“His glory is like a firstborn bull …”
(Deut. 33:17a, NKJV)
In last week’s teaching, we were largely concerned with an exegesis of Isa. 34, in particular one of its verses. For the sake of context, we’re also including the preceding verse: “The sword of the Lord is filled with blood, it is made overflowing with fatness, with the blood of lambs and goats, with the fat of the kidneys of rams. For the Lord has a sacrifice in Bozrah, and a great slaughter in the land of Edom. The wild oxen shall come down with them, and the young bulls with the mighty bulls; their land shall be soaked with blood, and their dust saturated with fatness.” (Isa. 34: 6-7).
We concluded last week by explaining that the symbolic sword of Eph. 6:17 is “the sword of the Spirit”, which is to say “the [rhema]-word of God”. From this sword drips blood and fat, and this is what creates imperishable life WITHIN us, which brings about that the land Edom (= red = Adam), its dust (Gen. 2:7; 3:19), is SATURATED with blood and fat. What seems like a massacre to the worldly eye is actually also a triumphant testimony in defence of Zion.
The word bull is symbolically defined by the Ancient Hebrew Lexicon of the Bible as “the filling of man with life and the image of God”! One cannot but notice the bull here in the master code of the Head, Jesus. Remember two things that support this view:
- In Col. 1:15 Jesus is explicitly called “the image of the invisible God”.
- In John 10:10b Jesus makes it very clear: “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have itmore abundantly.”
Once man lost the glory of God (Rom. 3:23), he also lost the image of God, in which he was created (Gen. 1:27; 9:6). God had indeed “from the beginning chose[n] you for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth, to which He called you by our gospel, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13-14). Through this gospel of glory, they are “renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him” (Col. 3:10).
The expression “bullocks” (KJV) derives from the root word “to break up”, which in the pictorial Hebrew means “to open the head … to reveal the seed inside” (AHLB). In the light of what we mentioned about the bull earlier in the teaching, it is clear that the “bullock” is the descendants or sons of the bull! Jesus is truly the Head that is opened so that the seed of Christ (Gal. 3:16) can be made manifest!
If one then reads the prophetic forecast Moses presented about Joseph, Rachel’s first son, Jacob’s beloved wife, this son becomes the Old Testament counterpart of Jesus: “His glory is like a firstborn bull.” (Deut. 33:17a). Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! (Rom. 11:33).
- Selah: What would the image at the top of the page imply in the light of this teaching?
- Read: 28-30
- Memorise: 28:12
