The mass graves of history, the horrors of the past, keep opening again, today. Why?
The mass graves of the past keep haunting us like ghosts. They have a story to tell. Perhaps a demand.
Today, as war rages on, claiming so many innocent people who deserve so much better, an ancient story opens up more terror from the past - with layers that insist we learn from what once was so that we hopefully do better when the next battle comes. Why else dig through this story if not to learn how to avoid internal, civil wars and how to hurt less and heal more? How not to hurl the blame but help each other?
That’s what’s happening in today’s biblical horror story - echoing today’s terrible war with the the wars of the past.
(and while on one hand this daily routine, this @belowthbiblebelt929 journey is a welcome distraction from the heartbreaking news it is also another chapter of the same story that is haunting our peoples and perhaps can one day, with enough of us claiming this trauma to heal it- can evolve?)
In today’s story swords slash the little security left in Judea in the aftermath of Jerusalem’s destruction by the Babylonians in the summer of 597 BCE. The long siege and battle left behind charred ruins of the once proud city. Several competing camps struggled for the leadership position, helping to shepherd the surviving few Judeans who were not killed or exiled as slaves. The man that Babylon put in charge was Gedaliah son of Ahikam, a mid size courtier with distinguished Judean roots and loyalty to Babylon.
Competing with him were the last relatives of the last king of Judah - determined to reclaim the Davidic throne and defy the occupation by Babylon. This group was led by Ishmael son of Nethaniah, a minor member of the royal household of Judah - but one of the few still alive. Not a good guy.
Under false pretenses, he and his band enter the fort where Gedaliah resides and murders him, along with every other Judean and Babylonian in view. The massacre happened on the third day of Tishrei, and was such a horror to the surviving Judeans everywhere that they made it into a public fast day - still practiced today: the Fast of Gedalia.
That’s not the worst of it. A day or so later, another group of Judeans, with torn clothes and ashes on their heads in mourning, who have traveled from beyond the Jordan river to honor their new governor and to offer support, arrives. Ishmael traps them and kills the whole group, except for ten who bribe him with promise of treasures they had hidden in nearby caves.
The ones slain are thrown into a mass grave, with the other bodies he had just murdered.
But it isn’t just any mass grave - it’s a historical pit that has already been haunted for a few generations:
וְהַבּ֗וֹר אֲשֶׁר֩ הִשְׁלִ֨יךְ שָׁ֤ם יִשְׁמָעֵאל֙ אֵ֣ת ׀ כׇּל־פִּגְרֵ֣י הָאֲנָשִׁ֗ים אֲשֶׁ֤ר הִכָּה֙ בְּיַד־גְּדַלְיָ֔הוּ ה֗וּא אֲשֶׁ֤ר עָשָׂה֙ הַמֶּ֣לֶךְ אָסָ֔א מִפְּנֵ֖י בַּעְשָׁ֣א מֶלֶךְ־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל אֹת֗וֹ מִלֵּ֛א יִשְׁמָעֵ֥אל בֶּן־נְתַנְיָ֖הוּ חֲלָלִֽים׃
“The pit into which Ishmael threw all the corpses of the men he had killed in the affair of Gedaliah was the one that King Asa had constructed on account of King Baasha of Israel. That was the one which Ishmael son of Nethaniah filled with corpses.”
Jeremiah 41:9
So what’s the story here? Why is the author of Jeremiah telling us this extra detail about the history of the tragic mass burial pit?
This pit holds history from an earlier civil war between the north and the south - the kingdoms of Israel and Judah.
Mizpah, where Gedaliah is murdered, is mentioned in 1 Kings 16:22, where the two kingdoms are at war.
When that particular round of attrition ended, King Asa of Judah used the ruins of Israelite fortifications to build Mizpah - an observation fort. The pit was known, all that was left of the moat that Israel had once built as defense against Judah.
Rabbi Benny Lau helps to unpack the context and why this history matters:
“Verses 7-9 describe the most sickening, bloodthirsty, and murderous act in all of Scripture. Nevertheless, as distasteful as it is, there seems to have been a "rational" motive for this massacre, based on Ishmael's presentation as a royal figure.
This expository note about the pit once used by King Asa of Judah takes us back to the wars between the kingdoms of Judah, led by the Davidic line, and Israel, descendants of the House of Saul.
King Asa reigned in Judah soon after the split into two kingdoms and during the first of the wars between them. The Book of Kings describes the war between Asa and Baasha, which set off the centuries-long war between the north and south, Israel and Judah.
Ishmael son of Nethaniah has been raised on tales of strife between Judah and Israel. He vividly recalls the stories of Israel’s attempts to conquer Judah, and the coalition formed by Israel and Aram to wage war against it. The time has come to settle accounts. Ishmael fills the pit dug by his distant forebear Asa with the bodies of the descendants of Baasha, who tried to eradicate the line of David; the tribe of Judah has the last laugh.”
History is complicated and who knows who will really have the last laugh? That ancient conflict in so many ways and beyond still felt today.
The fast of Gedaliah is what’s left of this particular pit story, still on our calendars.
It isn’t just a day of mourning about the loss of this short-lived lesser known leader but about the rage that radicals bring when instead of co-existence in the face of real shared danger they fight for power and weaken the community even further. That’s what the pit wants us to know.
The killing of Gedalia disintegrates the last hold on Jerusalem and whoever remains, Jeremiah among them, has to flee. But where?
That’s coming next.
Healing and hope.
Join me to talk about
Jeremiah & the Queen of Heaven, A Conversation about the Ancient Hebrew Goddess of Compassion
The book of Jeremiah is a literary masterpiece, painting evocative images crafted into metaphors of nuance and power. But what most stands out in Jeremiah is his vivid rendering of the agony of an abandoned heart.
Rev. Elizabeth M. Edman