Today's Scripture Reading (April 17, 2023): 2 Kings 17
I have often heard of the proverbial "straw that
broke the camel's back." It is a reminder that what brings us to the
breaking point is often not the placing of the heaviest part of the load on us,
but often it is something relatively small that carries us past our breaking
point. Families probably know the reality of this proverb well. Many parents
have had stressful days only to explode because something small went wrong when
they arrived home. The saying has Arabic origins and comes from the practice of
traders placing straw on the back of the camel to carry from place to place in
their trading activities. The trick was to get as much straw on the back of the
camel without passing the point where the animal would collapse under the too-heavy
burden. And, apparently, the practice of having camels loaded with straw has
cost more than one camel its life.
The earliest use of the expression in the precise way
we have it was in the Australian newspaper "The Age" in 1854.
However, Charles Dickens used the concept with slightly different phrasing six
years earlier in his novel "Dombey and Son." In that novel, Dickens
wrote, "As the last straw breaks the laden
camel's back, this piece of underground information crushed the sinking spirits
of Mr. Dombey" (Charles Dickens).
As the author of the Book of Kings
begins the tale of the last King of Israel, he reminds us that Hoshea was an
evil king, but not as bad as some of the kings of Israel who had preceded him,
which is significant in and of itself. Hoshea was the straw, and not the full
load that would cause the demise of the Kingdom.
The last time we saw Hoshea was in 2
Kings 15, as Hoshea led a conspiracy against Pekah, the previous King of
Israel. Hoshea led a bloody revolt against Pekah and killed the King, yet the
author of Kings says that even that was not enough to cause Hoshea to be listed
among the most evil kings the nation had to offer. One note is that it does not
seem that Hoshea either began or furthered practices that opposed the God of
Israel.
But Hoshea was a continuation of
other practices God had stated was forbidden for his people. Anglican
theologian John Trapp (1601-1669) says that "It is not the last sand that
exhausteth the hourglass, nor the last stroke of the axe that felleth the tree;
so here" (Trapp). No one grain of sand takes longer to fall through the
hourglass than any other, nor would the last stroke of the axe make the tree fall
without all of the blows the tree received before it. So Hoshea is simply the
last grain of sand, the final blow of the axe, and the proverbial last straw.
He may not have been the worst of the Kings, but he also did nothing to give
God pause concerning the fate of Israel. And so, Hoshea becomes the last King
of the Kingdom of Israel. It wasn't supposed to end this way, and yet it did.
Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: 2 Chronicles 29
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