The Word made flesh.

Seed of the Woman

Notice who is being spoken to. The man and the woman are standing right there, but Elohim turns and addresses the serpent. The first promise of a rescuer arrives inside a sentence passed on the enemy. Nobody in Eden is offered a way back to the tree. What they are given instead is a description of what is coming: the offspring of the woman. Then read the two halves of the wound. He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel. A crushed head ends a serpent. A struck heel wounds a man who is standing on it. So the victory was announced with its cost already written into it. From the very first page the deliverer is never described as untouched. He is described as bruised. Everything the rest of Scripture says about the Son is folded into that one line, spoken to a snake.

From the Tribe of Judah

Jacob is dying, and he gathers his sons to tell them what lies ahead. To Judah he says the sceptre will not depart, and that rule holds until he comes to whom it belongs. That is a narrow promise. One tribe out of twelve, named centuries before any king sat on any throne. Now see how Matthew opens his Good News. Not with a miracle. With a list of names, generation after generation, because a claim about lineage can be checked and a vague claim cannot. And look at what the list refuses to hide. Perez is born to Judah by Tamar, and the story behind that name is a disgrace. It stays in. Rahab stays in. Ruth the Moabite stays in. The line carrying the promise runs straight through people who would have been left off any list built to impress.

Born in Bethlehem

Micah names the town seven hundred years early, and adds something stranger than an address. The ruler who comes out of Bethlehem Ephrathah has goings out that are from of old, from ancient times. The one who is born there is not new. Then watch what happens to that verse. Herod is troubled, so he assembles the chief priests and scribes and asks where the Mashiach would be born. They answer at once. They know the book, they find the passage, they quote it correctly, and not one of them walks the few miles down the road to look. The men who could locate Him on a page stayed exactly where they were sitting. The travellers who could not have read the prophecy at all went and found Him. Knowing where He is has never been the same thing as going.

Born of a Virgin

Two names are given to the same child, and the text explains both. The malak tells Joseph to call him Yeshua, for it is he who shall save his people from their sins. Then Matthew reaches back to Isaiah for the second: They shall call his name Immanuel, which the passage itself translates as Elohim with us. One name says what He will do. The other says who He is. Notice when they arrive. Both are spoken before the child is born, before a word is taught, before a single sign is given. Nothing has been earned or demonstrated yet. The identity comes first, and everything else follows out of it. And the second name is not an honour paid to a great teacher long afterwards by admirers. It is a plain description of what was happening in that room.

The Suffering Servant

Read this chapter watching the small words rather than the large ones. Almost every line moves something from one party to another. Surely he has borne our sickness and carried our suffering… Borne and carried are words for a load. Something was set down on him that had been resting on somebody else. "He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities." Not for his own. YHWH has laid on him the iniquity of us all. Laid on. Placed there deliberately, from above. The chapter never says the servant suffered alongside people or in sympathy with them. It says the weight changed shoulders. And the last verse does not describe a tragedy that was survived. It says he bore the sins of many and made intercession for the transgressors. Seven hundred years before the cross, the mechanism is already written down.

My Elohim, My Elohim

Tehillim 22 opens with the loneliest sentence in Scripture, and Yeshua borrowed it word for word from the cross. My Elohim, my Elohim, why have you forsaken me? What follows is not vague misery. Hands and feet pierced. Bones out of joint and countable. A crowd standing and staring. Garments divided, and lots cast for the clothing. David wrote it out of his own affliction, a thousand years before anyone was nailed to anything. Now read on to the middle and watch it turn. I will declare your name to my brothers. Amongst the assembly, I will praise you. The voice that began by asking why does not end there. The man who could count his own bones finishes by telling everyone what Elohim is like. The cry was real, and it was not the final word, and Yeshua knew the whole of Tehillim 22 when He quoted its opening line.

The King on a Donkey

Zechariah had described the arrival centuries in advance. The King comes, righteous and having salvation, and then the surprising word: lowly, and riding on a donkey, even on a colt, the foal of a donkey. Now notice who arranges the animal. Yeshua sends two disciples ahead with instructions about where to go and what to say if anyone asks. He is not swept along by an excited crowd that happened to produce a donkey. He chose the mount, and the mount is the message. A king arriving on a horse was arriving from a battle. A king arriving on a donkey was arriving in peace, because the fighting was over. So on the one day He let the crowds shout whatever they wished, He fixed in advance the single detail that told them what kind of king they were shouting at.

