Month: May 2023

Week 21  2 Chronicles 24

Joash started pretty well. I’ll give him that much.
He was only a little boy when he became king and he was shepherded along under the influence of his friend & protector & mentor – the priest Jehoiada.
During that time Joash did a lot of beneficial things to swing Judah back to worshipping the Lord.
But then…a kind of shocking turn-around: after Jehoiada’s death, the leaders of Judah came…and persuaded the king to listen to their advice. They decided to abandon the Temple of the Lord…and worship Asherah poles instead.
The prophet Zechariah told Joash you have abandoned the Lord, and now he has abandoned you. Joash was angry enough that he had the prophet executed.
The version of the story told in Kings says: all his life Joash did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight because Jehoiada the priest instructed him. But Kings bafflingly redacted Joash’s whole post-Jehoiada dark-time.
I’m penciling in Joash on the lower-side of the Kings Scale. Sure…early-on he did some very good reformative work. But killing Zechariah looks like a decisive departure from the Lord.
Joash looks like his father Ahaziah – a guy heavily influenced by the people around him. A good advisor had influenced Joash toward the good. But in the end it looks like Joash was content with rejecting the Lord.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 24:17-18 20 & 2 Kings 12:2-3 (NLT). Added note: Zechariah – the son of Joash’s old friend Jehoiada – was executed in 2 Chronicles 24:20-22. Joash was assassinated in 2 Chronicles 24:25-26.

Week 21  2 Chronicles 23

After Ahaziah was assassinated Athaliah – his scheming & opportunistic mom – decided to become queen.
Athaliah was Jehoram’s wife and she was also the daughter of King Ahab of Israel (so Judah & Israel were awkwardly and temporarily reconnected-by-marriage).
The line of kings I’ve looked at so far – Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram & Ahaziah – were all part of David’s family-tree…father-son-father-son and like that.
But Athaliah set out to destroy the rest of Judah’s royal family and extinguish the David bloodline right then-and-there.
So anyway the bible doesn’t give any details about how Athaliah organized the plan to kill Ahaziah’s kids. But in a critical & decisive bureaucratic gaff by Athaliah’s organizing team one of Ahaziah’s sons slipped through the net. That baby boy – Joash – was rescued when one of his aunts kidnapped him and kept him safe for six years: in this way, Jehosheba, the wife of Jehoiada the priest, hid the child so that Athaliah could not murder him. Joash remained hidden in the Temple of God for six years while Athaliah ruled over the land.
When Joash was seven years old Jehoiada the priest organized a palace coup. Athaliah – after keeping the throne warm for six years – was executed. Seven year-old Joash became king.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 22:10 11-12 (NLT)

Week 21  2 Chronicles 22

Chronicles gives me some useful info about what was behind Ahaziah’s decision-making: he followed the evil example of King Ahab’s family, for his mother encouraged him in doing wrong. He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. Kings agrees that the reason Ahaziah was attracted to evil was because he was related by marriage to the family of Ahab. (I just saw that Ahaziah’s dad (Jehoram) was married to Ahab’s daughter and so Jehoram followed the example of the kings of Israel and was as wicked as King Ahab…He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.) Anyway getting back to Ahaziah: after the death of Jehoram, members of Ahab’s family became Ahaziah’s advisors, and they led him to ruin.
Chronicles & Kings don’t give a detailed list of Ahaziah’s actions. What stands out is that he was joined-at-the-hip with Ahab and that turned out to be a fatal mistake.
In my mind Ahaziah is going to be ranked on the low-side of my Kings Scale. He was definitely bad. Just exactly how bad is hard to say because he was a weak & indecisive guy who was influenced – heavily and negatively – by his family. But I think it’s safe to say that eventually Ahaziah developed his own personal preference and tastes for evil.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 22:3-4 2 Kings 8:27 2 Chronicles 21:6 22:4 & 7 (NLT). Ahaziah was assassinated and only got a decent burial because his grandpa – Jehoshaphat – was a man who sought the Lord with all his heart (2 Chronicles 22:9 NLT)

