Page 21 - The Plain Truth Spring-Summer 2026

I went on the mission the Lord assigned me. I completely
destroyed the Amalekites and brought back Agag their king.
The soldiers took sheep and cattle from the plunder, the
best of what was devoted to God, in order to sacrifice them
to the Lord your God at Gilgal’ (15:20-21).
His desperate attempt at extricating himself is laughable.
It’s a bit like a small child caught with its hand in a cookie
jar, or a young lad trying to conceal the football lying
inches from a broken greenhouse window.
It’s bad enough for God’s people to disobey him, without
making things worse by lying about it!
There’s humour, too, in Elijah’s sarcastic teasing of
Photo Credit: sweet publishing/freebibleimages.org
the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18:27-29. ‘At noon Elijah
mocked them, saying, “Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he
is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey,
It’s as if, by some extraordinary sleight of hand, the land or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.” And
of beatings, hard labour and infanticide not only fed them they cried aloud and cut themselves … until the blood
well, but has now become ‘a land flowing with milk and gushed out upon them … but there was no voice. No one
honey’ – the ultimate promised land! answered; no one paid attention’ (ESV). Elijah’s tongue-
Can they really have forgotten the fact that they were in-cheek taunting comically reveals the inability of the false
worked ruthlessly, treated harshly and forcibly made to god Baal to do anything his prophets ask.
maintain an almost Stalinist quota of bricks? That their
children were drowned in the River Nile, or that God had Hoist by his own petard
fed them with manna and quail? Just as our words can be used to encourage, exhort, mock or
The food in Egypt was either extraordinarily good, or rebuke, so they can also get us into trouble. In Esther 6 we
the Israelites’ memory extraordinarily bad! see how the evil Haman, delighted to be asked by King
And so, while life in Egypt was apparently a bowl of Xerxes what should be done to ‘honour the man the king
cherries, their diet in the desert was mainly sour grapes! loves’, assumes that the king wants to honour him!
It’s what happens when God’s people fail to trust Him for So he answers his sovereign, saying, ‘Have them bring
the future because they’ve forgotten how He’s helped them a royal robe the king has worn and a horse the king has
in the past. ridden, one with a royal crest placed on its head’, with
I wonder, do we do the same? The lesson for us, surely, a noble prince ‘proclaiming before him, “This is what is
is to look forwards in faith, remembering how God has led done for the man the king delights to honour!”’
us safely in the past. If he did it then, he can do it now. The king concurs with Haman’s advice, commanding
him to do all this for Mordecai the Jew – Haman’s nemesis.
Excuses, excuses One can only imagine how Haman felt when he realised Photo Credit: sweet publishing/freebibleimages.org
The Israelites’ faulty memory and skewed logic can that things had gone pear-shaped, leaving him looking like
also be seen when, contrary to God’s instructions, King a lemon. The dramatic irony doesn’t end there, however.
Saul spared Agag and the best of the sheep and cattle, Instead, Haman perishes on the very pole he’d erected for
though everything that was despised and weak was his arch-enemy Mordecai – his brutal death preceded by
totally destroyed. a somewhat farcical attempt at getting the Jewish Queen
So, when Samuel confronts Saul, Saul says, ‘The Lord Esther onside.
bless you! I have carried out the Lord’s instructions’ (1 Unfortunately for
Samuel 15:13). But Samuel, knowing that Saul hasn’t, asks Haman, 'operation
with heavy irony, ‘What then is this bleating of sheep in my olive branch' fails to
ears? What is this lowing of cattle that I hear?’ Unwilling to bear fruit. So when an
admit his guilt, Saul replies, ‘But I did obey the LORD… angry Xerxes enters the
banqueting hall and sees
Haman ‘falling on the
couch where Esther was
reclining’, the furious
king yells, ‘Will he
even molest the queen
while she is with me in
the house?’
Though we might see the humour in the situation, the
consequences for Haman are no laughing matter!
The man who lived the latter part of his life seeking the
genocide of God’s people dies violently instead, vanquished
by the very people he sought to slay.
The joke, this time, is truly on him. ,

Find us online at www.plain-truth.org.uk Spring-Summer 2026 The Plain Truth 21