Jeremiah 41:1-18.  In yesterday’s reading we saw how far the influence of a faithful servant of God could reach.  We also saw that God can and does use “outsiders” to mold and shape our lives for him.  We also saw the beginning of a story about a threat to the newly appointed governor of Judah.

In today’s reading we see the next part of that story.  The guy who was supposedly hired by the Ammonite king was Ishmael the son of Nethaniah.  In verse 1 we see that it is the seventh month.  If it was the seventh month according to the Jewish calendar then there We are not told what year it is, it could be 586 BC or it could be a year later (remember that the deportation happened in the fifth month of 586 BC).  If the calendar that the author is using was the Jewish calendar this would be the same month that the Jewish people celebrated a feast called Booths or Tabernacles (both words are used to mean a temporary shelter like a tent), the feast is also called the Feast of Ingathering.  The first name relates to the time when Moses brought the people out of Egypt and they lived in temporary shelters as they traveled from Egypt to the eland promised to them.  The second name relates to the harvest.  It was sort of a “harvest” festival.  The big idea behind both of these names is that God provides. In the first he provided shelter, protection, and guidance as he led the people through the desert (sometimes called wilderness), in the second name we see that God has provided another year’s harvest so they could eat.  According to verse 1 Ishmael came to Gedaliah in Mizpah in the seventh month.  Two other important pieces of information are that Ishmael had 10 men with him and we are also told he is the grandson of Elishama and is part of the royal family.  Evidently he was a descendant of David.

Gedaliah was eating together with Ishmael and his men and others.  All at once Ishmael and his men killed Gedaliah and the others who were at the meal.  Some of those killed where Babylonian (Chaldean) soldiers who were stationed there with Gedaliah.  Then an interesting thing happened.  The next day, before word of the massacre got out a group of 80 men came to Mizpah.  It is interesting because the group of men had shaved their heads and beards off, this was a sign of mourning.  But they also were carrying offerings of grain to bring to the “house of the LORD”.  That term usually meant the Temple.  Theses guys were from Shechem, Shiloh, and Samaria all towns in the area that had been the Northern Kingdom (destroyed 150 years earlier).  Mizpah would have been on the way from the towns they had come from to the Temple, but the land had been under siege, had they missed that?  And the Temple was gone (but only for two months if this is the same year) did they miss that too?  Part of the Festival of Ingathering was offerings of the first fruit that you would pick; in the previous chapter there was a lot of talk of grapes and summer fruit but that related to the people and area of Judah, not Samaria (Israel or the Northern Kingdom).  And the people of that area had not been in the habit of going to the Temple.  The Feast of Ingathering was a happy celebration so it is odd if that was what the grain offering was for that they were also morning.  The whole thing is very very odd.

Whatever these guys were doing they stopped by Mizpah and Ishmael went out to meet them.  He was crying, probably to trick them.  He invited them to Gedaliah’s place but as soon as they came into the city he and his men slaughtered them and threw their bodies, along with the body of Gedaliah into a cistern.  Ten of the eighty guys avoided being killed when they informed Ishmael that they had grain and honey and oil hidden in a field.  Mizpah was in the territory of Benjamin, part of the Southern Kingdom (Judah).  This area had been under siege for 18 months.  There would have been very little grain is the region because it require planting and tending, something that wouldn’t have gone on during the siege.  These guys from the north quite possibly could have had grain hidden back home (their towns were between 12-42 miles from Mizpah).  Homey and oil would also have been in short supply after the invasion and a prize to Ishmael.

In verse 9 we are told that the cistern where the bodies were thrown was built by Asa.  He was a king of Judah who lived about 300 years before the fall of Jerusalem.  He is describe in 2 Chronicles as a good king who followed in the footsteps of his “father” David.  But he was only half-hearted in following God and during battles later in his life he relied on foreign alliances instead of God.  The fortification of Mizpah and the building of the cistern were during a war with Baasha, a war that he won with the help of foreign alliances.  He was scolded by God for using foreign help.

A little more action and then we will get to what all of this stuff means.  After dumping the bodies Ishmael took the rest of the people in Mizpah, including Gedaliah’s daughters, as captives and headed back to Ammon.  Johanan (the guy who had warned Gedaliah of the plot in the first place) and the other commanders pursued Ishmael and caught up with him near Gibeon (about 3 miles south).  When the captives saw the “army” coming they resisted and ran to Johanan and the others.  Ishmael escaped but not before losing two men and he is never mentioned in the Bible again.  Johanan and the other commanders then proceeded to gather all the people left behind after the invasion by Nebuchadnezzer and prepared to flee to Egypt.  They feared another invasion in response to the killing of the Chaldean soldiers.  In the next chapter we will see that Jeremiah is still alive and he will instruct them not to go to Egypt, advise that they disobey.  The advice is from God who promises to continue the good life they had just started to enjoy if they obey and stay.

