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Week 18  1 Chronicles 1-9

I figure that in the last 2500 years no more than a couple of dozen people in the whole world have enthusiastically sat down to read 1 Chronicles 1-9. On the Bible-Reader’s Interest-Level Scale 1 Chronicles 1-9 is near the very bottom. I guess the reason is because it wasn’t written to be read enthusiastically. So even though the passage serves a purpose the purpose isn’t excitement. Or fascination. Or stimulation. Or entertainment. Or personal enrichment. Or adventure. The nine chapters are kind of like the Medicine Hat telephone directory: not intended to thrill.
But today I did notice four things in the early going that got me wondering…
One: a guy in the Noah-Shem line – Peleg – was given that name: because in his time the earth was divided. I wondered about what exactly that meant.
Two: the chronicler devoted twenty-six verses in chapter one to listing Ishmael’s clan. So how important is the Ishmael line? Hard to quantify exactly…but pretty important from the chronicler’s perspective.
Three: David had six brothers. Only three were named back in the episode in 1 Samuel 16. Q: who were the other three? A: Nethanel Raddai & Ozem – named right here in chapter two.
Four: the chronicler says David’s first six sons were: Amnon Daniel Absalom Adonijah Shephatiah Ithream. The cross-referenced list of sons in 2 Samuel 3 says: Amnon Chileab Absalom Adonijah Shephatiah Ithream. What do I make of Daniel vs. Chileab? Second name? Nickname? Not sure.

Note: quote from 1 Chronicles 1:19 (NIV) & see 1:29-54, 2:13-15, 3:1-3

 

Week 18  2 Kings 17

Chapter 17 is the last chapter in the history of Israel North. Game over.
Once the dust had settled Assyria started reorganizing Israel North and part of reorganizing included a policy of two-way migration.
The writer says that first: Israel was carried off to the land of Assyria.
Secondly: the king of Assyria transported groups of people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim and resettled them in the towns of Samaria.
A kind of Out-Migration In-Migration musical-chairs operation.
One of the upshots was the importing of religion. The writer listed developments according to a religion’s geographic Point of Origin & then the name of the local god-in-residence…
Babylonia: Succoth-benoth
Cuthah: Nergal
Hamath: Ashima
Avva: Nibhaz-Tartak
Sepharvaim: Adrammelech-Anammelech.
To top off the list the Assyrians appointed a Hebrew priest who specialized in the local religious customs of Israel North. So… Israel: God.
The result was a kind of religious smorgasbord: while these new residents worshipped the Lord, they also worshipped their idols. Both…and.
Whatever current rational political sense the plan made the writer of the Kings reflected back on the benefits of the old exclusive covenant-of-Moses mandate. But it was pretty clear that that train had left-the-station.
By the end of the War with Assyria Israel North got totally rid of the One-God model in favour of a Multiple-Gods approach: and to this day – the writer ended – their descendants do the same.

Note: quotes from 2 Kings 17:23-24, 41 (NLT)

 

Week 18  2 Kings 20

King Hezekiah was sick in bed…hoping it wasn’t his deathbed. But then Isaiah arrived and said: set your affairs in order, for you are going to die. You will not recover from your illness.
Hezekiah was stunned. Isaiah was an established & reliable prophet and he gave credible forecasts. Even kiss-of-death ones.
But even so Hezekiah didn’t cave-in. He did the only thing left to do. He prayed a kind of neutralizing/negativizing prayer: a please-overturn-Isaiah’s-forecast type of prayer.
I wonder about what was going on in the place where final decisions were made. Isaiah said Hezekiah would die. So his death was genuinely in-the-cards. But Hezekiah resisted that outcome and pleaded for a different one.
One of two things could happen. Either Hezekiah’s fate wouldn’t be changed and he’d die. Or his fate would be altered and he’d live. Isaiah’s forecast would either happen…or else it wouldn’t.
I feel pretty sure that when Isaiah predicted Hezekiah’s death Hezekiah was literally & materially & actually going to die.
But then Hezekiah introduced a brand new component into his own personal stream-of-future-inevitabilities. If he hadn’t injected that element then he would have died. But he did. So he didn’t.
In this instance the predetermination that Hezekiah would die was malleable and responsive to alternate inputs.
I don’t think there’s many things that can recalibrate an already decided future. But in this case praying did.

