The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 9 -15
The Bible reveals a great deal more about the preincarnate life of Jesus than most people think. It was not the quite boring life the world pictures, it was in fact full of disappointments, risk, and at least in some ways of looking at it, failures.
The Bible hides these things in plain sight, by telling us the story of a different man –telling us this man is like Jesus in a different place –and then leaving us to put the pieces together. Having learned what we have about Jesus’ illegitimacy, you’re ready to learn a bit more about what that actually meant for His past Selves.
It’s not an accident that exactly a week before that final acknowledgement of His legitimacy (Matthew 17:1), Jesus faced a test from Peter in Matthew 16:21-23. Like the rest of us, He wasn’t born with all the answers. He learned, like the rest of us, from the volume of the Book written for Him –and, incidentally, for us (Hebrews 10:7).
So Jesus hadn’t always known how His life would go, just like the rest of us. John 13:1 stresses that He knew these things then, implying He hadn’t always known them. He had known for a long time the point of His life, and how it must end; but knowing that you must die for mankind and knowing how, where, and when are very different things.
He probably figured out early on that He would have to die at a Passover, but hadn’t seen the “signs of the times” to know which Passover. Anyway, at this point in Matthew 16:21, Jesus began to reveal the manner of His death to His disciples; and Peter rebuked Him, and tried to talk Him out of it:
Matthew 16:22 (BBE) But he, turning to Peter, said, Get out of my way, Satan: you are a danger to me because your mind is not on the things of God, but on the things of men.
Now this is interesting because it means that Peter’s denial was something Jesus’ heart wanted to believe. He didn’t want to die by torture any more than you would have (Matthew 26:39). He was probably willing to be martyred for mankind, but just like you or I, His heart was incessantly bartering for one more year.
So Peter saying there might be another way, when God had already written that there wasn’t, was a temptation –making Peter the ADVERSARY of Jesus’ soul! And Jesus’ perfect response convinced the Father that this soul could be trusted to RULE all adversaries!
PETER’S POINT OF VIEW
Now think about this from Peter’s point of view; if your Master, whom you had seen raise the dead on several occasions –Lazarus and Tabitha, to name two –had told you that He was going to be killed and resurrected again, why would that bother you?
Remember, you KNEW the dead could be raised; you’d seen it, and in a few more years, you’d do it yourself! So why rebuke Jesus for something that, in the end, wouldn’t really matter –I mean really, so what if you die, if you are raised up again after only three days?
Jesus said Peter erred because he loved the things of men, instead of the things of God. What did He mean, in this context? Matthew 16:26,28. Peter wanted “the whole world” when the Son of man came in His Kingdom. And this wouldn’t happen with a dead Jesus!
Remember the misunderstanding the disciples were working under about the Kingdom of God (Acts 1:6, Luke 19:11). Reading those verses, Matthew 16:24-28 makes more sense –because Peter and the other disciples wanted the glory to be restored to Israel, and themselves to have a part of an earthly kingdom (Matthew 18:1, Mark 9:34, Matthew 20:21-24, etc.). And they knew if Jesus was overcome by the chief priests, that couldn’t happen!
They didn’t want a resurrected ghost of Jesus, they wanted the lion of the tribe of Judah to rule all nations! Which indeed He would… but not then, and not for the reasons they wanted Him to do it. Notice that those verses I just mentioned were all part of a chain of events; Matthew 16, 18, 20, etc. And that’s why Matthew 17 happened in the midst of them.
Reading the story –and the parallel versions in Mark 9:1-10 and Luke 9:28-36 –we have to ask “what was the point of doing this?” Ok, so the disciples saw Jesus and two ghosts (or whatever they were) in glory; surely that made them pay more attention, and established His authority… but was that really necessary after what, three years of following Him? They were already committed beyond any turning back (John 6:67-68).
And if this were some way of “showing off” to get more respect, how could it really accomplish that when they were sworn to secrecy about it? Verse 9. So clearly, something else was happening here. For that matter, why Elijah and Moses? Out of everyone who ever lived, Noah, Abraham, Adam, David, why these two?
