Margin Of Grace

Nearly a quarter-century after most of the world signed a convention outlawing the use of antipersonnel landmines, the number of people being killed or maimed by these insidious and lethal weapons remains high—and rising. The Landmine Monitor for 2021, released on November 10, reported 7,073 casualties in 2020, including 2,492 people killed and 4,561 wounded. Syria was the worst affected country, reporting 2,729 casualties. One of the worst things about this is that many of these people will have died or been maimed by a mine that was laid years, perhaps even decades, previously, but which have not yet been detected and neutralized. More than half the casualties in the report were children.

A similar kind of invisible but lethal danger surrounded the unauthorized approach to the altar; we saw that in the earlier books of the Old Testament. It was really dangerous to be in the presence of YHWH without an express invitation.

And the Israelites knew it. When God spoke to Moses at Mt. Sinai the people begged Moses to speak to God on their behalf; “You speak to us, and we will listen,” they said, “but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.” [Ex 20:19]

In Leviticus 16:2, “YHWH said to Moses: 'Tell your brother Aaron not to come just at any time into the sanctuary inside the curtain before the mercy seat that is upon the ark, or he will die; for I appear in the cloud upon the mercy seat.'”

The book of Numbers tells of when Korah and some of the other Levites stirred up dissension against Moses because they wanted the privilege of burning incense before the altar, like Aaron and his sons; they felt like second-class citizens. God told Moses to go ahead and let them try it; when they did, they were destroyed for sacrilege. The ancient Israelites had chapters upon chapters of complicated instructions about how to prepare themselves for worship. And when they ignored them, or took the privilege of God dwelling in their midst lightly, the consequences were very severe.

During the whole of their history, they kept getting it wrong and blowing themselves up. For instance, before Samuel became Israel’s judge, the people took the ark into battle against the Philistines as a sort of good-luck charm. The Israelite troops were slaughtered, and the priests responsible for the sacrilege killed. Even up to the time of David, when the ark was brought into Jerusalem, if you accidentally touched the ark you got incinerated.

"When they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah reached out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. The anger of YHWH was kindled against Uzzah; and God struck him there because he reached out his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God." [2 Sam 6:6-7]

King David himself - that man after God’s own heart - was so scared of getting it wrong that he left the ark right there where Uzziah had been killed. David was afraid of YHWH that day; he said, “How can the ark of YHWH come into my care?” [2 Sam 6:9] He left it there for three months before he got up the nerve to ask permission a second time to bring it up to Jerusalem.

And now here we are in 2 Chronicles. It’s been over 300 years since David brought the ark into Jerusalem, 250 since Solomon built the temple, almost that long again since the kingdom split into two. And the kings of Judah have seesawed back and forth between following YHWH and worshiping the Canaanite gods. The temple has been desecrated so often it’s a wonder anyone is left alive at all. In fact, when Hezekiah becomes king, he has to tell the Levites, “Sanctify yourselves, and sanctify the house of YHWH, the God of your ancestors, and carry out the filth from the holy place.” [2 Ch 29:5]

But if the people in the Southern Kingdom of Judah, where the temple was, were unfaithful, the people of Israel in the Northern Kingdom were even worse. By the time Hezekiah took the throne in Jerusalem, the Northern kingdom had fallen to the Assyrians and most of the population had been hauled off to slavery.

"So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day. The king of Assyria brought people from Babylon [and other places] and placed them in the cities of Samaria in place of the people of Israel... When they first settled there, they did not worship YHWH therefore YHWH sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So the king of Assyria ... commanded, 'Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there; let him go and live there, and teach them the law of the god of the land.' So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and lived in Bethel; he taught them how they should worship YHWH. But every nation still made gods of its own and put them in the shrines of the high places that the people of Samaria had made ... So they worshiped YHWH but also served their own gods, after the manner of the nations from among whom they had been carried away. To this day they continue to practice their former customs... They do not follow the statutes or the ordinances or the law or the commandment that YHWH commanded... " [2 Ki 17:24-34]