Nebuchadnezzar's Fall (part 5)

As man is driven from the good and bountiful garden, which had freely yielded the fruit of the trees for his sustenance, he is informed about a different way that his food is going to come to him from that point forward.  The Creator God told Adam, “cursed is the ground thanks to you; in painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.  It will produce thorns and thistles for you, but you will eat the grain of the field” (Genesis 3:17b-18).  This eating of the grain of the field---of what grows from the ground---could be likened to Nebuchadnezzar’s being “fed grass like oxen,” as both are now going to be eating what grows from the ground, as they live among the wild animals, rather than having plenteous quantities of food delivered to them by their humble servants. 

Humble servants?  In Adam’s case, because he was the Creator God’s image-bearing steward over all creation, and because he had been given a responsible dominion over the works of his God’s hands, his humble servants would have been the trees of the garden.  Scripture seems to suggest that creation itself would have willingly yielded its bounty to its steward.  For Nebuchadnezzar, of course, his servants would have been those men and women over which he ruled.  This eating of grass, for both Nebuchadnezzar and Adam, as Adam (man) was now forced to till the ground to yield food (“eating grass” then serving as metaphor), would serve as a constant reminder that they had fallen from what had been intended for them.  Yes, if He truly holds the world in His hands, it is to be borne in mind that the Creator God had purposeful intentions for Nebuchadnezzar.   

As has been said, the respective falls came through pride and self-worship, as both Adam and the king of Babylon presumptuously reached for that which did not belong to them.  Each time they ate the grass of the field, they would be reminded of their having been driven from human society.  Adam would be forced to remember that he had willfully departed from what it meant to be fully human, which was living in a complete, trusting allegiance to his Creator, faithfully carrying out his divine purpose to be the bearer of the divine image.  He now lived in cursing and exile, fallen from glory, and now inhabiting a world cursed because of his faithlessness.  Nebuchadnezzar would be separated from fellowship with his fellow human beings, therefore separated from relationship with others that had been created in the image of the covenant God of Israel, and therefore even further separated from that God, in an awful state of exile and in full experience of the Creator God’s cursing upon himself.

After this pronouncement on the man that is so often thought of as an evil and idolatrous king, the story of Nebuchadnezzar takes what might be perceived as an unexpected turn.  The Creator God makes a promise to Nebuchadnezzar that this state of affairs in which he finds himself living a beastly existence, will go on for “seven periods of time” (4:32d).  So it was not going to be a permanent condition for Nebuchadnezzar.  As the story goes, he was informed that he was going to undergo this cursing and exile so that he would be made to “understand that the Most High is ruler over human kingdoms and gives them to whomever He wishes” (4:32e). 

There is grace and mercy for Nebuchadnezzar here.  Not only is his time of insanity going to have a defined limit, but through it, the Creator God is going to enter in so as to reveal Himself to this king.  He will do this in a way that will, for Nebuchadnezzar, give real meaning and substance and conviction to his previous declaration about that God, in which he had said, “How great are His signs!  How mighty are His wonders!  His kingdom will last forever, and His authority continues from one generation to the next” (4:3).  In these words, Nebuchadnezzar had told “all peoples, nations, and language groups that live in all the land” (4:1), that he was “delighted to tell  you about the signs and wonders that the most high God has done for me” (4:2).  Perhaps this was nothing more than lip service following that to which he had been witness in the situation with Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and the fourth man in the fiery furnace?  Perhaps not? 

Terms Of The Covenant (part 1 of 2)

Tell them that the Lord, the God of Israel, says, “Anyone who does not keep the terms of the covenant will be under a curse.” – Jeremiah 11:3  (NET)

So it was for the people of the Creator God, Israel (specifically those of the southern kingdom of Judah in the time of Jeremiah).  The curses under which they would find themselves are presented with utmost clarity in the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy (expounding on the Levitical curses).  Because Jeremiah is speaking on the coming destruction of Jerusalem and subjugation of Judah by the Babylonians, and because such subjugation and oppression can be located within the extensive list of curses that Israel’s God had promised to bring upon His covenant people if they did not keep the terms of the covenant, it can be reliably affirmed that the Creator God’s people had not kept to the terms of the covenant. 

More specifically, the covenant people had not lived up to their responsibility to properly bear the divine image, as set forth in the laws that were understood to have been provided to them by their God, through Moses.  To Judah in Jeremiah’s day, in reference to the terms of the covenant and its curses, the Creator God said, “Those are the terms that I charged your ancestors to keep when I brought them out of Egypt, that place which was like an iron-smelting furnace” (11:4a).   

However, it would behoove later observers not to look down upon them or speak poorly of them because of this.  The covenant people were unable to keep the terms of the covenant because they were human, and therefore, as the story of Scripture seems to be supposed to be understood, subject to the same failings to be found in the head of the entire race, that being Adam.  The covenant that Israel violated was not the first covenant to be violated.  They were not the first to find failure when it came to the Creator God’s expectations.  To find that occurrence, one must look to the book of Genesis, remembering that the Genesis narrative is crucial for the self-identification and self-understanding of the people of Israel. 

There one is able to read that “The Lord God took the man and placed him in the orchard in Eden to care for it and to maintain it” (Genesis 2:15).  This care and maintenance was a portion of the Creator God’s covenant with the being that had been created in His image.  Reading on, one  also finds it said that “You may freely eat fruit from every tree of the orchard, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will surely die” (2:16-17).  Of course, owing to the knowledge of pain and suffering, information about which provides a daily bombardment of the sense, all are quite aware that the terms of this covenant were violated. 

Again, as the Scriptural narrative seems to insist, owing to that violation, because the Creator God is faithful to His covenants, all of humanity and creation came under a curse, as death is said to have made its entry into the world.  The curse came upon the good creation of the covenant God for the same reason that the curse came upon that same God’s people, Israel.  Terms of the covenant were not kept.