Friday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – First Reading

Commentary on 2 Kings 25:1-12

Today we come to the end of the sad story of Israel’s degradation and humiliation—the second deportation. Yesterday we saw how Mattaniah, renamed Zedekiah, had been made a puppet or vassal king of Judah, the southern kingdom, by Nebuchadnezzar. He was no improvement on his predecessors. The passage which comes between yesterday’s and today’s readings is as follows:

Zedekiah was twenty-one years old when he began to reign; he reigned eleven years in Jerusalem…He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, just as Jehoiakim had done. Indeed, Jerusalem and Judah so angered the Lord that he expelled them [the two kings] from his presence. Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. (2 Kings 24:18-20)

Rebelling against the king was a bad mistake on his part…

It was in the ninth year of his reign that Nebuchadnezzar came to Jerusalem with his army and, for the second time, laid it under siege. Earlier, he had subdued all the fortified cities in Judah except Lachish and Azekah (see Jer 34:7). A number of Hebrew inscriptions on potsherds were found at Lachish in 1935 and 1938. The Lachish ostraca (i.e. letters) describe conditions at Lachish and Azekah during the Babylonian siege.

Jerusalem, built as it was on an outcrop of high rock with steep sides, was not an easy city to capture and was able to resist for more than one year, into the 11th year of Zedekiah’s reign. But eventually, with the people starving, the walls were finally breached. It is possible that some desperate citizens may have deliberately brought this about to end the siege—and their starvation.

However, the king and his soldiers escaped from the city by night. Because of the surrounding armies, they had no option but to head for the Arabah, a desolate area in the Jordan valley. But there was no escape and the hapless king was caught near Jericho and abandoned by his troops.

He was brought into Nebuchadnezzar’s presence where sentence was passed on him, as a rebellious vassal. His two sons (his potential successors as king) were killed before his eyes while Zedekiah himself then had his eyes put out and was brought to Babylon. Ezekiel (12:13) had prophesied that the king would be brought to Babylon, but would not see the city. Jeremiah had advised Zedekiah what to do to avoid his own punishment and the destruction of the city, but the king had not listened (see Jer 38:14-28).

Finally, Nabuzaradan, the captain of Nebuchadnezzar’s bodyguard, took control over Jerusalem. He proceeded to wipe out every vestige of its past by burning the Temple, the king’s palace and every large building in the city. In the previous siege, the vessels of the Temple had been taken away, but the building had remained. Lastly, the formidable walls which had protected the town were torn down.

The remainder of the population, those who had gone over to Babylon’s side, and the last of the artisans, were all carried off into bitter exile. Only the very poor were left behind to take care of the vineyards and the farms. They would form the remnant which would maintain the continuity of the city of David with the future.

It was an ignominious end of the kingdom originally established by Saul. With the outstanding exception of David—and even he had done some pretty bad things—the dynasty had a dismal record as vicegerents of Yahweh.

The lesson of the reading is very similar to that of previous days. God does not take vengeance as we humans do, but on the other hand, we do reap the natural consequences of immoral behaviour.

At the same time, even the most negative experiences can be turned round. A good example of this is to be found in Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, where he shows that those who survived best in the Nazi concentration camps were those who found positive meaning and something to live for even in the utter degradation of their surroundings. Frankl himself was a clear example of one such person.

Out of all this corruption and immorality will come David’s descendant, Jesus the Christ. God certainly does write straight with crooked lines.

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Friday of Week 12 of Ordinary Time – Gospel

Commentary on Matthew 8:1-4

The two chapters (8 and 9) following the Sermon on the Mount include a long list of miracles (ten altogether) performed by Jesus. They are seen as a confirmation of his authority to teach because they are so obviously the work of God himself. The man who can do these things also has the right to be heard and followed.

The first story is the cure of a leper. It is told with the usual brevity and lack of detail characteristic of Matthew (compare with Mark’s version, 1:40-45). A leper begs to be healed. His faith and trust in Jesus is revealed by his saying:

Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.

Jesus replies:

I am willing.

And he cures him instantly. We may note the simplicity of Jesus’ act. In this, the healing miracles of Jesus contrast with the fantastic stories from the Hellenistic world and those sometimes attributed to Jewish rabbis.

But Jesus’ miracles also differ because of the spiritual and symbolic meaning attached to them. They often have the quality of a parable, and frequently the words that accompany the miracle are of greater significance. Such is true in this case, where the healing of the leper has wider ramifications as indicated below.

While compassion is many times the motive behind a miracle, most often they are seen as strengthening a person’s faith. Jesus, too, is very selective in the miracles he performs and often demands secrecy from the beneficiary. Jesus does not want to be the centre of any sensational wonder-working. It will be the miracle of his resurrection that will be the really determining factor of who he is.

Soon, we will see Jesus sending out his disciples to proclaim the Kingdom and giving them his own powers of healing. Their mandate will be to do the same work that Jesus has been doing. The 10 miracles recounted in chapters 8 and 9 will be the kind of thing that the missionary successors of Jesus will also do.

After the healing, Jesus then instructs the man, in accordance with the requirements of the law, to go to the Temple to get a certificate from the priests as proof of his return to health. Only with this official documentation will he be allowed to re-enter society.

The leper was a particularly unfortunate person in ancient society. It was known that through contact with a leprous person one could contract the disease, so they were kept isolated from the rest of society. There was, of course, no known cure and the person’s body just gradually rotted away.

What was probably more tragic was the fact that many people with other kinds of similar-looking skin diseases, which were not at all infectious, could be branded as lepers and condemned to the same policy of isolation. The healing of the leper by Jesus was then much more than a physical healing. It meant that the man could be fully re-integrated into normal society.

In our time, the leper can be a symbol for all those who are marginalised by our societies for one reason or another—foreigners; people of a different colour or culture, or gender, or religion; those with addictions—to drugs or alcohol, wealth or power, or pornography; victims of sexually transmitted diseases…the list could go on and on.

We Christians have a special responsibility to be agents of healing to re-integrate such people and accept them fully as brothers and sisters.

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