"And they clothed him with purple, and platted a crown of thorns, and put it about his head, and began to salute him, Hail, King of the Jews!"Mark 15:17–18 · the accession rite, performed in mockery — and thereby performed
Anointed in Elul, crowned in thorns at Passover, enthroned at the right hand — the three acts of kingship, the gaps that test, and the consummation the shofar rehearses.
The thesis, in short
Israel's kingship was conferred in three acts, not one: anointing, crowning, enthronement — and the gap between the acts is where the drama of Scripture lives. David is anointed as a shepherd boy and enthroned 15+ years later; the interval is spears, caves, and the vetting of the mighty men at Adullam. Solomon — who supplies the calendar and the rite, never the order of Melchizedek itself — shows the emergency bypass: anointed and enthroned in a single afternoon because a dying David could not risk an interregnum. The normative path is the long one: anoint, then test the anointed; crown, then test the governed; enthrone, then remove the ungovernable. Jesus told this exact sequence as a parable on the road to his own coronation — the nobleman who travels to a far country to receive a kingdom, whose servants are tested with stewardship in his absence, whose citizens send word 'we will not have this man to reign over us,' and who returns to reckon and remove. Read against the calendar: washed and anointed at the head of Elul, the 40 wilderness days landing on the Day of Atonement; the first sign at a Tabernacles wedding with the kingly hour explicitly withheld; the acceptable year proclaimed on the new year of kings, anointed and announced but not yet crowned; then, at Passover of the crisis year, the coronation itself — robe, crown, scepter, homage, acclamation, every element of the accession rite performed in mockery and thereby, in the irony of God, performed: a crown of thorns and a written testimony nailed above the King's head that the governor refused to amend. Forty days later the enthronement session begins at the right hand; ten days after that, at Shavuot, the acclamation goes public — 'God has made him both Lord and Christ.' But the session is explicitly incomplete: 'from that time waiting until his enemies be made his footstool.' The heavenly pole of the enthronement is done; the earthly consummation is outstanding — and Yom Teruah, the feast whose entire liturgy is the enthronement of the King with shofar and acclamation, is its standing rehearsal. The overcomer is written into the same sequence by the same formula: Revelation 21:7 confers the Davidic adoption-at-coronation formula of 2 Samuel 7:14 on each one who overcomes — son, therefore heir, therefore allotted a portion — and Romans 8:17 states the vetting clause: joint-heirs, if indeed we suffer with him. It was in our nothingness that we could do all things; in selfless service that we could overcome; forsaking all to become steward of all.
● The Spine
What the text and the calendar show
Each claim is sourced and stands without the reading that follows: an office that fuses both crowns; a three-act accession with a testing gap between the acts; a coronation rite of shofar and acclamation on a Tishri regnal clock; a coronation scene recorded in full regalia at Passover; a two-stage enthronement whose second pole the text itself calls outstanding; and an inheritance formula that writes the overcomer into the same sequence.
[1] The office that fuses the two crowns
Melchizedek is king of Salem AND priest of the Most High — one office holding both crowns Israel otherwise kept in separate hands (priest of Levi, king of Judah). Psalm 110 welds them to the throne: 'Sit thou at my right hand' (king) and 'Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek' (priest). Zechariah 6:13 names the fusion as prophecy: 'he shall be a priest upon his throne.' Note the fence within the fence: Solomon supplies coronation calendar and rite data, but Scripture nowhere places Solomon in the order of Melchizedek — the office and the template king are kept separate here by design, congruent on the timeline but never conflated.
[2] Three acts, one gap: anoint, crown, enthrone
Kingship arrives in stages. Anointing (mashach — the oil that makes the mashiach) can precede power by years: David, anointed at Bethlehem as a boy, reaches the throne of all Israel 15+ years and two more anointings later. Crowning is the visible investiture — and where the crown (nezer) appears at Joash's accession it appears WITH the eduth, the written testimony: crown and covenant document handed over together (2 Kings 11:12). Enthronement (yashav al-kisse, 'sat on the throne') is the assumption of actual rule — the verb of 1 Kings 1:46. Solomon compresses all of it into one afternoon only because 1 Kings 1 is a crisis narrative: Adonijah already feasting, David dying, Nathan and Bathsheba forcing the timing on the strength of a sworn promise. The compression is the emergency bypass of interregnum, not the ideal — and Solomon, uniquely, has no wilderness gap on record.
