Assyria

I'm all confused this week, since our readings are jumping all over the latter part of the Old Testament. As a result, the verse I referenced on Tuesday (I think), Hosea 6:6, isn't actually read until today. Sorry about that.

In Hosea 7:11, Hosea alluded to a dangerous game that Israel  attempted. We'll read more about it in Isaiah (and it will be clearer), but BOTH Assyria and Egypt are poised to conquer Israel, and Israel attempted to set up alliances with each to head off the other. In the history of the world, this has rarely worked, and we'll see how it failed fairly soon. As such, here's a map of the people and my stab at trying to explain it:

As we've mentioned in the past, Assyria is located in present-day Iran--what I never really understood before was that Nineveh was in Assyria. Put that in context--God sent Jonah to Nineveh to tell them to repent or be destroyed, and they repented. Apparently, they liked the message so much they decided to attack the country that Jonah came from.

Both Egypt and Assyria are looking to defeat Israel, so Israel looks to Egypt as protection from Assyria. It won't matter much, since God has already decided that Israel would be defeated and that any alliance would be futile. July 3rd's reading will describe Assyria's takeover, and often times prose does a much better job of description than prophecy. By this point, God had been warning Israel (and Judah, since they were just as evil) for close to 200 years (the death of Solomon) to repent and change their ways, and we're going to see the final decisive action soon.

And as usual, this still occurs today. God may not take us physically into exile, but the eternal exile we risk if we don't submit to the Lord makes anything that can happen to us on this earth pale in comparison. There are literally billions of people at risk of this, and God has charged us with reaching these people. He's given us all the tools we need to accomplish this, but we need to maintain the sense of urgency, since every day brings us one day closer to the ultimate day of exile for unsaved. The important difference will be that there will be NO return from that exile.

Get busy.

Scott