WHY MOSES AND ELIJAH?
Moses at least makes some sense; he gave us the OC, but why Elijah? To answer that question, first read John 1:21-25. Notice that their first questions were are you Moses’ replacement?; are you Elijah’s replacement; or are you the Christ?
The point is, the Jews were expecting these men –or men doing their job –to come and to baptize, as John was doing! And when Peter saw these three men in particular, it meant something to him that it doesn’t mean to us; for these were the three great “baptizers”; for the Jews couldn’t imagine why anyone ELSE would be baptizing!
Thus, Peter can be forgiven thinking in Matthew 17:4 that these three men in particular were glorified Elohims come back to rule Israel. To him, it seemed logical that they needed three tabernacles –which is to say, three CHURCHES.
Remember, Peter had grown up believing the temple –a permanent tabernacle –was the center of worship for God. We all know now that this wasn’t God’s intention (Acts 7:48-49, John 4:21, Mark 14:58). But few, if any, understood that –least of all Peter (Matthew 16:23 again).
The temple in Jerusalem is not where the Truth of God was preached; it is where what Moses understood about God was taught (Acts 15:21, John 7:22). In Church. Remember the difference between apostles and teachers; apostles speak for God, then everyone else just teaches what the apostle said.
So Moses the apostle spoke for God; and everyone else recited Moses’ words, usually without understanding them. Which is why Moses’ covenant hid God just as much as it revealed Him (2 Corinthians 3:13-14), because Moses created a Church in a tabernacle.
Likewise, Elijah spoke for God; and like Moses, Elijah had his own disciples (2 Kings 2:3-15). And let’s face it, Elijah was cool –snarky, irreverent, and indomitable, sort of like an iron-age Iron Man. Yet Elijah’s way of solving problems was to slaughter the sinners (1 Kings 18:36-40, 2 Kings 1:3-15).
His exercise of God’s power was so flamboyant we might almost call it wasteful (2 Kings 2:6-8). Was it really that important that his precious feet not get damp? And yet it is precisely this awesome superhero-like quality that the disciples of Jesus coveted (Luke 9:54-55); and it was precisely this problem that God was addressing in Matthew 17.
…Or I should say, these two problems… for all Israelites were, by covenant, disciples of Moses; and all of them lusted to have the power of Elijah, and be his disciples! Which, the disciples of John were, in fact! Matthew 17:10-12.
At the time of Christ, there were three competing religions in God’s eyes (not counting the various wackos and such who were patently wrong, Acts 5:34-37). So there were three ways to find God; one could be a disciple of Moses; and follow the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23:1-2). But this was an arduous journey, with lots of observances and statutes to obey, before you could see the truth thoroughly cloaked behind them (2 Corinthians 3:12-16).
Or one could be a disciple of John, who rejected the hypocrisy of the Pharisaic religion, and took a huge step towards Truth (Luke 16:16); but Elijah’s way of life was still hard (Matthew 3:4). And those baptized with John’s baptism had answers which pierced the veil… but they were still doing it the hard way (Acts 18:24-28). Note that Apollos wasn’t wrong; they just showed him a better way, an easier way.
And that final way, of course, was to be a disciple of Christ; thus, there were three different groups of followers, which means three separate houses, who needed three separate tabernacles, three different ways to enter the Kingdom of God (Acts 3:24-25).
Pay attention there… He told them they were the children of the prophets (Elijah); AND the children of the covenant of Moses; children of two separate houses! But now it was time to become the children of God by the covenant of Abraham!
And it was to distinguish between these three different ways to find God that God said “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased, hear ye Him”! Which, understood in this context, meant “JESUS is my beloved Son, follow Him instead of *him* or *him*!” [as God points at Moses and Elijah].
