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For many years You were patient with them. By your Spirit you admonished them through your prophets. Yet they paid no attention, so You handed them over to the neighboring peoples.
Nehemiah 9:30
One of the most pivotal passages in the Old Testament is arguably the twenty-eighth chapter of Deuteronomy. This chapter is the pinnacle of the books of the Law, spelling out both the blessings
as well as the sanctions of the Old Covenant. Everything prior to this chapter specifies the “terms and conditions” of the covenant—like the Ten Commandments and the ceremonial laws—and then God brings it all together in this vitally important passage. In a nutshell, He communicates two things:
- For faithful obedience to the terms of the covenant, Israel is promised continued blessings from His hand: peace, prosperity, and protection.
- For willful disobedience, though, Israel is forewarned of an escalating series of judgments which culminate in their destruction at the hands of another nation.
Because you did not serve the Lord your God joyfully and gladly in the time of prosperity, therefore in hunger and thirst, in nakedness and dire poverty, you will serve the enemies the Lord sends against you. He will put an iron yoke on your neck until He has destroyed you.
Deuteronomy 28:47-48
What unfolds throughout the rest of the Old Testament is a record of how well the Israelites (and later Judah) held up their end of the bargain. There were indeed times of great blessing under David and Solomon, but far more occasions for judgment. Because time and time again, Israel would come to the point where they sought God’s blessing even as they shunned His authority.
God’s “Corrective Wrath”
At first glance, the most striking thing about Deuteronomy 28 is its lopsided emphasis on punishment: eighty percent of the chapter focuses on the punitive portion of the covenant. The benefits and blessings are neatly summarized in a mere fourteen verses, while there are fifty-four verses that proclaim the doom that awaits this nation, God’s chosen people, if they should fail to obey His voice. Then we read this:
And it shall be, that just as the LORD rejoiced over you to do you good and multiply you, so the LORD will rejoice over you to destroy you and bring you to nothing; and you shall be plucked from off the land which you go to possess.
Deuteronomy 28:63 (NKJV)
Ouch! Is it any wonder that people associate wrath with the Old Testament? The whole thing seems a little heavy-handed at first, but when you think about human nature it’s probably surprising that God didn’t place even more emphasis on the judgments in store for Israel!
Just think about what happens today whenever we get caught doing something we aren’t supposed to. We look for loopholes, try to get off on a technicality, and will even try to redefine the terms of right and wrong (or of “is”…) So I submit that the apparent severity of Deuteronomy 28 is more a reflection of Israel’s nature, the recipient of the covenant, than it is of the covenant’s Author. He has simply left no wiggle room, no ambiguity, and allowed no possibility of feigning ignorance. In short, Israel has been left without excuse.
When viewed from this perspective we don’t see God’s wrath revealed in this passage, but rather His grace and His mercy! After all, if it were truly God’s intention to merely destroy the nation of
Israel whenever they turned their backs on Him, He could simply “cut to the chase” and deliver them over to another nation immediately. Instead, the sanctions which God delineates are progressive, designed to remind the people of their obligation under the covenant and subsequently bring them to repentance.
In fact, the whole sequence of punishments is given so that Israel might actually avoid final judgment. God is postponing His wrath at each intermediate stage, giving the people an opportunity to repent instead of rushing to judgment. For once again, God takes no pleasure in death:
“Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked?” declares the Sovereign Lord. “Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?”
Ezekiel 18:23
So even though God declares that He will “rejoice” over Israel’s destruction, it should be obvious that God’s true delight is in seeing righteousness prevail. And while His preference is clearly repentance and life, God is just giving Israel fair warning that He is not squeamish about taking drastic measures if they become necessary. Because after all, His glory—not the nation of Israel—is still God’s top priority.
Israel’s real problem, then, is not that God was too harsh with them, but that they chose to avert their eyes and cover their ears whenever He tried to get their attention. For each time that God sent His prophets to remind the people of the terms of the covenant—and to forewarn them of the consequences—Israel simply chose to ignore them. In other words, Israel willingly despised the chastening of the Lord:
And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons:
“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him; For whom the Lord loves He chastens, And scourges every son whom He receives.”
If you endure chastening, God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom a father does not chasten? But if you are without chastening, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.
Hebrews 12:5-8 (NKJV)
Prophet: Mission Impossible?
Imagine what it must have been like for Jeremiah, Isaiah, or any of God’s prophets. They were called to proclaim the message of His judgment and repentance to the nations, and while it was one thing to speak out against Israel’s enemies, like the Moabites or the Amalekites, it was quite another to proclaim doom for their own people. And as you might expect, the Israelites didn’t like hearing the message any more than the prophets liked delivering it.
Somewhat puzzling, though, is that God knowingly gave the prophets a task that seemed to be little more than an exercise in futility. For in the final analysis, not only was the prophets’ message
destined to fall upon deaf ears, but judgment was still inevitable:
[The Lord] said, “Go and tell this people: ‘Be ever hearing, but never understanding; be ever seeing, but never perceiving.’ Make the heart of this people calloused; make their ears dull and close their eyes. Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their heart, and turn and be healed.”
