What do you do when the Word serves as your indictment? What do you do when the Word, rather than proclaiming a word of peace and hope, proclaims a word of hopelessness and destruction? What happens during the dark night of the soul (as Luther would call it, anfechtung), when the walls begin to close in and our own voice starts to echo through the chambers of our mind?
"For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil will not sojourn with you. The boastful will not stand before your eyes; you hate all evildoers. You destroy those who speak lies; the LORD abhors the bloodthirsty and deceitful."
and then... "The LORD has done what he purposed, he has carried out his threat; he ordained long ago, he has demolished without pity; he has made the eney rejoice over you, and exalted the might of your foes."
These two, taken together, illuminate a chilling reality for the people of Israel and, indeed, illuminate our lives in a way that brings us directly to the dark night of the soul. In the depths of despair, we see God to blame for the destruction we see around us. Did God purpose that Israel would be blotted out? Was that really how it happened? Or did God, seeing the Israelites turning away, turning toward themselves and their own righteousness for salvation, determine that the only way to bring them back to Godself was to destroy the object of their worship? How often do we find the objects of our adoration crumbling even as we hold them? God is certainly a jealous God, but God is also merciful. Behind the destruction, our grasp on the things that do not save is released so that we may grasp the robe of Christ, being healed, being saved, being resurrected to new life.
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