Judges 1:7 And Adonibezek said, Three score and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table… The crime of Adoni-bezek was against not any special national law, but humanity. It was one calculated to create and foster the most cruel disposition, the moral sense being rendered callous by habituation to a spectacle of abjectness and suffering dishonouring to our common nature. Frequent amongst the heathen nations of the East, it was all the more necessary that it should be punished in an emphatic and exemplary manner. "Thumbs were cut off to incapacitate the hand from using the bow; great toes to render the gait uncertain." The circumstance stands forth here as an ancient "instance" of an eternal law, which may be thus expressed: - I. THERE IS A CLOSE CONNECTION BETWEEN EVERY SIN AND ITS PUNISHMENT. This may be taken as a conviction more universal in its influence than religion itself. Yet it is not wholly reducible to experience. It is as truly rooted in faith as any other axiom of the spiritual life. In order to reinforce it we have (1) what may be termed pictorial illustrations of it. The traditions and histories of the world are full of these. Neoptolemus murdered at the altar, and at the altar he was murdered ('Pausanias,' 4:17, 3); Phaleris roasted men in a brazen bull, and in like manner was he himself punished ('Cesta Romans,' 48.). Bajazet carried about by Tamerlane in an iron cage, as he intended to have done Tamerlane. Cardinal Beaton, upon whom Wishart's sufferings were avenged in a violent death, etc., etc. This affects the popular imagination more powerfully than any direct proof; and hence the crowd of real or fancied instances that have been recorded. It is in the light of this conception probably that Exodus 18:11 is to be interpreted. (2) The principle reveals itself it, the history of nations and individuals. Ishmael is the grand type of this. The story of the mutineers of the Bounty is still fresh in memory. And how many family records would show the family likeness of sins and their Nemesis, and the natural connection and development of the one from the other! In Judas the betrayer it shines with tragic grandeur. (3) The confessions of sinners themselves strengthen the belief. II. THE JUSTICE OF GOD IS FAITHFUL AND EXACT. "When the Olympian," says Homer, "does not speedily punish, he still does it later" ('Iliad,' 4:160). "The Almighty may not punish this week or next, my Lord Cardinal," said Anne of Austria to Richelieu, "but at the last he punishes." In the incidents of human life we seem to see links of an almost invisible chain connecting sin with judgment, as cause with effect. And if in the few cases we know the punishment is so finely, even dramatically, adjusted, are we not justified in believing that beneath the surface there is even a finer and more inevitable equivalency observed? It is here too we have another evidence of the superior moral influence of the doctrine of providence as compared with fate. Both are inevitable, but the former rationally and rectorially so. III. BUT BY AWAKING REFLECTION AND REPENTANCE OUR PUNISHMENT MAY BECOME OUR SALVATION. There is a gleam of something more than fatalism in Adoni-bezek's confession. It is just possible that it betrays an unfeigned repentance. The higher law of grace may step in to rescue us from the law of vengeance. Many a soul has drawn back before the hideous vision of "sin when it bringeth forth." - M. Parallel Verses KJV: And Adonibezek said, Threescore and ten kings, having their thumbs and their great toes cut off, gathered their meat under my table: as I have done, so God hath requited me. And they brought him to Jerusalem, and there he died. |
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