FALLING INTO A PIT OF ONE'S OWN MAKING: PART 2

 

Part 1 of this subject considered all the teachings in the Bible relating to the sort of poetic justice that happens to those who attempt to trick others. In addition, there are also many notable examples of this sort of retribution occurring to historical personages portrayed in Scripture. In some of these cases, a sinful party attempts to set a trap for an innocent person, only to fall into it themselves. However, there are also cases in which the trickster is actually the righteous party, and his “victim” falls for the ruse only due to their own twisted cleverness. Any confidence man will tell you that there are two types of people most likely to fall for a con game: the naively innocent and those with a touch of larceny in their souls. That is why Jesus taught in Matthew 10:16: “Be harmless (or innocent) as doves and wise as serpents.”

Genesis 3 This sort of scenario actually begins in the Garden of Eden when Satan successfully tricks Adam and Eve into disobeying God's one prohibition in order to destroy them. But rather than that being the end of the story, God foretells a future time when Eve's offspring, the Messiah, will crush Satan's head and he will be destroyed instead.

Book of Job Satan attempts the same sort of trick on God Himself when he proposes a test intended to show that the only reason people worship God is because they want to get something out of it for themselves. Somewhat surprisingly, God agrees to using Job as a test case. In the end, of course, it is Satan who is tricked when Job refuses to deny God no matter what agonies he is put through. Thus, it stands as a powerful witness even for us today and for all time.

Numbers 22 The seer Balaam is approached by some Moabite ambassadors who offer to pay him a handsome sum of money if he will come with them and pronounce a curse on the Israelites. God first warns him not to go but then allows him to in order to carry out a divine purpose. Whenever Balaam tries to curse the Jews, a blessing comes out of his mouth instead. But Balaam apparently is determined to convince or trick God into relenting so that he can collect his payment. Unfortunately for him, blessings continue to come until the Moabites dismiss him without a dime. This is one of several complicated cases in which the ultimate trickster turns out to be God or one of his servants.

The Jacob Cycle: Genesis 25-50 This huge chunk of Scripture turns out to be the story of one party after another attempting to deceive someone and then getting tricked in return.

Jacob begins by tricking his brother Esau out of the birthright. When Esau finds out, Jacob has to flee for his life, leaving his family and home behind. This initial act of deception continues haunt Jacob, and he soon becomes the victim of Laban who tricks him into marrying Leah instead of his true love Rachel. This is accomplished by the same sort of mistaken identity trick that Jacob had played on his father in order to get the birthright.

What follows is a sort of cat-and-mouse game in which Jacob and Laban attempt to outdo one another in forcing unfavorable business arrangements on the other party. And as Jacob leaves Laban, Rachel in effect steals Laban's birthright from him in the form of the household gods, just as Jacob himself had stolen Esau's birthright. That deception almost boomeranged on Rachel by costing her life (Genesis 31:32). And actually, some scholars propose that her subsequent early death was due to the curse that Jacob inadvertently put on her.

When Jacob returns to Canaan and has a reunion with Esau, he is so afraid of what Esau will do to him that he tries to butter him up with some gifts. But it doesn't appear to be necessary as Esau is apparently pleased to see him again. But as a trickster himself, Jacob thinks that Esau will take revenge once they all go back to Esau's land and people. Thus, Jacob practices one more trick on Esau by promising to follow him while heading off into another direction. In that way, Jacob tricks himself out of his brother's fellowship for many years until their eventual meeting at Isaac's funeral.

The deceptions do not stop there, however, in that Jacob's own sons cover up their actions in selling Joseph into slavery by fooling Jacob using a garment of Joseph. This, of course, is a direct borrowing of the deception that Jacob had used earlier to fool his father by wearing Esau's clothing.

One of the brothers, Judah, has uncommonly bad fortune when two of his sons die at God's hand after marrying a woman named Tamar. Judah is reluctant to give her to his remaining son, as required by law, and so he puts her off by saying that his son is too young to marry yet. However, Tamar finds out that Judah has no intention to let her marry. She then tricks him by disguising herself as a prostitute, and Judah provides her with a child himself. Judah becomes righteously indignant when he finds that Tamar is pregnant and wants to have her stoned until she reveals that he is the father of the child. He repents of his actions and admits that she was more righteous than he was.

Getting back to Joseph, when he is reunited with his brothers, it is his turn to be the trickster. He carries out an elaborate ruse by pretending to be an Egyptian and plays several tricks on his brothers to test whether they have changed their behavior over the years, which they have.

Joshua 9 When the Israelites begin to conquer the land of Canaan, the Gibeonites see how successful they have been since God was with them. Therefore they concoct a clever scheme to prevent them from being conquered in turn. They dress up in old clothes and approach Joshua with the tale that they had come from a very far land in order to make a treaty with the Jews. Joshua and the leaders are taken in by their lie and fall into their trap. However, when Joshua finds that he has been tricked and can't go back on his word by slaughtering them, he turns all the Gibeonites and their descendants into permanent slaves to serve the congregation. Thus, the Gibeonites' trick may have saved their lives, but it resulted in all of them losing their freedom instead.

