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Korah Return to the God"Do not be afraid," Samuel replied. "You have done all this evil; yet do not turn away from the Lord, but serve the Lord with all your heart" (1 Samuel 12:20). This week's Haftarah demonstrates God's willingness to keep in relationship with his people even when we do wrong. When Israel entered the Promised Land, they had no set political leadership structure. God provided leaders as needed. But after many years of this, the people wanted a king just like the other nations. By wanting this kind of predictable leadership, so to speak, the people were actually rejecting God as king. After the prophet Samuel established Saul as the first king, he confronted the people. He recounted what led up to their asking for a king, and clearly explained to them that this meant they had rejected God. God confirmed Samuel’s words by sending a storm at Samuel’s command. When the people realized what they had done, they were terrified, thinking that God was about to kill them. Why did it take to this point for the people to realize the seriousness of what they had done? But life is like that. It is often after we have already said or done wrong things that we understand how bad they are. But Samuel then comforted them with the words quoted at the beginning:
We would expect that God would react to their rejection of him by rejecting them. But God is not like that. Just because they did wrong doesn’t mean that God was finished with them. What they did was wrong, very wrong. But God doesn’t cast his people off like that. God is not surprised by our sins. He knew what we were like before he chose us to be his people. Yet God’s understanding of our sins doesn’t mean that he takes them lightly. Far from it! He knows that we need to realize how very serious they are. When we take our wrongs seriously enough, we will also see that our only hope in life is to turn from ourselves and serve God. We don’t have to continue our downward spiral away from God and his goodness. At any point we can return to him. Comments? Please e-mail: comments@torahbytes.org E-mail this TorahBytes to someone? Click here Subscribe? To
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