The Undoing of the Ungodly

Copyright © 2010 by Emmanuel Oghenebrorhie.

ISBN:          Softcover                                 978-1-4568-3439-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-3440-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Unless otherwise indicated, scriptures are from the Good News Bible (GNB) also known as Today’s English Version (TEV), King James Version (KJV), New King James Version (NKJV), New Living Translation (NLT), The Living Bible (TLB) and Bible in Basic English (BBE). All Bible quotations were copied from the Olive Tree Bible online on the internet.

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Contents

Dedication

Appreciation

Preface

I

II

III

IV

Author’s Other Published Titles

Dedication

To Professor Akinjide Idowu Osuntokun

Appreciation

All glory to God that this is available for others to read. Lord, everything in this call and commission is your doing and it is marvellous in my eyes.

God bless Mrs Yvonne Olatunbosun who served as editorial consultant. Rev (Dr) Kingsley Akin Adesehinwa and family’s friendship is highly appreciated. May God swell your heavenly account richly, in Jesus’ mighty name, Amen.

Preface

This could have been The Ungodly’s Undoing. The godly and ungodly are like the wanted and unwanted or preferred and ‘unpreferred’, liked and the ‘unliked’, loved and the ‘unloved’ like Jacob’s disposition to Leah and Rachel as his wives. All things being equal, the former should be preferred by both the benefactor and the beneficiaries in particular. In other words, any sane person should be desire and endeavour to be the preferred rather than otherwise. Wasted efforts should be one of the most abhorred things for sane souls during their sojourn on earth.

Just as God used Gideon to save the Israelites from wasted efforts orchestrated by the Midianites, so also I Samuel 23:1-11 confirms that He helped David and his officers to save the Keilahites from their Philistine raiders before they (Keilahites) determined to give David up to Saul for reasons best known to both Saul and the Keilahites alone and probably God, because He sees into the intent of all human hearts. Considering the way Saul ordered the massacre of the priestly town of Nob and its inhabitants in I Samuel 22:9-19, it must be that they had thought that the fear of King Saul was the beginning of wisdom. I Samuel 16:1 says that even Samuel had shown that the fear of Saul was the beginning of wisdom.

I

Genesis 34 and 35:22 tell the reason Jacob cursed his three eldest sons in Genesis 49:1-7 on the day he blessed his other children in the remaining verses 8-28, according to God’s will and purpose for them and their descendants for all generations. The implication is that Jacob disregarded God’s will for these three eldest sons to curse them because he adjudged that they had offended him. There is no doubt that he surely has every right to decide what constituted an offence against him by these sons and anyone else. But if they had not offended him, did Jacob mean that God did not have some form of blessing for them in life. It helps us to see the difference between God and man.

When David sinned, God punished him but did not withdraw His original blessing for David and his descendants. Surely, God said that the sword (meaning violent death) would not depart from David’s lineage, but He never said that his descendants would not be king again. In fact, when Absalom and Ahithophel tried to take the throne from David, God supported David against them and he regained the throne and returned to Jerusalem to reign. Here was a father who would not forgive his sons what they had done, meanwhile, his sibling Esau found space in his heart to forgive him twenty years after their split. May the good Lord deliver one from the sickening saints of this world. Why did he not give them their due God’s blessing before cursing them for offending him? After all, Judah got himself involved in incest and he got his God-ordained blessing without any reference to his incestuous misdemeanour.

Perhaps, Reuben, Simeon and Levi needed a more forgiving father. Their father never gave them the slightest human error margin. This helps to understand what prompted David to say that he would prefer God to punish him rather than humans because humans are heartlessly wicked and callous. They do not regard relationships when they set out to undo their fellow human. If Esau was the father of Reuben, Simeon and Levi, he would have readily forgiven them. Even if Reuben’s offence was definitely unforgivable, that of Simeon and Levi should be forgivable.

In fact, what the two of them did was that they used their anger to earn the best out of life and God should protect them. After all, it was the same anger which the Levites used to earn themselves the priesthood from God in Exodus 32 as confirmed in Deuteronomy 33:8-11 by one of their foremost tribal leaders Moses, the monumental man of God. And in a way, Moses reflected this anger when he killed an Egyptian in his ravenous desperation to protect the Israelites from oppression. God did not say that because Moses murdered a man He made in His own image, Moses could no longer serve as His chief messenger to his generation.

