The Words of the King
“The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against His command; Hear now, all peoples, and behold my pain; my virgins and my young men have gone into captivity. Lamentations 1:18 NASB
Rebelled – According to the Talmud, these are the words spoken by Josiah as he was dying (Ta’anit 22b). The Hebrew verb, mara, certainly describes defiance against YHVH, but in almost every case the verb is about the nation of Israel, not about individual persons. With this background, we might conclude that Josiah is not speaking about himself but rather about the whole of the nation that he represents as the king. But there’s a problem.
“As the Talmud was well aware, Josiah’s death raises serious theological questions. A king dedicates his life to rectifying the religious state of the nation, reinforcing national values, and bringing the people closer to serving God, yet he is killed so senselessly. Jeremiah’s fears are, sadly, well-placed, as he is moved to speak from the depths of his bleeding heart. All hope seems lost. A new future that is only beginning to coalesce has already been shattered. Jeremiah bends down and hears the king he so admires affirming God’s justice with his last breaths: I am a sinner; and God is righteous. At this, Jeremiah shrieks: You are the chosen one! You are the Messiah of God!”[1]
How can God allow the death of a man who acts with such righteous zeal? How can God anoint His holy representative and then snatch him away at the hand of a pagan power? What grounds are there for hope if this is the kind of world God made? Where is justice now?
Now read these same emotions into the lives of the disciples. Isn’t their distress the same? Haven’t they read of Jeremiah’s agony and thought, “Yes, but this time God will not fail us.” The new king, Yeshua, the anointed one, will prevail. He is God’s chosen. In the past we were confused. We thought Josiah was the one, but now we know it is Yeshua. God will redeem Israel for sure.
And then, the cross. It’s happening all over again. The same history, the same despair, the same questions. No hope. Disappointment. Discouragement. Where are you, God? The words of this king, “Forgive them for they know not what they do,” are no less tragic. What is there left to believe now?
Without the resurrection, the cross is just another defeat in the national life of Israel. Without the resurrection, the cross is the end of another false hope, another failed dream. Perhaps you and I can peel away our hindsight for just a moment and remember what it must have been like to see the hideous history repeated—until the resurrection. Without it, there isn’t much point in continuing, is there?
Topical Index: rebelled, mara, Josiah, Jeremiah, resurrection, Lamentations 1:18
[1] Binyamin Lau, Jeremiah: The Fate of a Prophet, p. 66.
Israel had to die as a nation before they were cleansed of what was killing them. They were “not consumed”, however. When they were resurrected at the foretold end of 70 years, they were effectively cured of the idolatry that had destroyed them before. Everything about the history of this nation was “written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the earth are come”(1Cor. 10:6-11). Yeshua repeated the principle of the grain of wheat having to transform before it could manifest its destiny, with death being the vehicle of that transformation. He was prefiguring His death, by which we would vicariously share His immortality Elijah of old gave us a type of that transformation in his translation/transformation, as did Enoch. Sure, they were sinners, but forgiven ones, for they had a Death already in place for them. Jude tells us that Moses was also resurrected even though he had “sinned unto death”. also as a prefiguring type.
This nation of Israel was indeed a prototype of how it all works. Christianity truly had nothing new to understand EXCEPT that resurrection. It was the final piece in a puzzle that had already been worked out; the Cornerstone had finally shown up, and that cornerstone, as Skip points out so well in his book, Crossword Puzzles, was the ultimate defeat of death, worked out on the human canvas in front of the requisite witnesses. It was the resurrection that the apostles preached, for everything else could be found down at the local chapter of already existing synagogues. With the resurrection, the rest of the Tanakh becomes, not a history of failure, but the prefiguring of triumph. It was a good time; it was “the best of times” to be the chosen people, with that final piece of that Crossword Puzzle. Halleluah!
O the Cross!!
My longing for love wouldn’t go away
I was desperate searching
Broken by pain
Looking for answers
But nothing seemed right
Where was my answer
What was my life
Blinded by sin I was lost couldn’t see
Until I turned my eyes to Calvary
Oh the cross where Jesus died
He shed His blood
Gave His life for you and I
My sins erased no longer lost
My debt was paid I am saved
Oh, the cross!
Day after day as I live my life
I find heartache trouble
Battles to fight
When fear tries to grip me
And I feel alone
Jesus is with me
I’m not on my own
Now I can say in my heart I believe
My life has been changed
Because of Calvary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTMFBHOpxUg
Carl, please don’t post links. As I’ve said, and I know people get tired of me nitpicking, but links go dead. And when they do, it causes our pages to load very slowly as it’s looking for said dead links. And consequently, it also costs us “scoring points” on the search engines because the crawl bots pick up those dead links and let the search engines know about it.
If you just told people the title of the video, or the name of a website, location of an article, etc. Then they could check it out.
It is for cleansing that the storms come. During them we often see only the truble. While the wars,
the destructions, the pains the losses are fresh in our minds we miss the greater message.
Thanks for the reminder that all of the old testament points toward the cross, while the new testament points back too it yet both are fufilled in the Resurrection. Perspective is found after the rains…
Link Removed
Mark, please see my comment above to Carl. Thank you.