Live by the Word
Live by the Word
Judges 9:5
And he went to his father’s house at Ophrah and killed his brothers the sons of Jerubbaal, seventy men, on one stone. But Jotham the youngest son of Jerubbaal was left, for he hid himself.
“He who lives by the sword dies by the sword,” our Lord taught Peter on the eve of His Passion, there in Gethsemane, as vile, treacherous, wolves-in-shepherd’s mantles drug Him away to an unjust and secretive trial; yet His words were also a lament over the blood-thirsty game of thrones that men in their envy have perpetually soiled the earth by. That’s why Cain watched God accept Abel’s sacrifice and then bathed the weeping earth in his brother’s blood. That’s why Pharaoh sent out a decree to kill all Jewish boys during Moses’ infancy, and why Herod decreed the same during Christ’s. That’s why Joseph’s brothers threw him down into a well to die and why Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and why Abimelech now slaughters seventy blood-brothers on a stone. Because envy is a sword that kills the soul first and then keeps on swinging till all that is good and true and beautiful is stacked in a heap of corpses.
We could spend the rest of this devotionals venting our disdain for Abimelech’s brutality, reflecting on just how horrifyingly depraved men can become apart from the Spirit’s work, but to do so would leave us out of the picture. See, we’ve never dragged seventy relatives to the chopping block, but are our own biographies free of civil wars that we’ve instigated? Is there no stone somewhere in the center of our own ambitions upon which we’ve willingly sacrificed a friendship or someone’s trust or a parent’s honor for our own selfish ambition? Has envy never drawn us away into private, mental fantasy, wishing for the downfall of a pastor or a leader or a church member or a brother who just seemed to get all the attention and all the publicity and all the glory? Admit it: when word comes out of some scandal, or some embezzlement or tax evasion or illicit adulterous affairs, we lap it up like dogs at the pond on a summer day, don’t we?
Oh, how the blood of Abel cries from the earth still today, imploring us—pleading with us—for the love of God and neighbor, to live by the Word and not by the sword.