Broken Promise
The angel of the LORD went up from Gilgal to Bokim and said to the Israelites, “I brought you out of Egypt into this land that I swore to give your ancestors, and I said I would never break my covenant with you. For your part, you were not to make any covenants with the people living in this land; instead, you were to destroy their altars. But you disobeyed my command. Why did you do this? So now I declare that I will no longer drive out the people living in your land. They will be thorns in your sides, and their gods will be a constant temptation to you.”
When the angel of the LORD finished speaking to all the Israelites, the people wept loudly. So they called the place Bokim (which means “weeping”), and they offered sacrifices there to the LORD. (Judges 2:1-5)
Broken promises hurt. And it is not just the one whose trust is betrayed who gets hurt. The one who betrays also suffers. Why did Israel betray God and not abide by the contract they had with him? Because they thought they knew better. They made treaties with the people of the land of Canaan, rather than wiping them all out. God told them what needed to be done, but they thought they could do better.
Israel didn’t want to destroy all their enemies. They thought they could negotiate with them instead. So their wish becomes God’s command. He would let them learn the hard way why God had asked them to destroy the Canaanites: they would lead his people to sin. The Israelites would start mixing the religious practices of the Canaanites with their own religious practices. They would start worshipping the gods of the Canaanites.
And of course, their rejection of God, already incipient in their refusal to follow his instructions, would only grow. Since God had no choice but to abide by his own promises to them, he would ultimately have to bring discipline upon them, ranging from famine and other suffering, to the ultimate pain of being exiled from their homeland in Babylon and witnessing the destruction of Jerusalem and the sacred Temple. God always gets his way. Whether it is the easy way or the hard way, the choice is yours.
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