For me this chapter really points to the complicated way that God deals with us in history.  It is very interesting to me all of the promises to preserve Jerusalem and keep the people in the land if they would submit to Nebuchadnezzar, because in Jeremiah 25:11 Jeremiah told the people that they would be exiles in Babylon for 70 years.  Technically he told them they would serve Nebuchadnezzar for 70 years but in 2 Chronicles 36:21 we are told that the reason for the Babylonian Captivity was so the land could “enjoy it’s Sabbaths”.  That is a reference to Leviticus 25 where the Israleites were told that every seventh year they were not to till the land; it was to rest (the idea behind the word Sabbath which means seventh).  Evidently the Israelites had not followed the rule for 490 years and the land had missed 70 sabbaths; the Babylonian captivity was 70 years long so the land could get it’s rest.  It seems like the plan was for all of the Israelites to be out of the land for 70 years.  The interesting thing is, in the end they all would be.  It’s not that God didn’t keep his promises and we shouldn’t think that God was just messing with them, the promises were genuine, but he knew they would never fulfill the requirements.  And we see that they haven’t, at least so far (remember there’s one group left in the land).  Another thing we have to keep in mind is that there is no real point, from an agricultural point of view, for the land to “rest” for 70 years.  In fact it wouldn’t rest it would keep producing just not with the help of the farmers.  And I think that that is the point, the “rest” of the Sabbath years was to make a point to the Israelites and anyone who would be watching; God cares and God will provide for those who put their faith and trust in him.  In Mark 2 Jesus’ followers were accused of breaking the Law of Moses by picking grain and eating it on the Sababath (the seventh day of the week, Saturday, which was also supposed to be day of rest).  Jesus used an example from the life of David (whom all the religious leaders totally respected) where David ate bread and gave it to hem hungry men, bread that was supposed to only be eaten by the priests according to the Law of Moses.  The truth of what David did and why it was OK is because “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27).  Jesus then told the people objecting to his followers actions that he was the “lord of the Sabbath”.  Jesus got to say what could and could not be done on that day.  And he consistently taught that it was good and right to “do” good and right things on the Sabbath, even though God commanded that no “hard” work should be done on it.  The point of all Sabbaths, whether the weekly one or the one every seventh year or other special ones, is to focus on God, on the things he is doing, can do or wants us to do.  The point of the Sabbath years was specifically to rely on God to feed and care for them.  There was no magic going on in the ground because the farmers were not tilling it the “magic” was going on in the hearts of the people as they trusted God.  It is interesting that the Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles) and the Feast of Ingathering (or Harvest) were celebrated at the same time; both were about God providing for his people in a very physical way (remember that God fed them as they traveled in the wilderness too).  If the people had put their trust and faith in God; had obeyed about letting Nebuchadnezzar rule over them then the land would have had it’s rest, even if all the Israelites had been there, because the point of the rest was hearts trusting in God.

Unfortunately so far the Israelites had not trusted in God; they have rejected all the messages Jeremiah had delivered and as a result the land would have to get it rest in a real and physical way so that the people could learn the lesson of the Sabbath; trust in God and obey him.

Remember I said that the Israelites were master storytellers (well really God is since he is the force behind the human authors of the Bible) and I think that that shows up in this chapter.  God frequently uses irony in his dealings with us.  Irony is when a point is made in a fitting but unexpected way.  An example might be how the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah were constantly looking to foreign nations to help them overcome invaders, especially in the later years of their existence.  Finally God used Nebuchadnezzar to “rescue” them from their “I can do it myself (with the help of who I choose)” attitude by invading and controlling them.  It’s ironic that the one nation that they wouldn’t trust was the one that would or could do them the most good, spiritually.  It’s also ironic that God used some pilgrims from the north in the way he did.  People still in the land of the Northern Kingdom at the time of our story were considered “half-breeds” the Southern Israelites didn’t think of them as true Israelites, from the name of their capital city, Samaria, they came to be called Samaritan, and in Jesus day they were completely hated by the Jews.  In our story today these guys came with an offering to take to the house of the LORD.  But they were also mourning.  Now they could have been mourning because the Temple had been destroyed and they had no where to take their offering but they might have know about it too.  They did know something about Gedeliah after all (probably that he was the new leader and was inviting people to settle down and get comfortable, v. 6).  I actually tink tht God was using those 80 guys in a prophetic way, their actions were an example to Ishmael.  First of all their offering showed that they cared about Yahweh, they were faithful servants of God.  The mourning was probably supposed to freak Ishmael out, which it clearly did.  Remember the comment right before these guys show up, “the next day when no one knew about the killings.”  Then Bam!  Out of the blue 80 guys in mourning.  That’s a God thing; only God and Ishmael and his men knew about the killings. That’s also  irony.  For me the place where Ishmael tossed all the bodies really sealed the symbolic deal for me, the cistern.  How could you read Jeremiah and hear the word cistern and not think, “Oh yea that where all good prophets get sent.”  In Jeremiah 38:6 and Jeremiah 41:9 the author even uses the same word for how Jeremiah and the bodies were roughly put in the cisterns.

The last thing that seems ironic to me is how Ishmael just disappears from the pages of history.  When he comes to kill Gedaliah we are told he is from the royal family.  Woo! Hoo! A real king.  And he sure acts like a lot of the kings in Israel’s history acted; the bad ones especially.  More than once in Israel’s history a king would take over and slaughter every single member of the old kings family that he could get his hands on, especially the male relatives.  Ishmael certainly did that.  Another thing many kings did, as I mentioned before, was make foreign alliances.  Ishmael certainly did that, too.  The big shot royal boy was not in step with God and he just disappears.  In contrast to that we have seen promise after promise to the people of Judah that God will bring them back, but for the next 70 years they would have to learn the lesson of trust and obedience.

God is amazing.  It is amazing how he can take all the junk that we have made out of our lives and work out his plan.  It is amazing he can take all the evil we bring into the world and still work it out for our good.  People like to blame God for the evil that exists or when bad things happen but the truth is we could have gone other ways and “stayed in the land”.  But only in theory; the reality is we all fall short of God’s perfection, we all rebel, we all do it our way; and it all falls apart.  We need help and God provides just that.  Jesus cleans out the corrosion that our personal power sources have leaked into our beings and makes us suitable for the true everlasting power of the Holy Spirit.  God is amazing.

God thank you for being so in touch with our world.  Thank you for applying your magnificent wisdom and knowledge to our problem; my problem.  Thank you for making a way back to you, a way through the maze of evil that we have made this world and our personal lives.  Let me listen to you and honor you even when I don’t understand, even when it goes against what I think is best.  Help me listen and obey.