PREPARING A PEOPLE
Yet that doesn’t mean that Elijah or Moses were wrong; on the contrary, they spoke for God. But they didn’t do so as well as Jesus had. So their words were necessarily confusing; their statutes were sometimes unnecessarily restrictive, their path to the Truth relatively crooked compared to the narrow, but very straight, path Jesus offered.
So it was to settle forever the question of which house offered the best path to salvation that the Father gave the disciples this vision; to show that Moses’ house was actually Jesus’ house (Hebrews 3:2-5). For Moses’ writings existed to speak about Jesus (John 5:46).
So why ask Moses about Jesus… when you could just ASK JESUS HIMSELF? Why follow Moses, when you could just follow Jesus like Moses told us to do?? Deuteronomy 18:17-19. Yet that’s exactly what the Jews insisted on doing; and that’s exactly what the disciples persisted in doing, decades after Jesus’ death (Acts 15:1).
Even Peter, who himself baptized the first Gentile, fell back into external, Mosaic, racist ways of thinking (Galatians 2:11-16). Ways of thinking that would have been long forgotten, if he had just LISTENED when God said, “Jesus, and not Moses, is my beloved Son… HEAR YE HIM!”
Likewise, Elijah taught the sons of the prophets to obey God, just as John would do, bearing his same spirit, in his room a thousand years later. Which means that John was THE prophet of the day! Isn’t that what Jesus said? Luke 7:26. “Much MORE than a prophet” can only be the HIGH PROPHET!
And if you had no one better to follow, you could certainly do a lot worse than John… but why persist in following John when he himself told you to follow Jesus?? John 1:35-37, John 3:28-36. Why follow Elijah, when Elijah’s house was ALWAYS here to prepare the WAY to Jesus’ house? Mark 1:2, Malachi 3:1, etc.
You had to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses to find Elijah; thus Moses existed to prepare a people for Elijah. And yet Elijah’s purpose was to prepare a people for the Lord. Which is why like Moses, Elijah had spoken of Jesus; albeit in a much more cryptic way (1 Kings 19:12).
He said it in a much more obvious way, if you have eyes to see, in 1 Kings 17:17-24; granting that this isn’t the clearest of prophecies, notice that Elijah stretched himself three times –three days –over this child to bring his soul to him again.
John the Baptist baptized Christ, approving of Him in the name of the Father; thus, John is a type of the Elohim-house, even as Moses is a type of the spirit-house. And Elijah, as the prototypical John, pictured the same thing –the Elohim resurrecting a human after three days! (Matthew 12:40).
So if we see Elijah as the Father, this story tells us that the child –Jesus, in symbol –was carried to the Father’s abode; out of the bosom of his mother, up to the bosom of Abraham, if you will (Luke 16:22-23). And notice the mother’s assumption that God was “calling her sin into remembrance”, by slaying her son!
When, on the contrary, her son was slain to take away that very sin! (Hebrews 10:3, 12). Which he did, by getting her to believe in God BY FAITH! (1 Kings 17:24). His resurrection was a sign to that Gentile woman “that the word of the LORD in thy mouth is truth”. A sign… to the GENTILES (Isaiah 11:10-12)! 5
Already in the story in the first half of 1 Kings 17, Elijah had given them OIL (the soul, fruit of the OT prophets) and BREAD (the spirit, fruit of the house of Moses), but no wine! Her Son had to die to bring her WINE, the blood of the beast!
And in case you think I’m making this all up… Jesus specifically compared His coming to this event (Luke 4:24-26)! For He came to bring something that His former Selves could not do: the blood of a perfect man!
ELIJAH, MOSES,AND JESUS
In a way, these men all came to do the same job, which was to do their part in getting people into the first resurrection; yet each one played a very different part. And Jesus, of course, came to do something MOSES couldn’t; something ELIJAH couldn’t.
For Elijah had called fire down from heaven, fire which is made from oil, and comes from the soul; and Moses had called bread down from heaven, and called water out of a rock, which is the spirits of Jesus and His Father, and thus come from the spirit.
