At first the consequences were smaller, though still unpleasant. They involved things like lack of success in their occupations and poor crop harvests. We talked about how the goal of discipline is repentance, so we can assume that if the people repented and turned back to the Lord as soon as the consequences of their disobedience began to fall, they would be restored not only to their close relationship to the Lord but also to the blessings of the Lord. But if time went on and they did not repent, the consequences of disobedience became more and more serious. Lack of fertility in humans and in animals would ensue. Plagues of locusts would consume everything they grew in the fields. Invaders would be successful in their raids against Israel. If these things still did not foster a widescale turning back to the Lord, another nation would come and defeat them and take many of their people captive. This is where we pick up with our study today.
"The Lord will bring a nation against you from far away, from the ends of the earth, like an eagle swooping down, a nation whose language you will not understand, a fierce-looking nation without respect for the old or pity for the young." (Deuteronomy 28:49-50) The nation of Assyria would later conquer the ten northern tribes of Israel. The nation of Babylon would conquer the two southern tribes. The Lord allowed this to happen because of the idolatry His people had fallen into, but which of these nations is the "fierce-looking nation" whose language the people will not understand? It could be either Assyria or Babylon or both of them, for they were both very formidable enemies with languages the Israelites did not speak. The reference to a nation "without respect for the old or pity for the young" fits Assyria better than Babylon; the Assyrians were well known for torturing their captives just for the fun of it. They had no respect for the elderly, for women, or for children. They even decorated the walls of their palaces with artwork depicting the various methods of torture they inflicted upon the peoples they conquered, including such atrocities as burning captive children alive. There is some evidence that the Babylonian judges inflicted various types of torture on defendants found guilty in court, but there is less available documentation for the use of torture upon captives in Babylon than there is for it in Assyria.
But whichever nation is in view here, or whether the Lord was speaking of an event much farther down the line (the fall of Jerusalem to Rome in 70AD, for example), in whichever era the Israelites would have fallen into disobedience or idolatry there would have been a heathen nation ready to swoop in and overpower them. There have always been nations who have hated Israel and who have wanted to destroy her. With this in mind, the Lord may not have been speaking of a specific nation/nations when He spoke the words of verses 49-50. If at any time He needed to bring this type of judgment upon Israel, there would always be some heathen nation ready and willing to attack Israel.
Food will become so scarce while being attacked by the enemy that the people will resort to cannibalism. "They will devour the young of your livestock and the crops of your land until you are destroyed. They will leave you no grain, new wine or olive oil, nor any calves of your herds or lambs of your flocks until you are ruined. They will lay siege to all the cities throughout your land until the high fortified walls in which you trust fall down. They will besiege all the cities throughout the land the Lord your God is giving you. Because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege, you will eat the fruit of the womb, the flesh of the sons and daughters the Lord your God has given you. Even the most gentle and sensitive man among you will have no compassion on his own brother or the wife he loves or his surviving children, and he will not give to one of them any of the flesh of his children that he is eating. It will be all he has left because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of all your cities. The most gentle and sensitive woman among you---so sensitive and gentle that she would not venture to touch the ground with the sole of her foot---will begrudge the husband she loves and her own son and daughter the afterbirth from her womb and the children she bears. For in her dire need she intends to eat them secretly because of the suffering your enemy will inflict on you during the siege of your cities." (Deuteronomy 28:51-57)
The portion of Scripture above is graphic and shocking. It's difficult to imagine it coming true. But it did come true as we will see when we reach the books of 2 Kings and Lamentations when we find the besieged people eating their own infant children. (There is some disagreement among scholars as to whether the infants died of natural causes and then were eaten or whether their parents killed them in order to eat them.) Also, though this took place after the books of the Bible were written (with the exception of Revelation), cannibalism happened during the Roman siege of Jerusalem according to the ancient historian Flavius Josephus. After they ran out of food the people started eating those who had died of natural causes. The weaker ones would have succumbed to starvation the soonest and no doubt starvation was the cause of death for many of Jerusalem's citizens at that time. But as their hunger grew more and more fierce, Josephus states that women were even killing their infant children, roasting them and devouring some of the meat right away and hiding the remainder. They were hiding the remainder not out of shame for what they had done; they were hiding it to save it all for themselves. They were hiding it so their other family members could not partake of it, just as was predicted in our study today. The citizens of many nations throughout history have resorted to cannibalism while under siege---not just the citizens of Israel---and the Israelites would have heard of such things. They knew it had happened in other nations and I think they knew what Moses was talking about when he relayed these warnings to them.