Judges 3 The first judge we encounter in this book is Ehud, a left-handed assassin who has a special sword made that will fit inconspicuously into the right side of his clothing. He sets a trap for the fat king of Moab, Eglon. After probably being frisked by the guards as he enters the Moabite palace (keep in mind that Eglon's left side was where they would have expected the weapon to be), he whispers to the king that God has a secret message for him. Hoping that he will gain some inside information allowing him to conquer the Israelite, Eglon dismisses the guards and ushers Ehud into his royal bathroom where they can talk without being overheard. In that way, Eglon is literally walking into a trap he is inadvertently setting for himself since it allows Ehud to kill him and escape the palace undetected.

Judges 16 Trickery also plays a great part in the story of the last judge in the book, Samson. In this chapter, Delilah colludes with the Philistines to trick Samson into giving up the secret of his great strength. That results in the capture and blinding of Samson. But instead of eliminating the threat from him permanently, it paradoxically leads to Samson wreaking the largest amount of destruction on the Philistines of his career when he brings down the pillars of the room in which they had chained him to mock him.

I Samuel 21 The first sign of David's propensity for trickery is seen in this chapter in two episodes. First, he tells a series of lies to the priest Ahimelech to trick him into giving his food and weapon. That subterfuge is successful for David but results in the priests' death later, as described below. Next, is the story of David's flight to Gath where he soon begins to feel his life is in danger. So he pretends to be crazy, and the people there leave him alone.

I Samuel 22-31 Technically speaking, the sad case of King Saul is not an example of any sort of trickery, but it does illustrate well the literal truth of Jesus' saying in Matthew 26:52: “All who take up the sword will perish by the sword.” Saul has the priests of God slaughtered with the sword after sitting down under a tamarisk tree (ch. 22) and meets his own doom by the sword followed by his body being buried under another tamarisk tree (ch. 31). The tell-tale detail of the particular kind of tree is an indication that this was no mere accident; it was engineered by God Himself so that the very weapons that Saul employed against God's servants would be used against him in the end.

I Samuel 27 shows us another example of David's trickery as he enters into the pay of the Philistines where he actually attacks their own cities while saying that he was out conquering the Israelites instead. David's pattern of deception will soon catch up with him, however, as seen in the next example.

I Samuel 11-12 relates the well-known story of David's seduction of Bathsheba followed by a number of schemes he sets to cover up her subsequent pregnancy. When none of them works, he finally resorts to violence by tricking Uriah into being left at the mercy of the enemy. The prophet Nathan traps David into admitting his sin using a fabricated parable which causes David to rise in a fit of righteous indignation and unknowingly condemn himself for his sin, as did Judah before him. The upshot of God's condemnation is that whereas David had destroyed the unity of Uriah's family, David himself will find his own family splintered into pieces. One of those subsequent examples is given next.

II Samuel 13:1-10 Amnon lures his half-sister Tamar into his clutches by tricking her into coming to his bedroom alone, where he rapes her. Her full brother Absalom bides his time and we see later in the same chapter that he in turn lures Amnon under false pretenses to his house where Amnon is murdered. Neither the trickster or the victim is innocent in this case.

I Kings 11 Even the “wise” King Solomon is not above falling into a trap that he himself set by bringing in a bevy of foreign beauties into his royal harem. First he falls for their charms and then for the lure of their pagan gods.

Daniel 6 During the Exile, the theme of a trickster being tricked continues. A group of Persian leaders become jealous of Daniel's power and so they set a trap for him. They convince King Darius to issue a decree stating that no one is to pray to anyone but the king himself; otherwise they will be thrown into the lion's den. When Daniel survives that ordeal, it is Daniel's accusers who are thrown into the trap they had set instead.

Book of Esther This whole story involves the plotting of the evil Haman to seek revenge on Mordecai and all the Jews in the Persian Empire. As in the case of Daniel, it is accomplished by convincing a rather weak king to issue a decree. Through God's providence, however, the plot backfires, leading to the Jews being able to seek revenge on their enemies instead. And Haman himself is hanged on the very gallows that he had constructed for Mordecai.

Book of Nehemiah This is the account of one attempt after another by the enemies of the returning Israelites to prevent the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem. They do not go about their nefarious schemes directly by force, but resort to one subterfuge after another directed mainly at Nehemiah himself. For more details as well as my personal experiences related to Nehemiah's response, see my series of posts on this OT book. Not only do all of these traps fail miserably, they only serve to bolster the resolve of Nehemiah and the Jews to complete their task.

The Gospels I will not review all of the times during Jesus' encounters when the text says that his enemies approached him with the idea in mind of testing and trapping him. But in each case, these hypocritical religious leaders end up being publicly shown up for their devious behavior or lack of knowledge of the Scriptures. No wonder that they hatched up the underhanded plan for putting Jesus out of their hair forever. But that plan backfired when his death paradoxically brought back his Spirit in power, and the whole temple and its sacrificial system to which the religious leaders were associated came crashing down around them a generation later.