As often noted, The Bible is full of discernible patterns, interspersed with shocking reversals. While many are easily recognized, others hidden from casual view, designed to be perceived by alert, attentive ‘spiritual watchers’ who recognize that history isn’t just randomly unfolding. It has been strategically pre-authored! (See: The Scripture of Truth (Series)).
Over the years, I’ve searched for, and reflected on many of these patterns. Some recur almost like clockwork (e.g., Ezekiel 14:12-23), while others appear rarely in the entire Biblical record. In this 2 part series, I discuss two opposite patterns--one that has been very common and persists today, and the other is the most rare in the Biblical record.
1. An Oft-repeated Pattern -- Agag Typologies
Throughout Scripture, many nations and groups that attempted to erase ancient Israel and/or Judah from existence, eventually experienced shocking reversals. The iterative destruction of such leaders, and often their nations and militaries and coalitions, is a theme that echoes across much of The Old Testament. These weren’t merely one-time fluke events! Rather, they were Heaven-ordained, patterned consequences.
Here are a few examples:
Ancient Egypt was decimated by 10 horrible plagues as it resisted The Lord’s command, through Moses, to ‘Let My people GO!!!’ Both Pharaoh and his mighty army drowned in the Red Sea during a feeble attempt to re-capture its recently-freed Hebrew slaves. (Exodus 14)
Agag, King of the Amalekites, had long defied The Lord’s plans for His imperfect people, Israel. But eventually, he was brutally hacked to death by Samuel, The Lord’s obedient prophet, after Saul, Israel’s disobedient king, had spared Agag’s life. (1 Samuel 15). 1
Goliath, a giant soldier among the Philistines—an ancient people who lived in the region we now know as Gaza, taunted Israel’s entire army, but was shockingly slain by a slingshot-wielding teenager, David, who had the temerity to cut off the giant’s head. That was an unbelievable spectacle for both on-looking armies! Before he became king of Israel, David, was very successful in destroying many other enemies of Israel. Moreover, The Lord granted him even greater such successes as king of Israel, and determined He would again rule over a greatly expanded Israel during The Millennial Reign age--the pending 5th age of history!
Ponder this: Samuel’s obedience in slaughtering Agag, effectively opened the spiritual door for The Lord to reveal His choice of David as the next king of Israel, long before Saul met his own demise!
Sennacherib, King of Assyria, taunted a fearful Israel, and blasphemed The Lord, Who eventually caused 185,000 of his soldiers to be mysteriously killed in one night, and him to die by the sword in the hands of his own sons, in his own land. (2 Kings 19).
Haman, descendant of Agag, plotted to slaughter all Jews in the kingdom of Persia. But he was hung on the very gallows he had built for Mordecai, a Jew who had raised his orphaned relative, Esther, who had become the Queen of Persia. (Esther 7).
Antiochus Epiphanes, King of Syria, forcefully prohibited the Jewish religion in Jerusalem, Judah, and desecrated The Lord’s Temple by sacrificing on its alter, a pig to Zeus (an abomination of desolation). He was eventually struck with an illness after a military campaign in Persia, and died humiliated and alone (1 Maccabees, Josephus).
These enemies of The Lord suffered a remarkably persistent pattern: destruction after defiance! They and countless others sat in what I call ‘the spiritual seat of Agag’. They all led militant or ideological opposition to The Lord's declared purposes for the land He had promised to Abraham, and to his seed born through Jacob, who was renamed Israel. Mind you, this promise was not made because Abraham’s seed would be righteous!! The Lord determined to fulfill His veiled strategy to be born as a man (Genesis 3:15), through the seed of Abraham. Only as a mortal man would He pay His declared price for the sins of every human who would, by faith, embrace His sacrifice as on their/our behalf. In light of the foreknown opposition (both human and satanic!) Jacob’s seed would face for this unique selection, The Lord pre-determined that all righteous Jews would, throughout eternity, be His priests in a promised new, eternal Jerusalem, on a new Earth. (Exodus 19:6) This determination presages His promise that every person will eventually be resurrected in an immortal, fully sentient body, to spend eternity on the promised, new Earth.
In recent times, other leaders—particularly those from militarized groups opposing Israel’s very existence—occupied the same spiritual seat of Agag. From history, and even in recent news reports of their ‘sins & wars’ against Israel 2, their fates echoed this same, old, persistent pattern that the whole world refused to recognize, but iteratively routinize in our world today! Will we ever learn??
----------
1 Ponder this: Agag, spelled backwards, is Gaga, which, when the second g is substituted with z, spells Gaza. Could the global failure to realize the UN’s original 2-state objective for Palestine (whatever the reasons) reflect something deeper—a spiritual inertia that has kept the spirit of Agag alive, and his seat occupied?
2 Might people's names sometimes shout what pre-written history ...whispers?
