Mercy and the Broken Oath

The readings set two paths before us. One is the path of repentance, thanksgiving, and fidelity; the other is the path of grasping for visible securities and breaking faith. Israel once gathered with fasting and confession, put away strange gods, and the Lord fought for them. As Tertullian says, “At the very moment when Samuel was offering the holocaust (in no way do we learn that the clemency of God was more procured than by the abstinence of the people), and the aliens were advancing to battle, then and there the Lord thundered with a mighty voice upon the aliens, and they were thrown into confusion, and fell in a mass in the sight of Israel;” Mercy did not make repentance needless; mercy met a people who turned.

But in the next breath the nation asks for a king like the nations. They would rather be ruled by appetite, splendor, and force than by the Lord’s commandments. The same temptation appears in Ezekiel: a sworn covenant is treated lightly, and the branch that sought help from Egypt withers under God’s judgment. To despise an oath, to seek rescue by worldly craft, to copy the nations—this is to forget the long memory of Psalm 136. The psalm teaches us to recount God’s mighty deeds so that gratitude may keep us from treachery. He divided the sea, fed His people, struck down proud kings, and gave an inheritance. Therefore His mercy endures forever; but that enduring mercy summons enduring obedience.

So let us not ask for Egypt when God has already brought us through the sea. Let us not trade the yoke of the Lord for the exactions of lesser masters. “If then you prepare yourselves, and repent with all your heart, and turn to the Lord, it will be possible for you to escape it, if your heart be pure and spotless, and you spend the rest of the days of your life in serving the Lord blamelessly.”