The Curse Of Meroz

Meroz is gone. No record of it except this verse remains. The most ingenious archaeologists have been unable to unearth this small Naphtalian City because they don’t know where to dig. But the curse remains. The violent outburst of the contempt and anger which men feel who have fought, suffered, and agonized, and then see others who have the same interest in the result which they have, come out cool, unwounded, and unscathed from their safe hiding places to take a part of the victory which they have done nothing to secure. Meroz stands for that. The word Meroz comes from an uncertain derivative. There is no meaning in the word itself. It sometimes happens that a man or a town passes completely away from the face of the earth and from the memory of men, and only leaves a name which stands as a sort of symbol or synonym of some quality, some virtue or perhaps a vice, forever. “Thou makest us a byword among the heathen, a shaking of the head among the people.” (Psalm 44:14) You know how we do it. “Man look at that Benedict Arnold!”

So Meroz stands for that shirker for him who is willing to see other people fight the battles of life, while he simply comes in to take the spoils. No wonder Deborah and Barak were indignant! Their wounds were still aching; their people were dead and dying all around, and here was Meroz, idle and comfortable, and yet, because she was part of the same country, part of the same body of Christ assured them benefits of the great victory as much as any.

This cowardly and idle town had not come “to the help of the Lord.” The horror of the thought of what would have been the consequences if the children of Naphtali and Zebulon had lost. And here sat this village, whose weight perhaps might have furnished just what was needed to turn the doubtful scale; here it sat through the critical and dreadful day, looking on and doing nothing. The Spirit of God moved upon Deborah and caused her to recount the prophetic denunciation by the angel of the Lord on Meroz. In the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary, volume 2, page 336, we read these comments:

No other verse in the book of Judges [5:23] constitutes so severe a warning to the members of the church today as the one here curses those who refuse to help in time of crisis. In the face of a crying need of laborers, many professed Christians are content to follow there leisurely, selfish course, refusing to render any assistance to the Church of God as it engages in battle with Satan. They say that the work of the church is to be performed by the ministers, and accept no responsibility for themselves. The curse of Meroz rests upon these unfaithful Christians unless they turn from their listless non-cooperation.

Many people in the community and in the world are what Meroz was in Palestine. There is an everlasting struggle going on against wickedness and wretchedness. It never ceases. It never changes. It shifts from one place to another. It dies out in one form only to be resurrected in some other shape. Evil appears only to tire, and the enemy gives way, but it and he never stops its struggle with the good in the world and the cause of God. The sadness of it all, is how few people engage in the struggle for right, how many who stand apart and wish it well but never expose themselves for it nor do anything to help it.