Tuesday 2 April 2019

John 18:1 and the Kidron Valley and Richard Baukham


I have been reading the Gospel of John for well over forty years; I have been teaching it for over fifteen.

There’s always more. Your eyes alight on a word and you think, yes I have read that a thousand times, but….

Take John 18:1

It is a geography verse, the author is just telling us that Jesus moves from the room where he had dined with his disciples, to ‘a garden’…and to help people who knew the area well he adds, ‘across the Kidron valley’.

John is the only Gospel writer to mention the Kidron valley. At one level it’s just a detail that sharpens the directions. We would tell friends coming from London, come down the A3 and you will cross over the M25.

However John rarely operates at one level, he is always asking you to push a little further, especially when he mentions something the other Gospel writers haven’t.

So I looked up where else Kidron was mentioned in the Bible. It opened quite a door.

When David was being driven out of Jerusalem by his own son (2 Samuel 15), he ‘crossed the brook of Kidron’. It was the boundary, it marked the place where the king became an exile. With David the moment was intensely poignant, hence many were weeping.

With Jesus it is even more so. Here is the Messiah, the Son of David, Israel’s true King being driven out by his own people. This has been happening right from the start of the Gospel (1:11) but now with the crossing of the Kidron there is a finality, as there was for David. This is the end of the road for the rejected king.

And there’s more…

When David was leaving Jerusalem, he was cursed and pelted with stones by Shimei, the son of Gera. When the throne was restored to David, Shimei begged for mercy, which was granted. However, when dying David asked Solomon to ‘bring his (Shimei’s) grey head down with blood’. Solomon though gave Shimei one more chance. Shimei could live, as long as he never left Jerusalem:

‘For the day you go out, and cross the Wadi Kidron, know for certain that you shall die…’

For three years Shimei stays in Jerusalem; but then two of his slaves ran away and he saddled a donkey and went looking for them. He crossed the brook of Kidron. Soon after he was executed. As was Jesus. As soon as he ‘crossed the Kidron’ the shadow of the Old Testament looms large – ‘Know for certain that you will die.’

And as is typical with John there are even layers of meaning in the reference back to the Old Testament. Jesus is to die because he repeatedly – like Shimei – has defied the Solomons of Jerusalem; but that is not the real reason for his death. Jesus must die because he is willing to become Shimei, the man in vicious opposition to authority: ‘God made him who had no sin to be sin for us…’ (2 Cor. 5:21)

And there is more…

It was at the brook of Kidron that evil was comprehensively done away with.

So in I Kings 15:14 ‘…Asa cut down her image (of Asherah) and burned it at the brook of Kidron’.

There are six other verses similar to this where an idol, or a pagan altar, or just uncleanness is taken away and destroyed at the book of Kidron. See; 2 Kings 23:4; 2 Kings 23:6; 2 Kings 23:12; 2 Chronicles 15:16; 2 Chronicles 29:16; 2 Chronicles 30:14.

So Jesus as he crossed the brook of Kidron, the author reminds us that this is the place where evil is done away with for Israel. That is what would happen now for the whole world because Jesus was willing to cross the brook of Kidron.

Just one word in a geography verse and the author asks us to pause the video to see Jesus ‘crossing the brook of Kidron’.  To see the poignancy of the rejected king. To see the certainty of the coming execution. And to see the crushing of evil that is again going to happen at the brook of Kidron.

The lesson. Always expect more from John.

And there is more even in 18:1, ‘a place where there was a garden’.

Yes, there was a garden, but again, how evocative. The Bible story begins in a garden; now we are in another garden at the start of John’s passion narrative, a narrative which will end in a garden (19:41); and all will again start in that same garden.

Richard Baukham is a fantastic theologian, especially for bringing out the more in John. If you’re interested make sure you read his ‘Testimony of the Beloved Disciple’ (2007) and his more recent ‘Gospel of Glory’ (2015). In the latter he has a chapter entitled, ‘Dimensions of Meanings In The Gospel’s First Week.’ I had always wondered about the marking of the days in the first week. It was like a slightly steamed up window. Baukham comes along and wipes it pretty clean. He shows how the writer has linked the first week up with last week. So on the last day of the first week (in Cana) we have the first sign; on the last day of the last week we have the seventh sign (the resurrection), as a result of both, the disciples ‘believed’ in him. (But what a difference there must have been in the quality of their belief). On the first day of the first week, we have John in ‘Bethany beyond the Jordan’[1] dealing with the Jerusalem interrogators, the trouble begins; on the first day of the last week we have Jesus in Bethany for the dinner, where he is ‘anointed for burial’.

Baukham also shows how there is a linking between the first chapter and the last around the theme of discipleship. In 1:37 – 43 we have ‘Follow me’ four times. This is what literally happened. But the full meaning is brought out in chapter 21, where Peter is told what it will mean to follow Jesus. Moreover Baukham shows brilliantly how in John 21 when Peter turns and sees the Beloved Disciple so we have an echo of when Jesus turned and saw Andrew and that same disciple.[2]

Another connection between the two weeks is the theme of witness. In the prologue we are told in verse 7 that ‘all might believe’ though the witness of John the Baptist, and then in the first verse of the narrative (v.19), we read, ‘This is the testimony’. Baukham points out the uniqueness of the Baptist’s testimony, the only one to witness to Jesus being the ‘Lamb of God’ and the one on whom the Holy Spirit remains, and underlines how it is this witness that draws the Beloved Disciple to follow Jesus (1:37). This is the crucial link. As the Beloved Disciple was there at the beginning, hearing the cry from the Baptist that Jesus is the Lamb of God, so he is there at the end, the only disciple to witness the spear going into the crucified body. He is a witness in the last week, because John was a witness in the first week; and he witnesses in the last week the even that John proclaimed in the first week. And most importantly, he is the disciple (not apostle) ‘who is testifying to these things and has written them….’ (21:24). That is why, as 1:7 says, ‘all can believe through the witness of John the Baptist. We can all believe because the Beloved Disciple wrote the Gospel.

As Baukham says, the first week is a week of beginnings that anticipate the end, especially the cross and resurrection. So we have the Lamb of God proclamation, soon to be followed by the Nathanial narrative (1:45 – 51) where the question of Jesus’ origin is first comes up. This will continue which ends with Jacob’s ladder from Genesis 28. Baukham teaches us that the root for the word ladder in Hebrew is ‘sll’ which means to lift up. So in Jesus’ first ‘Truly, truly’ statements (there are 25 in the Gospel) he is referring to his being lifted up on the cross and in resurrection.

And so to the first sign at Cana which corresponds to the last sign in the last week. It is all about the best wine linked to Jesus’ hour. This is the best wine that God supplies in abundance, the wine that echoes back to Isaiah 25 and the abolition of death, the wine that for Christians is the blood of Christ.

When disciples see this wine, they believe and get a glimpse of the glory. So it was in the first week; so it was in the last week; so it is today.

Who knows for how much longer I will be reading the Gospel of John. I am still expecting to discover more; especially if Richard Baukham keeps on writing.


[1] Baukham doesn’t believe this is Bethany near Jerusalem; rather he argues it is in the north east of Lake Galilee, an area known as ‘Bashan’ in Aramaic, and Betenayya in Greek.
[2] Baukham rightly assumes that the anonymous disciple in John 1 is the Beloved Disciple of 13, and 21 which of course is why John Zebedee cannot be the author as he is mentioned in 21:2


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