4 And
Judah went up; and the Lord delivered the
Canaanites and the Perizzites into their hand: and they slew of them in Bezek
ten thousand men.
5 And
they found Adoni-bezek in Bezek: and they fought against him, and they slew the
Canaanites and the Perizzites.
6 But
Adoni-bezek fled; and they pursued after him, and caught him, and cut off his
thumbs and his great toes.
7 And
Adoni-bezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great
toes cut off, gathered their meat under my
table: as I have done, so God hath requited me. And they brought him to
Jerusalem, and there he died. (Judges 1:4-7)
This is kind of a gruesome
story, but it is also instructive, so we can see why it was recorded. At the bottom of it we see the Canaanite
king, this fellow Adonai-bezek, announcing that the suffering inflicted upon
him is exactly what he deserves.
Even more, he sees the hand of the Lord in it, as the reward according
to what he had done to others.
The sad thing is that he
waited too late to see the Lord behind things. He could only see the Lord in the penalty; he was too
hard-hearted to see the Lord in whatever warnings came his way, as they would. The Lord allowed the thing that
Adonai-bezek inflicted upon other conquered kings to come upon him.
Adonai-bezek thinks it was
just. But was it really? It we look at Adonai-bezek’s case in terms of the Law of
Moses eye-for-an-eye ethic, what was done to him was far less than he deserved.
He cut off the thumbs and big toes of 70 kings and he didn’t have enough digits for this to be revisited
upon him. Moreover, there were all
the atrocities he committed in connection with the conquering of those kings,
which, judging from those mutilations, would not have been as simple as just
killing people.
In short, Adonai-bezek
thought God’s justice had been satisfied merely with his mutilation, but it was
very far from being satisfied. It
was just Adonai-bezek’s idea of justice he was talking about, and even then he
ignored those demands for a very long time. If that is a king’s idea of justice, what kind of idea do we
get about what his society was like?
In terms of justice,
Adonai-bezek should have been executed.
And in fact, Israel had been commanded to kill all the Canaanites and
Perizzites (and six other peoples in the land) but they disobeyed by sparing
his life and mutilating him instead.
I think a warning principle from
this story that we can apply to ourselves is we do not feel the full extent of
God’s justice for our sins in this life.
Like Adonai-bezek we may be punished a little bit and think we have
experienced justice, but in actuality the full and very terrible weight is
waiting for us on the other side.
If we all were given what we deserve right now, we would all perish
because we have all sinned. But our life is prolonged to give us a
chance to choose to repent and have faith in Christ and follow him.
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