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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
This is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of Ammon, even for four, I will not relent. Because
he ripped open the pregnant women of Gilead in order to extend his borders, I
will set fire to the walls of Rabbah that will consume her fortresses amid war
cries on the day of battle, amid violent winds on a stormy day. Her king will
go into exile, he and his officials together,” says the Lord.
Amos 1:13-15
This ends today’s
reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.
We’re past the halfway mark in this series which looks at
nations God calls out for judgment in the first two chapters of the Book of
Amos. Thus far, we have looked at Aram, Philistia, Phoenicia, and Edom. Today,
we turn our attention to Ammon and these words from the closing verses of
chapter one:
This
is what the Lord says:
“For three sins of
Ammon, even for four, I will not relent. Because he ripped open the pregnant
women of Gilead in order to extend his borders, I will set fire to the walls of
Rabbah that will consume her fortresses amid war cries on the day of battle,
amid violent winds on a stormy day. Her king will go into exile, he and his
officials together,” says the Lord. Amos 1:13-15
You may recall that yesterday we saw how Edom and its people
actually originated from Israelite roots with Esau (also referred to as Edom
because of the red stew he was famous for making) being the founding father of
the nation.
In looking at Ammon, it’s of interest that this nation and
its people also had ties to God’s people. To examine how that happened, we have
to go back to the Book of Genesis and Abraham, the man who was considered the
founding father of the Israelite nation.
When we look at Abraham and his wife Sarah, we know they had
a nephew by the name of Lot and Lot accompanied Abraham and family first to
Canaan and then to Egypt when a famine struck the land God had promised
(Genesis 12). After some interesting happenings with Pharaoh (you can read all
about it in the latter parts of Genesis 12), Abraham and Lot along with their
families went back to Canaan and attempted to settle down but quarreling
between the herders on either side led Abraham and Lot to agree to split up and
occupy different places (Genesis 13). Lot chose the plain of Jordan and pitched
his tents near Sodom while Abraham picked a location near the great trees of
Mamre at Hebron.
Well, you’ll remember that Sodom and its sister city
Gomorrah were immersed in sinful behavior, so much so that God sent destructive
judgment on both. As Lot, his wife, and the daughters escaped while God was
raining burning sulfur on the two cities, Lot’s wife looked back in disobedience
to God’s commands through His angels not to do so and she turned into a pillar
of salt (Genesis 19). Lot continued on with his daughters and they took refuge
in a cave in the mountains.
It was there, in the cave, that Lot’s daughters hatched a
plot to bear children by their father, possibly afraid that no one had survived
the judgment God and they would be women with no children, a cultural
disadvantage in biblical days. Each daughter had sexual relations with their
father and as a result two children were produced, two sons. The oldest
daughter’s son was named Moab and would become the progenitor of the Moabites
while the youngest daughter’s son was called Ben-Ammi and his descendants would
become known as the Ammonites, the very Ammonites at the heart of today’s
scripture passage. Of interest, the Ammonites would end up settling in the
plain of Jordan, the original land claimed by Lot.
From that point on, the Ammonites clashed with the
Israelites.
The first conflict point came when the Israelites were
returning from Egypt and the Ammonites refused to assist them in any way. The
scriptures tell us that God punished the Ammonites for their actions
(Deuteronomy 23:3-4). He didn’t expect the Israelites to take matters into
their own hands because He had commanded them to do this when dealing with the
people of Ammon:
“When you come to the
Ammonites, do not harass them or provoke them to war, for I will not give you
possession of any land belonging to the Ammonites. I have given it as a possession
to the descendants of Lot.” Deuteronomy 2:19
When the Israelites adopted kings as their leaders, the
first king, Saul, had problems in dealing with the Ammonites while trying to
negotiate a treaty. The ruler of Ammon at that time, a king named Nahash, had
besieged Jabeth Gilead and the men of Gilead asked the Ammonite leader if an
accord could be reached where if the men were spared, they would pledge
themselves to be subject to him. But the king made his own chilling proposal to
the men saying:
“I will make a treaty
with you only on the condition that I gouge out the right eye of every one of
you and so bring disgrace on all Israel.” 1 Samuel 11:2
This threat never came to be because King Saul came to the
rescue of his people and subjugated the Ammonites, a state that would remain through
the reigns of David and Solomon, but the cruel disposition of the Ammonites
toward Israel was exposed and would return at a later time as we see in the
words from Amos.
In regard to religious practices, the Ammonites, like most
of the nations outside of Israel, worshiped pagan gods and idols, thus God
commanded His people to never intermarry with them. King Solomon disobeyed this
command and married many wives from pagan nations to include the Ammonites, a
move that drew him into idolatrous practices and into God’s disfavor (1 Kings
11:1-9).
Later, after Israel divided into two kingdoms, the Ammonites
broke free from Israelite control and aligned themselves with other nations who
were enemies of the Israelites. This would be followed by an attempted land
grab by Ammon who were so obsessed with taking Israelites property that they
didn’t care who they had to kill to get what they wanted, even willing to rip
open pregnant women in Gilead “in order to extend its borders.”
God wasn’t going to stand for this horrific slaughtering of
his women and the babies they were carrying and so He took action, sending
fierce judgment on Ammon. He promised to “set fire to the walls of Rabbah” that
would “consume her fortresses amid war cries on the day of battle”. As for the
king of Ammon, God gave the following fate for him:
“Her king will go
into exile, he and his officials together,” says the Lord.
And that prophecy came to be when God exacted His punishment
upon Ammon through the Assyrians and Babylonians.
In our first five devotions of this series, all from Amos 1,
we have looked at Aram, Philistine, Phoenicia, Edom, and now Ammon. As chapter
2 begins, we will turn our attention to Moab.
Amen
In Christ,
Mark
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