Issachar is a rawboned donkey lying down among the sheep pens. When he sees how good is his resting place and how pleasant is his land, he will bend his shoulder to the burden and submit to forced labor. – Genesis 49:14-15

Today’s Scripture Reading (July 4, 2015): Genesis 49

One of the most quoted lines in English poetry might be the final lines of T. S. Eliot’s poem “the Hollow Men.” As with much of Eliot’s poetry, the theme of the poem is fragmented and disconnected. Much of the poem seems to be about post-World War I Europe and his own personal discontentment with “Treaty of Versailles.” But both the opening of the poem and the famous four last lines appear to be about “The Gunpowder Plot,” an attempted assassination of King James I of England in 1605. The plan was to use gunpowder to create a bomb and blow up the House of Lord’s during the opening of Parliament on November 5, 1605. But the plan failed, and instead of “The Gunpowder Plot” ending with the intended explosion on November 5, the plot ended with on January 31, 1606 with the execution of the last co-conspirator, Guy Fawkes. The famous last four lines T.S. Eliot’s poem read –

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

While the words fit well with the end of “The Gunpowder Plot,” they also seem to fit well with Jacob’s prediction regarding the descendants of Issachar. The comparison of Issachar to “a rawboned donkey” is most appropriately viewed as a description of the strength of Issachar. There was incredible strength to be found in the tribe, but the strength would go to waste. When Issachar found himself a comfortable spot, he would just bend his shoulder and work. Many experts wonder if this ended up being the path that Israel followed as it was subdued and driven into slavery; they became complacent and decided it was better to submit to the dominant culture and be a slave than to work to overturn the system. Even throughout Israel’s flight into the desert, there was this underlying thought that seems fitting to the prophecy of Issachar - “why are we here? We had it so good when we were slaves in Egypt.” Theologian Leon Morris has described Issachar this way – he was “strong, but docile and lazy.” In the end, the nation which had the strength to change the world, threatened to sit out history in slavery and whine about how things might have been.

It is the danger that many see with our own culture. We are Issachar. We have an incredible strength, but we have grown complacent and lazy. We seem to want everything to be handed to us. And the only thing that can lie at the end of this road is the slavery of Issachar. It has been the path that almost every world power in history has taken – and they have died, not with the bang that comes as a result of their strength, but with the whimper that emerges out of our own complacency and laziness.

This  - is how the world ends.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis 50

To our American Neighbors, Happy Independence Day. Maybe it is time to remember the source of our strength.