Gedaliah-itis – The Disaster of Nice without Nous

The book of Jeremiah is about leadership. Mostly it’s about bad leadership.

Israel’s leaders are unfaithful to God and the covenant and they disobedience brings down God’s judgement upon the nation.

Bad men who are bad leaders.

Which isn’t so surprising.

I have written previously about Ebed-Melech, the African eunuch and royal slave, who gave wise and courageous leadership to the people, in spite of the weakness of the king (see “Less than a man, less than a Jew, more than a King”).

A good man who was a good leader.

However, there is a further complication when we consider Gedaliah. For he was undoubtedly a good man, but sadly he was a poor leader.

Gedaliah was the son of a good man who was also a man of faith. He had a position of influence in the royal court and supported Jeremiah against his enemies who tried to have him killed (Jeremiah 26:24).

Once the destruction Jeremiah had foretold fell upon Jerusalem with the Babylonian sacking of the city in 586 B.C., Gedaliah was chosen by the Babylonian rulers as governor of the conquered province (Jeremiah 40:5).

Jeremiah found safe haven and refuge in Gedaliah’s home, and, as a prophet of God, can continue there to give God’s guidance to the nation.

Gedaliah inspires confidence in the people. Because of his personal character those who had fled the Babylonians return to Israel. Gedaliah encourages the people to go back and work the land. Which they do, and an abundant and bountiful harvest is gathered in (Jeremiah 40:11-12).

Sounds pretty idyllic, doesn’t it. All the nobles and the great and good have been taken off to Babylon. Gedaliah is left in charge of a rag tag group of country bumpkins, but they are working well together, life is going on.

But then…

Some soldiers, still living on the run in the countryside get some intelligence that the king of the Ammonites has sent an assassin to kill Gedaliah. The assassin is Ishmael son of Nethaniah, a man with connections to the royal family.

Gedaliah doesn’t believe this intelligence. Even after the army officers do all they can to convince him of the threat.

Lo and behold, a short while later, Ishmael turns up at Gedaliah’s door with ten men in tow.

In a kindly act of stunning stupidity, Gedaliah invites them in, sets out a feast for them. Which they take together and, during which, Ishmael (a name which ironically means ‘Man of God’) jumps up and promptly kills Gedaliah, as well as all the Jews and Babylonians present.

Gedaliah just couldn’t imagine anyone would want to hurt him.

He couldn’t imagine that anyone could betray him like that.

He couldn’t imagine that anyone could offend against the almost sacred duty of hospitality like that.

Because he couldn’t imagine it, he walked right into it. Sauntered even.

A good man, a terrible leader.

Why did Ishmael act like that? Perhaps he resented the fact that he had not been made governor by the Babylonians? Maybe he regarded Gedaliah as a collaborator?

Whatever his motivation, his actions had disatrous results. They led to the complete destruction of the land. Pretty soon after, fearing reprisals from the Babylonians, the remaining population flees to Egypt, only to find disaster strikes them there as Babylon rapidly succeeds in conquering Egypt.

Jesus told his disciples ;

“Behold, I send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves.

Therefore be wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” (Matthew 10:16, KJV)

Christian leaders need these skills too.

Wise to discern potential problems, alert to possible wrong-doing and wickedness.

Yet, harmless – not giving offence, not provoking anyone.

A hard balancing act to maintain.

To be alert to every possible ruse and skulduggery that might be being perpetrated against you, taking place within your own Christian community – yet gentle and inoffensive as much as that is possible.

The Christian church is currently reeling from the results of Gedaliah-itis.

Child abuse scandals, sexual sin, financial impropriety – write your own list.

All the result of Gedaliah-itis, leaders who assume the best of everyone, who don’t look too closely at things, who prefer to have a myopic benevolent regard over their churches. Who just refuse to believe bad news.

Gedaliah-itis – The disaster of nice without nous.

Less than a man, less than a Jew, more than a king

There are certain people that you just respond to.

Something about them seems to resonate with you and you can’t help but like and admire them.

That happens with characters from the Bible too.

Certain individuals, even if they are only briefly described, or have a minor role, yet something about them gets to you.

Ebed-Melech is just such a character for me.

In some ways he didn’t have much going for him.

He was a slave in the service of King Zedekiah (Jeremiah 38:6-13). His name seems to be a slave name, given to him to replace his given name, as it means “King’s servant.

He was also a eunuch, that is to say someone who had been deliberately castrated, or had his sexual organs completely removed, or who was incapable of sexual intercourse due to a birth defect. Although the first of these was the most common.