Secondly, Genesis 33:18-20 says—

18 So Jacob came safely from Paddan-aram to the town of Shechem in the land of Canaan, and put up his tents near the town. 19 And for a hundred bits of money he got from the children of Hamor, the builder of Shechem, the field in which he had put up his tents. 20 And there he put up an altar, naming it El, the God of Israel. (BBE)

This means that Jacob paid for the original portion of the land he got to settle with his flocks and family upon his return from the home of Laban after twenty years stay. He paid the full price to the Shechemites. This was before Genesis 34 says that because his only daughter Dinah was raped and his sons, particularly Simeon and Levi his second and third sons respectively killed the entire inhabitants of Shechem, like Saul had used his chief herdsman named Doeg a Hittite, to do to the priestly town of Nob during which 80 qualified priests of the Lord who were descended from Aaron the pioneer high priest were killed also.

Therefore, there is no doubt that it was when these sons destroyed the people of Shechem that the entire land of the Shechemites became that of Jacob or let us say he could lay claim to the entire territory. Then, Genesis 35:1-7 says that God concluded his ownership of the entire town because God put fear in the hearts of the neighbouring nations so that they could not destroy Jacob and his household and wealth for destroying the Shechemites and possessing their entire land. The loot his sons got from the houses of the Shechemites after destroying them must have been more than the amount Jacob paid for the portion which he bought earlier.

Then, before the very crucial point is the fact that Genesis 37:1-3 and 12-17 strongly suggest that each time his sons took his flocks from their traditional family home where Abraham and Isaac had lived to Shechem to graze, it must have been partly meant to enable Jacob’s sons check on the town of Shechem to ensure that other persons did not encroach on it. This meant that it was these sons that he used to safeguard the land of Shechem. Meanwhile, Genesis 37:1-4 and 12-17 can only be interpreted to mean that under the guise that their character away from home was improper; Joseph opted out and remained at home with their father.

And truth be told, it was not that Jacob did not love the fact that Simeon and Levi got him the entire land of Shechem. It was the threat it posed to his life and the valuables he believed he spent twenty years to gather in Laban’s home and business that pained him. Meanwhile, it meant that he was a fearful person. Of course, he was never used to going out to struggle against others to get his heart’s desires. That is the predicament his homely nature predicated on him. Meanwhile, it is not that he did not get other people’s valuables fraudulently. He did subtly. He got his desired valuables by trickery, as he typified in Genesis 25:27-33 and 27 against his brother Esau. He likes to get what he wants without paying the due price.

Their mother taught him to swindle his elder brother by deceiving their father to get the blessing their father meant for his brother. She taught him feminine manipulation. His first response to the mother’s suggestion to cheat meant that much as he wanted to get the blessing, he abhorred the possible consequence if his father discovered his lie. This reminds us that when their father found out, he never cursed Jacob like he cursed his own sons who he claimed offended him. The forgiveness that he enjoyed from his father, he could not give to his children when it was his turn.

Children should decipher the nature of their parents so that they maximize their relationship with them. Children should not assume that since their peers’ parents are very tolerant with them, theirs would do likewise naturally. Perhaps we can take the risk to say that because Esau had an aggressive nature, he would never have taken offence about the violent manner that Simeon and Levi claimed the land of Shechem from the Shechemites. Could that have made him a better suited father for Simeon and Levi in your estimation? Let us not digress into who is the right father for the right children and wrong fathers for right or wrong children. Noah was a right father for a wrong son named Ham the ancestor of the Canaanites, whereas, he was the right father for his other sons named Shem and Japheth. For his sake God spared his wife, three sons and their wives, only for Ham to mock him while the other sons revered him. Coincidentally or interestingly, or both, God transferred the land of the Canaanites to the descendants of Shem who had led Japheth to honour Noah, God’s approved man in their generation. When Reuben dishonoured Jacob by having intercourse with his concubine against Jacob’s wish, he could not be described as a right son for a crooked father. Jacob might have been a crooked individual but Reuben should not have committed such an evil.

Then, the real troublesome angle is that