The Word Made Flesh

John begins where Bereshit begins, with the same three words, and then makes a claim about the Word that nobody had made before. All things were made through him. Without him, nothing was made that has been made. Hold that sentence, then read a few lines further down. He was in the world, and the world was made through him, and the world didn’t recognise him. Those two statements sit within a dozen verses of each other on purpose. The one being walked past had made the road, the eyes and the breath of everybody walking past Him. And the word John chooses for the arrival is not visited. The Word became flesh and lived amongst us. He pitched a tent in the middle of it and stayed. Nearness was never the difficulty here. Recognition was.

Out of Egypt

Hosea was not making a prediction. Read his sentence in its own setting and it is plainly about the past: When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. The son is the nation, and the calling out is an exodus that had already happened generations earlier. Then Matthew takes that line and lays it over a child being carried down into Egypt by night to escape a king who wants him dead. The pattern is deliberate. Israel went down into Egypt and came out. Israel passed through water and went into the wilderness. Yeshua does every one of those things in order, alone, and does not fail where the nation failed. He is not simply born among Israel. He is standing in the place of Israel, doing what the nation was called to do and never managed.

The Immersion

John tries to stop Him, and his objection is a reasonable one. People came to that water carrying sin and left it behind them there. Yeshua had none to leave. I need to be immersed by you, and you come to me? The answer is not an explanation. Allow it now, for this is the fitting way for us to fulfil all righteousness. So He joins the queue. He stands where the guilty are standing, in the same river, in front of the same crowd, at the very start of everything He came to do. The shape of the cross is already visible at the Jordan: taking a place that was not His to take. And when He comes up out of the water the heavens open and the Father says, This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased. Not one work of ministry has happened yet.

Forty Days in the Wilderness

Read the first words out of the tempter's mouth. If you are the Ben Elohim… The second temptation opens exactly the same way. Whatever else is going on in that wilderness, the target has been chosen with care. The voice from heaven had just called Him beloved Son, and the very next voice He hears puts a question mark over it. That is worth sitting with. The attack does not begin with an appetite. It begins with an identity, and the appetite is only the leverage used against it. Notice what Yeshua does not do in reply. He performs no sign to settle the matter, and He never once argues about who He is. Three times He answers with a line already written down in Devarim. Hungry, alone, with nobody there to convince, He simply held on to what the Father had said about Him.

You Must Be Born Anew

Nicodemus arrives with a compliment and a category already prepared. Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from Elohim… A teacher is something he understands, because he is one himself. Yeshua neither accepts the compliment nor corrects it. He changes the subject entirely: unless one is born anew, he can’t see Elohim’s Kingdom. Consider why that answer lands so heavily on a teacher. Everything Nicodemus has ever gained, he gained by study and effort and years of it. Birth is the one event in a life that nobody arranges for himself. No child decides to be born, prepares to be born, or contributes anything whatsoever to being born. So the way into the kingdom is not a subject to be mastered by the diligent. Nicodemus came at night to learn something, and was told instead that he needed to be given something.

The Sermon on the Mount

Three chapters, one sermon, and a method that keeps repeating. You have heard that it was said, and then, but I tell you… Each time, the standard moves inward. Murder becomes anger. Adultery becomes the look. Keeping an oath becomes speech so plain it needs no oath behind it. Loving a neighbour becomes loving an enemy. Nobody in that crowd could have walked home thinking the bar had been lowered. That is the whole point of it. A law about behaviour can be kept by a careful person with a cold heart, and everyone has met someone who has managed exactly that. A law that reaches the heart cannot be handled that way by anybody. And notice the reaction at the end. They were astonished, not because it was gentle, but because he taught them with authority, and not like the scribes.

The Sower

Four soils, and it is tempting to read them as four sorts of person. Watch how Yeshua actually explains them. Every description turns on what happened to the word after it landed. It was snatched away before it was ever understood. It sprang up quickly and had no root, so the first trouble finished it. It grew, and then the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches… crowded in around it and choked it. Not one of the failures is a failure of the seed. The sower is careless in the best sense, throwing it everywhere, on the path, on rock, among thorns. So the honest question after a passage like this is not whether the hearing was enjoyable. Joy is in the description of the rocky ground. The question is what is still growing three months from now.