Yet neither of them turned the water of Moses into wine, the perfect blood of the tree of life. Neither of them turned the bread from heaven into flesh. For that could only by done by a beast! (Luke 24:39). So Jesus had to become one since He was UNABLE to do this as a Spirit Being!
Moses gave Israel the law; which is to say, the statutes and judgments, for Abraham and Adam had known the 1-2-10 law. Thus Moses pictures the spirit; but more than that… for Moses pictured the spirit-self of Jesus. His existence as a spirit, as Melchizedek. But not His existence as an Elohim.
Elijah pictured Jesus’ Elohim-self, His existence as the Word of John 1:1-3. As an Elohim like the Father, Jesus was absolutely intolerant of sin; indeed, in order to avoid killing the angels at their first sin, Jesus had to give up that nature in His very first sacrifice to become Melchizedek (Hebrew for “my King is the righteous one”), whose very name submits to the One who is righteous.
So while Elijah and Moses existed as men (James 5:17), they existed to teach us spiritual things beyond themselves (1 Corinthians 10:11). In this case, they pictured the former Selves of Jesus, His life as the spirit/grapevine, and His life as the soul/olive-tree; as the Word and Melchizedek.
When tasked with solving a problem, the Elohim-Jesus had a simple solution; kill them all (which was, not coincidentally, Elijah’s go-to method). But while effective at maintaining purity in heaven, this is a poor method for raising children who are certain to make mistakes.
The Lawgiver cannot give grace without changing what it means to be the Lawgiver (James 4:12). The laws themselves must be absolute. And so, likewise, must be the lawgiver –the Elohim. And yet when there are many laws, in a complex universe, sometimes they must come into conflict –at least, apparent conflict, from the perspective of very limited beings like us.
And so there must be a judge. Moses was just such a judge (Exodus 18:13), a job which the Pharisees continued to Jesus’ day (Matthew 23:1-2). Within the terms of his covenant, Moses could grant mercy; if you had been ignorant, once you realized your sin, you could pay the price with the life of an animal.
So Moses’ was not a merciless covenant; it was actually much more forgiving than what the Elohim-Jesus would have been capable of doing, reflecting the greater compassion that Melchizedek developed by interacting with the real world, and the fallible humans in it.
COVENANT OF GRACE
And yet, it was still a harsh covenant –for it mandated death the first time someone rebelled against the covenant itself (Hebrews 10:28). You could inadvertently touch a dead body and be cleansed; but if you did it knowingly, or even semi-knowingly, say, by choosing to touch a dead body rather than let a friend die, there could be no sacrifice for your sin. 2 Samuel 6:5-8 comes to mind.
Moses’ covenant existed to cleanse sins of ignorance; but if there was any knowledge of the law, the sin could never be washed away with less than your own death (Romans 3:20). This reflects the spirit-Jesus’s inability to personally relate to the difficulty of sin.
The world is not wrong to call the OC God –the spirit-Jesus –merciless and vengeful (Deuteronomy 32:41). But try to put yourself in the mindset of a being who never had sinned; imagine trying to grasp our confused priorities, our fears and lusts and dreams all struggling for dominance.
Could you really appreciate how hard these things are to manage… when these are things you had never felt? So you can imagine why such a Being would have an attitude of “Look! You. Just. Don’t. Sin. Why is that so hard for you people??”
This indirectly solves the conundrum of the “unpardonable sin” (Matthew 12:31). Because blasphemy against Moses, or the Spirit that gave Moses His words, is unforgivable under Moses’ covenant –because it blasphemes their Father (Exodus 21:17). And they had no excuse to disbelieve Him, nor did the spirit-Jesus particularly care why they didn’t trust Him!
Then Jesus became a man; and that version of Jesus had a carnal nature. His birth was suspicious, at best. It could be forgiven someone, if they questioned Jesus’ legitimacy! For legitimacy, Moses need only point to the mountain of fire, to his own glowing face, to bread that fell from the sky; questioning that was unforgivable, as Korah found out.
