Catching Fog

While Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and all his army and all the kingdoms and peoples in the empire he ruled were fighting against Jerusalem and all its surrounding towns, this word came to Jeremiah from the LORD: “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: Go to Zedekiah king of Judah and tell him, ‘This is what the LORD says: I am about to hand this city over to the king of Babylon, and he will burn it down. You will not escape from his grasp but will surely be captured and handed over to him. You will see the king of Babylon with your own eyes, and he will speak with you face to face. And you will go to Babylon.

“‘Yet hear the promise of the LORD, O Zedekiah king of Judah. This is what the LORD says concerning you: You will not die by the sword; you will die peacefully. As people made a funeral fire in honor of your fathers, the former kings who preceded you, so they will make a fire in your honor and lament, “Alas, O master!” I myself make this promise, declares the LORD.’”

Then Jeremiah the prophet told all this to Zedekiah king of Judah, in Jerusalem, while the army of the king of Babylon was fighting against Jerusalem and the other cities of Judah that were still holding out—Lachish and Azekah. These were the only fortified cities left in Judah. (Jeremiah 34:1-7)

There’s good news and bad news. Which would you rather hear first? Zedekiah’s sons would be executed in front of him. Immediately afterwards, he was blinded and then he was hauled away to Babylon in chains. Meanwhile, the city of Jerusalem was torched and burned to the ground, along with God’s temple. All this God had told Zedekiah before it happened, warning him that unless he changed his ways, this is how it would turn out. Instead of heeding God’s words, given to him by the prophet Jeremiah, Zedekiah had resisted God’s will and attempted to achieve his own will by rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar. The outcome was just as God had predicted.

But, despite his poor choices, despite resisting God’s will, despite the terrible suffering he endured, the promise God gave him was fulfilled. God did not let Zedekiah die by the sword. Instead he died peacefully—but far from home. And as the last king of Judah to ever sit on David’s throne, when he died he was mourned by the people of God.

The outcome of Zedekiah’s life was because of the choices he made. God is in control of the universe, but he exercises that control through the choices we make.

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“Then you will know that I, the Lord your God, live in Zion, my holy mountain. Jerusalem will be holy forever, and foreign armies will never conquer her again.

“In that day the mountains will drip with sweet wine, and the hills will flow with milk. Water will fill the streambeds of Judah, and a fountain will burst forth from the Lord’s Temple, watering the arid valley of acacias.

But Egypt will become a wasteland and Edom will become a wilderness, because they attacked the people of Judah and killed innocent people in their land.

“But Judah will be filled with people forever, and Jerusalem will endure through all generations.

“I will pardon my people’s crimes, which I have not yet pardoned; and I, the Lord, will make my home in Jerusalem with my people.” (Joel 3:17-21)

At the beginning of his prophecy, Joel predicted that the land of Israel would be devastated by a locust plague. It arrived like an invading army. Perhaps the locusts served as a picture of the Babylonians, God’s punishment for Israel’s disobedience.

Though the Babylonians and their allies, Egypt and Edom, served as God’s instruments of judgment, they slaughtered the innocent, not just the guilty. So God promised he would punish them, too. This happened within seventy years, when the Persians conquered Babylon and much of the rest of the Middle East. The Persians then issued a decree ordering that both Jerusalem and the Temple be rebuilt and that the Jewish captives should go home.

God then promised that he would live with his people forever. God fulfilled this promise with his New Covenant—a covenant that would be written on the hearts of his people. God intended to make his people his temple, the place where he really could live with them forever. As Paul the apostle would later write, his people are now God’s temple and God’s Spirit lives in their midst.

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The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Speak to the Israelites, and say to them: When you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, then you shall select cities to be cities of refuge for you, so that a slayer who kills a person without intent may flee there. The cities shall be for you a refuge from the avenger, so that the slayer may not die until there is a trial before the congregation.

The cities that you designate shall be six cities of refuge for you: you shall designate three cities beyond the Jordan, and three cities in the land of Canaan, to be cities of refuge. These six cities shall serve as refuge for the Israelites, for the resident or transient alien among them, so that anyone who kills a person without intent may flee there. (Numbers 35:9-15)

Revenge is a dish best served cold. In ancient Israel, there were no police officers, no detectives, no CSI, no FBI. Instead, family and friends were responsible for avenging the victim of a violent crime. Justice was dependent upon the victim’s family. Unfortunately, vigilante justice is notoriously imprecise. The wrong person all too frequently was fingered for a crime. Accidents were magnified into malevolence. An injured party was not interested in believing that the accused was innocent until proven guilty. They just wanted satisfaction: string him up now and ask questions later.