[3] The rite is shofar and acclamation; the clock is Tishri
The constitutive act at every described coronation is the trumpet blast plus acclamation — Solomon ('blow ye the trumpet: God save king Solomon'), Jehu, Joash (trumpets, clapping, 'God save the king'). This is exactly the frame the Rosh Hashanah liturgy gives Yom Teruah: Malchuyot, the enthronement of God as King, with Psalm 47:5 ('God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet') and Psalm 98:6. And structurally, Judah counted regnal years from Tishri 1 (Thiele's reconstruction, widely accepted; the northern kingdom used Nisan years) — so every Davidic king's official year turned over on Yom Teruah regardless of the day he was actually crowned. The covenant line is administratively anchored to the day of trumpets. The clean claim, stated once: this is about the rite and the accounting clock, not proof that any given king's ceremony fell on Tishri 1.
[4] Elul 1: washed at Jordan; 40 days to the Day of Atonement
The Aaronic priest was consecrated by washing and anointing (Exodus 29:4–7); at Jordan the washing is the river and the anointing is the descending Spirit, with a priest's son — John, of the course of Abijah — officiating. Mark's sequence is one motion: 'And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness' — anointing and trial are not two events but one. Placed at Elul 1, the arithmetic closes by itself: Elul 1 plus 40 days is Yom Kippur — precisely the traditional 40-day teshuvah season (Elul 1 through the Day of Atonement), itself patterned on Moses' third 40-day ascent ending in the renewed covenant. The anointed one's 40 days of testing would coincide, day for day, with Israel's own annual 40 days of testing, ending on the day the high priest enters the holiest.
[5] Cana at Tabernacles: the wine-sign at the feast of ingathering
John introduces the Word with a Tabernacles verb — ἐσκήνωσεν, 'tabernacled among us' — and the first sign follows at a wedding: water into wine. Sukkot is the feast of ingathering 'after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine' (Deut 16:13) — the new-wine season, the year's feast of joy, and (per Zechariah 14:16) the one feast the nations will keep under the reigning King. Wine is the Melchizedek table-sign from its first appearance at Salem (bread and wine, Genesis 14:18). The kingly hour is explicitly withheld at the very moment the emblem is produced: 'mine hour is not yet come.' Anointed, yes; crowned, no — and the text says so in the anointee's own words.
[6] Nisan 1: the acceptable year proclaimed on the new year of kings
At Nazareth the anointed one reads Isaiah 61 — 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me... to preach the acceptable year of the LORD' — and closes the scroll on the anointing clause, before the day of vengeance. The Mishnah names Nisan 1 as 'the new year for kings': the day the regnal count of Israel's kings turned over. A proclamation of the anointed one's platform on the kings' new year is an accession announcement without a crown — the manifesto of a king-designate. In the same season John places the first temple cleansing (John 2:13–17), and the scripture the disciples recall is Psalm 69:9 — 'the ZEAL of thine house hath eaten me up' — a son's zeal for his Father's house, the priest-edge act opening the acceptable year. The kingly jurisdiction act waits for coronation week.
[7] The coronation on the page: robe, crown, scepter, homage, acclamation
Matthew 27:27–31 is a complete accession liturgy, element for element: the robe (purple/scarlet), the crown (of thorns), the scepter (a reed placed in his right hand), the kneeling homage, and the acclamation — 'Hail, King of the Jews.' Every component of the rite, performed by Gentile soldiers as mockery and thereby, in the irony of God, performed. Pilate presents him crowned — 'Behold your King!' — and nails up the written declaration of kingship in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, refusing all amendment: 'What I have written I have written.' The thorns themselves are the fruit of the curse — 'thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee' (Genesis 3:18): the King crowned with the curse of the ground he came to lift. And the coronation doubles as the examination of the governed, administered and failed in real time: 'We have no king but Caesar' (John 19:15), spoken by the covenant people at Passover.
