by Roland Wrinkle
“Plague” is defined as “an epidemic disease that causes high mortality.” Tony Fauci agrees. In biblical Hebrew, the word is negep. It shows up over 90 times in the Old Testament and 13 times in the Greek New Testament, once as thanatos (the mythical “face of death”) and 12 times as plege (which is where we get the English for plague.
What’s going on now in this world-wide pandemic is nothing new to God or history. So…what can we learn from the book that binds us together as the people of God and upon which we rely for…well, everything— including the hope of what lies ahead for us as a part of God’s future. Here’s what we find.
There’s a whole lot of judgment going on, expressing itself in the form of a whole lot of pretty nasty plagues. But notice what precedes and what follows these calamities.
- The last seven chapters of Jeremiah recounts nine oracles of judgment against the nations of Egypt, Philistia, Moab, Ammon, Edom, Damascus, Kedar and Hazor, Elam and Babylon and then Jerusalem itself gets destroyed.
- Seventeen times the “Weeping Prophet” has it that “the Lord Almighty says: “I will send the sword, famine and plague against them” or some equivalent (14.12, 21.6, 21.7, 21.9, 24.10, 27.8, 27.13, 28.8, 29.17, 29.18, 32.24, 32.36, 34.17, 38.2, 42.17, 42.22, and 44.13 [I feel like an accountant]).
You see the hope? Nope. Not Yet. We still got to find out why all of this mayhem is happening.
- A similar narrative plays itself out in Ezekiel 25-33, i.e., nine oracles of divine judgment against the nine nations ending with one more against Judah (Israel, the nation God promised to use to restore all of fallen creation, Gen 12.3).
- Pretty much the same thing happens in Isaiah 13-23. A trifecta!
And all referring to different times in biblical history. And all laying the same
table, i.e., 9+1=10. There’s no way in heck this is just one big coincidence.
There’s something critically meaningful when something like this happens in the bible stories. You just have to figure out what it is. Well, the number ten is a big deal. It’s the number of the Sinai Commandments. It’s the number of times the freed slaves of Israel disobeyed God and wound up getting themselves stuck in the dessert wilderness. How about the ten plagues suffered by Egypt in Exodus, culminating in the deliverance of Israel?
What Was Really Going On? Reading scripture as an integrated whole, it sure seems that the first thing that is going on is a battle of the gods.
According to Jeremiah, the nine nations worshipped and trusted in a gaggle of gods, e.g., Amon, Ra, Chemosh, Molech, Bel, Marduk and the crew. Guess what? All of them were exposed as false idols and crushed by the one true creator of the universe, YHWH.
Now, we today got ourselves a different gang of gods, such as Ares (war), Mammon (money), Bacchus (alcohol), Aphrodite (sex), Gaia (the mother of the earth), as well as national exceptionalism, pride, the veneration of celebrities, blind allegiance to political parties and others.
You know what all of the false gods of our current culture have in common with the phony gods of the nations in these stories?
None of them have the power to save us.
None of them have the power to give us hope.
None of them love us…to death.
None of them will walk with us through the valley of the shadow of death. None of them will be there on the other side.
None of them are the true God of history and author the future.
Were God’s chosen people– the nation He selected to bring about His promise of New Creation, a New Heaven and New
Earth– spared the judgment imposed on the other nations? No.
So, Where’s the Hope? Notice that after all of these plagues and disasters—after all of these epochs of darkness and apparent hopelessness—there comes the inbreaking of God’s mercy and grace. There comes restoration. There comes redemption.
Ever notice how so many of the Psalms follow a common pattern? The psalmist is suffering something horrible (a plague, a pandemic, some sort of disaster) and cries out to God in protest and with a sense of abandonment: “How long, Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?” Psalm 13.
But only to wind up realizing the unfailing rescuing nature of God: “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will
sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me.” My buddy Paul put it best: I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.” (Romans 8.18—and Rome experienced a massive pandemic.)
After each pandemic, comes the renewal of the “blessed assurance.” The Promise comes back to reality and God’s plan for His future with His people regains its vibrancy. As much as we try to screw everything up by relying on ourselves and our counterfeit gods, the One True God delivers us, rescues us and redeems us as He will do ultimately and completely when He returns to fully establish his Kingdom and Domain “at the renewal of all things, when the Son of Man sits on his glorious throne.” (Matt 19.28). The truth of scripture and God’s plan is so much more glorious than the cheap imitation and parody offered up by much of idolatrous, Western Christianity.