Matthew 2:13-23 – God’s (VERY) Mysterious Ways

At first glance, this passage seems to merely reiterate a number of things we’ve already discovered about God. God communicates to his people through dreams and through his prophets. God’s plan is unalterable regardless of how much man or Satan try to interfere. And God protected Jesus so that he was able to accomplish the Father’s eternal purpose: the salvation of humanity from their sins. But upon second glance, this passage reveals something about God that isn’t so easily understood and can test us when we think of praising his name: in this world directed and controlled by God, suffering and evil still exist.

The Bible doesn’t tell us how many children Herod murdered in his attempt to kill Jesus but it would be safe to assume it was a considerable number. It is also probably safe to assume that, since Jeremiah prophesied about this event some 600 years before it occurred, Herod’s infanticide didn’t take God by surprise. It also seems reasonable to assume that God wasn’t taken by surprise when Pharaoh threw all the male Israelite children into the Nile some 1,500 years earlier. When I realize that God allowed such evil to be perpetrated I can struggle knowing how to pray,

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

And I suspect I’m not alone. Many of us have asked the question, “If God is all-good and all-powerful, then how can he allow evil to occur?” I suspect very few of us, if any, are really able to answer that question very well. Certainly, many of us are able to provide a very logical response; we point to the possibility of evil as a necessity for a world that allows for human freedom, or, if you don’t allow for human freedom, you have a different answer to the problem of evil. In either case, no logical answer seems to be very pertinent when you are holding your dead child in your arms. Our logical constructs, when confronted with evil and suffering, are usually stressed to their breaking points. When it comes to Pharaoh’s and Herod’s infanticide, most of us have a logical reason why God allowed it, including at the very least that Moses and Jesus were spared because they were saviors for their people. But, if we were one of those parents in Egypt or Bethlehem with non-messianic children, we might have something else to say. An immediate experience of evil and suffering realizes their once distant reality. And, when it comes to prayer, we might have difficulty praying,

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Pain, suffering, and evil usually send me to the book of Job. Job encountered quite a bit of suffering though he never knew why. But we, the readers of Job, are given a peek behind the curtain. We see that Satan got approval from God to beat the tar out of Job, kill his children, and take his wealth (Job 1:6-12; 2:1-6). Yet, even with the curtain pulled back ever so slightly, we are still troubled.

I used to think the book of Job dealt head-on with the question of suffering. Job’s life was shown to us so we would know that suffering comes even to the righteous. As true as that might be, I don’t think it’s the primary purpose of the book of Job. I’ve read through the Bible — from Genesis to Revelation — a number of times and I’ve noticed something quite interesting. A simple formula seems to run throughout all of the books from Genesis to Esther: follow God’s commandments and you will prosper; ignore God and you will suffer. Rarely does this formula not hold true (Pharaoh killing Israelite children is one exception). But when Esther concludes and we start reading the Wisdom books, the first thing we encounter is Job who, even though he did all the right things, encountered horrible suffering. This fairly major transition between Esther and Job has caused me to reconsider the purpose of the book of Job.

Maybe Job isn’t the one on trial. Maybe God is. Maybe Job and Job’s wife are the prosecutors. Maybe Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu, are the defense counsel. And maybe we the readers are the jury. The prosecutors accuse God of not behaving the way they thought he should; Job complained that the old formula didn’t work: he hadn’t done anything to deserve his suffering. And Job’s wife gave up and said that Job should curse God and die. The defense attorneys, Eliphaz, Bildad, Zophar, and Elihu, in one way or the other, defend the old formula and say that Job must have done something wrong because God doesn’t harm good people. But when the defendant shows up — God speaks out of the whirlwind, (the fact that it’s a whirlwind should tell you something, but that is best left for another day) — we see that both the prosecutors and the defense attorneys were wrong. They were only willing to accept their version of God: he always and only repays good for good and evil for evil. Their version of God didn’t allow for God’s ways to be very mysterious and beyond “our pay grade.” God ignores his defense attorneys and asks the main prosecutor, Job, a lot of questions. Then, when God is done speaking, Job answered the Lord and said,

I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted…
…I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know…
…I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:2-6)

When he was finally confronted with the God of the universe — his creator and redeemer — Job knew that his accusations and questions were meaningless and empty. Every accusation of his and every defense given disappeared when confronted with the presence of God. Job experienced deep pain and suffering, but his rational arguments and the God-in-the-box thinking were insufficient in the face of his experiential need. It was only when Job saw God for himself — when he encountered the presence of God — that his accusations disappeared; the experience of meeting God made void his questions. While Job still wasn’t able to answer why he encountered such suffering — and the Israelites in Egypt and Bethlehem were not able to answer why their babies died — the presence of God was enough for Job to trust God’s purposes even though they lie beyond his comprehension.

Just for kicks and giggles, imagine that there is no all-good and all-powerful God in control over the universe. And if that were the case, then there would be no possible answer to the problem of evil and suffering. It would be as Richard Dawkins has written, “The universe we observe, has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music” (Dawkins, Rivers out of Eden, 131-132). In Dawkins’s universe, Job’s suffering and the infanticides of Pharaoh and Herod are simply events that have taken place; they are neither good nor evil, they just are. So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that we know there is evil in the universe; we have experienced it and we even cause it. And yet, while we may not understand how that evil can coexist with an all-good and all-powerful God, we see enough of God to know that he is trustworthy. His Word speaks endlessly about God’s lovingkindness, and when he came to earth in the form of a servant, we saw how Jesus cared for the poor, the downtrodden, the alien, the outcast, and the forgotten. And we know, even if we don’t quite comprehend it, that God is just, for his word tells us that, “God will bring every deed into judgment, with every secret thing, whether good or evil” (Ecclesiastes 12:14).

Certainly, this passage in Matthew reveals God’s triumph: the prophesied savior of humanity was protected so that he was able to fulfill God’s eternal will on earth. But in the midst of God’s triumph, we find ourselves standing on the shaky end of the branch of our rational belief. We look around and realize we don’t know what to do and we don’t know where to go. It is at that point that we must trust God. Even though our eye or our reason may not see him, he is there and he is good. I think that is the primary point of the book of Job. I also think that is the very point Matthew is making when he included this story. Matthew wants us to know we can trust God in the most awful of circumstances. He wants us to know we can still pray,

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

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