But the whole POINT of Jesus’ illegitimacy was to give the world an excuse for disbelieving Him! (John 3:17). Yes, eventually they will pay; but only if they don’t eventually figure out their sins and correct them first! (Matthew 21:28-31). Meanwhile… they cannot possibly commit the unpardonable sin by rejecting a Son of Man!
A STRAIGHTER PATH
It is quite possible to live under the rules of the Elohim Jesus and find eternal life; after all, that’s exactly what the human Jesus did. And yet, for all practical purposes this is purely theoretical, since no other man ever has done so. Any of us could have, but the path was so narrow, and so long, that no other human has ever done so.
So the Elohim Jesus realized an easier, straighter path was necessary, sacrificing His perfection of judgment in order to overlook our most grievous sins. And indeed, many more found salvation with this head-start; David, Daniel, Job, and so on. And yet still, so many more failed to find life.
Failed, not because they were inherently incapable of living up to Jesus’ expectations; but because, long before they could master their fractions, Jesus was forced to kill them for some egregious sin that they might have been able to overcome given more time, or better circumstances!
So finally He sacrificed that existence of Himself as well to pay for yet more of our sins, in order to become a man. Only then was He able to really understand what it felt like to be human; how hard it was, what challenges we faced. Obviously, we’re talking about Hebrews 4:15 and Hebrews 2:10-18.
Which does not, obviously, mean He had ever asked too much of us; but simply that now He understood that maybe we needed more hand-holding than His God-self, or even His spirit-self, had been patient enough to tolerate (Hebrews 5:8).
Moses could produce perfectly righteous people in time; but how many people died before they figured it all out? How many people who could have been sons of God died because they made a bad choice with Korah, or mouthed off to Moses at the wrong time because they were grumpy due to hunger?
So if God was going to build His family as quickly as He wanted to, He had to find a way to overlook even more of our sins, and make the path to find life even more straight for us; narrow yes, absolutely; but maybe not quite so steep, not quite so rocky or windy, and maybe with a rope to hold onto now and then.
Understand, this in no way means that Jesus EVER lowered the bar for salvation; the start point (selfish nature, inaccurate spirit, untrained soul) and endpoint (doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with your God) in every case, with every person, under every covenant, is the same.
Yet the path between these two points didn’t really have to be done the hard way; they didn’t have to walk over the mountain, they might be able to walk around it, or order it out of the way; they didn’t have to dig through the wall, they could just ask Him to open the door (Matthew 7:8).
This way, though the start point and destination would be the same, a lot more people would make it and be, at the end, indistinguishable from those who got there the hard way!
And when you think about it… God must think that all those people who died under Moses’ and Elijah’ covenants have a chance to figure it out in a better environment… or else there would be no second resurrection!
A BETTER LEADER
So Jesus the Man was, quite simply, a better leader, a better guide, a better Lord and Master than Jesus the Spirit or Jesus the God had been! Not better in the sense of more righteous or more perfect; but better equipped to accomplish the goal of saving mankind!
Which is why the disciples saw Moses and Elijah, representing the former incarnations of Jesus, all talking with one another on the mount; they saw, in a sense, inside the very mind of Jesus as His fractions interacted.
Then they heard as His Father told THEM, the disciples –for this was all for their benefit –which one of THESE THREE SELVES OF JESUS would show them the best path to follow to find Him!
It was possible to be saved by Moses’ law; even Paul said so (Galatians 3:12). But it was the slow way. It was possible to be saved by becoming the son of a prophet (which, of course, John’s disciples were) –every OT saint is proof of these things. But these were the hard ways to get there.
Jesus came to provide a shortcut; one where, you didn’t have to first learn from Moses, then from Elijah, then finally learn from Him (Luke 16:31). Notice the two groups you had to FIRST HEAR before you could learn from Jesus!
First, listen to Moses AND THEN listen to the Prophets, of whom Elijah is arguably the most famous. Then, IF you listen to them –then, and only then, will you be ready and able to hear the One who rose from the dead.