I Am the Bread of Life

They had been fed the day before, and they crossed a lake to find Him again. Yeshua names the reason without softening it: you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Then they ask for a sign, and the sign they propose is manna. They are asking Him to repeat yesterday, on a grander scale. His reply shifts the subject twice. First the source, because it was not Moses who gave that bread, it was the Father. Then the substance: I am the bread of life. Consider what that image commits Him to. Bread is not admired, framed or discussed. Bread is torn and eaten, and then eaten again tomorrow. He was not offering the crowd a better meal than the one they remembered. He was offering Himself as the meal, daily, for good.

Feeding the Five Thousand

One sentence changes how this whole scene reads. Yeshua asks Philip where bread could be bought, and John adds, He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. So the shortage was never a crisis in front of Him. It was a lesson set up in front of Philip. Watch how Philip answers. He does the arithmetic. Two hundred denarii would not stretch far enough. He is not wrong, and being right is of no use to him at all. Andrew at least brings the loaves across, though he brings them with an apology attached. Then count what is left over. Twelve baskets of broken pieces, gathered up so that nothing would be lost. There was more bread after five thousand men had eaten than the boy had handed over at the start.

Lazarus Raised

Yeshua waited two days before setting out, and He had told the disciples plainly what He intended to do. So when He arrives at the tomb He is the only person present who knows how the afternoon ends. That makes what happens next remarkable. He sees Mary weeping and the crowd weeping with her, He groans in the spirit, He is troubled, and then comes the shortest verse in the Good News: Yeshua wept. Nobody weeps over a problem they are about to solve. Grief was not made unnecessary by the fact that resurrection was minutes away. He did not tell them to stop crying, and He did not explain to them that it would all be fine shortly. He wept with them first, and afterwards He called Lazarus out by name. The same person did both, and neither cancels the other.

The Beatitudes

Read them again and look for a command. There is not one. Nobody is told to become poor in spirit, to start mourning, or to arrange to be persecuted. Every line is an announcement about people who are already in that condition. Blessed are the ones with nothing left. Blessed are the ones who are grieving. Blessed are the gentle, who in every other setting come off worst. This is not a list of qualities to acquire in order to qualify for blessing. It is Yeshua looking across a crowd and naming out loud the people nobody else would have pointed at. The world has never had trouble spotting the strong. He opens His greatest sermon with the ones the world quietly files under unfortunate, and He tells them the kingdom belongs to them.

Salt and Light

The grammar is doing something easy to walk past. Yeshua does not say try to be salt, or aim at being light. He says you are. It is a statement of fact, spoken over a mixed crowd of ordinary people, before a single one of them had done anything to earn it. Then comes the warning, and it is a strange one. "If the salt has lost its flavour, with what will it be salted?" There is no answer to that question. Salt cannot be re-salted. Nothing else in the kitchen can do for salt what salt does for everything else. And notice where the light finally points. Not back at the one shining. People see the good works, and the honour goes to your Father who is in heaven. Identity handed over first, then a warning about wasting it.

Love Your Enemies

This is the hardest sentence Yeshua ever spoke, and the reason He gives for it is not the reason most people expect. He does not say love your enemies because it will change them, or because it will keep the peace, or because bitterness will eat you from the inside out. Those things may well be true. None of them is what He says. He says love them that you may be children of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. The reason is family resemblance. Somebody's enemy woke this morning to sunlight the Father sent him. So the instruction is not to manufacture a supernatural feeling about a particular person. It is to treat him the way the Father has already been treating him for years.

Do Not Worry

The birds and the lilies are not decoration. They are an argument, and it runs in the same direction every time. The birds neither sow nor reap, and they are fed. Aren’t you of much more value than they? The grass is alive today and burnt tomorrow, and it is still dressed better than Solomon ever was. If Elohim clothes that, what does He do for someone who will outlast it? The reasoning moves from the lesser thing to the greater, and the greater thing is the person listening. Then the closing line changes the frame completely. Each day’s own evil is sufficient. Yeshua also asks which of you by being anxious can add one moment to his lifespan. Nobody can. Worry does not lengthen anything. It only borrows a weight from tomorrow and carries it early.