[8] The enthronement: session at the ascension, acclamation at Shavuot, consummation outstanding
Mark uses the technical verb: 'received up into heaven, and SAT on the right hand of God.' Forty days after the resurrection (Acts 1:3), the Son of Man arrives on the clouds before the Ancient of Days — Daniel 7:13–14 is the ascension seen from the throne room's side, the arrival that RECEIVES dominion, glory, and a kingdom. Ten days later, at Shavuot, the acclamation goes public: Peter's whole sermon is Psalm 110:1, concluding 'God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ' — sound from heaven, the multitude, 3,000 responding; and Psalm 68:18, 'Thou hast ascended on high,' is the psalm of the season. But Hebrews states the session's own incompleteness: he 'sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth EXPECTING till his enemies be made his footstool.' Psalm 110's grammar agrees — sit first, subjugation during the session, the rod sent out of Zion later. Two stages of one enthronement: the heavenly session, done; the public earthly consummation, outstanding.
[9] The whole sequence, told as a parable on the road to the coronation
The parable of the minas is the three-stage flow in a single text, told 'because he was nigh to Jerusalem' on the final ascent: a nobleman travels to a far country TO RECEIVE A KINGDOM (enthronement in a distant court — modeled on Archelaus's actual journey to Rome for imperial confirmation, a scene Jesus's hearers knew); in his absence his SERVANTS are tested with stewardship ('Occupy till I come'); the CITIZENS send a message after him — 'We will not have this man to reign over us' — the governed, examined and refusing; he returns enthroned, reckons with the servants (the faithful given CITIES — stewardship scaled up to rule), and the parable closes with the removal of the ungovernable in so many words. Anoint and test the anointed; crown and test the governed; enthrone and remove those who refuse to be governed — narrated by the King himself, days before the thorns.
[10] Revelation 21:7 — the coronation-adoption formula conferred on the overcomer
The Greek carries the mechanics. ὁ νικῶν — present participle, 'the one overcoming,' continuous, not a one-time victor; the tested path is in the tense. κληρονομήσει — from κλῆρος, the allotted LOT, Joshua's land-grant vocabulary in the Septuagint: inheritance as allotment in the settled land. (Text note: the critical text reads ταῦτα, 'these things'; the KJV's 'all things' follows later manuscripts reading πάντα.) Then the back half is a direct lift: 'I will be his God, and he shall be my son' is the Davidic covenant adoption formula of 2 Samuel 7:14 — the very words Hebrews 1:5 applies to Christ's own enthronement — here conferred on ὁ νικῶν, singular, each overcomer. The chain: enthronement-adoption makes the son; sonship makes the heir (Galatians 4:7); the heir receives the allotment (Psalm 2:7–8 — 'Thou art my Son... ask of me, and I shall give thee... thine inheritance'). Romans 8:17 supplies the vetting clause — 'joint-heirs with Christ; IF SO BE that we suffer with him' — and Revelation 3:21 closes the loop: 'To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I ALSO overcame.' Same path, shared throne.
[11] Enthronement's completion: probation, then removal of the ungovernable
Solomon's first regnal acts are probations, not purges: Adonijah spared on terms ('if he shall shew himself a worthy man'), Shimei given a boundary and a warning. Each is given rope; each hangs himself on it; and the section closes 'And the kingdom was ESTABLISHED in the hand of Solomon' (1 Kings 2:46) — establishment through removal, after testing. Matthew 25 keeps the order: the goats are separated only after 'the Son of man shall... sit upon the throne of his glory.' Psalms 2 and 110 agree — session first, rod after. Isaiah 3:25–4:1 sketches the demographic aftermath of one such judgment: 'Thy men shall fall by the sword... and in that day seven women shall take hold of one man' — the men judged first, and to a consequential degree.
[12] The qualification is the emptying: 'therefore God highly exalted him'
Philippians 2 makes the descent the GROUNDS of the ascent, not its prelude: 'he emptied himself... became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. διὸ καί — WHEREFORE God also hath highly exalted him.' The therefore is causal. The operating principle for the interval is 2 Corinthians 12: 'when I am weak, then am I strong' — strength perfected in weakness, all things possible from nothingness. And the King's own rule for his order: 'he that is greatest among you shall be your servant... whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted.' Forsaking all is the stewardship exam; the throne is entrusted to hands that stopped grasping.
