“THE ROD OF MY ANGER”

So Osama Bin Laden has been killed. What are we to think of him, his death and the terror he spawned? What of the future? A biblical parallel from the Prophets might help here.


Isaiah the prophet was speaking to Israel and Judah at a time when those two nations were facing attacks and threats from what could have been justly called the “evil empire” of the era, Assyria. Assyria was a byword for terror with its cruelty, ruthlessness, wanton killing, violence and plunder. It was godless (though full of idols), and cared nothing for Israelite religion. It lived by plunder and the sword, and inevitably it was doomed to die by plunder and the sword. It had to be resisted at all costs, and right would prevail.


Isaiah saw all this but he saw something else in the destructive emergence of the Assyrian terror, something which his Jewish contemporaries were not at all happy about and which brought about a bitter rejection of Isaiah. He saw Assyria, evil though it was, as the “rod of God’s anger”, an anger that was directed to the Jews (Isaiah 10:5-6). Assyria was not simply an evil empire which must be defeated, but a warning to Israel to amend its ways; it was the very unpleasant rod of God’s correction. It had been raised up to bring the Israelites to their senses morally. This was a very unwelcome viewpoint to his contemporaries; it was grossly unpatriotic, immoral and roused their anger. Theologically it was off the radar!


But this is exactly what the prophet of God was for – to provide the deeper explanation of events and to see them from God’s perspective. It was not all black and white. We do well to heed Isaiah when we think back over the last ten years or so since 9/11 where bin Laden left the indelible mark of terror. What would Isaiah have seen in the events of those years?


The fall of the twin towers punctured the overweening hubris of the U.S. The two most iconic landmarks in the capital city of the most powerful nation on earth had been razed to the ground by a handful of madmen who had penetrated the most sophisticated of intelligence screening. The U.S. was very vulnerable after all. American pride had taken a colossal blow. The point would certainly not have been lost on Isaiah; he was acutely aware of God’s detestation of such hubris.

The twin towers soared upwards like two great idols, idols dedicated to the amassing of wealth and money by whatever means. Significantly they rose above all else. Now they were totally destroyed. But though the visible idols were gone, the spirit of ungodly financial gain and dominance was still very much alive. That was to lead to an arguably greater catastrophe seven years later when not merely the towers but the very edifice of the financial structure itself collapsed into a tangled heap of appalling debt, the rebuilding of which will take a very great deal longer than the physical towers. That certainly would not have escaped Isaiah’s notice

Immediately after 9/11 President Bush declared war on terror, leaping on to the moral high ground; but the wars he plunged into in Afghanistan and Iraq had hubris written over all them. Waged with the only power the U.S. understood, overwhelming military might, they have proved disastrous both militarily and economically, doubling the mountain of debt and bankrupting the nation. Arguably it was a great triumph for bin Laden. The whole saga would have left Isaiah heart broken.

In many ways bin Laden as a character was weak and insignificant. He was not a natural leader, but worked with grand and murderous delusions. Perhaps one might think of him, however, as a small human rod through which passed a devastating flash of lightning for our warning. Our call is to look at what the lightning has revealed, and not see the removal of the mere rod as a “closure”!



Bob




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