Build on the Rock

Two builders, and almost everything about them is identical. Both hear the same words. Both build a house. Both houses go up, and for a while both look like houses. Then the same weather arrives for each of them. The rain came down, the floods came, and the winds blew… Yeshua does not give the wise man better weather. The only difference between the two lies underneath, where nobody can see it, and He names it plainly: one man heard these words and did them, the other heard them and did not. Hearing is not the dividing line, because both men heard. The dividing line is what happened after the hearing stopped. And a foundation is the one part of a building that cannot be inspected from the road, and cannot be added later once the wind is already up.

Cleansing the Temple

Watch what Yeshua calls the building. Don’t make my Father’s house a marketplace! Not the house of Elohim, spoken about at a respectful distance, but my Father’s house… said by a son about his own home. The whip of cords and the overturned tables are not a loss of temper. They are a claim of ownership, made by a young man from Galilee in the busiest week of the year. Then they demand a sign to justify it, and His answer sounds like nonsense. Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. They count up the years of construction and conclude He has lost His mind. John then tells the reader what none of them could have known: he spoke of the temple of his body. He was not tidying up the old meeting place. He was announcing that He is the new one.

Woes to Pharisees

Before the eight woes there is a sentence that is easy to skip. Of these same men Yeshua tells the crowd, All things therefore whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do, but don’t do their works; for they say, and don’t do. The teaching was not the problem. The gap was. Every woe returns to that gap. Broad phylacteries and lengthened fringes, because the point of them is being seen. Mint and dill and cumin weighed out carefully while justice and mercy go unattended. A cup polished on the outside and filthy within. Whitened tombs, handsome in the sunshine and full of bones. Read the images together and one measurement runs through all of them. Yeshua is not comparing these men with other men. He is comparing the outside of a man with the inside of the same man.

Let Him Who Is Without Sin

The trap had two jaws. Say let her go, and He has set aside what Moses commanded. Say stone her, and He is a man who sends women to their deaths, and Rome had reserved that power to itself anyway. Any answer given inside the question would have finished Him. So He answers outside it. He who is without sin amongst you, let him throw the first stone at her. He neither denies the law nor applies it. He hands the stone back with a condition attached to it, then stoops down and writes in the dust and gives them room to leave. They go one at a time, beginning with the oldest. Then the two sentences that end the whole scene. Neither do I condemn you. And: From now on, sin no more. Neither of those sentences works on its own.

Washing the Disciples' Feet

John gives the reason before he gives the act, and the order is doing real work. Yeshua, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came from Elohim and was going to Elohim, then, and only then, arose from supper, and laid aside his outer garments. The towel came out of certainty, not out of doubt. A man unsure of his standing cannot afford to kneel in front of people who are watching him closely. A man who knows exactly where he came from and exactly where he is going has nothing left that needs protecting. And He washed every pair of feet in that room, including the pair belonging to the man He had already named as the one who would hand Him over. Then He sat back down and told them to do the same for each other.

A New Mitzvah

Loving a neighbour was not new. It had stood in Vayikra for more than a thousand years, and every man at that table could have quoted it from memory. So what exactly is new here? Read the second half of the sentence. Just as I have loved you, you also love one another. The measure is new. Not as you love yourself, which is the older wording and hard enough on its own. As He has loved them, and He says it on the night He washes their feet, hours before He is arrested in their place. Then He attaches a consequence that has nothing to do with feelings. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. Not by arguments won. Not by explanations given. Outsiders were handed one sign to look for, and this is it.

Gethsemane

He goes back to pray three times, and the first prayer is the plainest. My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass away from me; nevertheless, not what I desire, but what you desire. Read both halves of that. He wanted the cup gone. He says so out loud, and when the first prayer changes nothing He goes back and prays again, and a third time after that. The wanting did not go away. Obedience here is not a man arriving at the point where the hard thing has stopped looking hard. It is a man who still does not want it, going anyway. That matters for anyone who has assumed surrender means the reluctance must vanish first. It did not vanish in this garden. He asked, He was not granted it, He asked again, and then He stood up and said, Arise, let’s be going.

