So Jehoiachin put aside his prison clothes and for the rest of his life ate regularly at the king’s table.
2 Kings 25:29 (NIV)

There are natural waypoints on life’s road in which a season of life ends. Another begins. These are often celebrated rites of passage.

Graduations
Career
Weddings
Childbirth
Retirement

There are unexpected waypoints along the journey, as well. The outcome is the same. Life will never be the same. They arrive with tragedy, pain, and loss. Sometimes they are the inevitable consequence. Other times, they are simply the tragic realities of human beings living in a fallen world that is given to sin, sickness, tragedy, and death.

Terminal diagnosis
Accident
Divorce
Job loss
Financial loss
Incapacitation
Death

Today, we reach the end of Kings. This climactic waypoint in the journey of the Hebrew people falls into the latter category. The relatively short chapter truncates years of horrific human events. Babylon besieged Jerusalem for years. Unable to get food or supplies into the city, Jeremiah’s Lamentations describe mothers eating the flesh of their own children to survive.

King Zedekiah, having failed to make a successful breakout, is forced to watch the Babylonians violently execute his own sons. Then they pluck out his eyes before taking him into exile in Babylon. He will live the rest of his life with the execution of his own sons as the last thing he saw on earth.

The glorious temple that Solomon so famously built in 1 Kings 7, at the height of Israel and Judah’s history, is dismantled. The furnishings and precious pieces of the sacrificial system are hauled back to Babylon as treasure. The temple itself is burned and reduced to rubble.

The rag-tag remnant of refugees who escape exile attempt one more desperate coup against the puppet king that Babylon left behind. They then flee to Egypt. Sit with that for a moment. The Hebrew people’s journey began with God delivering them out of slavery in Egypt. Now, many of them have no choice but to return to the land of their forefathers’ slavemasters.

Lives are in ashes and ruin. Tens of thousands are in exile, living as strangers in a strange land.

Sometimes, along this life journey, I wake up to find that life will never be the same. But I’m not sure how this happened. I become angry. I want someone, anyone, to blame – even if it’s God. I never wanted it this. I never asked for this. It’s not fair. I don’t deserve this. I can’t see even a sliver of hope through the dark cloud of my circumstances, my grief, the despair.

What’s most fascinating for me about the end of Kings is the last four verses. It’s like the extra little scene that Marvel throws in after the end of the credits of one of their superhero movies. The narrator shifts focus from the rubble of Jerusalem to Judah’s exiled King Jehoiachin. He is released from his Babylonian prison cell. He removes his prison clothes. The Babylonian king lifts him to a place of honor. For the rest of his life, he lives with honor and dines at the table of the king.

In the quiet this morning, I couldn’t help but think of David’s psalms. Even in the psalms that describe David’s darkest moments, when David is singing the blues, he always ends his song with a refrain of praise and trust. Even the narrator of Kings wants me to feel a hint of hope in this – the darkest hour of their people.

What stays with me this morning is the distance between the last thing Zedekiah sees and the last thing the book lets me see. Zedekiah watches his sons die. I watch another man of David’s house receive a meal. Kings gives the horror its full weight and still asks me to stay for those four small verses.

Looking back, there are waypoints in my journey at which I can name, with great precision, what ended. I know the day the call came, the day the door closed, the last time everyone was at the same table. Hope is harder to date. In today’s chapter, it looks like a word spoken kindly to someone long accustomed to orders. A clean set of clothes. Enough to eat today, with the promise of enough tomorrow. The meal is in Babylon, which means mercy can reach a person while they are still living in the place they wish they could leave.

This also reminds me that sometimes the seat at the table is mine to give. Someone whose life has narrowed to a diagnosis, a failure, or a loss may need to hear their name spoken with affection again. They may need an invitation that will still stand next week. The final act in this long book about power is a king using his power to make room for someone. That is a very ordinary thing for me to do today, if I will but have eyes to see the opportunity and the courage to act.

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