First Turned; First Returned

Scripture: In this way, God brought back Abimelech’s evil—the evil that Abimelech had done to his father when he killed his seventy brothers. God also brought back to the men of Shechem all their evil. So the curse of Jotham son of Jerubbaal came upon them. Judges 9:56-57

Observation: This is the ending of a three-year distraction for Israel. Upon the death of Gilead, his illegitimate son Abimelech declares himself ruler. He has 70 (all but one) of the other sons of Gilead murdered by the people of Gilead, and is anointed ruler. The one surviving son curses both Abimelech and the city of Shechem. The truth is, Abimelech never truly rules Israel, and in a short time the people turn against him. He kills many of them in retribution, but they then kill him. It is a short time in the history of Israel, and likely an insignificant if not completely meaningless to 95 percent of Israel at the time.

However, Shechem is an interesting place. While the place where Gilead came from to become Judge, they then embraced a strange form of honor to Yahweh ... they worshipped the ephod Gilead created, and a god they named the "god of the covenant", all of which appears to be a twisted attempt to idolize the Lord. Shechem is very central in Israel. It is located between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, and this area would become a place of worship in various forms after the fall of the 'northern kingdom'. It is close to Jacob's well.

All of this sounds like the characteristics of another village in the bible, some 1,100 years later. It is a village is in the central area of Judea, practices a twisted form of believing in Yahweh, is conflicted about alignment to traditional Jewish practices, believes worship can occur on the nearby mountaintops, and has ... a woman who visits Jacob's well midday to get water. While the New Testament says that village was Sychar, the two are close enough to have been considered the same region "ruled" by Abimelech.

As described in the book of Judges, Shechem is the place where the people of Israel have first really fallen away from the Lord and into some new form of their own worship of Yahweh. They aren't just being led astray to worship a different god ... they have created their own physical items, attributed to them some different view of Yahweh, and created their own worship. As a result, murder and curses are handed down, and we will begin to see the spiral downward of the Jewish people. A millennia later, the gospel of John indicates that the Samaritan woman - in this same place - is the very first person that Jesus definitively tells he is the Messiah.

In other words ... perhaps ... these are the Jews who are the very first to lose their understanding of whom Yahweh truly is and create a different form of worship, and thus these are the people to whom the Messiah first really declares whom Yahweh truly is and embrace Jesus as their savior.

Application: My mind keeps coming back to this idea ... Messiah and salvation was first for the Jews, then for the Gentiles. Jesus actually exhibited this, and this parallel - that the first people to really turn away from the nature of God are the first people to whom Jesus demonstrates the nature of God - reinforces it.

There is a motion of prayer for Israel occurring worldwide this week. I truly don't fully understand why, but Israel, and the Jewish people, matter a lot when it comes to all of us understanding God. Even at their worst, we learn from the lessons of the Lord.

Prayer: Lord, I pray for Israel and for the Jewish people. May the land be under your protection, covering, and blessing, knowing how dear it is to you. May your hand be upon the Jews, and may those who do not yet accept Messiah come to discover and embrace Jesus. Amen.