Theological Commentary: Click Here
Today we
finish the story of Gedaliah. Yesterday,
Gedaliah ignored the warning about Ishmael.
Today, we see that Gedaliah dies.
He is killed rather easily.
Gedaliah invites his enemy to dinner and his enemy sticks him with his
sword. It’s a fairly ignominious death.
Having struck
the blow, Ishmael knows he needs to get out of town. He has killed the Babylonian governor and
expects retribution. He needs food and
supplies for the trip into hiding. He
finds a group of travelers who are well supplied and robs them. He even extorts supplies from them in
exchange for allowing some of them to live.
The
interesting thing, though, is that the retribution doesn’t come from
Babylon. The Hebrew people take things
into their own hands. Johanan son of
Kereah rises up and brings a force against Ishmael. Johanan rescues those who were taken. He can’t bring Gedaliah back to life. He doesn’t also find himself in a position to
kill Ishmael. He does, however, drive
Ishmael into hiding and free those Ishmael took with him.
What can we
learn from this? The Hebrew people continue
to suffer from perspective. There is
chaos in the land. Some people are
embracing God’s purification through the Babylonians. Others continue to resist with their very
being. They are continuing to turn on
one another because they lack a unified and godly perspective.
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