It’s good to be back home.  Back in a land of hills and valleys; of forests and vineyards; of rain and sunshine.  When the Assyrians finally captured Samaria, they carried us all into exile, scattering us right across their empire.  That was their policy: split up each nation into small groups and spread them everywhere, then they won’t ever get organised enough to rebel.

I was taken to a small town near the Habor River.  The number of exiles sent to each place was carefully chosen so that we knew just enough people in the town to feel almost at home, but at the same time were surrounded by enough other people that we would feel outnumbered, intimidated and uncomfortable.

I spent a year there and I was glad to leave.

And now, back here in Israel, I have an important job to do.

When the Assyrians took us away, they brought in people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and settled them throughout our cities.  As you can imagine, when they arrived, they lived in the same way as they were used to living in their own countries – and that completely ignored Yahweh, the God of Israel, which is a really bad idea.

New idols were springing up everywhere.  The men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, the men of Cuth made Nergal, the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avvites made Nibhaz and Tartak; and the Sepharvites burned their children in the fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech, the gods of Sepharvaim.

You get the picture.  It was a free-for-all.  But it didn’t include Yahweh.

Well, everything seemed to be going fine, until lions started killing some of the people.  Of course, I can’t say for sure that it was Yahweh who did it – it may have been just that having fewer people in the land had allowed the number of lions to increase – but they were certain it must be because they weren’t worshipping the local god properly.  So they made enquiries and found out that his name was Yahweh.

That was when an urgent call came to bring back one of the priests who had been carried away, and I was the lucky one chosen.

It is delightful to be back in Israel, even if most of the people here now speak languages I can’t understand.  At least I am back in Israel, the land where I was born.

Communicating has been a bit of a problem too.  I suppose one of the reasons I was chosen is that I speak a few languages quite well, including Aramaic, and fortunately quite a few of the new inhabitants speak Aramaic, so I can converse reasonably with them, at least.

The afternoon I arrived in Bethel, the news had just arrived that a man had been killed by a lion that very morning.  It made me popular, I can tell you: everyone was hanging on my every word, expecting me to tell them how to solve the problem – and hurry up about it!

There was a feast that night, and straight away they asked me if Yahweh had any requirements for the food they should eat.  I was able to reassure them that although some people put restrictions on what people could eat and claimed that the rules came from Yahweh, we had not paid much attention to any rules like that in modern times, and, well, I was still alive!

All this expectation put a lot of pressure on me, too.  Of course I can teach them how to worship Yahweh alright – no-one better – but will that solve the problem?

It was all very well to agree that their failure to worship Yahweh must be the problem when I was a long way away and happy to grasp at any opportunity to get back home, even if only for a while, but it was quite another matter standing in front of an audience who expected me to solve the lion problem in double-quick time.  And I wasn’t sure that I could!  All I could do was to teach them about Yahweh and hope that the problem would go away – whatever the reason for it might be.

Thankfully, I had done some preparation on the way, writing myself some lists of things that I needed to teach them about worshipping Yahweh.

This was the list I started with.  Seven points, with a short explanation for each:

Obviously the worship of Yahweh has developed over time.   Cultural changes have come to Israel over the centuries and our religion has moved with the times – just as it did way back when we left Egypt.  After all, if we don’t pay attention to keeping our religion up to date, we really aren’t doing our duty to God.  Old-fashioned worship won’t be attractive to the younger generation, and staid, serious worship won’t attract the more lively people either.  With just a little bit of imagination and creativity, the worship of God can be made attractive to everyone.

So I taught them how we worshipped, and naturally, they wanted to know what careers were available in this religion – in fact, there were already a few candidates who were interested in a religion whose God could send lions to punish.  I was pleased to be able to assure them that anyone can be a priest of Yahweh as long as they have the appropriate training, and to some extent, that was what I was there for, too.

I won’t be surprised if there are even more applicants if the lions do stop killing people once they begin to worship Yahweh.  We shall have to wait and see.

Today I’m packing up to leave.  I have been here for almost a year now, teaching and explaining, selecting and ordaining new priests of Yahweh.  All of them have a healthy fear of Yahweh because of those lions, but they have also maintained a healthy variety of worship in their private lives and a pleasing tolerance for the cultural differences of others – there is no mindless insistence on exclusive or rule-based worship.

The lions have stopped killing their people, too, so maybe it really was Yahweh sending the lions.  Maybe.

When I get back to that town on the Habor River – I still can’t really call it “home” – I’ll have to think about that a bit more.  If Yahweh really can send lions, should that change our attitude to him?  We’ve always treated Yahweh with respect, but, honestly, we haven’t highlighted it.  We’ve tended to treat him more like an optional extra god, even a gentle grandfather god, but maybe he’s a bit more than that.  As I say, I’ll try to spend some time thinking about it once I get back.  It’s not urgent.

Yesterday all the new priests were gathered together to say goodbye.  They asked me for some parting words of wisdom: a pithy summary of what they should do to make sure that the lions stay away.

Yet again, preparation had made my job easier, because I had already planned a closing statement.  I wrote it down for them:

“Worship Yahweh as the Israelites did – obviously it worked since we weren’t being killed by lions.”