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Pre-TEOTWAWKI OPSEC, by P.J.
Then Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Hear the word of the Lord of hosts: Behold, the days are coming when all that is in your house, and that which your fathers have stored up till this day, shall be carried to Babylon. Nothing shall be left, says the Lord. And some of your own sons, who will come from you, whom you will father, shall be taken away, and they shall be eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.”
Isaiah 39:5-7
God’s word to Hezekiah, king of Judah, through the prophet Isaiah immediately followed a dramatic sequence of events that twice should have led to Hezekiah’s death, but ends with his miraculous healing and a visit by Babylonian envoys bearing gifts and congratulations. Hezekiah welcomed these envoys gladly and, for some reason, decided to show them “his treasure house, the silver, the gold, the spices, the precious oil, his whole armory, all that was found in his storehouses. There was nothing in his house or in all his realm that Hezekiah did not show them.” Isaiah was not aware of the envoys or their grand tour, and upon discovering their presence began questioning the king about them and what they had seen. The king’s confession prompted Isaiah’s prophecy above, and so it was that some 100 years later the first wave of Babylonian invaders began to deport Jews from their Judean homeland into what became known as the Babylonian captivity.
My theological beliefs hold that God is sovereign in all things, and He used Hezekiah’s actions and the subsequent Babylonian invasion to ultimately point the Jewish people back to Him. I also believe Paul in his second letter to Timothy when he said “all Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” (2 Timothy 3:16). It follows then that the Bible is replete with great examples of how we should live our lives daily, not just in a spiritual sense, but in a very practical sense. God used Hezekiah’s mistake as part of His ultimate plan of redemption, but that does not take away from the fact that Hezekiah made a very grave error in judgment by laying open all the possessions and capabilities of his kingdom to foreign visitors, ultimately making and giving justification to their later invasion.
So what lessons do you and I stand to learn from Hezekiah’s actions? Any student of history, and certainly any frequent reader of SurvivalBlog, should be intimately familiar with the concept, application, and importance of Operations Security (OPSEC). However, being familiar with OPSEC and putting it into practice are two very different topics. Today we face the same danger that Hezekiah faced. Relatively speaking, things are good for many of us in this day and age. We lead busy, active lives and while we know dangers exist, our busy lives have a way of lulling us to sleep and coaxing us to take our guard down because total chaos has been averted for yet another day.
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