X2M.137 Proprietor Desolator of the Apostates △
If Proscription (135) isolates and Purgation (136) refines, then Proprietor (137) establishes ownership. The Desolator’s final act is not only to cast down wickedness but to repossess creation under the true King. The very word proprietor denotes one who holds title and distributes land echoing the ancient practice of proprietorship in the American colonies, where rulers were granted both authority and stewardship.¹
Genesis grounds this logic in the beginning: “Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being” (Gen 2:7).² Humanity was designed as God’s proprietary steward, formed from dust yet animated by Spirit. Apostasy forfeited that proprietorship, but in Christ the original dominion is reclaimed. Isaiah foresaw this reversal: “No longer will they call you ‘Forsaken’ … but you will be called ‘My delight is in her,’ And your land ‘Married’” (Isa 62:4).³ What was once desolate becomes wed, bound again in covenant possession.
Zechariah’s vision of the woman in the basket (Zech 5:5–11) dramatizes the counterfeit proprietorship of wickedness. Babylon builds a temple for her, enthroning corruption as if it had legal right.⁴ Yet the vision anticipates God’s reclamation: the basket is lifted, exposed, and judged. In contrast to Babylon’s false enthronement, the Proprietor enthrones the Branch (Zech 6:12–13), marrying land and people under divine kingship.
Sara Japhet’s work on the Restoration period emphasizes how post-exilic Israel wrestled with this very theme: who truly possesses the land — the exiles returning from Babylon, or the nations who had filled the void?⁵ The answer was theological, not merely political: proprietorship belongs to the one who holds covenant title.
Meredith Kline calls this the intrusion ethic — a breakthrough of final ownership into present history.⁶ What was delayed under common grace is anticipated in intrusions of judgment and restoration. The Proprietor both delays (gestation of covenant history) and intrudes (acts of purgation and repossession), until consummation unveils the kingdom in full.⁷
Thus, Proprietor is not bare dominion but Christocratic proprietorship. The enthroned King is given the nations as inheritance (Ps 2:7–9), stabilizing both people and cosmos: “His hand on the sea, his right hand on the rivers” (Ps 89:25).⁸ Bauckham notes that the king shares God’s throne as His representative, an identity claim taken up in early Christian Christology.⁹ Eaton stresses that the king’s gift of life brings life also to the people — proprietorship is never private but corporate, blessing subjects through the king’s rule.¹⁰
In this way, X2M.137 Proprietor closes the Desolator cluster. Apostates are dispossessed, Babylon’s false enthronement is exposed, and Christ reclaims proprietorship over land, people, and nations.
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Footnotes
¹ William Robert Shepherd, History of Proprietary Government in Pennsylvania (New York: Columbia University Press, 1896).
² Genesis 2:7; cf. 1 Corinthians 15:45–49.
³ Isaiah 62:4 (NASB).
⁴ Zechariah 5:5–11 (NET).
⁵ Sara Japhet, From the Rivers of Babylon to the Highlands of Judah: Collected Studies on the Restoration Period (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2006), 488.
⁶ Meredith G. Kline, God, Heaven and Har Magedon: A Covenantal Tale of Cosmos and Telos (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2006), 20.
⁷ Ibid., 89.
⁸ Psalm 89:25 (NRSV).
⁹ Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Divine Identity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 152–81.
¹⁰ John Eaton, Kingship and the Psalms (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1976), 156.
