Not A Day For A Fight

02.26.13

Numbers 20.21 21 Thus Edom refused to give Israel passage through his territory, so Israel turned away from him. (ESV)

Not every encounter turned into a battle – this time Israel just turned and walked away. In patriarchal history, Edom was Esau, the brother of Jacob; and Edom was the nation that had descended from Esau: Isaac’s favorite son.

The relationship between Esau and Jacob had been severely strained when Jacob deceived Esau over the birthright and obtained Isaac’s blessing that should have been Esau’s (Genesis 25, 27 & 28). (Esau banked on being daddy’s favorite.) And the strained relationship between these two brothers carried over into their descendants and endured. Edom was no fan of Israel.

To me, it is both interesting and baffling how familial dispute can last and last. You’d think family would get their act together at some point and just let the thing go, but that is often not the case. More often because of the dysfunction in families, the smallest things can be the fly that spoils the ointment for decades.

Family is supposed to be the part of life where one’s basic abilities for social interaction are shaped and formed. Family is where we’re supposed to learn how to get along, to share, and to have compassion and empathy. But so often family is a cesspool of some of the most wicked behavior imaginable. (If this is how families are in the Biblical model, I can’t imagine what things are like apart from that.) Not every family is this way but many are: there is favoritism,  jealousy, envy, spite, revenge and the whole package. God’s intention for the family has been hopelessly marred by sin.

And so on this day, instead of picking a fight, Israel turned and walked away. Nothing changed and down the road their enmity with Edom only intensified; but on this day, Israel just turned and walked away.

Lessons for me are simply: it is wise to choose carefully the hill I want to die on – not every time am I going to get my way, no matter how intensely I think I should. It is better for me not to cave to instigation – not every time a family member pushes my buttons do I have to react as I am accustomed (or as they expect me to). I must learn to make my way in God’s family and not let the content and custom of my past dictate how I’m going to respond in the present (sometimes it’s easier to love those who didn’t know me when…).

I will pray for my relatives but I will do my best to model godliness and goodness in my own family; the Scripture doesn’t say, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” lightly.

And Israel acted nobly that day – they simply swallowed their pride and walked away. It could’ve been a lot worse but it didn’t have to be and in this instance it wasn’t. God isn’t mentioned in this little encounter but I think His presence was felt: that day wasn’t a day for a fight…