This meant that as a convert to Judaism (something that he would have had to be given his role in the service of a Jewish king) he was excluded from temple worship.

Deuteronomy 23:1-3 and Leviticus 21:18-20 specify that this exclusion was not because they were considered morally, socially or ethnically inferior but because their condition was a “blemish”, something which made them imperfect. Eunuchs could not be priests; nor could they be admitted to the Temple.

Ebed-Melech is also a Cushite, that is to say an African, probably a negro. Thus he has been sold into slavery, castrated and sent hundreds of miles from his homeland to a foreign nation, speaking a foreign language.

Poor guy! He hasn’t got much going for him. Less than a man, less than a Jew, a slave, mutilated so that he can never marry and have a family and yet this man is a hero to me.

Why?

Well in the Jeremiah text the Jews are rebellious against God and consequently have mistreated Jeremiah the prophet. He has been thrown into a well, and left to die there.

Poor Jeremiah is sunk down in the mud at the bottom of a well solely for having proclaimed God’s truth to God’s people ; a truth they didn’t want to hear.

Ebed-Melech is outraged by this.

King Zedekiah is a weak king, who fears his own nobles and countrymen. Indeed, when these powerful officials came to ask him for permission to kill Jeremiah his very words to them were,

“He is in your hands. The king can do nothing to oppose you”. (Jeremiah 38:5)

Knowing this weakness, Ebed-Melech shows remarkable cunning. He waits until the King is sitting in the city gates – the place from which the King dispensed judgement.

A place in which the King will be publically expected to do what is right and lawful.
In this place he accuses those who have attacked Jeremiah of behaving unjustly.

The King cannot do other than agree and he grants Ebed-Melech the authority and the manpower to go and redress this wrong.

Ebed-Melech also shows remarkable kindness. He is on his way to rescue Jeremiah from the well and he stops off to get some rope, but he also gets some rags.

The rags are so that Jeremiah can pad the ropes under his arms so they won’t hurt him as he is lifted from the well.

Nice touch, isn’t it?

Ebed-Melech’s courage and kindness are recognised by God. In the next chapter of Jeremiah God promises that in the coming invasion, when Jerusalem is going to be conquered, Ebed-Melech will be kept safe (Jeremiah 39:15-18).

“Because you trust in me” (Jeremiah 39:18)

I find Ebed-Melech inspirational because he symbolises the fact that a relationship with God changes the unchangeable.

An unfortunate, castrated, negro slave, many miles from home yet performs an act of spiritual leadership and personal courage which causes his name to live on over 2,500 years after his death.

Indeed, Isaiah 56 might have been written with Ebed-Melech in mind.

‘To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose what pleases me
and hold fast to my covenant –
to them I will give within my temple and its walls a memorial and a name
better than sons and daughters;
I will give them an everlasting name that will endure for ever.’ (Isaiah 56:4-5)

Of course this text find its best known fulfillment in Acts 8. Where another eunuch, from a nearby country to Ebed-Melech, encounters the Apostle Philip.

The unnamed eunuch is reading Isaiah 53 where a prophecy is given about the suffering servant,

‘He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent,
so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice.
Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.’ (Isaiah 53:6-7)

The eunuch wants to know who the prophet is referring to?

Philip takes this text and speaks to him about Jesus, who has just fulfilled it in his death on the cross.

I like to think that Philip also got the eunuch to turn over the page – or more accurately, to roll down the scroll – and showed him chapter 56 and Isaiah’s prophecy about the glorious messianic future.

A future in which eunuchs and foreigners would no longer be excluded from temple worship but would take their place within it; a time when all nations would pray to God together, side by side.

Whilst they are talking they happen to pass by a river. The Ethopian eunuch then asks Philip,

‘Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptised?’ (Acts 8:36)

The answer is ‘Nothing’! Isaiah 56 makes that very clear!

So a eunuch, a mutilated negro slave, a convert to Judaism but excluded from temple worship, becomes the first convert to Christianity from Africa.

He returns to Ethiopia where his high rank as treasurer to Queen Candace enabled him to share the Christian message with the royal court.

Tradition states that he baptised Queen Candace himself and that this began a succession of Christian Ethiopian leaders.

Therefore only some 4 months after Jesus resurrection (around 34 AD) , Ethiopia becomes a country ruled by a Christian leader – the first Christian country!

All because of the ministry of a physically mutilated, negro slave.

The Old Testament, the New Testament – it’s always the same story.

God using the improbable to do the unimaginable.