Today’s Scripture Reading (February 26, 2020): Isaiah 30
The United States maintains that it is the most powerful of
nations. That belief is not based on the fact that they have the most soldiers
because they don’t. It is based on the idea that they have the best, most
technologically advanced, and most potent weapons. But there is also a problem
with the assertion, one that has been played out repeatedly over the past
decade. Small groups of armed radicals using guerilla tactics can cause
significant pain to even the most powerful of countries. Warfare based on conflicting
ideologies is becoming more and more commonplace in our world. And a group of
religious fanatics fighting for their god is a significant foe, even to the
most technologically advanced army in the world. Compound the motivation to
fight for an ideology with the ability to fade into the background after an
attack, and the result is a tactic that is beyond the smartest of weapons. It
is what can sometimes make the most technologically inept countries a problem
for one of the world’s superpower. And a dependency on weaponry can, sometimes,
make those that wield them stupid.
Isaiah wants to confront Judean leadership with two national sins.
The first was the trust that they placed in Egypt to help them. An alliance
with Egypt against Assyria was a severe temptation for the nation. The
Egyptians were seen as a military strength in the area, and Egypt was always
willing to ally with their northern neighbor, especially when it came to an
alliance against the other significant powers in the Middle East. In the minds
of the Egyptians, Judah would serve well as a buffer between the Assyrians and
the Babylonians, and Egypt. But relying
on Egypt was a step backward for Judah. Essentially, they would trade the
possibility of one slave master, the Assyrians, for the definite presence of
another, the Egyptians. And that was a trade the Isaiah did not want the
leadership to make.
The second national sin of Israel lay in the way that they
evaluated power. They saw horses and chariots as a strength. And there is no
doubt that they were. Horses and chariots were much stronger than unmounted
units. In the days of Isaiah, mounted units were advanced weaponry. Whether it
was a reliance on the mounted units that Judah possessed, or on the mounted
units that would come from Egypt, the nation saw horsemen and chariots as the
defense that they needed against the Assyrian threat. But Isaiah’s warning to
the leaders of the country was that advanced weaponry is good, but it is never
enough. And in the case of a conflict with either Assyria or Babylon, a
reliance on Egypt or advanced weaponry would fail.
What Judah needed, but had rejected, was God. Isaiah insists that
God was the solution to the problem that neither weaponry nor alliances could
solve. If only they would look to him for the answer to their military
challenges.
Over a hundred years after this prophecy, and after the Babylonian
exile and the assassination of Governor Gedaliah, who was killed for working
with the Babylonians, Johanan led the remnant of Judeans to Egypt and a long
sought-after safety. One person who was taken unwillingly to Egypt was the
Prophet Jeremiah. It was in Egypt that the prophet would spend the rest of his
life. And I wonder if part of Jeremiah’s reluctance to go to Egypt was that he
knew well Isaiah’s writings and saw Egypt as the solution for those who refused
to believe in God. He had preached a message of reliance on God throughout his
tenure as a prophet, and there is no reason to believe that that teaching did
not continue in Egypt. For the rest of his life, Jeremiah would try to get his
people to return to God and home. He would pick up Isaiah’s crusade and teach
them that God was the only answer to the problems that plagued them daily.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Isaiah 31
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