Week 21  2 Chronicles 21

Jehoram was Jehoshaphat’s oldest son and even though he was officially declared king he still assassinated his six brothers – who he figured were potential rivals.
The chronicler says a couple of pretty unqualified things about him:
First: Jehoram followed the example of the kings of Israel and was as wicked as King Ahab…Jehoram did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. So he was a proactive evil-doer.
Then secondly: Jehoram had abandoned the Lord…He had built pagan shrines in the hill country…and had led the people…to give themselves to pagan gods. So he initiated what looks like a state-sanctioned religious re-conversion program to turn Judah against the Lord.
Elijah criticized Jehoram:
a) you haven’t followed the good example of your father, Jehoshaphat, or of your grandfather King Asa
b) you’ve actively promoted idol worship and
c) you killed your brothers – men who were better than you.
Jehoram did no positive good and did take positive action to do evil (I double-checked the Kings account and it didn’t have anything good to say about him).
As I go along I’m thinking about my King Rankings. Nothing’s definitely locked-up yet but I’m dropping Jehoram way down the list. If a king is described as doing no good and also described as doing only evil then the gravitational drag of irreligion is really pulling him down. It’d be like walking on Jupiter.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 21:4 6 10-11 12 13 (NLT)

Week 21  2 Chronicles 17-21

A couple of passages (mostly positive) summarize Jehoshaphat:
the Lord was with Jehoshaphat because he followed the example of his father
Jehoshaphat did not worship the images of Baal
He sought his father’s God and obeyed his commands
Jehoshaphat was a good king, following the ways of his father, Asa
He did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight
But on the flipside Jehoshaphat failed to remove all the pagan shrines, and the people never fully committed themselves to following God.
He also cozied-up to King Ahab to the point where the prophet Jehu chastised him (although Jehu also admitted there is some good in you…and you have committed yourself to seeking the Lord). But later when Jehoshaphat formed another alliance with Israel the prophet Eliezer told him that because you have allied yourself with King Ahaziah, the Lord will destroy your work.
It looks like Jehoshaphat did have genuine faith and he acted on that faith by obeying the Lord in a majority of cases. Plus he didn’t actively promote evil actions. So the fact that he a) followed the Lord and b) did good things without c) doing evil boosts Jehoshaphat into the upper rank of good kings.
But he did make those couple of questionable and criticize-able choices.
Jehoshaphat is comparable to his father Asa in that way – it looks like two pretty good kings who each made a couple of missteps.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 17:3-4 20:32-33 19:3 20:37 (NLT)

Week 21  2 Chronicles 14-16

It looks to me like Asa was a good king in many ways.
He did what was pleasing and good in the sight of the Lord his God. For example:
He got rid of pagan altars & shrines & idols
He repaired the altar in the temple
He led the nation back to the worship of the Lord
He prayed for help when Ethiopia attacked Judah – O Lord, you are our God: do not let mere men prevail – and he got his help!
Asa remained fully committed to the Lord throughout his life.
But that said Asa doesn’t end up with an absolutely pristine record:
Example #1: he paid a mercenary army to protect Judah. But a prophet named Hanani chastised Asa for his lack of faith: 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! Asa’s reaction? He threw Hanani in jail.
Example #2: Asa developed a foot disease at the end of his life and even when the disease became life-threatening, he did not seek the Lord’s help but sought help only from his physicians.
It looks like Asa did not make any deliberate choices to do wrong. But he did make a couple of choices not to do the best thing. So I’ll keep those asterisks in mind when I read that Asa remained fully committed to the Lord throughout his life.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 14:2 11 15:17 16:9 12 (NLT)

Week 21  2 Chronicles 13

Reading the Chronicles story of Abijah I come away feeling that he was a pretty good king.
For instance Abijah trusted the Lord in a key battle against Jeroboam. He publicly affirmed that he was different than the renegade Jeroboam: as for us (i.e. Judah), the Lord is our God, and we have not abandoned him. So when all was said-and-done Judah defeated Israel because they trusted in the Lord. And while Jeroboam was declining in power by contrast, Abijah of Judah grew more and more powerful. 2 Chronicles doesn’t say anything bad about Abijah. Which leads me to believe that he was good. Correct?
Not so fast! I made that mistake two years ago when I forgot about the Kings version.
That story rubs some of the Golden-Boy glow off Abijah: he committed the same sins as his father before him, and his heart was not right with the Lord his God (I remember that his father – Rehoboam: was an evil king, for he did not seek the Lord with all his heart).
So…like-father-like-son. Both of them a) practiced similar sinful actions and they b) lacked genuine personal devotedness to the Lord.
In spite of one shining example of Abijah trusting the Lord it looks like – in general – he didn’t.
At this point in the 15-Kings exercise I don’t know where this father-and-son combo will be ranked. But I think they’ll be pretty close together.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 13:10 18 21 & 1 Kings 15:3 & 12:14 (NLT). And see the post from May 16/21.

