Month: May 2024

Week 20  1 Chronicles 24

About 20-seconds into the chapter I was already thinking: this content is completely useless to me.
So anyway I’m lucky that I read in a pretty steady state of thinking-adjusting-reacting-assessing and so pretty quickly I realized that panning chapter 24 was just a knee-jerk reaction on my part. I needed to pull-back. Not take myself too seriously.
The idea of ‘total uselessness’ isn’t really fair. What I could say (to be more fair) is that today chapter 24 was pulsating in my head with powerful vibrations of irrelevance. The most I could say is that today chapter 24 seemed useless-to-me.
What that means is that I don’t get to say chapter 24 is absolutely useless. For instance I’m pretty sure it was useful – maybe necessary – instruction to the OT priestly class. The way it divided & organized people & clans could have been precedent-setting and it might have influenced tasks & responsibilities for centuries. Still…even if that’s true my personal interest in the chapter is very minimal.
One thing I notice at the end is that all these religious assignments were done publicly ‘in the presence of King David, Zadok, Ahimelech, and the family leaders of the priests and the Levites’. So…fair enough. David was a key player and organizer with a vested interest in religious practice. But a niggling question I’ll be keeping in the back of my mind is: shouldn’t David (the head-of-state) be at arms-length from the priesthood (the religious department of the state)?

Note: quote from 1 Chronicles 24:31 (NLT).

Week 20  Psalm 127

Unless the Lord builds a house, the work of the builders is useless.
I don’t think Solomon is saying that a) the Lord actually builds houses or that b) home builders’ work is futile.
I think Solomon is talking about doing a project (maybe something as simple as just working at my job). I think Solomon’s point is that I consider the project in terms of its Degree of Usefulness.
He says: IF I build a house BUT I give Zero Consideration to the Lord THEN the house is useless.
Think of some Project X:
Project X – the Lord = a Useless Project
Project X + the Lord = a Useful Project
(There’s likely a fairly big middle ground between 100% Uselessness and Total Usefulness. There’s likely many points along a continuum that measure a greater or lesser inclusion or exclusion of the Lord in the project.)
I thought back to the Tower of Babel. I’m guessing that those builders solicited roughly zero input from the Lord. The result was a building that registered close to zero on the Degree of Usefulness Scale.
I remember the Lord’s story about two builders. One guy built a house on a sand foundation. The other built on rock. Both guys successfully got their houses built and they moved in. And there was no need to think about the Degree of Usefulness of the structure or its foundation. Or at least not as long as the weather cooperated.

Note: quote from Psalm 127:1 (NLT)

Week 18  2 Kings 17

The kingdom of Israel was finished by chapter 17. Kaput.
At the end of the story the writer goes back to the beginning and says something about the first king: Jeroboam drew Israel away from following the Lord and made them commit a great sin. And the people persisted in all the evil ways of Jeroboam. Jeroboam stands out as a beacon of darkness and his (bad) influence comes up again-and-again. For instance Jeroboam’s son: Nadab did what was evil in the Lord’s sight and followed the example of his father, continuing in the sins of idolatry that Jeroboam had led Israel to commit.
I wondered about the other 17 kings – Baasha Elah Zimri Omri Ahab Ahaziah Jehoram Jehu Jehoahaz Jehoash Jeroboam II Zechariah Shallum Menahem Pekahiah Pekah & Hoshea. How many of them imitated Jeroboam?
I did a quick 27-chapter scan looking to see if it was definitely spelled-out whether a king followed Jeroboamism. And what I found was that Baasha Zimri Omri Ahab Ahaziah Jehoram Jehu Jehoahaz Jehoash Jeroboam II Zechariah Menahem Pekahiah & Pekah all did (Elah Shallum & Hoshea were the exceptions.)
The kings who followed Jeroboam might have rung-up some of their own individual religious-isms. But the starting point was Jeroboam in 1 Kings 12. He got the ball rolling. The others added momentum.
I don’t know if that makes Jeroboam 1 the worst king (that’s not what I was after). But I think it’s a warning about the power of a bad influencer.

Note: quotes from 2 Kings 17:21-22 1 Kings 15:26 (NLT)

 

Week 18  2 Kings 1-8

Jehoram was Ahab’s son and he became king in the first chapter of 2 Kings.
At first I figured that Jehoram’s story was long because he was a contemporary of Elisha – a king hanging-around in the shadow of the prophet. So I needed to check that:
Chapter 1 Jehoram becomes king
Chapter 2 Jehoram isn’t mentioned
Chapter 3 Jehoram is named in the battle against Moab
Chapter 4 Elisha miracle-stories. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 5 Naaman miracle. A ‘king of Israel’ is mentioned 3xs. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 6 Arameans. A ‘king of Israel’ is mentioned about 8xs. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 7 Ben-had. A ‘king of Israel’ is mentioned twice. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 8:1-6 a ‘king of Israel’ anecdote. Jehoram isn’t named
Chapter 8:16-24 Jehoram is named. His career is summarized. And then he dies.
Jehoram is only identified clearly in about 35-verses. But I think that he’s probably the (unnamed) king-of-Israel. So in that case 2 Kings devotes about 185-verses to Jehoram’s monarchy. But…when push-comes-to-shove I think he stays mostly in the shadows. A bit of an anonymous phantom.
Both (father) Ahab and (son) Jehoram get a lot of coverage. The big difference between them is that I think Ahab was a star whereas Jehoram was a third-rater. Both were bad. Ahab was Capable Bad. Jehoram seemed more Inept Bad.
At first I thought that Ahab was a marquee guy because of Elijah. But now I don’t.
And I thought that Jehoram was a marquee guy because of Elisha. And I still do.

Week 18  1 Kings 16-22

I’ve been wondering why the Big Four kings of Israel got so much coverage (while the other fifteen only got about seven-verses each).
At first I thought that King Ahab was featured because his story was told in tandem with the life of Elijah – that Ahab piggy-backed on Elijah. That might be true but looking at Ahab-specific content in those chapters I see Ahab was pretty important too (of the 209-verses 167-verses are about Ahab after I subtract all the Elijah content). But there’s more to it. The Lord actually communicated with Ahab using the prophets:
• Elijah forecast the three-year drought
• There was the shocking events at Carmel
• Ahab got battle intel from a prophet for his fight with the Arameans
• Elijah lowered-the-boom on Ahab because of the murder of Naboth (to his credit Ahab did repent for that)
• Micaiah forecast Ahab’s doom in battle.
So at least five times Ahab bumped into some pretty big sign posts. And now I’m thinking that Ahab was one of the featured Big Four because he was given more first-hand & personal & specific & convincing info from the Lord than any other king of Israel.
In spite of all that he didn’t make the best use of those benefits. In the end the verdict on Ahab was: no one else so completely sold himself to do what was evil in the Lord’s sight as did Ahab.

Note 1: quote from 1 Kings 21:25 (NLT).
Note 2: Ahab connected with prophets in: 17:1 18:16-46 20:13-28 & 35-43 21:17-29 & 22:6-28.