Medicine Hat Joe

Week 24  2 Chronicles 36

In the last week of May 2023 I ranked the fifteen kings of Judah. I purposely didn’t bother with the last four kings since it’s a little difficult to think of a person being a king if a foreign ruler is telling him what to do. But technically there were 19 kings. Not 15.
I decided to look at the Last Four this year: Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jehoiachin & Zedekiah. The one big thing they had in common was that they all did evil in the sight of the Lord. Even though Jehoahaz and Jehoiachin only had short reigns – about three months – they took that narrow window of opportunity to do-evil (and it’s possible they acted evilly before the were crowned and after they were deposed.)
Anyway the point is that I didn’t find anything good about any of them. And what that means is that if I had included them in my 2023 ranking they all would have been at or near the very bottom of the list for the same reason that landed Ahaziah Jehoram Ahaz & Amon at numbers 12 13 14 & 15 last year: not a single good quality was recorded about them.

Note: an interesting take-away for me was the reminder about Jehoiachin. In his long exile in Babylon he had a grandson named Zerubbabel who was one of the people who returned to Jerusalem after the exile. His story is told in Ezra 1-6. And one other thing…Jehoiachin and Zerubbabel also show up in Matthew 1 – the family name list of Jesus.

Week 23  2 Chronicles 36

Here are the key facts about the very last king of Judah:
Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king
He reigned for eleven years
The chronicler adds a couple of other details. First is that Zedekiah had taken an oath of loyalty in God’s name to not rebel against Babylon (but he rebelled anyway). The second thing is that Zedekiah was a hard and stubborn man, refusing to turn to the Lord.
Finally – like the other three kings – Zedekiah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord his God.
2 Kings adds a couple of details about the siege of Jerusalem. But it’s really Jeremiah who spends more time in his book talking about what was going on in Jerusalem during Zedekiah’s reign (in fact Jeremiah 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 37 38 39 all talk about those years) (35 & 36 are about Jehoiakim).
Even though a lot of the content of those 10 chapters in Jeremiah are about Jeremiah and his prophecies one interesting thing I found out about Zedekiah is that even though he publicly rejected Jeremiah’s advice (in fact Jeremiah was locked in prison for spreading anti-state propaganda) the king secretly visited him a couple of times sniffing-around for some advice & input (the Babylonian army was at the city gates and maybe Zedekiah hoped the Lord would bail him out). But in the end Zedekiah didn’t listen to Jeremiah. The last king of Judah was a hard and stubborn man. And stayed that way all the way into exile.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 36:13 12 (NLT)

Week 23  2 Chronicles 36

Key facts about Judah’s second last king:
Jehoiachin was 18 years old when he became king
He reigned for three months and ten days (the 2 Kings version rounds it down to three months)
At that point Nebuchadnezzar brought Jehoiachin to Babylon. The Bible I’m reading says that Jehoiachin was ‘summoned’ to Babylon. But when I turn back to the Kings version of the story it looks like it was something stronger than a ‘summons’. 2 Kings says that: 1) the Babylonian army had Jerusalem under siege. 2) Jehoiachin surrendered to the Babylonians. And 3) Jehoiachin was taken prisoner.
Then one final thing: Jehoiachin did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.
I had hoped that Jeremiah would give me some extra information (like with Jehoiakim) – but he dropped-the-ball. At least at first. I checked a word book and found that Jehoiachin’s name showed up in the last chapter of Jeremiah. So how did things turn out for Jehoiachin?
He was a prisoner in Babylon for 37-years
Then he was released from prison
And he was given a living allowance that covered his expenses for the rest of his life.
So in the end things turned around a little bit for Jehoiachin.
As a teen-aged king Jehoiachin did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. I wondered if he’d had a change of heart there in Babylonian exile.
Maybe. But I didn’t find anything to say he did.

