Week 20 2 Chronicles
So far I’ve read the stories of eight rulers of Judah-South – Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Athaliah (a queen) Joash.
A couple of days ago I’d decided to group kings under three categories: Goods-Bads-Middlers. My simple rule-of-thumb was that if the chronicler only said good things about the king then he’d get a thumbs-up.
Things got complicated when I read the Abijah story. In Chronicles I didn’t find anything bad about Abijah. Only three pretty good things:
His long historical speech seemed pretty good
In his battle with Jeroboam (Israel-North) he got help from the Lord
And the chronicler said: Judah defeated Israel because they trusted in the Lord.
So on my checklist Abijah landed in the Good King column.
Anyway then I saw that Abijah’s story was cross-referenced to 1 Kings and when I flipped over there it said: (Abijah) committed the same sins as his father before him, and his heart was not right with the Lord his God.
And just like that Abijah got X-ed out of the Good King column.
And also just like that my simple & straightforward exercise got more time-consuming because now even if a king scores 100% in Chronicles I’ll have to double-check the story in Kings.
Which – I admit – might not end up being a whole lot of extra work because so far even though my sample size is small good kings are looking to be about as common as mountain gorillas.
Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 13:18 & 1 Kings 15:3 (NLT)