Week 21  2 Chronicles 10-12

The very first thing Rehoboam did was to alienate the northern tribes of Israel. I don’t think that was necessarily evil-doing – it seems more a stupid decision than a bad one.
But once Rehoboam was settled in power he decided for bad: he abandoned the law of the Lord, and all Israel followed in this sin (a couple of examples are given in Kings: they built pagan shrines…set up sacred pillars and Asherah poles…and there were shrine prostitutes throughout the land).
When Egypt attacked Judah a prophet named Shemiah told Rehoboam that the cause of the conflict was that Rehoboam had forsaken the Lord – simple cause-and-effect. The news sobered up the king & court enough that they humbled themselves and said, “The Lord is righteous in doing this to us”. The result? Because Rehoboam humbled himself, the Lord’s anger was turned aside, and he did not destroy him completely.
Reading this I get the general impression had Rehoboam drifted away from the Lord – but then came back. But the story ends with this: Rehoboam was an evil king, for he did not seek the Lord with all his heart.
In 2021 I assessed Rehoboam as a Middler. But that final phrase – he was an evil king – makes me wonder. His mid-career repentance – in spite of being genuinely good in the moment – didn’t seem to be a permanent change or one that turned him from an evil king into a good one.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 12:1 6-7 12 14 I Kings 14:22-24 (NLT)

Week 21  2 Chronicles 10-36

The last 27-chapters of the book are the story of the southern kingdom of Judah. Working through that section two years ago I decided to try categorizing the kings of the south. The exercise I gave myself to think about was pretty straightforward: Is this king good? Is he bad? Is he somewhere in the middle? And that’s what my three headings were: Good Kings – Bad Kings – Middlers.
Looking back on it now I realize it was a bit flimsy. Even though I was using it as a focusing exercise it was a bit like trying to build a buffet with a chain-saw and sledge-hammer.
So anyway I decided to survey each king a little more carefully and individualistically this year. My plan is to rank them – like before. But this time I’ll order them numerically (so I’ll end up with a King #1 and a King #15).
That’s my plan for the next few days.

Note: the fifteen kings I’m looking at are Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Azariah/Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon & Josiah. I’m excluding queen Athaliah (the powerful mother of Ahaziah who took the throne illegally & temporarily). And I’m not including the last four puppet kings: Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jehoiachin & Zedekiah.
Added FYI: my Good-Middler-Bad posts were on May 14 16 & 22/2021.

Week 20  1 Chronicles 28

The book ends with a big public event where David commissioned Solomon to a) be the next king and b) build the temple.
At that extravaganza David publicly told Solomon:
Get to know the God of your ancestors
Worship and serve him with your whole heart
Serve him with a willing mind
If you seek him, you will find him
If you forsake him, he will reject you forever.
It doesn’t necessarily sound like an easy checklist. But it does sound reasonably straightforward and uncomplicated.
I flip over to the end of Solomon’s story in 1 Kings to see what he did with his dad’s advice:
He quit trusting the Lord
He started worshipping idols
He practiced evil things
He refused to follow the Lord
He built shrines for his wives
He turned away from the Lord
He didn’t listen to the Lord’s advice.
Seven steps on Solomon’s Down Stairway. I don’t know if the writer was thinking of the steps as a linked-series (for instance Solomon took Negative Step #1. Then proceeded to Negative Step #2. Then on to #3 and like that).
Maybe the steps were regressively sequential. But maybe there was quite a bit of randomness involved. Personal arbitrariness. A hit-and-miss scatter of stupid life-decisions. It’s hard to say.
But one step down that seems pretty concerning to me is that Solomon turned away from the Lord. Turning away sounds like a decisive starting point.

Note: quote from 1 Chronicles 28:9 (NLT). And see Solomon’s actions in 1 Kings 11:4-10.