Bread of Angels

          When the Lord heard them, he was furious; his fire broke out against Jacob, and his wrath rose against Israel, for they did not believe in God or trust in his deliverance. Yet he gave a command to the skies above and opened the doors of the heavens; he rained down manna for the people to eat, he gave them the grain of heaven. Human beings ate the bread of angels; he sent them all the food they could eat. (Psalm 78:21-25) 

                I put my back out this morning trimming along my raised beds, so while I spent time on my back on an icepack, I opened my Bible randomly to II Samuel 1. I’m not including it here because it’s long, but it includes a song that David wrote after hearing of the death of King Saul and Prince Jonathan. It’s understandable that he’d sing about Jonathan. They were friends, but Saul had been trying to kill David for at least seven years. But the song isn’t about how David’s enemy finally got what was coming to him. 

                In today’s passage, God is described as being angry. Israel was, well, being Israel, and they’d rebelled repeatedly. God punished them, but even in the middle of the punishment, He never stopped feeding them the “bread of angels.” 

                We have a tendency to want to cut people off. Those who disagree with us, those whose pain doesn’t measure up to what we think is “real pain,” we want to dismiss them. That’s not the principle in today’s passage. If Saul had killed David, he would have declared a celebration throughout the land. In fact, we have seen such celebrations. When a nation the Muslim countries hate faces a crisis or is defeated, they celebrate. When accused terrorist leaders have been hunted down and killed by American troops, Americans have celebrated. I have little doubt that if Mr. Trump were to die of a heart attack (or better yet, COVID-19) there would be parties across the world. But this is not the pattern of behavior set forth in Scripture. 

                David wept when Saul and Jonathan died. He wrote a song and taught it to the nation. While God punished Israel, He still fed them and protected them. As a people, we may have to put a serial killer or serial rapist to death or take out a terrorist enemy. We may have to put someone in jail who insists on deliberately spreading COVID-19. But, contrary to human nature, we should not find pleasure in it. Nor should we mistreat the person we have marked for death. They still get fed the “bread of angels.”