Note: quote from 2 Chronicles 36:9 2 Kings 24:12 (NLT). And see Jeremiah 52:31-34

Week 23  2 Chronicles 36

The snippet-account of Jehoiakim is in 2 Chronicles 36:5-8 (4 verses).
The other short version is in 2 Kings 23:36-24:5 (7 verses).
The passages don’t give me much to go on but the key facts about the third last king are:
Jehoiakim was 25 years old when he became king
He reigned for eleven years
During his reign Judah was taken over by Babylon and Jehoiakim was exiled to Babylon
He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.
It’s pretty meager information to go on. That’s why Jeremiah’s prophecies add some useful data. For instance Jeremiah told Jehoiakim you are full of selfish greed and dishonesty. You murder the innocent, oppress the poor, and reign ruthlessly.
Jeremiah also told the story of a prophet named Uriah who forecast doom against Judah. Jehoiakim didn’t like what he heard and tracked down Uriah and killed him.
And on another occasion Jeremiah wrote down all his prophecies and sent the scroll to Jehoiakim. The king’s reaction was to cut the scroll into little pieces and incinerate them.
I don’t know if there’s any way to fairly compare Jehoahaz & Jehoiakim. They both did evil in the sight of the Lord. The big difference is that Jehoiakim had about forty-times more time to do his evil than Three-Month Jehoahaz. Does that make Jehoiakim qualitatively worse? Not necessarily. About all I can say now is that Jehoiakim got more chances to practice his evil. And he took them.

Note: quote from 2 Kings 23:37 & Jeremiah 22:17 (NLT). And see Jeremiah stories in 26:20-23 & 36:1-26.

Week 23  2 Chronicles 36

In 2023 I looked at the kings of Judah and ranked them according to their character qualities: Top-to-Bottom. Best-to-Worst. I posted my final list – one-to-fifteen – on May 31 2023.
I admitted last year that I was cheating on my King List by making Josiah  the last king. The fact is that there were four more kings after Josiah but I didn’t count them because they were basically puppets controlled by foreign countries.
The four kings not on my 2023 list were: Jehoahaz Jehoiakim Jehoiachin & Zedekiah. I decided to take a look at them this year.
The stories of all four are in 2 Chronicles 36. Short accounts – averaging about 5.5 verses each. Luckily I remember from last year to double-check the Kings versions of the stories. They’re in 2 Kings 23-25.
Key facts about the Jehoahaz the fourth last king:
He was 23 years old when he became king
He reigned for three months
He was deposed & exiled by the king of Egypt (he died in an Egyptian prison)
He did what was evil in the Lord’s sight.
One thing I’d completely forgotten about was that Jeremiah prophesied during the exact time of these last four kings. In fact Jeremiah’s long career went from the thirteenth year of King Josiah’s reign in Judah…until the eleventh year of King Zedekiah’s reign.
I figured Jeremiah might add some details. But in the end he didn’t have much to say about Jehoahaz.

Note: quotes from 2 Kings 23:32 & Jeremiah 1:2-3 (NLT)

 

Week 23  Proverbs 5

The last couple of days I’ve been thinking about what Solomon calls The Way. I picture a fork in the road – or maybe an on-ramp – where I get to choose: Do I choose the Way-of-Life? Or the Way-of-Death?
So anyway in chapter five Solomon talks about a woman who’s trying to sexually seduce a young guy and what Solomon says about her makes me rethink my fork in the road picture:
a) she gives no thought to the way of life
b) her paths are crooked
c) but she knows it not.
The woman isn’t concerned about the Way-of-Life. She’s already on the Way-of-Death . I get that. But the surprising thing is that it looks like she doesn’t even know it.
If the woman was on a crooked path and knew it and couldn’t care less – that would be one thing. But the thing is: she knows it not – doesn’t seem to have any conception of her predicament. I’d think that if she had stood at an intersection and thought and decided to go the Way-of-Death then she’d at least recall the decision. But it looks like she didn’t.
Which makes me wonder: was there no fork in the road? Maybe the woman was on the Way-of-Death from the very beginning. Maybe she didn’t need to turn her back on The Way. Maybe it was turned to start with. Which makes even locating the Way-of-Life a worrying problem.

Note: quote from Proverbs 5:6 NLT

Week 22  Proverbs 4

The Way is called the path of the righteous (person). The Way is progressive & developmental & evolutionary. It starts dimly. But gradually things get brighter and clearer over time. The early stages of The Way are a bit like sunrise: the path of the righteous is like the first gleam of the dawn. Shadowy and opaque at first but as I wait it eventually gets ever brighter till the full light of day.
By contrast the way of the wicked is like deep darkness. So in one way it’s kind of similar to how The Way is at the beginning. The difference is that The Anti-Way stays dark. It doesn’t get lighter over time. There’s no point in waiting for the dawns-early-light since morning will never ever come. It’s perpetually dark. Permanently dark. Still…since it’s the only way an evil person’s got he walks along the dark path. He has to. He can’t just stand there inertly. He starts walking (even though he probably shouldn’t since he’s functionally blind). So then he trips and falls over something in the path (it’s so dark he doesn’t know what he fell over). Tripping and falling is going to be a pretty major component of an evil person’s journey along The Anti-Way. Going by feel. Still…I guess he figures anything’s better than The Way.

