On Holy Thursday the rules for fasting are relaxed ever so slightly so as to allow wine and oil. The Mystical Supper on that day provides the occasion for the relaxation, but it is observed also in preparation for the strict fast that follows. After Holy Thursday evening, the ideal is to fast from all food, even drink if possible (cf. Matt. 26:29), for the duration of Holy Friday — the day of the Crucifixion — and well into Holy Saturday. The occasion for breaking that fast is the Divine Liturgy that begins Saturday morning. I say “begins” because this is a very long service that carries over into the afternoon. After Hours and Typica, a Vesperal Liturgy is served with eight Lord I Have Cried verses and fifteen Old Testament readings, including the whole Book of Jonah, the long passage from Exodus about crossing the Red Sea adjoined by the Song of Moses, and the long passage from Daniel about the Three Youths in the furnace, adjoined by both the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Youths, to name some of the longer readings. These are followed by Epistle and Gospel readings, between which Psalm 81 is sung as long as necessary (in Russian practice, which in this instance is definitely superior) to change all the vestments of the church and altar servers from Lenten purple to Paschal white. It’s the day of the Great Sabbath, but we’re already holding Vespers for Pascha Sunday; the Gospel reading after the vestment change, Matthew ch. 28, is the first announcement of the Resurrection.
Only then, after the Gospel, does the Divine Liturgy pick up with the litanies and Great Entry — and it’s the Liturgy of St. Basil, the one with the much longer priest’s prayers. You haven’t eaten anything in nearly two days, and you may have even helped keep vigil at the tomb the night before, reading Psalms in church. I mean, commonly we don’t live up to the ascetic ideals and just do what we can. But even so, this service is by design the most physically demanding of the year. At the end of the Liturgy, bread and wine are blessed in church to comfort the faithful and strengthen their bodies for the midnight service later that night (after which the real feasting begins).
In the interest, then, of strengthening and comforting the faithful on Holy Saturday, I offer this structural guide to the fifteen Old Testament readings. May it be an aid to the spiritual digestion we need in order to distract ourselves from the lack of bodily digestion. The passages are selected and read so as to illustrate how the great length of sacred history all leads up to Christ’s Death and Resurrection. Before we are to receive our salvation, we must first feel the want and anticipation of it as deeply as possible. And so there are fifteen of these readings because that’s the number of days between a new moon and a full moon, the number that takes you from the oblivion of non-being into the fullness of light.
The texts for the service with all the readings can be found here. As fifteen is half a lunar cycle, it’s also a two-week structure, what I sometimes call a fortnight structure or a double octave. Readers will recall from the end of my Lenten octave article this shape is also formed by the octaves of weeks between Lent and the Pentecostarion overlapping on Bright Week. (It’s also the general shape of both Romans and 1 Corinthians, but I haven’t gotten around to demonstrating that anywhere yet.) As with heptatonic scales or days of the week, one cycle’s eighth serves also as the next cycle’s first. Hence a double octave is regularly reckoned not as sixteen but fifteen, one of the products of seven plus one, like eight, of course, or twenty-two (the Hebrew alphabet), twenty-nine (the lunar cycle), thirty-six (the solar cycle [12 × 30]), or fifty (the Jubilee). But the Old Testament readings on Holy Saturday number just fifteen, a two-week structure.
So we start with the non-existence symbolized by a new moon. Then, in the beginning...
...And we end basking in the fullness of God’s uncreated light in the furnace with the Three Holy Youths. In between are two overlapping octave structures.
The first tip-off that octave structures are in play is the presence of two striking chi-themed passages — one about a sacrificial lamb and one about a sacrificial ram — flanked by alpha–omega correspondences precisely in the places we would expect them. So the first fivefold chiastic work week centers on the third reading, (Χ₁.) instructions concerning the Passover lamb in Exodus, Passover being a symbol of Pascha so clear it shares the same name and occupies the same place on the liturgical calendar. The first and fifth readings on either side of it are (Α₁.) the creation narrative at the beginning of Genesis (as alpha as they come) and (Ω₁.) the appearance of the chief captain of the Lord’s host to Joshua son of Nun. This latter visitation occurs, the text explains, on the first Passover celebrated in the land of Canaan, when the Israelites first ate of the wheat of the Promised Land and the manna ceased. Typologically this story represents the end of our journey through time and our celebration of Pascha in eternity, presided over by the captain of the Lord’s army brandishing a sword of judgment and telling us to take off our shoes, i.e., our carnal way of life. Traditionally, which is to say, liturgically and patristically, this captain is understood as the Archangel Michael, he who slays the dragon in the apocalypse (this passage is read on his feast day). Fr. Stephen De Young insists it has to be the Lord Jesus based on Joshua’s worshipful reaction to him, which isn’t rebuked. But given how angels are transparent with the light of God, I see no reason why both interpretations couldn’t be accepted.
