One of the prophecies that Solomon got was that there would be a Jewish Question. That the Jews would be a byword, stock criminals. My extension that Marlowe would have his Jew of Malta and Shakespeare Shylock.
The text today talks about a hissing. People shaking their heads and looking at the temple in ruins and asking why this happened.
Scripture makes it simple. Israel abandoned God, became corrupt, and tolerated evil. In the end, they rejected Christ: God incarnate, who kept the law. And Titus, as it was prophesied to Solomon, reduced the temple to ruin. It has not been rebuilt, and the Jews became a byword and a shunned nation.
65So Solomon held the festival at that time, and all Israel with him — a great assembly, people from Lebo-hamath to the Wadi of Egypt — before the LORD our God, seven days. 66On the eighth day he sent the people away; and they blessed the king, and went to their tents, joyful and in good spirits because of all the goodness that the LORD had shown to his servant David and to his people Israel.
1When Solomon had finished building the house of the LORD and the king’s house and all that Solomon desired to build, 2the LORD appeared to Solomon a second time, as he had appeared to him at Gibeon. 3The LORD said to him, “I have heard your prayer and your plea, which you made before me; I have consecrated this house that you have built, and put my name there forever; my eyes and my heart will be there for all time. 4As for you, if you will walk before me, as David your father walked, with integrity of heart and uprightness, doing according to all that I have commanded you, and keeping my statutes and my ordinances, 5then I will establish your royal throne over Israel forever, as I promised your father David, saying, ‘There shall not fail you a successor on the throne of Israel.’
6“If you turn aside from following me, you or your children, and do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, 7then I will cut Israel off from the land that I have given them; and the house that I have consecrated for my name I will cast out of my sight; and Israel will become a proverb and a taunt among all peoples. 8This house will become a heap of ruins; everyone passing by it will be astonished, and will hiss; and they will say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this house?’ 9Then they will say, ‘Because they have forsaken the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of the land of Egypt, and embraced other gods, worshiping them and serving them; therefore the LORD has brought this disaster upon them.’”
This shunning may have preserved them, for corruption would not. Rabbi B, who has embraced Christ, discusses this further.
That’s all fine and good, and the Bible certainly speaks of signs in the heavens which portend the winding up of this age and the dawn of an eternity to be ushered in by the Messiah. But that is not all. When Jesus was asked a question about the circumstances surrounding His return, he answered with the words in the passage quoted above in Matthew 24. He indicated that the time of His coming would be likened to the “days of Noah.”
That being said, perhaps it would behoove us to consider what characterized the days of Noah just before the flood. If we were to look back in Genesis, we would discover that two primary elements characterized the days of Noah: (1) the earth was corrupt before God’s countenance and (2) filled with wrongdoing, sometimes translated violence or robbery.
Let’s begin with the idea that the earth was corrupt. In Hebrew, the root word for corrupt is shachet and denotes ruin in the sense of corruption rather than destruction. It is that which ruins an otherwise healthy and sound condition. In other words, shachet impedes the progress of something that it is intended to flourish, something that transforms success into failure. The most basic meaning of shachet is “a pit.”
One who digs this kind of pit, however, does so for evil and not for good – his intention is to place an obstacle in the path of someone to prevent him from reaching his destination, hoping to bring him to ruin. Shachet is related to shached, the root word for a bribe. The idea is that a bribe ‘digs a pit’ in the path of a judge who is on his way or on the path to delivering a just verdict, but the bribe blinds him, stops him in his path, and prevents him from reaching his goal by placing a stumbling block before him.
And so, the idea is that the whole earth was corrupt before God and that people were digging pits and placing stumbling blocks in the paths of one another, because their primary objective was to bring others to ruin. Their only goal was to ruin and destroy that which was healthy and sound, that which was flourishing. Their main objective was to turn the success of others into failure and to prevent those who were on the path of righteousness from ever reaching their destination by impeding their progress.
But this is only half the story. The text also says that the earth was not only corrupt before the Lord, but filled with wrongdoing or violence. The word in Hebrew, rendered robbery or violence in most standard translations, is quite fascinating and suggestive. The word is hamas.
Hamas is a form of robbery which cannot be recovered through legal proceedings. One who perpetrates hamas is not penalized by any human court; if left unchecked and perpetrated over and over again, hamas gradually leads to the ruin of one’s fellow man. A couple of examples which serve to illustrate its usage in other passages:
When a vine sheds unripe grapes, it is said to have committed hamas against the fruit, since the hamas is not committed all at once; but instead, the fruit’s drawing of sustenance from the vine is slowly but surely stopped, until the fruit finally drops off (cf. Job 15:33). A similar verse in Lamentations 2:6 describes the relationship between a garden and its hedges, where the pressure of the garden’s growth causes the hedges to wither, slowly over time. Interestingly, hamas is also related to vinegar, since wine does not sour all at once, but gradually and over time as well.
And so, according to the text, moral corruption comes first, sins about which society is not too concerned. Even though married life deteriorates and the young behave disrespectfully, etc. people in a society are wont to think that life can proceed as it always has; that trade and commerce will continue to flourish, and that business relationships will remain honest. What most people fail to realize and understand, however, is that once the world is corrupt before God Himself, all the laws and institutions in the world will not be able to preserve society from the ruin it is determined to bring upon itself.
Scripture is given to us to correct and to train. The Ancient Jews wrote their history with warnings attached: to abandon the temple and the LORD was to invite disaster. To allow all men to live as they chose was to dilute the tribe. The reforms, such as Nehemiah, involved repenting from miscegenation, and raising families to continue the witness of the Jewish nation.
But there are no favourites. If we reject God, we will perish. If we make up new stumbling blocks, driven by the idea of white oppression or the more neurotic ideas of transhuman wannabes in PETA, the vegans, or the social justice movement, we will again die.
We will destroy what is good. The people will abandon faith, and our churches will ruined be.
As society falls away, our duty is to live, to warn, and to encourage repentance. Not to repeat the narratives that lead to destruction. Not to make up new sins, new stumbling blocks.
But to cleave to Christ, and him alone. Lest the Christians be the new Shylock.