The honest verdict: The three-act accession pattern is assembled from the narratives, not spelled out as a checklist anywhere — Jehu shows it could compress or deform — but the David/Solomon contrast (15-year gap versus same-day crisis compression) is textually solid, and Luke 19 narrates the full sequence as a parable. The mock coronation's completeness as an accession rite is on the page in Matthew 27 and John 19, as is the session's explicit incompleteness in Hebrews 10:12–13. What the corpus adds as conviction is the 24–27 CE calendar placement, the September 26, 2026 dating of the Yom Teruah of consequence, and the Justinian-scale reading of prior removals. No claim rests on the absence of a record.
He was washed at the head of the month of returning, and his forty days ended where atonement ends. He showed the wine at the feast of the King and said the hour was not yet. He proclaimed the acceptable year on the new year of kings, and gathered his mighty men in the gap, as David did at Adullam. Then they crowned him — robe, thorns, reed, and homage, every element of the rite, meant as mockery and received as coronation — under a written testimony no hand was permitted to amend. Forty days later he sat down, and ten days after that the acclamation went out: Lord and Christ. The session is open. The footstool is not yet finished. And every year the shofar rehearses the day it is — for the overcomer holds the same formula the King was crowned under: I will be his God, and he shall be my son.
Sources
The spine, cited
[1]The office that fuses the two crowns —
Genesis 14:18; Psalm 110:1, 4; Hebrews 7:1–2; Zechariah 6:13Melchizedek is king of Salem AND priest of the Most High — one office holding both crowns Israel otherwise kept in separate hands (priest of Levi, king of Judah). Psalm 110 welds them to the throne: 'Sit thou at my right hand' (king) and 'Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek' (priest). Zechariah 6:13 names the fusion as prophecy: 'he shall be a priest upon his throne.' Note the fence within the fence: Solomon supplies coronation calendar and rite data, but Scripture nowhere places Solomon in the order of Melchizedek — the office and the template king are kept separate here by design, congruent on the timeline but never conflated.
[2]Three acts, one gap: anoint, crown, enthrone —
1 Samuel 16:13; 2 Samuel 2:4; 5:3; 1 Kings 1:39, 46; 2 Kings 11:12, 19Kingship arrives in stages. Anointing (mashach — the oil that makes the mashiach) can precede power by years: David, anointed at Bethlehem as a boy, reaches the throne of all Israel 15+ years and two more anointings later. Crowning is the visible investiture — and where the crown (nezer) appears at Joash's accession it appears WITH the eduth, the written testimony: crown and covenant document handed over together (2 Kings 11:12). Enthronement (yashav al-kisse, 'sat on the throne') is the assumption of actual rule — the verb of 1 Kings 1:46. Solomon compresses all of it into one afternoon only because 1 Kings 1 is a crisis narrative: Adonijah already feasting, David dying, Nathan and Bathsheba forcing the timing on the strength of a sworn promise. The compression is the emergency bypass of interregnum, not the ideal — and Solomon, uniquely, has no wilderness gap on record.
[3]The rite is shofar and acclamation; the clock is Tishri —
1 Kings 1:39; 2 Kings 9:13; 11:12–14; Psalm 47:5; Psalm 98:6; Thiele, Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew KingsThe constitutive act at every described coronation is the trumpet blast plus acclamation — Solomon ('blow ye the trumpet: God save king Solomon'), Jehu, Joash (trumpets, clapping, 'God save the king'). This is exactly the frame the Rosh Hashanah liturgy gives Yom Teruah: Malchuyot, the enthronement of God as King, with Psalm 47:5 ('God is gone up with a shout, the LORD with the sound of a trumpet') and Psalm 98:6. And structurally, Judah counted regnal years from Tishri 1 (Thiele's reconstruction, widely accepted; the northern kingdom used Nisan years) — so every Davidic king's official year turned over on Yom Teruah regardless of the day he was actually crowned. The covenant line is administratively anchored to the day of trumpets. The clean claim, stated once: this is about the rite and the accounting clock, not proof that any given king's ceremony fell on Tishri 1.