The Betrayal

A crowd arrives with swords and clubs, and for a moment it looks like a capture. Then Yeshua speaks and the scene turns over. To Judas, mid kiss: Friend, why are you here? To the man who drew a sword: put it back where it belongs. And then the sentence that settles what is actually happening here. Or do you think that I couldn’t ask my Father, and he would even now send me more than twelve legions of malakim? Twelve legions is an army, not a rescue party. The point is not that help existed somewhere in theory. The point is that it was one request away and the request was never made. Nothing was taken from Him in that garden. He tells them so directly, reminding them He sat teaching in the temple daily and nobody laid a hand on Him.

The Trial

The council had a problem. They wanted a death sentence and they could not manufacture the evidence for it. Matthew says it twice in one breath: they sought false testimony and found none, and even with many false witnesses coming forward, they found none. The lies would not line up with each other. Yeshua says nothing through all of it. He stays silent while the case against Him collapses on its own. Then the high priest puts Him under oath and asks the only question that matters, and Yeshua answers it. You have said so. Nevertheless, I tell you, after this you will see the Ben Adam sitting at the right hand of Power, and coming on the clouds of the sky. That is what convicted Him. Not a witness. Not a charge that could be proved. His own claim, which He could have withheld.

Before Pilate

Three separate times Pilate says it out loud. I find no basis for a charge against him. He says it after questioning Him, again after flogging Him, and again while presenting Him to the crowd. This is not a judge who was deceived. He reached the correct verdict and announced it publicly more than once. So watch the exact moment he folds. It is not new evidence. It is a sentence shouted up from the pavement: If you release this man, you aren’t Caesar’s friend! That is a threat to his position, and it works at once. He sits down on the judgement seat and hands Him over. Earlier in the same conversation he had asked, What is truth? and walked out without waiting for the answer. A man can hold the truth, say it aloud, and still trade it for something he fears losing more.

The Crucifixion

Of all the weeks in the year, it is this one. Yeshua dies at Pesach, the feast built around a lamb that dies in the place of a household. Every year for centuries families had kept that meal, and every year the same shape was rehearsed. A spotless animal. Blood applied to the doorway. Judgement passing over. Nobody ever thought the lamb was the point of it. The lamb stood in for someone. So when Yeshua is arrested on that night and killed on that day, the timing is neither coincidence nor decoration. It is the explanation. The whole sacrificial system had been a long argument made in pictures, repeated until it was familiar, always pointing forward to one substitution that would never need repeating. Read these two chapters knowing which week it is. The calendar tells you what the cross was for.

The Veil Torn

The detail doing the work here is only a few words long. The curtain was torn from the top to the bottom. That curtain was not a household drape. It sealed off the innermost room, the place one man entered once a year, carrying blood, after long preparation. It was the visible statement that access was restricted. A tear beginning at the top does not begin with anyone standing on the floor. Whoever opened it reached down, not up. That is the entire point of the direction, and Matthew takes care to record which way it went. Notice also when it happened. Not three days later at the resurrection, but at the instant Yeshua died. The moment the price was paid, the barrier came open from the far side, opened by the One who had put it there in the first place.

The Burial

Two men handle the body, and John tells the reader exactly who they are. Joseph of Arimathaea was a disciple, but secretly for fear of the Yehudim… Nicodemus is introduced as the one who first came to Yeshua by night. Both of them had kept their distance in daylight for a long time. Now look at when they step forward. Not on the day the crowds were shouting in the streets. Not while there was still a movement worth belonging to. They come out on the afternoon everything has collapsed, when the disciples have scattered, when there is nothing left to gain and a great deal to lose. Nicodemus brings about a hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes, which is a burial fit for a king. The man who came in the dark buried Him in the open.

He Is Risen

The malak rolls the stone away and then sits down on it. Nothing needed moving for Yeshua to leave. The stone was moved so that people could look inside. That is exactly what the women are told to do. Come, see the place where Adonai was lying. The evidence is handed over for inspection, not described from a safe distance. Then Matthew does something no inventor of a legend would ever do. He records the rival story and names its price. The guards report what happened, the chief priests take counsel, and a large amount of silver changes hands so the soldiers will say the body was stolen while they slept. Consider that alibi for a moment. Men asleep are testifying about what took place while they were asleep. The empty tomb was never in dispute. Only the explanation was.

