	Chiastic closure with beginning of Gospel, Nathanael’s proclamation “you are the son of God, you are the king of Israel” (John 1:49). [Also, Psalms 5 & 145, “my King and my God”]   More resolution and chiastic closure.
Breakfast—unlike anything in earlier Scripture
Peter’s final complaint—like siblings arguing; also about mature discussion on the faith.

 

What does all this mean? What is this about? Why does John limn so many connections to the David Story, the Red Line of Hope, and the early “Solomon story” into his own Gospel?

Certainly, the literary and religious meanings of the Johannine echoes of these Old Testament accounts are supremely important in themselves.

But could there be another set of things occurring here?

Recall that throughout the Farewell Discourse (chapters 13-17), Jesus spoke about how the Paraclete, the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, would come to us, and would teach us “all things.” (John 14:26)

And when he was dying on the Cross, he “delivered up the Spirit,” giving us the Holy Spirit in his final breath upon the Cross. (19:30)

And when he visited the Apostles after his Resurrection, he breathed upon them, saying, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” (20:22)

So while John never explicitly writes of the Pentecost, it appears at junctions in his Gospel. Jesus gives us the new relationship with Holy Spirit, as John depicts in many ways.

 

Now we all have to skillfully shift gears: The Holy Spirit communicates directly with us. We can learn how to read the Spirit’s signs and languages. We can become better interlocutors with Divine inspiration, better conversationalists with, and far more effective agents of the Holy Spirit as we learn how to read these signs. Synchronicity, for example, is a language of the Holy Spirit. Psalm-based arithmetic is another. There are many languages of the Holy Spirit.

And these languages of the Holy Spirit are a new world that John’s Gospel wants to teach us.

Image Recognition

              All of these sets of allusions to earlier Scriptural accounts, especially to the David Story and the Red Line of Hope, also serve as practice for us in learning how to read the signs of the Holy Spirit.

Additionally, all of these allusions are stocked with meaning, imbued with deep lessons that the Scriptures want to impart to us. These lessons have to do with our living lives today.

Plato speaks of image recognition. (And Mark’s Gospel specifically speaks of one of Plato’s dialogues.) We, in the school of the Holy Spirit, become better at recognizing. When comparing two different Bible passages, or when comparing a Bible passage to one of our lived experiences, we recognize repetitive situations, word echoes, parallel actions, similar emotions, and much more. We enter into deeper, and more constant, communication with the Holy Spirit.

In our own lives, when there are coincidences, or when things remind us of something else, it may be that the Holy Spirit is inviting us to consider these things, and so to discern a lesson that we can learn therein. Such lessons are brimming over with human and Spiritual content.

All of these duplications, echoes, resonances, repetitive patterns, and situational rhymes that we discover in the Bible are training us to recognize the communication of the Holy Spirit in our lives today. When becoming more skilled in these recognitions, we’ll be better agents for the Holy Spirit in the world.

 

Much of our life’s work has to do with healing the violent tendencies within us, such as the tendency to separate ourselves from others. And many of the connections between the David Story and the Gospel of John are arcs, and beautiful arches, that show us ways of transformation, growth, maturity, healing, and empowerment of these deep energies within us.

Jesus Christ is the perfect human being who is also God. Matthew’s Gospel and the New Testament begin by saying that Jesus is also a new and vastly better take on the person of David, who was king, priest, and prophet.

David is a very alive human being, who clearly pursued God in his life and often strove after virtue. He tried to be the best person he could be, even if there were troubles both in the world and in David’s childhood and memory. David was punished for his sins and also received many gifts from God, and rewards for the great things he did.

In a sense, David was a model for humanity, especially an earlier humanity, closer to his time. He grew closer to God in his life. There were many good events in his life, and his son Solomon was another amazing fruition of his development. Solomon became the great wise king, even if this did not last for long and the kingdom began to disintegrate. The extra-Biblical literature says that Solomon had powerful spiritual gifts, although there was never a danger of saying that Solomon was divine or achieved anything like the status of a divine human being or a deity. He was an integrated human being, and this allowed for his wisdom to reach profound new levels.

So the trajectory of David’s life, including the positive developments in his son Solomon’s life, show a sort of merger, a slow and gradual coming together of the divine and the human.

Jesus, of course, takes this reality to a totally new level. He is God and he is human.

