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Alternative Daily Text for Monday, December 16, 2013
“They have set up princes, but I did not know it.” (Hosea 8:4, NWT 1984)
Many “people today are tired of living under the eye of God.” (The Watchtower, December 1, 1994, page 5) But is fearing “that God is watching continually what we do” justified at all? (The Watchtower, June 15, 1977, page 355) What does the Bible say?
At the very beginning of human history, Adam and Eve “hid from the face of Jehovah God among the trees of the garden. And Jehovah God kept calling to the man and saying to him: ‘Where are you?’” (Genesis 3:8, 9) Apparently God did not know where the humans sojourned and what they did. Centuries later God saw from heaven that some people were building a tower, but he was unable to recognize details. Thus he had to come “down to look at the city and the tower the people were building.” – Genesis 11:5, NLT.
In Abraham’s day God came to know from hearsay that something was wrong in Sodom and Gomorrah. Therefore he went for a visit to his friend Abraham, and to him “Jehovah said: ‘The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is indeed great … I will go down to see whether they are acting according to the outcry that has reached me. And if not, I can get to know it.” (Genesis 18:20, 21) Evidently he was unable to see the events in these cities from his heavenly home. Rather, he had to go there in person to “get to know” what happened. Even later Jehovah was upset because the Kingdom of Israel had not informed him of political changes. He complained to Hosea: “They have set up princes, but I did not know it.” – Hosea 8:4, NWT 1984.
Obviously Jehovah did not know where Adam and Eva hid themselves. From heaven he could not see the construction of the Tower of Babel and the events in Sodom and Gomorrah. Also he did not realize the appointment of new princes in Israel. How is that possible? A psalm from David provides the answer: “The eyes of Jehovah are on the righteous.” (Psalm 34:15) Thus Moses, David, Jesus, and other “righteous” had always been under his surveillance and accordingly were reproached by him regularly. But Adam and Eve after they sinned, Nimrod, the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the princes of Israel were not numbered among “the righteous.” Hence Jehovah ignored them for the most part.
Since there will “be a resurrection of both the righteous and the unrighteous” anyway, we do well to prove to be “unrighteous.” (Acts 24:15) In that case, when finally “the dead … [will be] judged out of those things written in the scrolls according to their deeds,” most of our “deeds” will not be recorded in these “scrolls.” – Revelation 20:12.