Mary at the Tomb

She had already seen Him and did not know it. She had already heard Him speak, twice, and did not know it. He asked her why she was weeping and who she was looking for, and she answered Him as a gardener, offering to carry the body away herself. A full view of His face was not enough. The sound of His voice asking a question was not enough. Then He says one word. Mary. And she turns. Whatever changed in that moment, it was not the quantity of evidence standing in front of her. It was that He used her name, in the way He had always used it. She had come out in the dark to a tomb, and the first person the risen Yeshua sent with the news was a woman still crying in a garden.

Thomas Believes

Thomas set out his terms and they were not modest ones. Unless he could see the print of the nails, put his finger into the print of the nails, and put his hand into the side, he would not believe. Eight days later Yeshua walks in and repeats the list back to him, item by item. Reach here your finger, and see my hands. Reach here your hand, and put it into my side. He does not argue with the terms. He meets them exactly. And notice what that requires of the risen body. It could pass through locked doors, and it still carried the holes. Resurrection did not tidy away the evidence of the crucifixion. Whatever else was made new when He rose, the wounds were kept, and the first thing they were used for was settling one man's doubt.

Peter Restored

Two different words are doing the work in this exchange, and they are worth slowing down for. Twice Yeshua asks Peter whether he loves Him, adding more than these the first time — and twice Peter answers with something smaller: you know that I have affection for you. A man who has denied Him three times will not stand up and claim the larger word. So on the third question Yeshua does something unexpected. He comes down to Peter's word: Do you have affection for me? That is what grieved Peter, not the repetition, but being met exactly where he was, with no pretending required. Then notice what is not scaled down to match. Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. The commission stays full size even though the confession does not. Restoration here is not a demotion. It ends with a command that starts a walk: Follow me.

The Great Commission

One clause in this scene is usually read straight past. The eleven go to the mountain, they see Him, they bow down to Him, but some doubted. That sentence sits immediately before the commission. Yeshua does not send the doubters home, or take them aside for further work, or wait until the room is unanimous. He walks up to the group exactly as it stands and hands them the whole world. Then look at how the sending is bracketed. It opens with All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth and it closes with I am with you always, even to the end of the age. His authority at the front, His presence at the back, and the instruction sitting in between. Nothing in the middle rests on the confidence of the people carrying it.

The Great High Priest

A priest exists in order to stand between, and Ivrim is careful about what qualified this one. Not rank. Not distance. He is one who has been in all points tempted like we are, yet without sin. And then a stranger line still. Though He was a Son, He learnt obedience by the things which he suffered. Learnt. Obedience was not simply known in advance; it was walked through, in a body, under pressure, with strong crying and tears. So when the passage says to draw near to the throne of grace with boldness, that boldness has a reason standing behind it. The One at the throne has been where you are standing. He is not hearing about weakness at second hand. He knows the whole weight of it, because He carried it Himself and did not put it down.

Be Ready

Start with who appears on the list of those who do not know. Not the malakim of heaven. "But my Father only." Whatever anyone claims to have worked out, the calculation is being attempted from a position the Father has kept for Himself. So the passage removes the date deliberately, and then tells you what to do with the gap it leaves. It is the image of the thief. "If the master of the house had known in what watch of the night the thief was coming, he would have watched." He did not know, so nothing was gained. That is precisely the argument. There is no hour to prepare for, which means readiness cannot be a burst of activity at the right moment. It has to be an ordinary condition, held on a quiet Tuesday, with no reason to expect anything.

All Things New

It is easy to hear this passage as a list of things that will be gone. No death, no mourning, no crying, no pain, no sea. All of that is there. But read the line that comes first, because everything else follows out of it. Behold, Elohim’s dwelling is with people; and he will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and Elohim himself will be with them as their Elohim. The absence of pain is a consequence. The presence is the point. And notice how the tears are dealt with. Not forgotten, not explained away, not declared to have been unimportant all along. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. That is a hand, close enough to reach a face. Scripture has been moving towards Elohim living with people from the beginning, and here it arrives.