The Glory Has Departed

No cartoon scared me more as a child than Walt Disney’s adaptation of Washington Irving’s short story, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”.  The main character is Ichabod Crane, a school master who had a strong belief in the supernatural, including the legend of a headless horseman. Ichabod begins courting a wealthy heiress but has a rival who also wishes to marry her.  After proposing to the heiress, Ichabod is confronted by this headless horseman, brandishing a large sword who begins to chase Ichabod who is never seen again.

I had never met nor heard of another person named Ichabod (who wants their child referred to as Ick for short) until I found it in the Bible years ago.  In 1 Samuel 4 we have the story of Israel in battle with their arch enemies, the Philistines, and the Philistines are soundly defeating them.  The Israeli leaders presumptuously determine that the only way to victory is to bring the Ark of the Covenant, which represented the presence of God’s glory in Israel, from its God ordained place in the Tabernacle to the battlefield.  Not a good idea, as not only does Israel continue to suffer defeat, but the Philistines capture the Ark.

News of the defeat, the capture of the Ark and the death of his sons in the battle is brought back to Eli, who is the ruling judge and high priest of Israel.  He is shocked by the news, and being old and extremely overweight, falls and dies from a broken neck.  At the same time, one of his dead son’s wives is about to give birth and will die upon delivery. Before she dies, she learns of the capture of the Ark and the death of her husband and Eli.  In response we are told that “she named the child Ichabod, saying, ‘The glory has departed from Israel!’ because the ark of God had been captured and because of her father-in-law and her husband. And she said, ‘The glory has departed from Israel, for the ark of God has been captured” (1 Samuel 4:21-22). The word Ichabod is a Hebrew word meaning “inglorious” or “there is no glory,” and in her grief and despair the woman (whose name is not given) laments the loss of the glory of God in Israel by giving her son this name.

Israel was the nation chosen by God through which He would reveal and begin to restore His glory, His manifestation of the infinite perfections of His being for man’s eternal joy, pleasure and satisfaction in Him; glory that had departed from mankind upon Adam’s sin in the Garden of Eden.

Adam and Eve, in their original state, were created to manifest and magnify aspects of God’s glory in their physical beauty and abilities, in their intellectual capacity, and in their holy and righteous nature and character.  The glory of their being was to be put on display for the enjoyment of God and one another, as well as in their care and rule of the glorious creation around them.  The Bible says that they were naked and not ashamed (Genesis 2:25) as nothing about them needed to be hidden as they were the most exquisite and magnificent of God’s creation, essentially being clothed in the glory of God.

Years ago, in trying to explain to my nephew regarding the glory of mankind before Adam’s sin, I suggested that if Adam played one on two basketball with Michael Jordon and Lebron James, Adam would score every time he had the ball and Jordon and James would never get a shot off.  I would further suggest that he would have beaten all time chess champion Gary Kasparov (look him up) in less than five moves every match.  Eve would have won every beauty contest she entered and made Cleopatra look common, ordinary, even ugly.  Both would have made Einstein, da Vinci and Aristotle seem like village idiots.

But that glory departed in an environment in which it should have shined most brightly, in the immediate presence of God, within all He created and called good. In Genesis 3, we see Adam and Eve openly disobeying God’s one commandment (Genesis 2:15-17) out of a desire to dethrone God.  Immediately, upon their one act of disobedience to God’s law and distrust of God’s love, they bring deformity, destruction and death into God’s glorious creation.

Their appearance becomes so corrupted that out of a massive sense of shame they try to cover themselves from each other, using the latest in fig leave fashions.  Their soul becomes corrupted with fear and  guilt wherein they try to hide from God and then, when confronted by God, instead of taking responsibility and pursuing the glory of God’s mercy and forgiveness, they attempt to deny responsibility for their sin with Adam blaming God and Eve blaming the devil.

God summarily judges them to be guilty and pronounces sentence which includes pain in childbirth for women; a curse on the earth wherein man will now have to struggle against nature for survival, and the inevitable deformity and deterioration of the body and its return to the dust from which it came (Genesis 3:16-19).  God then exiles them from His presence into a world shrouded in spiritual darkness, depravity and death; a world that will retain only a remnant of His glory (Genesis 3:23-24).

Thankfully, God in His great mercy promised to one day send into this world a redeemer, who will restore the light of His glory in both man and nature (Genesis 3:15).  And it is in the life, death and resurrection of this seed of the woman, Jesus Christ, that the promise will ultimately be fulfilled (2 Corinthians 4:5-6).

Grace and Peace ×