AP

Genesis 34:29-31  They carried off all their wealth and all their women and children, taking as plunder everything in the houses.  Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land.  We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.”  But they replied,  “Should he have treated our sister like a prostitute?”

The system I use to determine what I will use for Today’s Quick Word each day (using the M’Cheyne Bible Reading Program) unfortunately lands me with Genesis 34 today – one of the most upsetting chapters in the whole Bible.  

This chapter deals honestly with one of the most shameful episodes in the history of God’s Chosen People; but on the basis of 2 Timothy 3:16-17 we can’t just ignore it!  This event is a clear example that bears out the very sad reality Paul wrote about in Romans 2!

The justification Jacob’s sons gave for deceiving and murdering all the males among Shechem’s people was that they ‘treated our sister like a prostitute’.  This enabled them, in their own minds, to take the moral high ground and excuse their wicked deception and genocide.  But what did they do as collateral for their wicked, inexcusable actions?  They carted off ‘all their women and children’, no doubt to treat them as prostitutes!  How blind the human heart is to its own sinfulness.

It is no wonder the Apostle Paul felt constrained to write to the Jewish and Gentile Christians in Rome: “You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgement on someone else, for at whatever point you judge another, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgement do the same things.” (Romans 2:1) And it’s no wonder Jesus said to God’s people of his own day: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.  Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:1-5)

Next time we feel like taking the moral high ground in our deteriorating society, let us remember that we are all ‘sinners-saved-by-God’s-grace-alone’.  As John Bradford, a sixteenth-century martyr, said on seeing criminals being led to their execution: “There, but for the grace of God, go I.”

– Bruce Christian