Then I said, “For how long, O Lord?” And He answered: “Until the cities lie ruined and without inhabitant, until the houses are left deserted and the fields ruined and ravaged, until the Lord has sent everyone far away, and the land is utterly forsaken.”
Isaiah 6:9-12
The prophets were essentially given an impossible task, and accepting it came at great personal cost. They were hated on account of their message—being ridiculed, ostracized, persecuted, and
even murdered for speaking on God’s behalf—and yet they were compelled to speak out:
But if I say, “I will not mention Him again, or speak anymore in His name,” His word is in my heart like a fire, a fire shut up in my bones. I am weary of holding it in; indeed, I cannot.
Jeremiah 20:9
For even though it grieved them to see Israel and Judah suffer God’s wrath, these men of God were even more grieved by the evil and perversion which had come to be practiced by the people whom God had set apart:
Oh, what a sinful nation they are—loaded down with a burden of guilt. They are evil people, corrupt children who have rejected the Lord. They have despised the Holy One of Israel and turned their backs on him.
Isaiah 1:4 (NLT)
So what was the point? If God knew that the hearts of the people would not be turned (which of course, He did) and if their destruction was already a foregone conclusion, why bother to send the prophets in the first place? The answer is as ominous as it is straightforward: God sent the prophets because He wanted the people to know that their pending destruction was not a coincidence. Their devastation wasn’t a case of “bad luck,” nor was it a result of things going haywire while God took a brief siesta. On the contrary, God wanted the people to understand that the nation’s downfall was an act of sovereign judgment which they had brought upon themselves.
Without question, then, the problem was neither the Sender nor His messengers, but that the people consistently chose to focus on their prosperity rather than their sin—they hardened their hearts and rejected God’s calls to repent. Hence, they persuaded themselves that Isaiah was just being overly dramatic, and that Jeremiah was simply mistaken. After all, Israel was “God’s chosen people” so everything was sure to work out fine…right? Now compare Israel’s denial to the response of Nineveh, a pagan city, which was brought to repentance by the preaching of reluctant Jonah:
The Ninevites believed God. They declared a fast, and all of them, from the greatest to the least, put on sackcloth.
When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened.
Jonah 3:5,10
It’s almost mind-boggling when you consider how indifferent Israel had become to her own depravity, because in hindsight it is clear that the people—not the prophets—were the ones who were wrong. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine how the Israelites could have been so blind to the things going on around them, but in the end they basically convinced themselves that Isaiah, Jeremiah, and all of the other prophets were stark raving mad. And idiots can be ignored.
Love is Patient
What then should we conclude about this elaborate system of punishments that God initially spelled out in Deuteronomy? Did they fail? Did God somehow…miscalculate? After all, we know
that Israel was repeatedly delivered into the hands of her enemies. So it would appear that the intermediate judgments failed to turn the hearts of the people, since each progressive manifestation of judgment left Israel and Judah seemingly indifferent. Hear what Amos
proclaims to the unrepentant nation of Israel:
“I gave you empty stomachs in every city and lack of bread in every town, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the LORD.
“I also withheld rain from you when the harvest was still three months away. I sent rain on one town, but withheld it from another. One field had rain; another had none and dried up. People staggered from town to town for water but did not get enough to drink, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the LORD.
“Many times I struck your gardens and vineyards, I struck them with blight and mildew. Locusts devoured your fig and olive trees, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the LORD.
“I sent plagues among you as I did to Egypt. I killed your young men with the sword, along with your captured horses. I filled your nostrils with the stench of your camps, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the LORD.
“I overthrew some of you as I overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah. You were like a burning stick snatched from the fire, yet you have not returned to me,” declares the LORD.
“Therefore this is what I will do to you, Israel, and because I will do this to you, prepare to meet your God, O Israel.”
Amos 4:6-12
Indeed, by God’s own testimony it would appear that the incremental judgments He prescribed were wholly ineffective at bringing His people to repentance. For in the final analysis, Israel’s guilt is confirmed and consummate judgment is pronounced. Even so, the fact of the matter is that God’s discipline accomplished exactly what He intended, and to assert otherwise is to contradict the clear teaching of Scripture:
So is My word that goes out from My mouth: It shall not return to Me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.
Isaiah 55:11
We need to keep in mind that each time the nations of Israel and Judah were decimated by invading armies, a faithful remnant was always preserved. Where did they come from? Was this just a happy coincidence? Did God “luck out”? Quite simply, the escalating punishments served two distinct purposes: they simultaneously hardened the unrepentant even as God used them to turn the hearts of the few who still had eyes to see and ears to hear. It was a gradual process, because God’s desire was to draw as many as possible back to Himself. Ezekiel proclaimed it in the Old Testament, as does Peter in the New:
The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9
Sadly, though, the record clearly shows that it often took nothing less than utter judgment to finally get Israel’s attention. For in spite of God’s repeated attempts to discipline His people, they would still refuse to turn from their sin. As a result, once all other options had been exhausted, they would inevitably receive the full measure of the wrath which God had been postponing all along. Because even though God is indeed slow to anger, He will not be ignored forever.
(Next >> Heaping Up Wrath)
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