Daily Devotional

God makes three promises to a people who have nothing to offer him. The first is abundance: windows of heaven opened and blessing poured out until there is no more need. The second is protection: “I will rebuke the devourer.” In an agrarian world your worst enemy is not an invading army but an insect or a blight, something small enough to be invisible and fast enough that a harvest you have watched grow for months disappears in a week. Pieter Verhoef notes that this promise addresses precisely the crop failure and drought the community was experiencing. God is not offering them a blessing in the abstract. He is offering to guard the exact thing they were most afraid of losing, the thing they had been trying to protect by holding back from him.

This is the quiet irony of the passage. The remnant withheld their firstfruits in order to secure their harvest, and the harvest failed anyway. What they could not protect by clenching their fists, God offered to protect by his own word. There is a category of loss no amount of planning can prevent, and everyone eventually meets it. The question is not whether you can guard your life. It is who you will ask to guard it.

The third promise is reputation: “all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a land of delight.” The remnant’s standing among the surrounding peoples was at a low point, low enough that they had been intermarrying and assimilating to establish themselves among their neighbors. God’s counsel is to stop building a name and start serving him, and let him handle the name. Jesus says the same thing in the Sermon on the Mount when he tells his disciples not to chase what the Gentiles chase but to seek first the kingdom and let the rest be added (Matthew 6:31-33). In abundance we see God’s generosity. In protection we see his sovereignty. In reputation we see his devotion, because he is not merely willing to bless his people, he is willing to attach his own reputation to theirs.