One Foreign Well, Please

A few years ago – well, actually some 27 centuries ago, but in a time not much different from our own, armies strutted about the middle east, conquering and being conquered. Assyria dominated the Fertile Crescent for three centuries until they were overthrown by the Babylonians, then the Persians and then the Greeks.

But in 688 BCE, the king of Assyria was flexing his muscle. In his early years as king, Sennacherib built a palace in Nineveh that was, in his words, without rival. He built a stone-lined canal and the world’s first aqueduct to water his palace gardens, diverting water across a valley from a river 80 kilometers away.

An effective military enforced his control of a far-flung  empire. He overthrew northern Israel and replaced its king with his own puppet.

He thrashed Egypt when she came to Israel’s defense and captured scores of fortified towns in southern Israel. His siege of Lachish was celebrated in the famous Lachish reliefs, now on display in the British Museum.

He accepted heavy tribute instead of surrender from Jerusalem’s king Hezekiah.
But a decade later, Hezekiah changed his mind and Sennacherib returned with a vengeance. In 688 BCE his army held the city of Jerusalem in a strangling siege.

Besides his state-of-the-art military, he used a brazen propaganda campaign of taunts and threats to break the spirit of Israel and her king Hezekiah. Bragging about his far-flung exploits, he boasted that he could conquer any nation he targets.

I have dug wells in foreign lands
and drunk the water there.
With the soles of my feet
I have dried up all the streams of Egypt."
2 Kings 19:24

Digging a well demonstrates control of the land – and this conqueror regards the water resources of his vassal states as personal trophies, showing utter contempt for the people who depend on those wells and rivers.

Sennacherib never once imagined that Israel’s God was tracking his every move and was about to crown his arrogant imperialism with humiliating defeat. The story is immortalized by Lord Byron’s “Destruction of Sennacherib”:

The Assyrian came down like the wolf on the fold,
And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold;

Byron recounts how the whole formidable army, horses and riders, are struck down overnight as
The Angel of Death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed;
…
And the might of the Gentile, unsmote by the sword,
Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord!

Here was one foreign well the proud king failed to win. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.

By contrast, consider the international water passion of the American singing group Jars of Clay. They boast multiple platinum Grammy award winning songs and an international fan club, but they have leveraged their popularity to raise millions of dollars for wells in Africa to provide clean water to help combat HIV-AIDS.

Their Blood:Mission International and “Forty Days of Water (no Ark needed)” website is an inspiring read and on May 10, 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee they will celebrate the completion of 1000 wells in a blow-out party called "Well:Done". I love it!

Capturing a well in a foreign country may feed a tyrant’s ego, but helping to fund a well in a foreign land is a far more enduring way to build a personal legacy, advance God’s shalom in the world and promote international health and good will.

God,
Save us, the well-heeled and empowered of this world, from autonomy and pride. Help us learn humility and generosity by investing our capacity to provide water for those who need wells and whose pools and streams are undrinkable. Use such wells to make good neighbors across the world. Amen