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Context No. 362 of 4322 · 1 Chronicles

Context · Reflection

1 Chronicles 5:18-26: in context

18The sons of Reuben, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, of valiant men, men able to bear buckler and sword, able to shoot with bow, and skillful in war, were forty-four thousand seven hundred sixty that were able to go out to war. 19They made war with the Hagrites, with Jetur, and Naphish, and Nodab. 20They were helped against them, and the Hagrites were delivered into their hand, and all who were with them; for they cried to God in the battle, and he answered them because they put their trust in him. 21They took away their livestock: of their camels fifty thousand, and of sheep two hundred fifty thousand, and of donkeys two thousand, and of men one hundred thousand. 22For many fell slain, because the war was of God. They lived in their place until the captivity. 23The children of the half-tribe of Manasseh lived in the land. They increased from Bashan to Baal Hermon, Senir, and Mount Hermon. 24These were the heads of their fathers’ houses: Epher, Ishi, Eliel, Azriel, Jeremiah, Hodaviah, and Jahdiel—mighty men of valor, famous men, heads of their fathers’ houses. 25They trespassed against the God of their fathers, and played the prostitute after the gods of the peoples of the land whom God destroyed before them. 26So the God of Israel stirred up the spirit of Pul king of Assyria, and the spirit of Tilgath Pilneser king of Assyria, and he carried away the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh, and brought them to Halah, Habor, Hara, and to the river of Gozan, to this day.

This short passage tells a whole rise and fall, and the two halves are worth holding right next to each other. The first half is a victory. The eastern tribes, Reuben and Gad and half of Manasseh, go to war against the Hagrites, and the Chronicler is careful about why they won. They were helped against them, he says, because they cried to God in the battle, and he answered them because they trusted in him. It is stated as plainly as it can be. Real dependence, a genuine cry to God in the middle of the fight, met with a real deliverance. The plunder was enormous, and the writer adds that the war itself was of God. This is faith working exactly the way we hope it will.

Then the passage jumps ahead, and the second half undoes the first. They lived in their land, it says, until the captivity, and here is what happened in between: they were unfaithful to the God of their fathers and prostituted themselves to the gods of the peoples around them, the very peoples God had cleared out before them. So God stirred up the kings of Assyria, and the same tribes who had cried out and been answered were carried off into exile. The people who trusted God in the battle abandoned him in the security the victory bought. The deliverance became a settled comfort in which they slowly forgot the one who delivered them.

That arc is a familiar one, and it usually runs in exactly this direction. We cry out to God in the crisis, and he answers, and then, once we are safe and settled again, we drift toward other things. Do I trust God fervently in the fight and then quietly forget him in the peace that follows, losing in my security what I gained by depending on him in the battle?

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