Week 22 2 Chronicles 10-36
Last week I decided to make a ranked-list of the kings of Judah – from #1-to-#15. This week I’ve pretty much concluded (unfortunately) that the exercise can’t be done (at least not with much accuracy).
I think the biggest road-block is that when I needed to make subtle points of distinction I didn’t think Chronicles gave me enough data. Chronicles is a kind of Encyclopedia of the Kings – good for brief & to-the-point & general information – but not so good for drawing razor-thin differences (which is what I needed). I knew that if King A followed the Lord with his whole-heart and King B followed the Lord too but not with his whole-heart then I’d rank King A higher than King B. But I knew I couldn’t numerically quantify the difference between whole-hearted & part-hearted allegiance
Anyway I got a big piece of black construction paper. Then I cut out 15 small yellow slips with the name of a king on each. I rough-sorted them using questions like:
Did the king only do what was right?
Did he lead the nation in doing good?
Did he fail at some point?
Did he stayed ‘failed’ or turn back around?
Did the king only do wrong?
Did he publicly advocate for wrong-doing?
Did he lead the nation away from the Lord?
How did he end-up?
I’ll leave the 15-slips there overnight. Look them over tomorrow. Then take-my-best-shot at a ‘definitive’ list (but I already know it’ll be less definitive than I’d planned).