Therefore, God established refuges for those accused of violent crimes. An accused person could flee to any one of six cities where they would be protected from vengeance. Once there, the vengeful relatives could do nothing more than bring charges against the person before the city leadership. Ideally, those leaders could then dispassionately investigate the matter. If found not guilty, then the accused could stay in the city indefinitely, safe from a vengeful family, who might not be satisfied by a pronouncement of innocence. The law of refuge was the same, whether you were a citizen or not. God decided that justice was best served by those not lost in the heat of their emotions, so that only the guilty would actually be punished. Revenge is not just about making the victim feel better. All too often, our emotions can get in the way of what’s right. God wants to protect us, and those around us, from ourselves.

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The daughters of Zelophehad son of Hepher, the son of Gilead, the son of Makir, the son of Manasseh, belonged to the clans of Manasseh son of Joseph. The names of the daughters were Mahlah, Noah, Hoglah, Milcah and Tirzah. They approached the entrance to the Tent of Meeting and stood before Moses, Eleazar the priest, the leaders and the whole assembly, and said, “Our father died in the desert. He was not among Korah’s followers, who banded together against the LORD, but he died for his own sin and left no sons. Why should our father’s name disappear from his clan because he had no son? Give us property among our father’s relatives.”

So Moses brought their case before the LORD and the LORD said to him, “What Zelophehad’s daughters are saying is right. You must certainly give them property as an inheritance among their father’s relatives and turn their father’s inheritance over to them.

“Say to the Israelites, ‘If a man dies and leaves no son, turn his inheritance over to his daughter. If he has no daughter, give his inheritance to his brothers. If he has no brothers, give his inheritance to his father’s brothers. If his father had no brothers, give his inheritance to the nearest relative in his clan, that he may possess it. This is to be a legal requirement for the Israelites, as the LORD commanded Moses.’ ” (Numbers 27:1-11)

God likes women. The five daughters of Zelophehad wanted to protect their father’s name and they wanted to protect themselves. It was important for the Israelites that their names and property were passed down to future generations. In their patriarchal society, if a man had no sons, then some other male relative gained his inheritance. Zelophehad’s daughters thought that was wrong. They were his children, as much as any son could be, so why couldn’t they get the inheritance? God agreed with them. God told Moses that children, regardless of gender, took priority over other relatives. Only if there were no children at all, could some other member of the extended family inherit a dead man’s property.

What mattered to even the least powerful individuals was important to God. He was concerned with such mundane details as the inheritance rights of children. God was concerned with protecting those who might otherwise have been taken advantage of. In a patriarchal society, the rights of women were regularly trampled upon. God saw to it that daughters could not be deprived of what was rightly theirs. Gender does not trump and individual’s humanity. Regardless of what Moses or the other men might have thought, God insisted that women mattered. No one was unimportant to God.

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Then the LORD spoke to Moses saying,

“Send out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan, which I am going to give to the sons of Israel; you shall send a man from each of their fathers’ tribes, every one a leader among them.”

So Moses sent them from the wilderness of Paran at the command of the LORD, all of them men who were heads of the sons of Israel.

These then were their names:

from the tribe of Reuben, Shammua the son of Zaccur;
from the tribe of Simeon, Shaphat the son of Hori;
from the tribe of Judah, Caleb the son of Jephunneh;
from the tribe of Issachar, Igal the son of Joseph;
from the tribe of Ephraim, Hoshea the son of Nun;
from the tribe of Benjamin, Palti the son of Raphu;
from the tribe of Zebulun, Gaddiel the son of Sodi;
from the tribe of Manasseh (a tribe of Joseph), Gaddi the son of Susi;
from the tribe of Dan, Ammiel the son of Gemalli;
from the tribe of Asher, Sethur the son of Michael;
from the tribe of Naphtali, Nahbi the son of Vophsi;
from the tribe of Gad, Geuel the son of Machi.

These are the names of the men whom Moses sent to spy out the land; but Moses called Hoshea the son of Nun, Joshua. (Numbers 13:1-16)

God believes in freedom. God brought the people of Israel out of Egypt for the express purpose of bringing them back to the land he had promised to Abraham. Then God told Moses to select twelve people to act as spies, so the Israelites could discover what that land was like.

Couldn’t God just have given Moses a briefing? Of course. But he didn’t. Couldn’t he have specified who Moses picked for spies? Yes. But he didn’t. He let Moses pick mostly bad spies who brought back a negative report. When the people of Israel believed their discouraging message they rejected God’s offer of the Promised Land. And God accepted their rejection! God gave that generation its wish not to enter the land. God accepted the will of the majority. God granted his people their freedom, for good or ill.

If we can find out something on our own, God isn’t going to tell it to us. God won’t allow himself to become a shortcut for laziness nor a way to shirk our responsibility. He is willing to let us learn things the hard way.

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