DASHED EXPECTATIONS IN THE BIBLE

I love tracing certain themes throughout the Bible. For one, it is no surprise that the Bible is full of surprises for the personages in the narratives, some pleasant and others not so much. Just consider some of the times in Scripture when someone had high hopes only to be confronted with stark reality.

The first place where we encounter this happening is in the Garden of Eden when the hopes of Adam and Eve to become equal to God Himself turn into banishment from His presence instead and a life of toil.

Cain hopes to displace God's “favorite” Abel by simply removing him from the picture altogether, but instead he is the one who is removed.

The inhabitants of Babel expect to make a name for themselves by building a tower to heaven, but they also are scattered to the winds.

When Abraham gives his nephew Lot the choice of grazing land, Lot chooses the best land for himself. But that choice leads to him losing everything but his two daughters when Sodom is destroyed.

Esau trades in long-term for short-term gain by selling his birthright for a pot of stew and is bitterly disappointed when the blessing goes to Jacob instead.

Jacob, in turn, is tricked by Laban into working for seven years before he can claim Rachel as his bride, only to find on his wedding night that he has married her sister instead. In the end it all works out, but Jacob has to slave away for another seven years.

When Dinah, Jacob's daughter, is raped by Shechem, her brothers take revenge by tricking the Hivites into getting circumcised so that they can safely slaughter them. But instead of being praised by Jacob for their actions, he denounces them instead.

In a replay of the Cain and Abel story, Joseph's brothers sell him into slavery out of sibling jealousy. But their action only leads later to them bowing down to the vastly elevated Joseph as he had earlier dreamed they would.

And all that is just in the Book of Genesis. Moving on to the period of Israel's exodus from Egypt, we see:

The Jews in the wilderness grumble about having to eat manna all the time, and so God inundates them with quail. But their happiness turns to dread when God strikes them with plague before they have time to eat any of it.

Miriam wants to elevate her status to be the equal of Moses, but instead God inflicts her with leprosy to put her back in her place.

Balaam the prophet thinks that he will earn a great deal of money from the Moabites for cursing the Israelites. Instead, God makes him bless them and Balaam loses his commission.

Of course, there is the sad story of Moses who had led the people for decades only to find that he himself would be excluded from entering the Holy Land.

The Israelites are dealt a heavy blow after the miraculous conquest of Jericho when they are defeated themselves as they attack Ai, all due to the disobedience of one man in their camp.

The Gibeonites hatch what they feel is a clever plan to avoid being conquered like the other Canaanites. They pretend to be a distant tribe and trick Joshua into making a treaty with them. But when he finds out what has happened, he condemns them and their descendants to serve as slaves.

The book of Judges is also filled with dashed hopes, starting with the King Eglon of Moab who thinks he is going to get some inside information from Ehud regarding the Israelite troops, but all he gets is a dagger in the belly. This is followed by the events of Judges 4-5 in which three people get rude surprises: the Israelite commander Barak has to yield credit for victory over a Canaanite army to two women; the Canaanite general Sisera thinks he has safely escaped from the battle only to find that he has stumbled into the hands of a woman who will kill him while he is asleep; and Sisera's mother at home dreams of all the precious goods her son will bring home to her from the battle only to be soon rudely awakened to reality.

Then we can't forget the scene in which the lords of Philistine meet in a huge hall to celebrate a sacrifice to their god. They haul in the blinded Samson in order to make fun of him, but his performance literally brings down the house, killing everyone inside.

Even the Book of Ruth contains an example of dashed expectations when Naomi's nearest relative is given what he thinks is a great opportunity to increase his belongings. Then he learns that he will have to marry Ruth in order to get it and that the land will belong to her children rather than the ones he already has.

I will skip over the rest of the Old Testament since there entirely too many examples to even mention in passing. You might want to go through them yourself sometime to see how many times God frustrates the high hopes of those who wish to take a shortcut to success. But we see this same pattern in the New Testament narratives as well.

Sometimes Jesus encounters those who appear to be sincere in their approach to him, but he still needs to put them in their place and expose their errors directly. Just consider the man who begins his conversation with Jesus by calling him “good teacher.” I am sure that the man felt that this address would flatter Jesus, but it becomes quite obvious that Jesus did not take it in that light at all and needed to set the man straight instead. The same thing is true of the rich young ruler who was obviously looking for approval from Jesus for his exemplary life. But Jesus merely told him to sell all his possessions and give them to the poor, which was not the sort of reply he had expected.

However, the clearest examples of Jesus' attitude toward those who felt they were vastly more moral than those around them were the many times he openly exposed their hypocrisy and told parables that had as their punchline: “The first shall be last, and the last shall be first” or the equivalent thought.

I realized that I had actually experienced years ago a purely secular parallel to Jesus' various encounters with the scribes and Pharisees. It happened when I was a graduate student and attended one of our weekly evening department meetings. The special speaker was a visiting professor from UCLA who had gotten his PhD from Harvard. He also happened to be my previous undergraduate research professor whose recommendation was instrumental in getting me admitted to graduate school at the somewhat less prestigious institute I was attending.

That particular evening the full professors were all out of town and so the junior staff, somewhat fortified with a little alcohol before the meeting, apparently decided to strut their stuff before all of us students and demonstrate that they could more than hold their own with this professor from a more famous university. They began interrupting the speaker's talk with questions and objections to what he was saying. At first, the speaker politely addressed their remarks until he began to realize what they were up to. At that point, he feigned ignorance on a certain fact and tricked one of our professors into coming up with the answer, which turned out to be false as the speaker pointed out.

From that point on, all of us in the audience were firmly rooting for the speaker and glad to see our profs put in their place. It was hard for us to all keep a straight face when one of our staff made one last stab to win a point and the speaker merely said, “You're wrong. Think about it.” The talk concluded with the speaker thanking the staff, which he labeled as “cynical,” in the same manner as Jesus had called the Pharisees “hypocrites.”

It is easy to point to others who get the sort of unexpected disappointments they deserve. But we all need to realize that we are in the same situation ourselves and may get some rude awakenings from God if we are not careful. Just consider the following teachings in conclusion:

    “Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Proverbs 16:18)

    “So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall.” (I Corinthians 10:12)