TREASURE HID IN A FIELD

The fifth and sixth parables of ‘the kingdom of the heavens’ are a pair. They tell of the immense price paid by the king to purchase, not the kingdom itself, but those valuables in it which He prizes most highly. In this parable, the ‘treasure’ probably represents Israel. Jehovah referred to obedient Israel as ‘a peculiar treasure unto me among all people: for all the earth is mine’, Exod. 19. 5. Others see the ‘treasure hid in a field’, possibly a rich trove of jewellery, coins, and precious metal, to represent the saints and martyrs of all ages who lie sleeping ‘in the dust of the earth’, who will be raised to ‘shine as the brightness of the firmament’, and ‘as the stars for ever and ever’, Dan. 12. 2, 3. In the parable which follows, the pearl is unquestionably the church.

Jehovah ‘found’ Israel in ‘a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness’. She was kept as ‘the apple of his eye’, ‘sealed up among my treasures’, Deut. 32. 10, 34. The Lord Jesus, the ‘man’ who found the treasure, hid it, and ‘for joy’ went and sold all that He had, and bought the field. Christ came first to Israel. He was devoted to His land and people, John. 1. 11. But the nation, and Jerusalem in particular, over which Christ wept so poignantly, rejected its King. Christ gave Himself, not only for ‘the chosen generation’ of the church, 1 Peter 2. 9, but for ‘all Israel’ who, in a future day, ‘shall be saved … there shall come out of Sion the Deliverer, and shall turn away ungodliness from Jacob’, Rom. 11. 26. For 2000 years, Israel has remained largely ‘hid’ among the Gentiles. But, after the rapture of the church, at the climax of the great tribulation, Jews worldwide will be gathered to their homeland. There will be national repentance as Israel views her Messiah’s wounded hands, outstretched in reconciliation. ‘They shall look upon me whom they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him’, Zech. 12. 10. The nation shall be ‘born at once’, Isa. 66. 8.

Israel, in the millennium, will have a bright future. Jehovah declares, ‘they shall be mine, in that day when I make up my jewels [Heb. special treasure]; and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him’, Mal. 3. 17.