Context: With the exception of the reign of Josiah, Judah has suffered 100 years of evil kings -- each who did more evil in the eyes of God than the one before.
Today's Devotion: 2 Chronicles 36:15 - 19
15 The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent word to them through his messengers again and again, because he had pity on his people and on his dwelling place. 16 But they mocked God's messengers, despised his words and scoffed at his prophets until the wrath of the LORD was aroused against his people and there was no remedy. 17 He brought up against them the king of the Babylonians, who killed their young men with the sword in the sanctuary, and spared neither young man nor young woman, old man or aged. God handed all of them over to Nebuchadnezzar. 18 He carried to Babylon all the articles from the temple of God, both large and small, and the treasures of the LORD's temple and the treasures of the king and his officials. 19 They set fire to God's temple and broke down the wall of Jerusalem; they burned all the palaces and destroyed everything of value there.
taken from www.biblegateway.com
It is easy to understand how frustrated God was with his people. For years he has watched them blatantly worship other gods and destroy every good thing he had established for those he had separated as the chosen ones. In fact, it's hard to understand how patient he actually was during this time.
The time had come for the Israelites to suffer the consequences of their disobedience. But look at the place where God allows the invasion to start in verse 17...the sanctuary! This verse brings up many questions that don't seem to have answers (either in the Bible or in any commentary I could find):
1. Were the young men in the sanctuary before the massacre? Or did they get dragged there as an act of desecration? If the latter, did the location cause them to cry out to God at the last minute...and did He honor those prayers?
2. Were all the women and others in the sanctuary, too? Or were they killed in the town and the verse just doesn't specify?
3. If they were worshipping, why would God kill the ones who were doing the right thing?
One part of me wants to believe that those who were killed were a group of the few who had remainded devoted to God despite the evil their kings were doing. Although dying by massacre would not be my first choice, maybe God took them away so they could avoid the horrors of the coming exile. What we see as tragedy, God may have allowed as a blessing.
Whether this was the case or not, it causes me to think about other things that we see as terrible tragedies here on Earth. How could we learn to look at death and destruction in this life from a different perspective?
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