The second fivefold chiastic work week centers on the tenth reading, (Χ₂.) Abraham obediently sacrificing Isaac, only to be interrupted by an angel and the appearance of a ram caught in the thicket of a wood, whose life, like the paschal lamb, is taken instead, restoring to faithful Abraham the life of his son. This exceedingly Paschal event serves as the chiastic center of the entire Book of Genesis, and, as it takes place on Mt. Moriah, where King Solomon builds the Temple in Jerusalem (2 Chron. 3:1), it also occupies the same general geographical space as Christ’s Passion.
The eighth and twelfth readings, meanwhile, are the chiastic pair of (Α₂.) the prophet Elijah raising the widow’s son from the dead and (Ω₂.) his disciple Elisha raising the Shunammite woman’s son from the dead, from 3 and 4 Kingdoms respectively. Though the restoration of Isaac’s life happens in type, Elijah was the first prophet to perform the miracle of returning breath to a body who had lost it, and, as the one who took up his mantle and a double portion of his spirit, Elisha repeated the feat. Elijah did it for an impoverished widow suffering through famine, for whom he first provided an endless supply of flour and oil, as though famine represents the non-being from which we are created, and the flour and oil represent the being and mercy with which we are endlessly graced. In contrast, Elisha did it for a rich, hospitable woman who had a full life with the exception that she had no son and her husband was old. Elisha first had to grant her fruitfulness to bear the child, but when the boy was grown, he was out with his father and the reapers in the time of harvest, complaining of pain in his head. Sent back to his mother, he died in her lap. Elijah, for his part, gave life to the widow’s son by thrice breathing it into him, even as breath was given once at the beginning. Elisha had to do more. His staff alone, sent on ahead, did not do the trick. He had to bow down upon the boy seven times, matching his eyes to the boy’s eyes, his mouth to the boy’s mouth, his hands to the boy’s hands, making himself small. Thus having died at the harvest time, the boy was brought back to life and restored to his mother. The creation typology of the Elijah story is matched in the Elisha story with typology of the judgment and general resurrection.
Spacing out these two alpha-and-omega resurrection stories from the central chi-story of Isaac’s salvation from death are two contiguous passages from the Book of Isaiah. They are contiguous, but in reverse order, suggesting there is intention in their positioning. The passage used for the second spot in this chiasmus (Β₂.) features the prophet rejoicing that his soul is clothed, not with garments of skins as in the fall, but with the garment of salvation and the vesture of gladness. Like a bride it is being prepared for its bridegroom, a fruitful union anticipated but not yet come. Fourthly in the chiasmus (Ο₂.), it would appear the union has happened, as “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me; because he hath anointed me; he hath sent me to preach glad tidings unto the poor, to heal the broken in heart, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind” (Is. 61:1). This apostolic mission results in “inheriting the land a second time” — that is, after being exiled on account of sin, the Lord’s people are brought back into paradise, as in the Church.
Isaiah’s writings are also drawn upon for the intermediate layer of the double octave’s first chiasmus, but only for the second slot. Here (Β₁.) Jerusalem is a city raised into the shining light, “for the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee” (Is. 60:2), in contrast to the darkness that shall cover the earth. The kings of the world shall come as captives to Zion, and the power and glory of the nations with them. This prophecy comes in response to the reverse historical situation: “Because thou hast become desolate and hated, and there was no helper, therefore I will make thee a perpetual gladness, a joy of many generations” (Is. 60:15). Instead of the historical reality, the enemies of Zion will perish, and they will be made desolate. The fourth reading offers a chiastically corresponding inversion of the same theme. The Book of Jonah (Ο₁.) tells the story of a prophet of Israel sent to the capital of the worst Gentile nation, Nineveh of Assyria. The prophet resists, but Nineveh repents. The sign of Jonah enduring three days in the belly of the sea beast before being spit out typifies Christ’s three days in the grave before the Resurrection. That’s why it’s read on the Great Sabbath, but God’s purpose in dramatizing the relationship between Israel and a repenting Nineveh is the reason why it’s fourth. Assyrian-level repentance is the omicron-style purpose of the growing season between seeding the blood of the Passover lamb in Egypt and harvesting wheat for matzah in the Promised Land.
