FATE IN THE BIBLE

John O'Hara wrote a novel titled Appointment in Samarra based on an old tale retold below by Somerset Maugham from Death's viewpoint:

“There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, Master, just now when I was in the marketplace I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture, now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there Death will not find me. The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning? That was not a threatening gesture, I said, it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

The moral of the story is that it is impossible to escape your destined fate no matter how hard you try. And a similar story with the same theme is that of Oedipus, a foundling adopted by the king of Corinth who received a prophecy from the oracle of Delphi that he was fated to kill his father and marry his mother. To avoid that fate, he leaves Corinth for Thebes where he unwittingly kills his biological father and ends up marrying his widow, his own mother.

Notice that both of these stories come from pagan cultures and neither one contains any spiritual or ethical lesson to it or implies that these people deserved their punishments. Instead, they just echo the belief that blind fate is a powerful and inescapable force, and attempts to flee from it will only hasten your demise. We could also cite a more modern proverb of those who leave the frying pan only to fall into the fire. Turning to the world of the Bible, there are some passages which on the surface seem to convey the same message, but are in reality quite different in several ways. The Bible, especially the New Testament, is (a) much more interested in man's ultimate fate than his fate here on earth; (b) such a fate is not blindly determined but firmly under God's control; (c) there is always a way provided for avoiding ultimate doom; (d) and such fate is not randomly determined but closely tied into our moral and spiritual state.

Here are a few passages from the Bible which illustrate these distinctives:

Genesis 3 – In the Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve buy into the half truths Satan tells them. So they decide to disobey God's command in order to elevate their status on earth. It is that action which causes them to be driven from their ideal existence and from God's presence. In addition, they now no longer have access to the Tree of Life and thus begin to die from that point on.

Joshua 10 – This is another ironic narrative in which five kings feel they are safe hiding from the Israelites in a cave. Instead, it first turns into their prison from which they cannot escape and then ultimately as their mass tomb. But these are by no means innocent parties like the servant of the merchant of Baghdad since they had all ganged up to attack Joshua and his army.

Judges 4:17-22 – I have often cited the story of Sisera and Jael in other contexts, but here is another application of it. The defeated Canaanite general Sisera flees from the Israelites until he reaches the tent of Heber and his wife Jael, where he thinks he will be safe. Instead, Jael lulls him to sleep and then drives a tent peg into his head. This would seem to be another case of blind fate catching up to someone who was trying escape it. However, there is a definite moral and spiritual component to the story since Sisera represented the pagan nations that the Israelites were commanded to wipe out. That is why Jael is lauded as a heroine in the Bible.

Judges 19 – It is sometimes hard to find a true hero in the book of Judges since it is the story of downward progression in the life of Israel. But one can be forgiven for at first wanting to take pity on the nameless Levite in this story. After all, he is trying to get back home and is afraid of staying the night in a pagan city. So he travels on until he feels he is safe back in Israelite territory only to find himself threatened with homosexual rape by all the men of the town, who proceed to abuse his concubine all night long to the point that she dies.

This Levite seems to be the exact copy of the merchant's servant who fled from Baghdad only to meet his fate in Samarra. But there is a huge difference here once you look further into the character (or lack thereof) of the Levite. He callously throws his concubine (or secondary wife) to the lustful crowd to save his own skin; the next morning he sees her battered body lying at the doorstep and casually says, “Get up. Let's be on our way” as if nothing at all had happened; and finally he butchers her dead body into twelve pieces. This is no mere innocent party who inadvertently ran straight into trouble.

Ecclesiastes 6 – The teachings in the book of Ecclesiastes appear to echo the “Appointment in Samarra” story above in that the Teacher again and again bemoans the fact that everyone goes to the same ultimate fate whether they are good or bad, rich or poor, wise or foolish. Of course, all of his teachings and experiments in living are carried out with the limited perspective of what happens “under the sun,” (i.e. in this present world only). Thus, they only serve to demonstrate that if all that exists is our present life, there is no ultimate meaning to the world.

Proverbs 14:12 – “There is a way which seems right unto a man; But the end of it leads to death.” This illustrates the foolishness of trusting to your own wisdom instead of following God's leading. You may think that you will better your life, but it will only lead you down the path of destruction.

Isaiah 4 – This taunt song sung against the king of Babylon illustrates the folly of trying, as did Adam and Eve, to rival God in status and power. The king's grandiose attempts to “raise his throne above the stars of God” only lead to being brought down to the depths of the Pit instead.

Amos 5:18-20 – The prophet preaches to those fellow Jews who are always talking about looking forward to the day of the LORD. He warns them that due to their evil actions, that is the last thing they should be wanting since at that time their sins will catch up with them. The simile he uses to drive home that point resonates with the Samarra story somewhat: “It is...as if a man fled from a lion and a bear met him; or went into the house and leaned with his hand against the wall, and a serpent bit him.”

Matthew 16:25 – Here Jesus warns, “For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” In the context of this teaching, He is cautioning his followers that attempts to escape death by distancing themselves from Him will paradoxically lead ultimately to their eventual eternal destruction.

Acts 28:1-6 – This narrative provides an interesting example of even the pagans of Malta believing in final justice, not blind fate, catching up to a wrongdoer. They see Paul, whom they know is a Roman prisoner, being bitten by a snake and remark, “No doubt this man is a murderer. Though he has escaped from the sea, justice has not allowed him to live.” In other words, in trying to escape drowning he merely ran into an even worse death.

James 5:3 – James denounces those who amass great hordes of riches in an attempt to assure that they will have a long and prosperous life. But in fact they are doing just the opposite since those rusty and moth-eaten goods which should have been shared earlier with the needy will be the very evidence used against them at the Last Judgment. Jesus gave a similar example in his parable of the farmer who built bigger and bigger barns to store much more produce that he could ever need in life rather than sharing it with others.

In contrast, I think of Andrew Carnegie, whose life could be divided into two periods. In the first, he spent all his efforts accumulating vast wealth. Then in the last part of his life, he spent all his efforts giving it away to worthy causes.

In conclusion, none of the above biblical passages indicates a belief in a blind Fate which determines one's destiny regardless of how one acts or what one believes. A possible problem passage in that regard is Romans 9 in which one could read in the idea that God randomly selects some people for destruction and others for salvation. But this whole subject of predestination is much too large to tackle in this brief post.