MIRACLE IN AN IRISH BOG

 by adam harbinson

An Irish bulldozer driver was digging up bogland to make potting compost soil somewhere in Ireland's Midlands when, ‘Just beyond the bucket of my bulldozer,’ he said, ‘I spotted something.’ That ‘something’ turned out to be a book of psalms in a vellum binding that was buried in the bog for over a thousand years. It was so flimsy that the experts reckoned it might take months to figure out a way to separate its 20 pages without destroying them.

‘This is really a miracle find,’ said Pat Wallace, director of the National Museum of Ireland. ‘For it to have survived buried in a bog at all is miraculous, but for it to be spotted and unearthed when it could so easily have been destroyed is incalculably more amazing.’ And then he added, ‘Even if the bog owner had left it exposed overnight, it would have dried out and just vanished; blown away.’

A couple of days before the archaeological find was reported, a friend of mine sent me a prayer letter of sorts that wa’s circulating the Jewish world. A rabbi was urging Jewish people around the world to pray using his interpretation of Psalm 83, and guess what. Yes, the 1200 year old book of Psalms that was found in an Irish bog was lying open at Psalm 83. Coincidence? Maybe.

The thing that stands out in Psalm 83 is that it appears to be a prophecy that one day, a confederacy of states will arise and commit themselves to the complete destruction of Israel. ‘Come,’ they say, ‘let us destroy them as a nation, that the name of Israel will be remembered no more.’ Now that’s another odd thing, for a Lebanese terrorist leader recently said, ‘A hundred years ago there was no nation of Israel, and in a few years time there will be none again. It is at best a temporary nation.’

The ancient peoples mentioned in Psalm 83 lived in areas where Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and southern Lebanon are located today. Another group, the Philistines, lived mainly along the coastal plain in the area of the modern Gaza Strip, experts think this refers to the Palestinians whose contemporary name is derived from the name of Israel’s ancient enemy – the Philistines.

It’s interesting that Christian and Jewish biblical scholars alike, agree that there’s no evidence that such an alliance ever existed before now. Could this be a prophetic warning of impending destruction? If so, Israel’s politicians and military men would do well to listen to their biblical scholars, for they could point them to a number of precedents in their Scriptures.

One classic story they would find is in 2 Chronicles 20, when Jehoshaphat was king, about 900 BC. A vast army was approaching and the king, alarmed as he was, ‘resolved to enquire of the Lord.’ That’s lesson number one. Then he proclaimed a fast and all the people of Judah gathered to hear what their king had to say about it. That’s what the rabbi was attempting.

And Jehoshaphat prayed: ‘O Lord, you rule over all the kingdoms. Power and might are in your hand. No one can stand against you. If calamity comes we will stand before this temple and cry out to you and you will hear us and save us.’ And then he concluded, ‘We do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you.’

That’s lesson number two, and that’s where the leaders of Israel have got it wrong. They are relying on their own military might, backed by a trigger-happy Texan half a world away. Maybe we should all pray the words of Psalm 83. And maybe we should pray the prayer of Jehoshaphat. Not just because of our concern for the women and children in Israel and Lebanon, but also because a conflagration that could envelop the entire world could develop if the situation is allowed to get out of hand.

Isn’t it funny what an Irish labourer can turn up in a bog?