Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“This is the statute of the law that the Lord has commanded Moses: gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, and lead— everything that can withstand fire, shall be passed through fire, and it shall be clean.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, January 13, 2023
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I know I’m supposed to riff on the symbolism of purification by fire, but I just can’t. I read the previous portion of the chapter and came to find out that this gold, silver, bronze, iron, tin, and lead were the spoils of a war with Midian in which, at God’s command, all the men of Midian were killed, and when the women and children were taken as spoil, it was further commanded that only the virgin women and girls should be spared, so the other women and the male children were all murdered.
It takes my breath away, the causal language in which these terrible war crimes—commanded by God!—are written. I can’t read this next passage about how to make all the precious metals stolen from Midian needed to be purified, since they came from an impure—non-Jewish—people. Nothing, and I mean nothing, can make those precious metals “clean” in my book.
Where are we to find gospel in this account of atrocity? I think of all the war crimes that have been and are being committed by Russian soldiers in Ukraine and how there is a narrative of moral superiority from Russia that makes the rest of the world scoff, but perhaps helps justify to the Russian soldiers their horrific actions. Then there is the fact that all war is itself a crime in my book. Yes, the Midianites attacked the Israelites first, but the idea that God would then direct Moses to take revenge on the Midianites seems preposterous to me.
So where are we left with this today? I take some comfort in the fact that this portion of scripture is ahistorical, not that such wars didn’t take place, but I don’t believe God commanded them. I come back to yesterday’s daily devotion text that promises God will remove our guilt in a single day. God’s promises are sure. We are all guilty of something, and some of us are guilty of great atrocities at least in our minds and hearts. We are human, after all. Yet we are God’s humans. And God’s love purifies and redeems more thoroughly than any fire.
Where do I find God’s gospel of peace and love in the midst of challenging texts like this one?