[4]Elul 1: washed at Jordan; 40 days to the Day of Atonement —
Mark 1:9–13; Luke 1:5; 3:21–22; Exodus 34:28 (the third 40 days); traditional Elul teshuvah seasonThe Aaronic priest was consecrated by washing and anointing (Exodus 29:4–7); at Jordan the washing is the river and the anointing is the descending Spirit, with a priest's son — John, of the course of Abijah — officiating. Mark's sequence is one motion: 'And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness' — anointing and trial are not two events but one. Placed at Elul 1, the arithmetic closes by itself: Elul 1 plus 40 days is Yom Kippur — precisely the traditional 40-day teshuvah season (Elul 1 through the Day of Atonement), itself patterned on Moses' third 40-day ascent ending in the renewed covenant. The anointed one's 40 days of testing would coincide, day for day, with Israel's own annual 40 days of testing, ending on the day the high priest enters the holiest.
[5]Cana at Tabernacles: the wine-sign at the feast of ingathering —
John 1:14 (ἐσκήνωσεν); John 2:1–11; Deuteronomy 16:13; Zechariah 14:16John introduces the Word with a Tabernacles verb — ἐσκήνωσεν, 'tabernacled among us' — and the first sign follows at a wedding: water into wine. Sukkot is the feast of ingathering 'after that thou hast gathered in thy corn and thy wine' (Deut 16:13) — the new-wine season, the year's feast of joy, and (per Zechariah 14:16) the one feast the nations will keep under the reigning King. Wine is the Melchizedek table-sign from its first appearance at Salem (bread and wine, Genesis 14:18). The kingly hour is explicitly withheld at the very moment the emblem is produced: 'mine hour is not yet come.' Anointed, yes; crowned, no — and the text says so in the anointee's own words.
[6]Nisan 1: the acceptable year proclaimed on the new year of kings —
Luke 4:16–21; Isaiah 61:1–2; Mishnah Rosh Hashanah 1:1; John 2:13–17; Psalm 69:9At Nazareth the anointed one reads Isaiah 61 — 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me... to preach the acceptable year of the LORD' — and closes the scroll on the anointing clause, before the day of vengeance. The Mishnah names Nisan 1 as 'the new year for kings': the day the regnal count of Israel's kings turned over. A proclamation of the anointed one's platform on the kings' new year is an accession announcement without a crown — the manifesto of a king-designate. In the same season John places the first temple cleansing (John 2:13–17), and the scripture the disciples recall is Psalm 69:9 — 'the ZEAL of thine house hath eaten me up' — a son's zeal for his Father's house, the priest-edge act opening the acceptable year. The kingly jurisdiction act waits for coronation week.
[7]The coronation on the page: robe, crown, scepter, homage, acclamation —
Matthew 27:27–31; John 19:2–5, 14–15, 19–22; Genesis 3:18Matthew 27:27–31 is a complete accession liturgy, element for element: the robe (purple/scarlet), the crown (of thorns), the scepter (a reed placed in his right hand), the kneeling homage, and the acclamation — 'Hail, King of the Jews.' Every component of the rite, performed by Gentile soldiers as mockery and thereby, in the irony of God, performed. Pilate presents him crowned — 'Behold your King!' — and nails up the written declaration of kingship in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, refusing all amendment: 'What I have written I have written.' The thorns themselves are the fruit of the curse — 'thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee' (Genesis 3:18): the King crowned with the curse of the ground he came to lift. And the coronation doubles as the examination of the governed, administered and failed in real time: 'We have no king but Caesar' (John 19:15), spoken by the covenant people at Passover.
[8]The enthronement: session at the ascension, acclamation at Shavuot, consummation outstanding —
Mark 16:19; Acts 1:3, 9; Daniel 7:13–14; Acts 2:33–36; Psalm 68:18; Hebrews 10:12–13Mark uses the technical verb: 'received up into heaven, and SAT on the right hand of God.' Forty days after the resurrection (Acts 1:3), the Son of Man arrives on the clouds before the Ancient of Days — Daniel 7:13–14 is the ascension seen from the throne room's side, the arrival that RECEIVES dominion, glory, and a kingdom. Ten days later, at Shavuot, the acclamation goes public: Peter's whole sermon is Psalm 110:1, concluding 'God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ' — sound from heaven, the multitude, 3,000 responding; and Psalm 68:18, 'Thou hast ascended on high,' is the psalm of the season. But Hebrews states the session's own incompleteness: he 'sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth EXPECTING till his enemies be made his footstool.' Psalm 110's grammar agrees — sit first, subjugation during the session, the rod sent out of Zion later. Two stages of one enthronement: the heavenly session, done; the public earthly consummation, outstanding.
