“Rage That Reaches To Heaven”

II Chronicles 28:1-10

"Ahaz was twenty years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem sixteen years. Unlike David his father, he did not do what was right in the eyes of the LORD. He followed the ways of the kings of Israel and also made cast idols for worshiping the Baals. He burned sacrifices in the Valley of Ben Hinnom and sacrificed his sons in the fire, following the detestable ways of the nations the LORD had driven out before the Israelites. He offered sacrifices and burned incense at the high places, on the hilltops and under every spreading tree. Therefore the LORD his God handed him over to the king of Aram. The Arameans defeated him and took many of his people as prisoners and brought them to Damascus. He was also given into the hands of the king of Israel, who inflicted heavy casualties on him. In one day Pekah son of Remaliah killed a hundred and twenty thousand soldiers in Judah--because Judah had forsaken the LORD, the God of their fathers. Zicri, an Ephraimite warrior, killed Maaseiah the king's son, Azrikam the officer in charge of the palace, and Elkanah, second to the king. The Israelites took captive from their kinsmen two hundred thousand wives, sons and daughters. They also took a great deal of plunder, which they carried back to Samaria. But a prophet of the LORD named Oded was there, and he went out to meet the army when it returned to Samaria. He said to them, "Because the LORD, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, He gave them into your hand. But you have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches to heaven. And now you intend to make the men and women of Judah and Jerusalem your slaves. But aren't you also guilty of sins against the LORD your God?"

God waited for a very long time before He judged the peoples of Canaan by giving them over to be driven out by the Israelites. The bible, of course, focuses on the history of the nation of Israel making scarce mention of the Canaanite tribes and how they have filled to the brim and exhausted God's mercy (Gen 15:16). We do have extra-biblical support for the history of Canaan, Dr. Susanna Shelby Brown, ancient peoples researcher at UCLA writes about "Late Carthaginian Child Sacrifice" in 1992 concludes: "No other ancient people, however, regularly chose their own children as sacrificial victims, or equated them with animals which could sometimes be substituted for them. The Phoenician practice indicates a definition of the ‘family’ and the boundaries belonging to it and alienation from it that was incomprehensible to others in the ancient Mediterranean", and "rather than ceasing with time and contact with other peoples, the rite continued at Carthage until the city’s destruction in 146 BC and survived in North Africa into the third century AD even under Roman rule... The longevity of child sacrifice and the tenaciousness with which Carthaginians and other Phoenicians adhered to the practice despite their frequent contacts with neighbors who abhorred them for it suggests that the ritual was crucial to Phoenician religion and to the well-being of a city and its inhabitants... [archaeological evidence indicates] many thousands of children were victims but modern scholars are perhaps overly eager to exonerate the Phoenicians from a ‘crime’ (in our eyes) that, by Phoenician standards, was simply not an offense...". God had also given Israel, and in today's verses, Judah under errant King Ahaz, who exercised exactly those detestable rituals of the Canaanites (v. 3), over many times to other nations —Midianites, Philistines, Aram, Babylon, Rome, as judgment for their wickedness. God is actually very loving because He is just. And it is even this mercy and "longsuffering" that the prophet Jonah complains about because he desired so much retribution for the Ninevites. He "knew that" God is "a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger and abounding in love, a God who relents from sending calamity" (Jon 4:2). And interestingly here we find God in His sovereignty, orchestrating events whilst clearly taking to account human free will that bears the propensity for evil and sin, "because the LORD, the God of your fathers, was angry with Judah, He gave them into your hand. But you have slaughtered them in a rage that reaches to heaven (v. 9)," not that God is surprised by this act of Israel towards Judah, He knew it before it even happened but allowed it, and has appointed the prophet Oded to warn them of their war excesses and like the Ninevites later in the time of Jonah, Israel relented. It may be very difficult to respond when people bring up the Canaanite conquest, or the problem of God's allowing moral evil in general, such as the slaughter of innocents in the time of the earthly birth of our Lord Jesus Christ under the wicked King Herod: "When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi. Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: “A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more (Matt 2:16-18, Jer 31:15)." I guess we just cannot square with a loving God who allows evil (so much so that we often fail to see that the category of moral good and evil itself is meaningless without God), but actually, that His allowance for it may be warranted in saving a fallen world filled with humans given sacred free will to be able to voluntarily respond to His love ultimately displayed at the cross that had been prepared for the child born in a manger, and the only begotten precious Son that was given unto us (Isa 9:6), some 2000 years ago. By this I suppose we know and can have faith, that we can always trust that God has morally sufficient reasons for His judgments and so we can have faith like that of Abraham to rhetorically ask, "shall not the judge of the earth do that which is right (Gen 18:25)?" This is how great He is and we can trust Him for love and mercy, and justice. And because of The Christ coming down to earth, born of a virgin, who grew up to be this man who was handed over to us "by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge"; and we, "with the help of wicked people, put Him to death by nailing Him to the cross (Acts 2:23)," we can trust His promise that "He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.” And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true (Rev 21:4-5).”