OUR FATHER WHOM WE MUST ALWAYS TRUST

Jeremiah chapter 41 verse 9 says this;

Now the cistern where he threw all the bodies of the men he had killed along with Gedaliah was the one King Asa had made as part of his defense against Baasha king of Israel. Ishmael son of Nethaniah filled it with the dead.

The Babylonians, having over-run Jerusalem and conquered Judah,  took the elite and able-bodied Israelites back to Babylon and left behind the poor and needy people  under the rulership of a Israelite vassal king named Gedaliah.

Ishmael son of Nethaniah, having decided to take matters into his own hands rather than trust the Lord, entered  the town of Mizpah with a cadre of ten men and  assassinated Gedaliah along with the men of Judah who were with him. They also killed the babylonian soldiers who were stationed there.

This verse includes a detail that when Ishmael killed Gedaliah and the men of Judah and the babylonian soldiers, he threw their bodies into a well. 

The well had been dug by a former king of Judah named Asa as part of the defense infrastructure  against king Baasha of Israel.

Now King Asa, at the beginning of his reign, was dedicated to the Lord and he was favored with many years of peace because, as 2 Chronicles chapter 14 verse 2 said of King Asa,

And Asa did what was good and right in the eyes of the Lord his God. 

He had used this time of peace to build defences to protect Judah from her neighbors and among these defences was the well that Ishmael used to conceal the bodies of those he and his men killed at Mizpah.

King Asa, dug the well to protect Israel by providing water along her defensive lines. This action may have been a faltering in the trust that King Asa had in the Lord.

Ishmael, also failing to trust in the Lord and operating as a maverick, filled the well with the dead and exposed Israel to the fearsome wrath of Babylon.

The remnant in Judah became terrified of the retribution that would surely come from Babylon because of the crimes commited by Ishmael. 

As they tried to decide what to do, they approached the prophet Jeremiah and asked him to petition the Lord for guidance and the Lord responded by promising them that He would protect them from Babylon on condition that they remained in the land of Judah.

If they trusted the Lord and stayed in Judah, He would shield them but, if they panicked and escaped to Egypt, the things they feared from Babylon would visit them in Egypt.

Thus the lack of trust in the Lord was judged in Judah and the only remedy to alleviate the judgment was to regain absolute trust in the Lord.

Amen.

50