Say to them, ‘Hear the word of the Sovereign LORD. This is what the Sovereign LORD says: Because you said “Aha!” over my sanctuary when it was desecrated and over the land of Israel when it was laid waste and over the people of Judah when they went into exile … Ezekiel 25:3

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 18, 2014): Ezekiel 25

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in 586 B.C.E., Nebuchadnezzar appointed Gedaliah as governor in what was now the Babylonian province of Judah. The choice was probably a very good one. Gedaliah’s heritage was solid; he came from a very well respected Judean family. And Gedaliah went to work immediately. His strategy was to gather the remnant in Judah, those that had not been carried into exile, and set them at the task of planting the fields so that once again the fields of Judah would begin to produce food. The reason for the strategy was twofold. Maybe most obviously there were people that needed to be fed. But a secondary advantage was that the agrarian activity would keep the people busy, stopping them from plotting further activity against Babylon. As a result, Judah would gain a measure of security. If they were willing to plant the fields, then Babylon would most likely leave them alone. And after three collisions with the superpower in the past decade, Judah needed the space.

Gedaliah was successful in his plan. He gathered a core of people around him and they began to change the culture of the nation. But the Ammonites began to plant seeds of doubt within some of the Jews regarding the motives of Gedaliah. The Ammonites accused Gedaliah of being a puppet of the Babylonians – a Jew who had sold out his loyalty to Judah and the God of Israel to serve the interests of the Babylonian overlords. Such a man didn’t deserve to live.

And so the Ammonites incited Ishmael and ten other men – all Jews – to murder Gedaliah. But the motives of the Ammorites were not pure. They enlisted certain Jews to join them in their battle against Babylon, but what they really wanted was the Jews massacred. Because it was a group of Jews that had committed the murder of Gedaliah, they argued that the wrath of the Babylonians would be directed against the Jews. The hope of the Ammonites was that the Babylonians would then finish the job and annihilate the Judean nation – a nation with which they had never gotten along with. But it wasn’t just Judah that they wanted destroyed. With the destruction of both Israel by the Assyrians and now Judah at the hands of the Babylonians, they hoped that they would also kill the Jewish God once and for all.

So God speaks. The words of the prophecy were quite likely delivered to the diplomats who had gathered in Babylon. God was not amused, and he was not going anywhere. God would have the last word, not the children of Ammon. Because they had refused to bless the children of Abraham, they would pay the price of their arrogance. In the end, rather than the remnant of Israel, it would be Ammon that would suffer marginalization. Because Yahweh was not just the God of the Jews – he was the true God of the world.   

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ezekiel 26