A Clean Slate
Friday, March 7
A Clean Slate
Judges 10:1-2
After Abimelech there arose to save Israel Tola the son of Puah, son of Dodo, a man of Issachar, and he lived at Shamir in the hill country of Ephraim. And he judged Israel twenty-three years. Then he died and was buried at Shamir.
Strange, isn’t it, that this biblical obituary of a godly leader who rose up through the ashes of Abimelech’s scorched-earth reign to bring back prosperity to God’s people does not recount a single word he spoke nor an act he performed? All we know from Tola’s twenty-three years of public service are the names of his father and grandfather, his tribe, and the neighborhood he called home. He’s another in that line of faceless heroes that pop up from time to time, like a black silhouette hung between colorful portraits in an art museum. Ah, but we do learn the most significant thing about him in the opening line: that when the time came, when his name was called, whether for a mighty feat of strength or for a more mundane act of policy reform, he rose to the challenge and spent two decades building back what Abimelech had torn down.
Reading Tola’s obituary took my mind back to a brief but outstanding anecdote that Solomon gives in Ecclesiastes 9:14-16. He writes, “There was a little city with few men in it, and a great king came against it and besieged it, building great siegeworks against it. But there was found in it a poor, wise man, and he by his wisdom delivered the city. Yet no one remembered that poor man. But I say that wisdom is better than might, though the poor man’s wisdom is despised and his words are not heard.” That’s the irony, Solomon! You remember the poor man’s words! And God has stirred your heart to write it down in Scripture as an exemplar that no righteous deed done in an unrighteous world goes unnoticed by Heaven’s eyes.
Tola’s wisdom is perhaps best summed up by the succinctness of the silence that follows Judges 10:2, because there’s no antecedent saying, “But Tola’s ephod became a snare for the people,” or “But the people did was what evil in the sight of the LORD during these days.” Sometimes, the life of faith isn’t about performing mighty, unforgettable heroics, but simply leaving a clean slate for the next generation.