That's Not Fair!

The suffering of two faithful servants

    “After all that Hezekiah had so faithfully done, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah” (2 Chronicles 32:1, italics added). Wait a minute. Isn’t this the Old Testament? Isn’t this one of those books where God repeatedly says that Israel’s and Judah’s ups and downs are directly connected to their degree of faith and obedience?

    How could God do this to Hezekiah? How could He follow Hezekiah’s faithfulness with a vicious attack? Doesn’t that go against everything the chronicler has been illustrating? Isn’t God being totally inconsistent with His teaching throughout the Old Testament?

    Why would God allow this?

    It reminds me of poor David (1 Samuel 16-31). Anointed as king while Saul is still reigning. Serving under him as both a musician and a warrior. Arousing Saul’s jealousy as David slays his tens of thousands, while Saul only slays his thousands. Spending years fleeing from Saul’s vengeful attempts to kill him.

    And yet David was a man after God’s own heart, while Saul defied God’s clear directions and lost His favor (1 Samuel 15). It’s not supposed to work this way. The good guy is supposed to be rewarded with an easy life, while the bad guy faces judgment.

    So why did God allow Saul to torment David, and Sennacherib to attack Hezekiah? It’s only a theory, but I have to wonder if there’s such a thing as preventive suffering. Even though David was more committed to God and followed Him more faithfully than any other Old Testament king, at one time he allowed his lust and his pride to drag him down into committing rape and murder (2 Samuel 11).

    He had his neighbor’s wife, Bathsheba, taken from her home and brought to him for sex. Could she have turned him down? Could she have resisted him? Could she have called out for help? Her life was in his hands, and they both knew it. As king, he had the power to do with her as he pleased, whether that meant sleeping with her or punishing her if she refused. He used her and he sent her home.

    And she got pregnant. Her husband, Uriah, was off at war, fighting Judah’s enemies, as David should have been. Uriah couldn’t possibly be the father of Bathsheba’s baby. David tried to cover his tracks by sending for her husband, but Uriah refused to enjoy the pleasures of home while the rest of the army was on the battlefield. Desperate to save his reputation for righteousness, David had Uriah killed and married his widow.

    I read these chapters in my Bible with pain and horror and anger. How could he do such a thing?

What if . . .

    And then I wonder, could it have been even worse? What if David had had an easier life? What if Saul had died and David had become king shortly after Samuel had anointed him? What if he’d never had to flee in terror from Saul’s jealousy and rage? What if he hadn’t spent years trusting God to fulfill His promise?

    Would his sin have been even worse?

    Would he have let his talents and his power and his popularity go to his head, raping women, murdering men, eventually turning completely away from the God that he’d worshipped in his youth? It’s possible. The Lord may have used David's suffering at the hands of Saul as preparation for the great temptations that he would face as his power multiplied.

    The same could be true of Hezekiah, whose reign prior to the attack by Sennacherib is described in 2 Chronicles 29 through 31. He purified the temple. He encouraged the people of Israel to return to the Lord and to celebrate the Passover in ways that hadn’t happened in years. He gave generously to the restoration of God’s design for worship. He did what was “good and right and faithful before the Lord his God. In everything that he undertook in the service of God’s temple and in obedience to the law and the commands, he sought his God and worked wholeheartedly. And so he prospered.”

    Then came the invasion by Assyria. Some time after that, “Hezekiah’s heart was proud and he did not respond to the kindness shown him [by God, in healing him of a deadly disease]; therefore the Lord’s wrath was on him and on Judah and Jerusalem. Then Hezekiah repented of the pride of his heart” (2 Chronicles 32:25 and 26).

    What if Hezekiah hadn’t been forced to depend on God during Sennacherib’s siege? What if he hadn’t been humbled by his helplessness? What if he hadn’t experienced the prayerful support of the prophet Isaiah as they awaited God’s action in defeating the enemy? What if he hadn’t grown in his faith as a result of his suffering?

    Would his downfall have been even worse? Would the Lord’s wrath on him and his people have been even more devastating? Would the suffering have been greater without the invasion by Assyria than it was with it?

Strengthening for hard times

    I don’t like the verse that I quoted at the beginning of this post. I want to read here, as elsewhere in the Old Testament, that God rewarded Hezekiah’s faithfulness with peace and prosperity.

    But on the other hand, it can be reassuring to me when I’m going through hard times, as so many of us are today, to know that even His most faithful servants can face a vicious attack. To know that painful suffering can come even in the times of consistent obedience. Then I’m better able to resist the negative thoughts telling me that if I’d just prayed a little more, if I’d just had a little more faith, if I’d just spent more time reading His Word, these bad things wouldn’t be happening to me.

    “After all that Hezekiah had so faithfully done, Sennacherib king of Assyria came and invaded Judah.” Maybe some of the invasions in my life come, not as a result of sin and disobedience or a failure to discern and follow His will, but after all my faithfulness to God. Maybe they come to grow me and strengthen me, to prepare me to face temptations that would otherwise overpower me somewhere in the unknown future. Temptations that might lead to greater suffering for others as well as for myself. Maybe life is better with the painful, unwanted, undeserved attacks than it would be without them.