Note: quote from 2 Kings 20:1 (NLT)

Week 18  2 Kings 16

Some things a reader has to figure out for himself.
King Ahaz went from Jerusalem to Damascus to see Tiglathpileser.
Tiglathpileser was Ahaz’ political master so Ahaz likely had to go. But once he got there he did a couple of things he didn’t have to.
He saw the big shiny altar in Damascus. He liked it and got a scaled-down model sent to Jerusalem to be duplicated (which he didn’t really need to do).
He told Urijah the priest to build it (technically-speaking he was likely stepping way beyond his own political jurisdiction).
When he got home he went and offered sacrifices on his new altar (Israel’s sacrifices were supposed to be offered on the authorized altar).
Moses’ original bronze altar in front of the door was shifted to give centre-stage to the new one (which Ahaz decided was an improvement).
Ahaz then made his Damascus-altar the one for public sacrifice and re-purposed the old bronze altar for personal use (a functional change that he made on his own say-so).
Personally I knew that Ahaz was going against the exacting specifications and precise instructions that Exodus-Leviticus-Numbers said had to be undeviatingly followed.
But the author of Kings didn’t say a word about the novelties. He could have spelled things out for me. But I guess he expected me to remember that religious mixes-and-matches weren’t allowed and that I could draw reasonable conclusions about Ahaz based on what I already knew.

Note: the story is in 2 Kings 16:10-18

Week 18  2 Kings 15

The northern kingdom of Israel didn’t just suddenly disappear. It’s more like it did a long and slow swansong fading to a whisper. Then gone.
I was reminded of that today in my reading: during (Pekah’s) reign King Tiglath-pileser of Assyria attacked Israel again, and he captured the towns of Ijon, Abel-beth-maacah, Janoah, Kedesh, and Hazor. He also conquered the regions of Gilead, Galilee, and Naphtali, and he took the people to Assyria as captives. I checked a not-too-detailed map and found two of the cities – Kedesh & Hazor. I also spotted the region of Galilee and the tribal territory of Naphtali. All of them are in the geographic north of the northern kingdom.
The territorial losses reminded me of something I read a couple of days ago: at about that time the Lord began to reduce the size of Israel’s territory. King Hazael conquered several sections of the country east of the Jordan River, including all of Gilead, Gad, Reuben, and Manasseh. I checked another map that was not-too-detailed but it was detailed enough for me to see that a huge central chunk of Israel east of the Jordan was lost during that time.
There’s maybe fifty or sixty years between the Jordan East losses to Hazael and the Israel North losses to Tiglath-pileser. Israel is slowly sinking in the international sunset. Slowly but surely.
I also read chapter 17 today. Good-bye Israel.

Note: quotes from 2 Kings 15:29 & 10:32-33 (NLT)

Week 18  2 Kings 13

Yesterday was the end of April so it was time to do a reading-progress check.
2022 is 33.3% in-the-books now so I needed to be 33.3% of the way through the bible to be on-track. I add up the numbers (Genesis-2 Kings 12 plus 121 psalms = 446 chapters).
That means I’ve read 37.5% of the bible. I don’t think staying-ahead is any easier than catching-up…but being ahead definitely feels better.
So if someone asked me ‘how’s your reading going?’ I’d say ‘okay’.
But if someone asked me ‘how’s your Kings reading going?’ I’d likely say ‘okay…I guess’. Because Kings – the second book especially – is an Attentiveness-Demanding book and a minefield for a careless reader.
One example: 2 Kings says that Joash the son of Ahaziah was king of Judah. Then it says that during Joash’s 37th year as king Jehoash son of Jehoahaz became king of Israel.
And then in the next chapter it referred to Joash the son of Joahaz king of Israel. I logically infer that Jehoash & his father Jehoahaz (in chapter 13) are a different son-father than Joash & his father Joahaz (in chapter 14). But an added note in my bible says that the name Jehoash is a variation of the name Joash. Jehoash (in 13) = Joash (in 14). So now I’m guessing that Jehoahaz is likely a variation of the name Joahaz…which makes Jehoahaz (in 13) = Joahaz (in 14).
And that’s just one example that I happened to read today.

Note: see the Joash story in 2 Kings 13:1-14:1 (NASB). Especially 13:9-10 & 14:1

Week 17  2 Kings 9

The story catches me by surprise. Elisha tells one of his men to go to Ramoth-gilead with a message for an army commander named Jehu. Here’s the exact message Elisha dictated: this is what the Lord says: I anoint you to be king over Israel. That’s it – a 14-word message.
But when Elisha’s man goes and speaks to Jehu he gives him a longer message – five-verses long – about 110-words. There’s an obvious discrepancy and I think about what to make of it.
Maybe Elisha gave the young prophet a 14-word message but then his man went off half-cocked and added a bunch of extra gobbledygook when he met Jehu.
Or maybe Elisha gave the young prophet the brief 14-word message but the man was able to expand & develop it – which he could do because he was a prophet too.
Or maybe Elisha gave the young prophet the full 110-word forecast but the writer of 2 Kings didn’t want to repeat the 110-words twice so be abbreviated Elisha to 14-words (and assumed I’d figure it out).
The last option makes good sense to me.
And it’s a reminder that the writer’s decisions are part of the reading mix. He has to make editorial choices – what to include…what to exclude. I need to keep the writer in mind. He had his own limitations & requirements.
I usually figure the bible is plenty long as it is but I sometimes wish the writer added some detail.

