| JUST WHAT THEY DESERVED |
| God will judge every nation in the world. |
| "I will carry out great vengeance on them and punish them in my wrath. Then they will know that I am the Lord." 25:17 |
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| World War II ended in Europe with the surrender of the German army. People danced in the streets. But the victorious allies could not simply pack and go home. They had captured thousands of Nazis. Among them were some of the most brutal murderers the world has ever known - monsters, really, who had enriched themselves with the gold and jewelry of the millions of Jews they had exterminated. A question came up: under what law could the Nazis be tried? American, British, or French law didn't apply in Germany. Faced with this dilemma, the Allies invented something new: the Nuremberg trials. Judgments were based on a belief in a higher law - an international code of right and wrong that applies to every person, regardless of country. Under this unwritten law many Nazi leaders were condemned to death. Nations on Trial Ezekiel introduces a similar concept of justice, beginning in chapter 25. In the first 24 chapters he had spoken harsh words to the Israelites, who had repeatedly broken the law God had given them. But now Exekiel's vision expands to nations who never had that law. Ezekiel marches through Ammon, Moab, Edom, Philistia - four nations that, on the small scale of Palestinian geography, could be seen with the naked eye from Jerusalem. Each nation has its moment in court, and each is condemned for its inhumane malice against Israel. (The sentences Ezekiel gave were soon carried out historically. The nations listed vanished from the face of the earth, victims of the same violence they had used against Israel.) |