There at Riblah, in the land of Hamath, the king had them executed. So Judah went into captivity, away from her land. – 2 Kings 25:21

Today’s Scripture Reading (April 14, 2017) 2 Kings 25

The story is told of the early days of Abraham Lincoln’s first term as President. In an unusual picture of humility, a common sight in Springfield was the President-elect making his daily trip to the local post office to pick up his mail. Finally Lincoln arrived at the conclusion that he was in need of help – and with that determination in mind, early in 1861, he hired a young immigrant by the name of John Nicolay to be his private secretary – an office that Nicolay would hold until Lincoln’s assassination four years later in 1865.

Nicolay was alarmed as he started to read the letters that the president was receiving, many of the letters were threats against the newly elected President. Lincoln seemed to be unperturbed. The President-elect was unable to imagine how it could be that political hatred could ever be transformed into an attack that would cause physical harm. Yet, on the evening of his first inauguration, the President-elect was sneaking into Washington, while citizens who had planned the first assassination attempt on his life waited for him in Baltimore.

The strategy of killing the leaders of the opposition is an ancient one. And as the saga of the Kingdom of Judah ends, that is exactly what happens. In all fairness to Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar had tried other avenues – but the nation had repeatedly rebelled against his rule. And so as he closes this chapter, he expels the people and kills the leaders, both political and religious, of the nation.

There is an almost eerie lack of emotion as the writer of 2 Kings announces the demise of the country. A nation that had started with acts of dependence on God and the faith of the people, first with the crossing of the Jordan at its flood stage when the water of the Jordan was the deepest and the swiftest, and then with the miraculous fall of the walled city of Jericho, over eight hundred years later ends with consecutive acts of idolatry, a dependence on other gods, and rebellion. It had started as the story of a people given the honor of reaching the world and making it a better place. It ends as the people are scattered and driven from the land that God had promised to them – all because of their failure to fulfill that very responsibility.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 21