All human lives are invited to grow in holiness. All humans are invited to welcome the Holy Spirit’s direct communication and presence into their own lives, in the light of the Pentecost. Athanasius said that God became human so that humans might become divine. Iranaeus said that the glory of God is a human being fully alive. And the 2^nd Letter of Peter says that we are invited to be partakers in God’s own nature! A major part of Eastern Christian theology (and to a somewhat lesser extent, Western Christianity too) are the many teachings of deosis, in which a main purpose of humanity is to grow closer to the Divine and to join the Divine.

Great. So we are invited to grow in perfection, and to scale the heights of the Divine. And the Holy Spirit gives us new languages to help us.

But then a reality hits us, sometimes hard. Our lives are messy, often, and the world has gross unfairness and difficulties. So is it even possible to aim for perfection and constant growth in virtue, in the fallen world and situations in which we find ourselves?

John’s Gospel gives us hope.

The Fourth Gospel reaches, with profound depth and precision and care and respect, into the troubled lives of David, Bathsheba, Solomon, Joab, Absalom, Tamar (all of the Tamars), and the people of Israel, and shows the way forward to integration and wholeness. By taking the brutal violence and treachery of the characters in Israel at the time of the David Story and the Hebrew Scriptures portions of the Red Line of Hope, John’s Gospel is doing multiple things.

First, it’s showcasing our human evolution, and the beauty of our progress. We owe our ancestors a great deal of respect and gratitude, especially the ones who persevered through ice ages by being better at extracting bone marrow from animal carcasses than other early folks were. They had so many difficult times. So too we see amazing and beautiful throes of life’s growth in the life of David. His bad times are exemplified by Absalom, who is stuck between heaven and earth, as he’s hanging pitifully by his hair in the oak tree—the agonized icon of evolution. His good times are exemplified by, and brought to a fruition by, the elevation of Solomon at his coronation.

All of this is brought to a greater fruition by Jesus’ Crucifixion and the events at the Cross in John 19. A major purpose of this present book has been to show this.

These developments shows both evolution and Spiritual progress in the guidance of the Divine.

 

There is another development that speaks to all of us: The redemption of the characters of the David Story, much later, in John’s Gospel, are speaking to us today! These healings of David and his family, friends, and peers are about the redemption of our own lives, here and now.

John’s Gospel has taken the mucky parts of the David Story and the Hebrew Bible and transformed them into parts of the most beautiful and intimate 11 chapters that humanity has known (Chapters 11-21 of John’s Gospel).

David’s treacheries and Joab’s bloodlust and the Tamars’ hurts and Absalom’s misplaced sense of justice and Phineas’ wife’s birthing Ichabod in misery, all of which are painful and horrible, all get transformed into intimate scenes and parts of the Last Supper and the Resurrection. In the light of the Resurrection and of the glory of our evolution in the light of Christ and the arrival of the Paraclete to us, even the Crucifixion, in John’s Gospel, becomes a place of glory, a dynamic center of reconciliation and joyful human development.[1]

God remembers the least and most forgotten and the most backwards, lost, and misdirected of people. Again, even the wicked lout Phineas, the son of Eli, whose wife gave a difficult delivery to his son after his death in battle, gets somewhat redeemed. The passage about the difficult birth of Phineas’ son Ichabod (1 Sam 4:19-22) is rehearsed and transformed into joy in John 16:21, as the above chart discusses. The sheer panic of David’s flight from Jerusalem, when his son Absalom was trying to murder him, when David screams to all in the palace, “Everyone up, let’s get the heck out of Jerusalem!” is converted into Jesus’ gentle and firm, “Rise, let us go hence….”

One thousand years after Solomon, Paul writes, twice, that “We are all parts of each other.” (See Ephesians 4:25 and Romans 12:5)

John’s Gospel, by converting and transforming the most troubling episodes of the Hebrew Scriptures into joyful and intimate new reality, shows us meaning and shows us the way forward as humanity, as a human family.

The lives of each one of us are to be found in the Gospel. Not only is the David Story found in the Gospel, but so is Your Story and My Story.

God loves us and wants us to grow into the glories that God is planning and preparing for us.

Isaiah talks about the scarlet quality of some of the sins of people. These can be forgiven and transformed.

Our lives, no matter how fallen and bad they were in the past, can be rescued and our actions can become loving and meaningful. Before “the silver cord is snapped, and the golden bowl is broken,” the thread of our life is right now being sought by God to be woven into our meaningful evolution (Ecclesiastes 12:6). God rescues the storyline of our life. God the divine weaver is desiring the thread of your life and mine. Each one of our lives can become a thread, a red and multi-colored line of hope in the tapestry of creation and salvation.

[1] Metropolitan Bishop Kallistos Ware’s brilliant The Power of the Name concludes by calling on us to be “dynamic centre[s] of reconciliation.”