Between Iraq and a Hard Place

AM Psalm 18:1-20 • PM Psalm 18:21-50
Jer. 38:1-13 • 1 Cor. 14:26-33a,37-40 • Matt. 10:34-42

In this reading from Jeremiah, we find Jerusalem under siege by the Babylonians. Jewish King Zedekiah is holding out for help from his ally Egypt, an archrival of the Babylonians. An advisor asked the King if he had consulted all the prophets on what to do next. The king remarked earlier in the text that he had 400 prophets in his kingdom, and 399 were in agreement with the King’s alliance. But one, Jeremiah, had not been called in, because the King found him always to be a contrarian rabble-rouser. After being thrown down a muddy well to silence him, but later rescued by a Cushite eunuch, Jeremiah told Zedekiah that God had revealed that the Babylonians would triumph in any case but would utterly burn the city to the ground and treat the inhabitants harshly, if Zedekiah did not surrender. The king surrendered, and while the temple itself was burnt, over 30,000 citizens were resettled in what is now in Iraq. The soil there was fertile and the Euphrates provided irrigation, and the exiles actually thrived. A remnant of the Jerusalem population had been left in the care of Zedekiah, who tried once again to ally with the Egyptians. This led to a punitive expedition by the Babylonians who indeed utterly destroyed Jerusalem and slaughtered his sons before his eyes, which they then gouged out. Fortunately as had also been prophesied, the now prosperous Babylonian exiles were returned to Jerusalem, 70 years to the day they were taken from it. Cyrus the Great, who had defeated the Babylonians, and was an extraordinarily benevolent conqueror, actually gave the former exiles enough gold and silver to rebuild the Temple and much of the city as well.

Is there a lesson in all this? Well, when you are in desperate straits, and nothing you had been doing is working, taking the advice of a crank who claims to be talking to God, might be less crazy than listening only to your “Yes Men.”

Written by Tony Stankus

Tony Stankus, now 70, is the first librarian ever promoted to the rank of Distinguished Professor at the U of A. He became an Episcopalian at age 66, because he could neither resist the transcendent joy of the liturgies at St. Paul’s, nor the warmth of its priests and people.