Today’s Scripture Reading (January 30, 2026): Ecclesiastes 4
I am old enough to remember Bobby
Orr making end-to-end rushes in the sport of hockey. Orr changed the way
defensemen played the game. He set the stage for some of the defensemen who
would follow him and become offensive powerhouses. However, Orr could pick up
the puck and rush into the opponent’s zone only because he understood that
someone, one of the forwards, would drop back to cover his defensive
responsibilities. Today, that idea has become more dominant in contemporary
hockey. Hockey is a sport that depends on the concept of a team. You might have
a superstar playing for you, but one talented person will never win a
championship. Winning championships depends on putting together a team of
players who are willing to play together.
Ecclesiastes was written about the
middle of the 10th Century B.C.E. Three centuries later, the fabulist Aesop put
his spin on the concept.
Aesop tells the story of “Four Oxen and a
Lion.” Once upon a time, four oxen shared a field. There was also a lion in the
vicinity, but he was never able to defeat the four oxen. The problem was that
every time the lion came near, the oxen pressed their tails together, showing
only their sharp horns to their enemy. It didn’t matter which direction the
lion chose for his attack; it was always the horns of the oxen that greeted
him. The task of getting to the four oxen was hopeless, and so, eventually, the
lion gave up.
Without the pursuit of the lion, the attention
of the oxen drifted off to other things. They began to criticize each other and
complained about almost every aspect of their life together until, one day,
they decided they had had enough. There were lots of pastures available in the
area; they didn’t have to share the same one. And so, the four oxen decided to
separate, each one finding a place where they could all live on their own
without the annoyances of the other.
Up in the hills, the lion caught wind of the
new arrangements and decided to wander down into the pasture to see for himself
what was happening. Sure enough, the four oxen had split and, now, each one
ruled over its own little pasture, which meant that the lion was now free to
attack them one by one. The lion attacked, and soon it was only the lion that
was left standing. The four oxen, once invincible, had been defeated by their
own bickering.
It is funny how often the end appears because
of our disagreements. Just before Aesop stepped onto the stage, the end of the
Assyrian Empire began with a civil war that followed the death of Ashurbanipal
in 627 B.C.E. Suddenly, the great war machine that had terrorized the nations
was turned on itself, as one faction sought to lead the empire against the
desires of another. The war was brutal, and one by one, those areas that had
been defeated by the Assyrians once again began to assert their independence.
And without a united front, the Assyrian Empire didn’t have the power to do
anything about it.
Assyria fought back, but after a few initial
wins, all of those who had been on the receiving end of Assyria’s military
might unified for one final push to the capital city, Nineveh. The capital city
fell in 609 B.C.E., and the Assyrian Empire disappeared into the pages of
history.
In a strange twist of fate, Nabonidus seized
power in the Babylonian Empire in 556 B.C.E. Nabonidus was an Assyrian from
Harran. But Nabonidus, who would be the last king of the Babylonian Empire,
made no effort to rebuild the Assyrian Empire. There really wasn’t a point.
Less than 100 years after the demise of the Assyrian Empire, there was nothing
left of Nineveh but ruins, and precious few Assyrians even lived anywhere near
the remains of the former capital city.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Ecclesiastes 5
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