Faithfully Turned Over & Overwhelmed (part 2 of 2)

How do the implications of Leviticus and Deuteronomy relate to the text with which we began?  Israel is said to have done evil, and is subsequently subjected to Midian.  This is to be understood and being in accordance with the covenant of their Creator God.  So having done evil, it can be said that the Lord faithfully turned Israel over to Midian.  Faithfully?  Yes, for Israel’s God is understood to be faithful to His promises.  If He was not, and if the Scriptural record could not be looked to as the record of that faithfulness, then Israel would not be recognize Him as a God that was worthy of trust. 

The Scriptural narrative informs Israel that through Moses, God had warned His people, saying “if you ignore the Lord your God and are not careful to keep all His commandments and statutes I am giving you today, then all these curses will come upon you in full force” (Deuteronomy 28:15).  Moses begins outlining curses and comes to the point where he says, “The Lord will allow you to be struck down before your enemies” (28:25a), which sounds suspiciously like being turned over to and overwhelmed by Midian. 

With our return here to Judges then, we read that “Whenever the Israelites planted their crops, the Midianites… would attack them.  They invaded the land and devoured its crops…  They left nothing for the Israelites to eat, and they took away the sheep, oxen, and donkeys.  When they invaded… they were as thick as locusts… They came to devour the land” (6:3-5).  Looking again to the curse tradition as recorded in Deuteronomy, in an effort to make sense of the plight of Israel, what do we find?  “You will plant a vineyard but not even begin to use it.  Your ox will be slaughtered before your very eyes but you will not eat of it.  Your donkey will be stolen from you as you watch and will not be returned to you.  Your flock of sheep will be given to your enemies and there will be no one to save you” (28:30b-31).  In Judges we can read that their invaders were as thick as locusts that devour the land, and in Deuteronomy, we find that “You will take much seed to the field but gather little harvest, because locusts will consume it” (28:38).  Clearly, the author of Judges well understood the terms of God’s covenant, along with His blessings and curses---his worldview shaped by the Levitical and Deuteronomic traditions.   

Yes, and that tradition includes the sense that their God will fulfill His promises.  The faithfulness of Israel’s God is not limited to doing only what His covenant people will view and agree upon as good (blessings), though all things to which God subjects His people (even His curses) are ultimately for the working of His good.  The words of this message are not offered as a warning, but rather, as a reminder of the steadfast, promise giving and promise fulfilling nature of that God.  Though we can read about His people suffering for their failure to perform as God would have had them perform in accordance with His covenant with them, and though we can read about the curses that could and would come upon His people as a result of those failures, and though we can certainly accept them as warnings about the wrath of that God in response to sin (word and deed not in keeping with His covenant, failure to bear the divine image), we are best served by letting these things remind us of the steadfast love and faithfulness of the God that reached out and chose a people for Himself---a renewed Israel---by and through which to bring the blessings of that God into the world.