Remember, Paul never said the laws of Moses hurt you; he simply said that being saved by the law made Christ’s death meaningless (Galatians 5:2-4). It wasn’t that circumcision prevented you from finding Christ; it just meant choosing to find Christ in the hardest way possible.
It wasn’t that you couldn’t find Him in Moses’ law (Galatians 3:21-25)… but that you were wasting time looking for something that was right in front of you! (Galatians 2:21-3:1). It frustrated the grace of God, it made Christ of no effect! But it didn’t make salvation impossible! (1 Corinthians 7:18-20).
It just made His death pointless if you kept trying to find Him through Moses, since HE CAME to provide a shortcut around Moses! For you always had to learn from Jesus, sooner or later (Acts 4:12); Moses and Elijah just got you there the long way, or the hard way.
Jesus came to show a new and living way (Hebrews 10:20), which made the path much straighter. Paul was just saying “why learn from Moses and Elijah, when both are just going to take you on a long and winding path that curves you right back to Jesus?”
Why try to find the head through the foot, when the head is like, RIGHT THERE? (Ephesians 4:15-16). Because if you keep the law, if you hear Moses and the Prophet, eventually you will hear them when they tell you that you have to believe Jesus to be saved! (Deuteronomy 18:15, John 1:30).
Why not just start there?
THE GREATEST NAME
So when the disciples wanted to call fire down from heaven, Jesus rebuked them and said “that’s not the fraction you’re a disciple of”; “that’s not the spirit should be becoming like!” Elijah cursed the wicked, and the preincarnate Jesus had been trying that for umpteen eons with very mixed results. It was time to try something different!
Likewise, when the Jews wanted to stone the woman in adultery, Jesus wanted no part of it because that’s not why He came to Earth! (John 12:47). He had delegated that job to Moses, and between Moses and His own spirit-self, He’d been trying this for 4,000 years with similarly unsatisfactory results.
God’s spirit had shown Moses how to judge on the mount –and he was to do it letter-perfect, without mercy. That same spirit that was in Moses was transferred to the 70 elders; they WERE to judge as Moses judged; and that spirit was administered –however badly –by the Pharisees.
…but if Moses’ spirit had been able to bring people to life by itself, there would have been no need for Jesus to come. So the disciples were not supposed to have the spirit of either Elijah OR Moses; but the spirit that the human Jesus breathed upon them (John 20:22). A better spirit!
Their job was to seek to imitate Him, who circumcised no one; to judge as He judged, who killed no one; to teach as He taught, who did not strive in the streets and advertise His presence; for although He taught with authority, it was a calm authority (Matthew 7:28-29). Well, most of the time (John 2:13-17).
The disciples were not supposed to build new tabernacles as Peter wanted to do; but to realize that HE Himself was the temple, as they themselves were meant to be; and that the physical temple and all its paraphernalia could be, and would be, destroyed without in any way affecting them.
They were supposed to realize, in short, Moses and Elijah had had their chance; and that everything they had ever said and done was pointing to what He, now, was telling them; for now it was time for His NEWLY educated heart, spirit, and soul to lead all nations better than His preincarnate selves could have ever done! By a new and LIVING WAY!
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
And that begs one final question. Just before Elijah was “taken up into heaven”, Elisha, his apprentice and heir, asked for a double portion of his spirit. So if Elijah represented the soul-self of Jesus, who could Elisha possibly be, and why would he need a double portion of the spirit?
In the story of the transfiguration, how many people (not counting the disciples themselves) did they see on the mount after they awakened? Read Luke 9:28-36 again and count. Three, you say? Wrong. Try again. No, God’s voice was heard, but they didn’t SEE Him, so He doesn’t count. No, the cloud was not a person. No, not the disciples. Try again. How many people were on the mount?
The correct answer is four. Yes, four –go look again. First, they see a glorified Jesus; then Moses; then Elijah (verse 32). That’s three so far. Then in verse 36 they saw the HUMAN JESUS again! Remember, the “appearance of His face was changed” in verse 29. So four different people, every one of which represented a stage of Jesus’ existence!