Note: quotes from Proverbs 4:18 19 (NIV). End-of-month reading report: the 563 chapters I’ve read are about 47% of the bible…and as of today that’s in roughly 42% of the year.

Week 22  Proverbs 1

Proverbs is a manual – a guide – for living in a wise way.
It’s safe to say that Solomon figures I shouldn’t just live a spontaneous undirected random casual self-directed crowd-influenced easy-going devil-may-care life. His view is that I need to find The Way. The Way informs & directs & focuses me. Walking The Way is what Solomon says is walking the path of wisdom.
So – broadly-speaking – there are two possible avenues:
1) I can decide to do what I decide to do for whatever personal or group reasons that go into making my decisions (Solomon thinks this kind of action-taking is foolish. He doesn’t exactly name it The Fool’s Way…but that’s the implication).
2) I can decide to do what I decide to do based on the code of The Way (Solomon doesn’t call it The Wise Way…just The Way).
Choosing which way to follow isn’t a purely neutral choice. Solomon says foolish people have already decided to despise wisdom and discipline. They reject the Lord. Ignore his advice. Love their own way. Hate knowledge. So when a foolish person decides not to choose The Way it’s really hardly even a choice. It’s more like just carrying on as usual (if my default is to hate The Way why-in-the-world would I choose it?)
Anyway…Solomon begins by mapping out my options: a) I can try to start following The Way or b) I can disregard it.

Note: quote from Proverbs 1:7 (NIV). And see 1:22 24 25 29.

Week 22  Psalms 146-150

Yesterday I searched through psalms 146-150 looking for qualities of the Lord. I found eight.
Today I dropped a couple off the list (they didn’t quite fit the bill…they seemed like action-qualities…doing as much as being). So I had six things that described the Lord:
great is our Lord (another psalm said surpassingly great)
he is mighty in power
his understanding has no limits
he reigns forever
his splendor is above the earth and the heavens
his name alone is exalted.
I thought it would be helpful (and maybe easier) to reduce these phrases to a single word. That seemed to work at first – for instance I tried Great Powerful & Brilliant. But the second three traits were too complex to describe in a single word (and for all I know the first three were too and I was just kidding myself). After all I noticed that the writer decided to add modifiers to really make his point:
• How great is the Lord? Stupendously great
• How powerful? Powerfully powerful
• Limitlessly smart
• Permanently in-charge
• Incandescently above everyone & everything everywhere
• Peerlessly superior
But really the main point in these psalms isn’t to get the Lord’s qualities out on-the-table – even though it does do that. The writer’s aim was to show what qualities the Lord could be praised for.
You’re the greatest
You’re the strongest
You’re the smartest
You always take care of things
You’re everywhere
You’re the very best.
Praise the Lord!

Note: quotes from Psalm 147:5 (& 150:2) 146:10 147:5 148:13 148:13 (NIV)

Week 22  Psalms 146-150

146 147 148 149 and 150 all have the same opening line: Praise the Lord.
Each time the expression is used my bible has a footnote that says “Praise the Lord” (in the Hebrew language) is Hallelu Yah. I looked up hallelujah in an English language dictionary and it said: praise the Lord.
Praise means approval. Affirmation. Commendation. Applause. If I go to a concert and it’s terrific I stand up and clap. I approve. I praise the performers.
When it comes to praising the Lord it seems like the same general idea applies. The Lord performs…and I can approve of the performance by Hallelujah-ing the Lord. If I wanted to I could stand. Shout. Applaud. Raise my hands in salute.
I did a quick re-reading exercise…scanning these five psalms and counting-up things that the Lord did (what his praiseworthy actions were). There were quite a few of them. In 59-verses there were 41 actions the Lord could be commended for (for instance he determines the number of stars).
But in the process I also found something I wasn’t looking for: praiseworthy things that weren’t performance-related. They were praise-approvals of the Lord for what he was like…his qualities…his character-traits. I found 8-items describing what the Lord was like (for instance praise him for his surpassing greatness).
Anyway it was a pure numbers exercise. A follow-up idea might be to create two lists: a) the Lord’s actions and b) the Lord’s qualities.

Note: quotes from Psalms 145:21 147:4 150:2 (NIV)