Today’s Scripture Reading (February 3, 2017): 2 Kings 20
True friendship asks for nothing. It carries no agenda. It treasures silence and listens like a sponge when listening is appropriate. It celebrates, yet sometimes seems to bring with it, its own sense of melancholy because we really do feel the pain of the other – and often there is very little that we can do to relieve that pain. True friendship is only for the strong. The rest of us have to settle for something less.
Marduk-Baladan comes to Hezekiah as a friend. Except that it was something less than friendship that was being offered. Babylon needed help removing the yoke that had placed on them by the Assyrian Empire. And their hope was that Hezekiah and Judah would be part of that help. Hezekiah was only too happy to prove that he could be a worthy friend. Well, except that it wasn’t really friendship that was on the table.
And in this visit of Marduk-Baladan were sown the seeds of Judah’s own exile and captivity at the hands of the Babylonian Empire. Apparently, the thanks and the friendship of Babylon only went so far. A little more than a hundred years after the visit of Marduk-Baladan, Judah would be the recipients of a yoke placed on them by the expanding Babylonian Empire.
History seems to come in cycles because the almost the same scenario would happen a little more than 500 years later. This time it would be the Seleucid Empire with Antiochus IV Epiphanes on the throne. And Judah, with the Maccabean family in control, would reach out to the relatively unknown Romans, a new friend to help break the control of the Seleucids. But that friendship was also something less. While the Maccabees may have been able to get rid of their Seleucid puppet masters for a period of time, a hundred years later they became the slaves of their somewhat less than friends and the burgeoning Roman Empire.
Sometimes real friends are hard to find. But if you find a real one – hold on.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 18
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