Theological Commentary: Click Here
This is an
interesting chapter when we compare the human impulse versus the will of
God. Here’s what I mean. The Hebrew people gather for battle against
the Philistines. The Philistines rout
the Hebrew people. The Hebrew people
gather together and wonder what on earth went wrong and why God abandoned them.
Out of these
questions we begin to diverge between God’s ways and the ways of humans. The human beings gather around and decide
that God must have something against them because He failed them. Therefore, the call for the ark to come
forward. They think that surely God will
defend His ark. They are wrong. The Hebrew people die in battle, their priests
are killed, and the ark is captured.
The mistake
that the Hebrew people make is to miss something obvious. They fail to think that perhaps god wasn’t
actually on their side. This smacks of
human arrogance. If the Hebrew people
are God’s people and they worship Him, why wouldn’t God want them to win,
right? The reality is that God is not on
our side. God invites us to be on His
side. God is on the side of
righteousness. When we are righteous, we
are on His side.
What a
fundamental and catastrophic flaw in the ways of mankind. We think that we are earning favors from
God. We think that by worshipping Him we
are earning some sort of divine debt that we can call upon to repay. That’s just not right. Our reward is being invited to participate in
His righteousness.
The Hebrew
people forget this. They bring forth the
ark without consulting God. They do as
they please, trying to force the hand of God.
The net result is that the Hebrew people lose the battle and lose the
ark. What is the ark to an all-powerful
and all-knowing God? Is God any less God
because His ark is captured by another group of finite human beings? Of course not. They think that they can force the hand of
God and instead they see what happens when we try to force His hand instead of joining His hand
in His work.
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