Week 19 2 Chronicles
Once you’re past the chronicler’s stories of David & Solomon things get a bit more tangled. Fortunately for readers Chronicles is only interested in the Judah-David line of kings – by contrast Kings ricochets back-and-forth between Judah & Israel.
To help focus my reading I decide to track each of the kings. My plan is to rate them under three categories. Good Kings – Bad Kings – Middler Kings. How will I decide? I’ll use a pretty simple mechanism…
If the bible says nothing but good about a king he’s Good.
If the bible says nothing but bad about a king he’s Bad.
If the bible says both good and bad about a king he’s a Middler.
I read about Asa today.
At the start of Asa’s reign a prophet told him: the Lord will stay with you as long as you stay with him. And for a while Asa did stay with the Lord. Which is good.
Then in chapter sixteen he hired foreign mercenaries. Completely disregarded the Lord.
Another prophet came to tell Asa he’d missed-the-boat: the eyes of the Lord search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him. What a fool you have been! Which is bad.
Asa stared out pretty well but declined as time passed.
It’s unfortunate. Sobering. You wonder what happened.
I feel let down, and I have to check Asa off as a Middler.
Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 15:2 & 16:9 (NLT)