Today’s Scripture Reading (November
8, 2013): 2 Chronicles 29
According to
Greek Mythology, Daedalus and his son Icarus were imprisoned on the island of
Crete by King Minos. Minos actually imprisons the father – son duo in the very labyrinth
that Daedalus had created for King Minos to imprison the Minotaur, a half man
and half bull monster that was born of Minos wife and the Cretan bull. When
Daedalus is drawn in to helping an enemy of Minos survive the labyrinth and
kill the Minotaur, Minos decides that the labyrinth can now serve as the prison
for Daedalus and his son.
So Daedalus
is confronted with two problematic escapes. The most immediate problem is the
escape from the labyrinth, but the second escape is easily just as hard – how
can Daedalus and Icarus get off of the island of Crete and back to Greek
mainland. So Daedalus invents a pair of wax wings which have, stuck into the
wax, feathers that Daedalus had been able to gather up. The idea is that flight
might be the only way to both escape the labyrinth and the island. Daedalus
test drives his created wings first and finds that they work. He gives a pair
to his son with the instructions that Icarus must exactly replicate the flight
path of his Dad if the two are going to survive the trip. To fly either too
close to the sea or too close to the sun would be a mistake with deadly
consequences. But once in the air the experience of flying deafens Icarus to
his father’s advice and Icarus flies higher and higher until the heat from the
sun melts the wax and the feathers fall out of the wings leaving Icarus
flapping his bare arms which will no longer sustain his flight. The result of
the pride of Icarus is that he crashes and dies in the sea between Crete and
the mainland – his resting place is named in his honor and is known today as
the Icarian Sea – leaving the father to mourn the life of his son.
The story of
Daedalus and Icarus is one of the prototypical stories used to describe father
and son conflict. The father who is wise gives to the son instructions that the
son needs for life. But the son does not recognize the wisdom of the father –
in the story of Icarus the wisdom of the father is not recognized until it is
too late – and therefore the son falls into the precise trap that Dad’s advice
was intended to protect him from. Dad’s wisdom is proved in the folly of the
son.
In the story
of Ahaz and Hezekiah, the father-son conflict exists, but the roles are
reversed. For Ahaz and Hezekiah, it is Ahaz who is deafened by pride, and it is
Ahaz who seems to fly too close to the sun. And the result of the father’s
folly is that the son is left to pick up the pieces. One of the things that
Ahaz had done during his reign was to remove the gold and silver items that
were intended for use in the temple and in the sacrificial work of the priests,
taking them from the temple so that he could enjoy their use personally. These
items were not destroyed so they did not have to be remade, but they did need
to be re-consecrated for use in the temple. In this process there would have
most likely been a time of national repentance for the failure of the nation to
recognize God in the days of Ahaz. What we might sometimes miss is the
emotional toll that consecration and repentance might have had on Hezekiah. The
son would be forced, not lonely to mourn the loss of his dad, but to publically
recognize dad’s folly. No matter what the relationship was like between Ahaz
and Hezekiah, this would have been one of the harder moments of Hezekiah’s
reign – the day when the son would have to set right the results of his father’s
having flown too close to the sun.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2
Chronicles 30
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