"If you do not carefully follow the words of this law, which are written in this book, and do not revere this glorious and awesome name---the Lord your God---the Lord will send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters, and severe and lingering illnesses. He will bring on you all the diseases of Egypt that you dreaded, and they will cling to you. The Lord will also bring on you every kind of sickness and disaster not recorded in this Book of the Law, until you are destroyed. You who were as numerous as the stars in the sky will be left but few in number, because you did not obey the Lord your God. Just as it pleased the Lord to make you prosper and increase in number, so it will please Him to ruin and destroy you. You will be uprooted from the land you are entering to possess." (Deuteronomy 28:58-63) In the Old Testament we find Israel witnessing the destruction of a number of heathen nations and tribes. The Lord brought judgment on those nations and tribes because of their sin and idolatry and abominable deeds. When the Bible says it will "please Him" to bring destruction, I don't think it means that the Lord actually wants anyone to be destroyed, for the Bible assures us that He is patient with mankind, giving them many opportunities to repent, "not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance". (2 Peter 3:9) But if people will not come to repentance, a holy God must judge sin. Judging sin satisfies the Lord's sense of justice, and His sense of justice is perfect and without error unlike man's code of justice which can miss the mark. The Lord always judges true. The Lord always administers the right type and the right amount of judgment. I don't think He ever enjoys having to bring judgment on anyone, but if repentance never occurs then He has no choice. He cannot be a holy and righteous God if He does not judge sin.
The Lord warned the Israelites that He will uproot them from the land just as He uprooted those who lived there before them if they fall into idolatry. If they choose the false gods of other nations, He will send them to other nations where they'll see nothing but the abominable practices of idolatry. He will say to them, just as He says to anyone who keeps insisting on going in the wrong direction, "Have it your way then." If the Israelites choose the gods of other nations over the one true God of Israel, He will send them where they'll see so much idolatry they'll be sickened by the sight of it. They'll have to face the fact that no matter how long they pray to these gods and no matter how many pagan rites and rituals they perform, those gods are incapable of hearing them or helping them. "Then the Lord will scatter you among all nations, from one end of the earth to the other. There you will worship other gods---gods of wood and stone, which neither you nor your ancestors have known. Among those nations you will find no repose, no resting place for the sole of your foot. There the Lord will give you an anxious mind, eyes weary with longing, and a despairing heart. You will live in constant suspense, filled with dread both night and day, never sure of your life. In the morning you will say, 'If only it were evening!' and in the evening, 'If only it were morning!'---because of the terror that will fill your hearts and the sights that your eyes will see. The Lord will send you back in ships to Egypt on a journey I said you should never make again. There you will offer yourselves for sale to your enemies as male and female slaves, but no one will buy you." (Deuteronomy 28:64-68)
These curses sound like hell on earth and they are meant to sound like hell on earth. The Lord doesn't want anyone ending up this way and He takes care to fully outline in terrible detail what will happen if the people forsake Him. There is truly no worse thing that can happen to any human being than to reject the Lord. Even if none of these curses ever fell on anyone for their rejection of the Lord, an even worse fate awaits them after death---eternal separation from the One who created them. Forsaking the Lord and reaping earthly consequences (the hellish conditions listed in our chapter) is bad enough, but there are eternal consequences for the person who rejects the Lord all his life long. We shouldn't want this to happen to anyone. The Lord doesn't want this to happen to anyone either, which is why so many warnings are included in the Scriptures to help people avoid making these dreadful mistakes. This is why the Lord spends more time talking about the curses for disobedience than He spends talking about the blessings for obedience. This is why Jesus talked more about hell than about heaven. Human beings need to be told, in graphic and unpleasant detail, just precisely why they should not want to go a particular route. A terrifying picture has to be painted for us. We don't need to be convinced that heaven is a good place; we need to be convinced that hell is a bad place. We don't need help understanding why blessings are a good thing; we need help understanding just how severe the discipline for disobedience can be.
No comments:
Post a Comment