Note: quote from 2 Kings 9:3 (NLT)

Week 17  2 Kings 1

A guy once told me you can prove anything you want from the bible. I figure that if bible writers had decided to compose a bland encyclopedic document that was endlessly reader-editable then maybe it’s true. But I’m not exactly convinced the bible is that gelatinous.
Of course reading the bible isn’t a walk-in-the-park. Last week I read the story of a troop that came to arrest Elijah and – in a divinely-mandated strike – was instantly incinerated. I’m asking myself: what do I do with that?
If – like the guy said – I can do anything I like then I can say: that’s unfair. Cruel. Terrible. God is brutal-unfeeling-disgusting. Like that. But if I can’t just do anything I like then I try a couple of other things: a) admit I don’t know and b) file it for now and c) realize that not knowing now isn’t the same as not knowing.
Anyway Elijah’s story was in memory when I read psalm 119 today. The writer said about the Lord: you are good and only do good. And later: your decisions are fair.
A few days ago it looked like the Lord acted in an unexplained and unfair and arbitrary way. But today I read that he has reasons and he’s fair and acts with purpose.
He acts – and apparently only acts – in good ways.
Today was a bible-reader’s reminder: I’m not just reading…I’m trying to correctly jigsaw bits-and-pieces together.

Note: quotes from Psalm 119:68 & 75 (NLT). The Elijah story’s in 2 Kings 1.

Week 17  2 Kings 5

Naaman was an outsider – an Aramean – a non-Israel guy. So generally-speaking he was in the broad classification of being foreign & oppositional & a danger to Hebrew life and health. An enemy. But he travelled to Israel in search of a miracle.
It’s hard to know whether he thought he would definitely get his miracle or whether he was just thinking I’ve-got-nothing-to-lose. But he did have at least three expectations: a) I thought (Elisha) would come out to meet me! b) I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and c) (I expected him to) call on the name of the Lord his God and heal me. (Naaman also threw in a water-quality comparison question – aren’t the Abana River and the Pharpar River of Damascus better than all the rivers of Israel put together? – but that was more an annoyed add-on.)
Anyway when Elisha didn’t a) meet him personally or b) wave his hands or c) publicly call on God Naaman was furious. He could also have been a bit self-conscious about his degenerative disease. Maybe irritated at coming to his ethnic-inferior cap-in-hand. Used to giving orders and now having to take them.
But when Naaman’s expectations didn’t materialize he came this-close to going home. Losing his status. Becoming a social outcast. Dying prematurely. Because of what he thought.
Lucky for Naaman that one of his men respectfully floated the idea of giving his expectations a second thought.

Note: quote from 2 Kings 5:11-12 (NLT)

Week 17  Psalm 114

This psalm is an extreme condensation/summary of a 140-chapter chunk of the bible (Exodus 1 to Joshua 4). Hard to believe he’d even try…but the writer did a pretty nice job of squashing it into 8 verses. Hundreds and hundreds of details are skipped in the process but the writer got away with it because he was really just trying to make one main point: when the Israelites escaped from Egypt – when the family of Jacob left that foreign land – the land of Judah became God’s sanctuary, and Israel became his kingdom.
I tried to visualize the point by drawing a simple diagram/map – a small box inside a big box. In the small box I wrote Israel – God’s Sanctuary. Then in the big box I wrote Outside-Israel – Not God’s Sanctuary (and since I had room I penciled-in a couple of geo-political territories: Egypt & states of Africa & tribes of Europe & kingdoms of India & Chinese dynasties. Like that.) I don’t think this Sanctuary-&-non-Sanctuary distinction is a case of Better vs. Worse. Not Superior vs. Inferior. It’s more like The Safety Zone vs. The Danger Zone.
The Promised Land became the geographic unit where Israel would be safe & protected & secure. In OT Bible World it was Israel’s safe territory. All the rest was unsafe territory in a state of slow degradation.
Unfortunately I remember what’s coming. Non-Sanctuary-type life will be imported into Sanctuary Land. Corrosive renovation’s on the move. Soon enough nowhere will be safe anymore.

Note: quote from Psalm 114:1-2 (NLT)