Then an Israelite man brought into the camp a Midianite woman right before the eyes of Moses and the whole assembly of Israel while they were weeping at the entrance to the tent of meeting. – Numbers 25:6

Today's Scripture Reading (December 20, 2021): Numbers 25

Philosopher William Hazlitt (1778-1830) said, "The only vice that cannot be forgiven is hypocrisy. The repentance of a hypocrite is itself hypocrisy." We seem to live in an era when hypocrisy is all around us. It is not just the domain of the religious, but it has become the soil out of which our politics is grown, and it has infiltrated the lives of the common person. We speak what we think might be advantageous for our purposes, but our actions are often quite different. We don't necessarily believe what it is that we say. Our words are filled with hypocrisy and rebellion. Truth no longer matters. What we believe is not important, only what I say to obtain the support of those around us. And that is a tragedy.

What is needed is repentance and an ability to move beyond yesterday's mistakes. We need to be big enough to ask for forgiveness and move on without the hypocrisy of pretending that the errors of the past are the way that life should be.

Balaam's plan of encouraging Israel into sexual sin had worked. And a plague was now working its way through the Israelites as a result. Moses and the whole assembly of Israel gathered at the entrance to the "Tent of Meeting" or Tabernacle to repent of their sin in hopes that God would stop the plague.

And as the people wept in repentance before God for their very real sin, an Israelite man brought a Midianite woman to the meeting. The meeting sounds innocuous in the way that the circumstance is described in Numbers, but some believe that it was anything but an innocent event. In the midst of the people's repentance for their national immorality, some argue that this man brings a Midianite woman before the community and begins to have sex with her in front of the tabernacle and all who had gathered there. Because the act is so offensive, the text deliberately and delicately obscures this point.

Maybe we should admire the man for his refusal to bow to the repentance of the moment. Maybe to do so would have been a moment of hypocrisy. But he has also ignored the objective sin into which the nation had fallen. He was rebelling against God and his prophet and doing so in a very public way. Instead of repenting for sin, he continued to follow what his heart desired, and what he wanted was a continuation of the nation's sin. But he was alone. The rest of the country was in a mood of mourning and repentance. And the two forces were about to clash in front of the tent of meeting.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Numbers 26