Elijah represents His soul-self; Moses represents the spirit-self; and the human Jesus represents the beast-self… then who is the glorified Jesus, if not the resurrected Jesus? And what form does He now have, if not a soul? John 17:5. Just as He had when He WAS the Elijah-soul-self!
…only… BETTER! Which is why Elisha, the NEW soul-self of Jesus, deserves a double portion! Because now He is the FIRSTBORN Son, who is worthy of a double portion! Because now He is an elder who ruled well, again worthy of a double portion!
Jesus lived a perfect life, nay, THREE perfect lives! And He didn’t do all this just to go back to what He was before the world was… but to be BETTER than He was before! To become a new kind of Elohim who understood the struggles, not just of man, but of angel alike; one who knew what it was to obey, how hard it was to make a good decision when you don’t have all the facts.
The first three Selves had each begun their lives as a bastard, literally meaning “a man without a legal father”, which is why each one of them surrendered His own name, so that after His resurrection He could inherit the new title “the beloved son of God”, whom the Father can forever trust to bring His other sons to glory!
Of course, if you’d just listened to the Bible, it told you this all along in the one verse for this lesson, 1 Kings 19:19-20. Don’t see it? That’s not surprising, because God hid it in Hebrew. See, the name Elijah means, in Hebrew “Yah is God”, which is to say, “Yahweh is El”. So literally, this is Jesus as He was in John 1:1.
So Elijah’s name is, literally, the soul-self of Jesus! But the name Elisha means… (are you ready for this?)… God is salvation. It is a contraction of El and yahshua, so said differently, the name Elisha literally IS the name “Jesus is El”!
But more than that, Yah-Is-El (Elijah) has no mentioned father. He is simply a Tishbite, which was a place name, not a parent (1 Kings 17:1). Which, of course, points us to Melchizedek who had no father (Hebrews 7:3).
But Yah-Is-El gave up His equality with God to become something less; to become Melchizedek whose name means “my king is Zadok”. Melchizedek was the priest of God, thus, the spirit of God –thus, Melchizedek was the spirit-self of Jesus!
As Yah-Is-El, He had no father or king; as Melchizedek, He also had no father, but was God’s servant –the servant of Zadok. Now Zadok means “righteous one” (compare to Matthew 19:17)… which is to say, Yah’s king was the one righteous Judge! (Hebrews 12:23).
But unlike Yah-Is-El, His successor Jesus-Is-El (Elisha), was the son of Shaphat; and Shaphat means “he hath judged”. Thus Elisha-son-of-Shaphat’s name literally means “Jesus the El, Son of the He Who Judges”!
Thus, His name tells us plainly that this was the God Yahweh, who became the Word of El, who then become flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14); who then finally became the Son of God which He hadn’t been until that time!
For doesn’t Proverbs 17:2 say “A wise servant shall have rule over a son that causeth shame, and shall have part of the inheritance among the brethren”?
What were the Word and Melchizedek, if not wise servants of the Most High God? Servants who, though aliens from El’s inheritance, did what none of God’s sons had ever done –lived a perfect life and laid down His life for His friends!
The heirs of God, angelic and Adamic alike, had all caused shame; but God was proud to acknowledge Jesus, and thereby ceased to be merely His King and became… His Father. And as a Father, gave His firstborn Son a double portion of everything! Something Elijah and Melchizedek had no right to inherit!
Thus, Jesus now has a name that is above EVERY OTHER NAME… INCLUDING HIS OWN FORMER NAMES!! Philippians 2:9. BECAUSE HE IS NOW BETTER than YAH-IS-EL, better than YAHWEH ELOHIM-THE WORD-MELCHIZEDEK, because He has done something that none of them ever did… SAVED mankind!
Which is why His new name is best of all; the one of which He, and His Father, are most proud; the ANOINTED SAVIOR;
Jesus the Christ.