He offered sacrifices to the gods of Damascus, who had defeated him; for he thought, “Since the gods of the kings of Aram have helped them, I will sacrifice to them so they will help me.” But they were his downfall and the downfall of all Israel. – 2 Chronicles 28:23

Today’s Scripture Reading (January 22, 2020): 2 Chronicles 28

Lewis Carroll asks the question in his 1865 classic “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” The puzzle, or riddle, is this; “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” The book never gives us an answer to the riddle, and that became one of the central mysteries of a book that is classified as part of the “nonsense genre.” Because “Alice” is nonsense fiction, maybe the fact that the book asks a question and then refuses to give us an answer should be expected. But it wasn’t. The Mad Hatter’s riddle of a raven and a writing desk became the subject of many letters written to the author during the last part of his life. Finally, in the preface of the 1896 edition of the book, Carroll offers this answer to the question.

Inquiries have been so often addressed to me, as to whether any answer to the Hatter's riddle can be imagined, that I may as well put on record here what seems to me to be a fairly appropriate answer, "because it can produce a few notes, though they are very flat; and it is nevar (sic) put with the wrong end in front!" This, however, is merely an afterthought; the riddle as originally invented had no answer at all.

I think that my favorite answer to the Hatter’s Riddle was put forth by puzzle expert Sam Loyd. He answers the Hatter’s riddle this way; "because the notes for which they are noted are not noted for being musical notes.” But, maybe, when a question is asked with no answer, then any response will do.

King Ahaz’s guiding principle in life seems to be political expediency. Unlike his father and grandfather, and even his son, Hezekiah, Ahaz has no grounding in the faith of Israel. Gods only matter if they will support you in war and times of distress. As a result, loyalty is a mysterious concept to Ahaz.

And so, the God of Ahaz’s fathers sends trouble on the king. But Ahaz is so disconnected with the faith that he cannot make sense of what is going on in his kingdom. In the mind of Ahaz, what is intended to get the king's attention and to bring him to the point of repentance, makes about as much sense as the Hatter’s riddle.

What does make sense to Ahaz is that he was defeated by a nation that followed a different god. So the answer to the riddle that was placed in front of him was to change his allegiance from the God of Judah to the foreign god of Aram, likely the pantheon of Mesopotamian gods including Haddad and Sin, as well as El, the supreme god of Canaan, and other miscellaneous gods that they had picked up along the way.

But the author of Chronicles adds correctly that these gods were of no help to Ahaz and his kingdom. The king had arrived at the wrong answer to the question posed about why he was defeated; he exchanged the truth for a lie, and instead of salvation, the gods Ahaz chose to follow brought about his downfall and the downfall of the people over whom he was given responsibility.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Kings 16