Justice

2 Samuel 21:1-14

We come to another one of the many events in history recorded in the Bible that makes us think more about it and search for answers. This aren't easy verses to deal with and quite frankly, it is disturbing. But I will always try to move closer and examine the things I find jarring in the Word of God. The question in reading these passages is obvious: Why did God allow the Gibeonites to put to death Saul’s sons? And somehow, God seems to have taken the initiative in this matter, by afflicting the nation of Israel with a famine because the house of Saul had put the Gibeonites to death (v.1). Indeed the Living Life writer takes us further back in history regarding the relationship of Israel and the Gibeonites in the days of Joshua, having failed to seek God, they unwittingly forged a covenant protecting the Gibeonites in Israel (Joshua 9). However King Saul out of "zeal" for man or race/nation, "for Israel & Judah", and not necessarily for God - to honor Joshua's covenant, vis-a-vis Jesus's zeal in John 2:17, sought to annihilate them (genocide). Gibeon is near Saul's hometown of Gibeah, the king might have been seeking to take the territory for himself. Still in v.1, it says "Saul and his blood-stained house (family)". This could implicate some of his sons in the attempted annihilation. We do know the Gibeonites were cutters of wood and drawers of water for the altar of God – the tabernacle was at Gibeon. Another commenter, Sheryl of BibleQ said: "It wouldn’t be surprising if these people had become worshippers of God, from their exposure to the tabernacle and teaching." Matthew Henry gives a very sharp and complete analysis of this and he suggests that this is an exceptional, "extraordinary case" that God involves himself as "an immediate party to the cause...and His judgments are not subject to the rules which men’s judgments must be subject to. Let parents take heed of sin, especially...of cruelty and oppression for their poor children’s sake, who may be smarting for it by the just hand of God when they themselves are in their graves." God's justice is at work here. I am inclined to disagree with the Living Life writer with his third point that "nor does the Lord ever say this was the right way to correct *the* wrong" especially, that God seems to have initiated this and the famine is resolved after the requirement of justice is met (followed by mercy - Rizpah and the proper burial, 2 Sam 21:10-15). However if he didn't mean "the right way" as a universal response to wrongdoing, we have no disagreement.

Finally, has justice been served? Proportionate to the genocide attempt by King Saul, to seven of his 'innocent' sons? Ultimately, I am not in a position to say. As it is in any case in our daily encounter, whether first-hand or not, with the news of evil, pain and suffering in this world. I think my finite mind cannot simply grasp the gravity of sin, even my own and how it affects others as much as I cannot immediately comprehend the purpose and the will of God in letting humanity experience seemingly senseless moral and 'natural' evil and suffering. I can only place my faith in God. An all-loving God expresses love in a righteous and just way, He is also the measure of goodness, He simply cannot tolerate wrongdoing and injustice – but in his own time, as we see here it seems a long-awaited vindication of the aggrieved in which Matthew Henry states the principle as: "Time does not wear out the guilt of sin; nor can we build hopes of impunity upon the delay of judgments." The Psalmist intimates this too in "...yet I have never seem the righteous forsaken..." (37:25) and Martin Luther King Jr. echos this in saying that the arc of God's moral universe "is long and it bends towards justice." I find four biblical truths come to mind in such instances when I am confronted with morally tough events in Scripture, and that I am reminded (a) of my finitude and mortal limitations and (b) to trust in God's attributes of Justice and Goodness: (1) Isaiah 55:8-9 (2) Habakkuk 2, (3) Ezekiel 18 and to me, generally, the most powerful of these is, (4) Genesis 18:25 in the words of our patriarch Abraham to God Himself, teaching us about faith in God's character:

Genesis 18:25
"Far be it from You to do such a thing as this, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous should be as the wicked; far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?"

~16.06.2014

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