We’re talking about a group of sinners – their specific sins aren't detailed here, but trust me, they were bad enough to warrant divine attention. At God’s command, these individuals and everything they owned were consumed by fire near the brook of Pishon, one of the rivers said to flow from the Garden of Eden itself. Everything, that is, except for two things: Amorite books and idols made of precious stones.
Imagine that. Everything reduced to ash, but these artifacts remain untouched. Fire couldn’t burn them. Water couldn't wash them away. They just… persisted. What do you do with something like that?
Kenaz, a figure not explicitly identified in the original text but implied to be a leader or righteous individual, stepped forward. He thought to consecrate these idols to God. A noble impulse, right? Turn something evil into something holy. But then, a revelation came to him, a divine voice questioning the very idea. "If God were to accept what has been declared anathema, why should not man?" In other words, if God were to accept something utterly cursed, what standard would we have left?
The message was clear: God would take care of things that were beyond human power to destroy. So Kenaz, following divine instructions, took the books and idols to the top of a mountain. There, he built an altar. The cursed objects were placed upon it, and the people offered sacrifices and celebrated a festival all day long. It was a communal act, a way of purging the land, perhaps.
But the real magic happened that night.
Dew rose from the ice in Paradise – talk about evocative imagery! – and descended upon the books. The letters of their writing, the very essence of their corrupting influence, were obliterated. Then, an angel appeared and completely annihilated what was left. Divine intervention, pure and simple.
The idols suffered a different fate. An angel carried off seven of the precious gems and threw them into the depths of the sea. Why the sea? Perhaps because the sea is often seen as a place of chaos and primordial power, a place where even divine power must work.
But that’s not the end of the story. A second angel then brought twelve other gems. These weren’t just any gems; they were destined for something special. This angel engraved the names of the twelve sons of Jacob – the twelve tribes of Israel – on them, one name on each gem. Each gem was unique, its character reflecting the tribe it represented.
The order in which the tribes are named, and the stones linked to them, are themselves significant. We have Reuben, the firstborn, linked to a sardius stone; Simon, to a topaz; Levi, the priestly tribe, to an emerald; Judah, the kingly tribe, to a carbuncle; Issachar to a sapphire; Zebulon to jasper; Dan to ligure; Naphtali to amethyst; Gad to agate; Asher to chrysolite; Joseph to beryl; and finally, Benjamin to onyx.
This transformation is powerful. Cursed objects, instruments of sin, are not simply destroyed, but repurposed. The precious materials are reclaimed, re-inscribed with the very names of the tribes of Israel. It's a message of hope, of redemption, of the possibility that even the most corrupted things can be transformed into something holy and meaningful. What do you think? Can something truly evil ever be fully destroyed, or is transformation always a possibility?