Tuesday, 12/15/15
The first reading is
from the Prophet Zephaniah from the generation immediately preceding the
Babylonian Captivity. The general morality of the people had sunk so low that
God saw that the only remedy for them was to let them suffer at the hands of
their enemies.
The prophet’s
description of Jerusalem is most discouraging.
“Woe to the city, rebellious and polluted, to
the tyrannical city! She hears no voice, accepts no correction. In the Lord she
has not trusted, to her God she has not drawn near.”
In that same decade,
Zephaniah’s contemporary, Jeremiah, gave us the sad indictment against the rich
people of Jerusalem
When the common
people could not pay their debts or their rents, they and their children were
handed over to slavery. It even happened
that the rich brought in their own relatives as house slaves.
Once, when the city
was threatened by the Babylonian forces of Nebuchadnezzar, the city leaders
asked Jeremiah if there was anything they could do to secure God’s protection. And,
he told them God would save them if they released their enslaved kindred. They
did free them; and Nebuchadnezzar moved away to hold off th forces of the
Pharaoh.
The rich then,
knowing they were safe, went out and rounded up those whom they had freed. At
that time, Jeremiah told the population to resign themselves to being
vanquished.
We cannot fool God
by going on saying our little prayers, while committing our big sins.
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