Today’s Scripture Reading (March 7,
2014): Jeremiah 49
I have
mentioned in this blog that Israel was designed as a theocracy – a nation where
God was supposed to rule as the physical king. What we sometimes forget is that
while that is an unusual form of government, Israel might not have been the
only theocracy in ancient times. Many nations were built on the idea of the “rule
of god. And another possible candidate
for a theocracy is the Kingdom of Ammon and the Ammonites. In this case, the god
in question would be Molech or Molek. But for the Ammonites, Molek was not just
the name of their God, it was the name of their king. In fact, Molek seems to
mean “the god who is king.”
Another
interesting parallel between both Ammon and Israel is that both nations went by
the moniker “The Children of.” The people of Israel were known as “The Children
of Israel” and the people of Ammon were known as the “The Children of Ammon.”
Gad was a Transjordan
tribe of Israel (a tribe that had settled, along with Manasseh and Reuben, on
the east side of the Jordan River. But the territory, which had been part of
the Northern Kingdom of Israel, not Judah, was no longer a possession of the
descendants of Jacob. By the time of Jeremiah, the Kingdom of Israel had been
long defeated by the Assyrian Empire – and Israel had been carried into exile
and was gone. Yet God still seemed to expect Judah, who represented the surviving
children of Israel, to be in control of the cities of the Northern Kingdom – in
this case the cities of Gad who had long been lost to the Kingdom of Ammon. And
God’s question is why Judah had allowed this situation to arise.
So the
message that comes to Judah is asking the question – does Israel (or Jacob)
have no sons. Because the cities that I gave to the children of Israel are now
in the possession of the children of Molek (either the god or the king – or both.)
This lack would form part of the charge against Judah – they had not had the
faith to keep what God had given to them.
It is a
question that I admit that I wrestle with. Do I have the strength and the faith
to keep what God has given to me? And I am not sure that I always know the
answer. But I do believe that the church has become a safe church – not that it
is a safe place to be, but a place that is unwilling to risk for God. And
because of that, we have lost the holy places – and people – that God had
intended for us to impact. And I wonder if at some point in the future, the
question that Jeremiah asked of Judah will be asked of us.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading:
Jeremiah 13
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