[9]The whole sequence, told as a parable on the road to the coronation —
Luke 19:11–27; Josephus, Antiquities 17.9 (Archelaus's journey to Rome)The parable of the minas is the three-stage flow in a single text, told 'because he was nigh to Jerusalem' on the final ascent: a nobleman travels to a far country TO RECEIVE A KINGDOM (enthronement in a distant court — modeled on Archelaus's actual journey to Rome for imperial confirmation, a scene Jesus's hearers knew); in his absence his SERVANTS are tested with stewardship ('Occupy till I come'); the CITIZENS send a message after him — 'We will not have this man to reign over us' — the governed, examined and refusing; he returns enthroned, reckons with the servants (the faithful given CITIES — stewardship scaled up to rule), and the parable closes with the removal of the ungovernable in so many words. Anoint and test the anointed; crown and test the governed; enthrone and remove those who refuse to be governed — narrated by the King himself, days before the thorns.
[10]Revelation 21:7 — the coronation-adoption formula conferred on the overcomer —
Revelation 21:7 (ὁ νικῶν κληρονομήσει ταῦτα); 2 Samuel 7:14 LXX; Hebrews 1:5; Psalm 2:7–8; Romans 8:17; Galatians 4:7; Revelation 3:21The Greek carries the mechanics. ὁ νικῶν — present participle, 'the one overcoming,' continuous, not a one-time victor; the tested path is in the tense. κληρονομήσει — from κλῆρος, the allotted LOT, Joshua's land-grant vocabulary in the Septuagint: inheritance as allotment in the settled land. (Text note: the critical text reads ταῦτα, 'these things'; the KJV's 'all things' follows later manuscripts reading πάντα.) Then the back half is a direct lift: 'I will be his God, and he shall be my son' is the Davidic covenant adoption formula of 2 Samuel 7:14 — the very words Hebrews 1:5 applies to Christ's own enthronement — here conferred on ὁ νικῶν, singular, each overcomer. The chain: enthronement-adoption makes the son; sonship makes the heir (Galatians 4:7); the heir receives the allotment (Psalm 2:7–8 — 'Thou art my Son... ask of me, and I shall give thee... thine inheritance'). Romans 8:17 supplies the vetting clause — 'joint-heirs with Christ; IF SO BE that we suffer with him' — and Revelation 3:21 closes the loop: 'To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I ALSO overcame.' Same path, shared throne.
[11]Enthronement's completion: probation, then removal of the ungovernable —
1 Kings 2:13–46; Matthew 25:31–33; Psalm 2:9; Psalm 110:1–2; Isaiah 3:25–4:1Solomon's first regnal acts are probations, not purges: Adonijah spared on terms ('if he shall shew himself a worthy man'), Shimei given a boundary and a warning. Each is given rope; each hangs himself on it; and the section closes 'And the kingdom was ESTABLISHED in the hand of Solomon' (1 Kings 2:46) — establishment through removal, after testing. Matthew 25 keeps the order: the goats are separated only after 'the Son of man shall... sit upon the throne of his glory.' Psalms 2 and 110 agree — session first, rod after. Isaiah 3:25–4:1 sketches the demographic aftermath of one such judgment: 'Thy men shall fall by the sword... and in that day seven women shall take hold of one man' — the men judged first, and to a consequential degree.
[12]The qualification is the emptying: 'therefore God highly exalted him' —
Philippians 2:5–11 (διὸ καί); 2 Corinthians 12:9–10; Matthew 23:11–12Philippians 2 makes the descent the GROUNDS of the ascent, not its prelude: 'he emptied himself... became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. διὸ καί — WHEREFORE God also hath highly exalted him.' The therefore is causal. The operating principle for the interval is 2 Corinthians 12: 'when I am weak, then am I strong' — strength perfected in weakness, all things possible from nothingness. And the King's own rule for his order: 'he that is greatest among you shall be your servant... whosoever shall humble himself shall be exalted.' Forsaking all is the stewardship exam; the throne is entrusted to hands that stopped grasping.