|
by
Doug Ward |
In June 2023 an anonymous Kentuckian announced that he had found a
stash of 700 gold coins in a cornfield. The coins, which may sell for a total
of over a million dollars, apparently were buried there during the Civil War.
Stories
of buried treasure have always captured our imaginations, going back to ancient
times. One of my favorite treasure stories involves the biblical King
David, who late in life made detailed plans for the Temple that his son
Solomon would build. In preparation for the project, he amassed vast amounts of
gold, silver, bronze, iron, stone, and timber (1 Chronicles 22:14).
As
it turns out, David gathered more than enough material for the Temple. Writing
in the late first century AD, historian Flavius Josephus (Antiquities of the
Jews 7.15.3) reported that David "had great and immense wealth buried
with him" when he died in about 970 BC.
Josephus
also revealed that later rulers raided the riches in David's tomb. In about 133
B.C., the Jewish priest-king John Hyrcanus persuaded the Seleucid ruler
Antiochus VII to lift a siege of Jerusalem by giving him 3000 shekels of silver
from David's tomb. Then in the first century B.C., King Herod the Great, who
was known for his expensive construction projects, "took away a great deal
of money" from the same source.
Josephus
(Antiquities 16.7.1) added an intriguing postscript to his Herod story,
relating that Herod hoped to extract more wealth from the tomb but was thwarted
in an attempt to do so. Herod, Josephus said, "had a great desire to make
a more diligent search, and to go farther in, even as far as the very bodies of
David and Solomon; where two of his guards were slain, by a flame that burst
out upon those that went in, as the report was."
This
startling account, reminiscent of movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark,
suggests that God directly intervened to guard David's tomb from further
encroachment. We are left to wonder what might have happened to any remaining
treasure from David's tomb. Did the Romans grab what was left when they
captured Jerusalem in 70 AD? If not, is there still
treasure buried somewhere under the City of David?
We
do not know the answers to these questions, but the story of David's treasure
invites us to investigate the even greater wealth available in the Bible, as
well as in sources like the works of
Josephus.
The
news of the Kentucky gold coins also reminds me of a parable of Jesus:
"The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man
found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and
buys that field" (Matthew 13:44). This parable implies that the greatest
riches of all are to be found in following him.
File
translated from TEX by TTH,
version 3.66.
On 24 Jul 2023, 16:05.