Speaking of the Passover, the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea in Exodus (Ϛ₁.) comprises the sixth reading and the stigma-passage of the first octave. The theme of purification should be obvious here: Israel passes through a body of water and is cleansed of all pharaonic subordination in the process. As the sixth day of creation circumscribes the first five and prepares them for the sabbath blessing, so this passage — in this case a literal passage — circumscribes the preceding cosmic chiasmus and carries it over into a process of participation in divinity that begins with purification. It’s an egress so triumphant, the reading bursts into song, the Song of Moses, that is. Similarly the stigma-passage of the second octave, (Ϛ₂.) one last reading from Isaiah, returns to the same imagery and asks, “Where is he that brought up from the sea the shepherd of the sheep? where is he that put his Holy Spirit in them? who led Moses with his right hand, the arm of his glory? he forced the water to separate from before him to make himself an everlasting name” (Is. 63:11–12). Isaiah recalls the crossing in a spirit of repentance, noting, “We are become as at the beginning, when thou didst not rule over us,” and begging, “Return for thy servants’ sake” (Is. 63:19, 17).
For the sabbath of the first octave, after the Red Sea crossing, the Prophet Zephaniah (Ζ₁.) depicts the Lord pouring out his fierce anger on the nations while at same time saying to His people, “The Lord, the King of Israel, is in the midst of thee” (Zeph. 3:15). This is God resting in His creation, the fullness of temporal order having reached its end, and death being overcome: “The Lord hath taken away thine iniquities, he hath ransomed thee from the hand of thine enemies” (ibid.). The second octave’s sabbath says something very similar: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 38:34 LXX [31:34 MAS]). This message comes via the Prophet Jeremiah (Ζ₂.), who likewise betokens divine illumination in what he says, reporting of a new covenant, one unlike the former. For the Lord saith, “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jer. 38[31]:33). And no one will anymore teach knowledge of the Lord to any other, because it will have permeated everyone, from the least to the greatest.
Beyond the Lord’s victory on the sabbath abides the glory of the Resurrection on the eighth day. We’ve already encountered the first eighth day, the octave of the first week and first day of the second, the reading from 3 Kingdoms (Η₁/Α₂.) where Elijah supplies the widow in time of famine and raises her son from the dead. This passage serves as an octave rendering of the very creation of heaven and earth (Α₁.) wherein all things receive their being. The miraculous supply of wheat flour and olive oil, moreover, two foods requiring human participation and exertion, symbolizes the gift of well-being on top of being. The final eighth day, then, gives us the image of ever-being that raises being and well-being to their ultimate ecstasy. That would be (Η₂.) the story of the Three Holy Youths Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, or as they are known by their Chaldean names, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
The Three Holy Youths, as we read in the Book of Daniel, refuse to heed King Nebuchadnezzar’s music and worship his statue, so they are thrown into the fiery furnace heated sevenfold. They walk about therein and sing praise to God, blessing the Lord, in nowise coming to any harm. Azariah makes a long prayer, extolling the Lord for His justice and supplicating Him for deliverance. And so the king’s servants continue to heat the furnace, but a flame streams out of the furnace forty-nine cubits in length and consumes them. It’s after this mention of forty-nine (seven times seven) that the angel of the Lord appears in the furnace with the Three Youths, as if to complete the jubilee. This angel is understood to be the Lord Himself, the Son of God, as Nebuchadnezzar himself observes (a comment not included in the reading because it occurs after the Song of the Three Youths). Here we have an image of human community reflecting the Divine Persons in its threeness, and it’s visited by the Son of God Himself, as though recognizing that the Youths’ blessed humanity is His own in the Incarnation, His condescension overcoming the furnace of passion and death and making the flame of fire like a moist whistling wind. The eighth day contains everything, and this story is an image of everything. Accordingly the Three Holy Youths break out in song, and the whole church with them, blessing the Lord by way of all created things, praising the Lord and supremely exalting Him unto the ages. This is the blessed life of ever-being we spend our whole lives preparing for. This is the divine fire of Pascha.
Thank you Cormac! Good strength until the Resurrection!