Medicine Hat Joe

Week 20  2 Chronicles

Solomon had a dream and in it the Lord gave him an unbelievable choice: what do you want? Ask and I will give it to you. The offer sounds too good to be true. I can’t think of anyone else in the OT who got one like it.
Anyway with this sky’s-the-limit offer on the table Solomon asked for wisdom and knowledge. What a great character guy! And the Lord told him: because your greatest desire is to help your people, and you did not ask for personal wealth and honor or the death of your enemies or even a long life…I will certainly give you wisdom and knowledge.
I put together a list: Potential Choices for Solomon (in ascending order):
• personal wealth
• honor
• freedom from opponents
• long life
• wisdom-and-knowledge
When Solomon made his choice I don’t know how far down the road he was thinking. But I was reading 1 Kings a couple of weeks ago and know that Solomon’s wisdom-and-knowledge didn’t inoculate him against idol-worship. So maybe not far enough.
I’m wondering if another choice might have been better for Solomon (not  to say that Wisdom-and-Knowledge wasn’t good. But wouldn’t something like long-term Faith have been better? Maybe so.
Based on what he knew about himself at the time Solomon made a solid choice. What he didn’t plan for was the long deviation that would gradually take him farther and farther away from the Lord.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 1:7 11-12 (NLT)

Week 20  Psalm 138

By definition there’s a huge difference between the Lord and me. And one result is that there’s a gigantic distance between us. But when David says though the Lord is great, he cares for the humble, but he keeps his distance from the proud that’s a tip-off that distance is dynamic.
Knowing that the Lord’s proximity isn’t fixed & static is useful information to have. The Lord isn’t equidistant from every single one of us. Arrogance has a distancing effect and so the Lord keeps the proud at arms-length. By contrast humility narrows the gap.
Proximity is a dependent variable. The personal space between the Lord and a) a proud person and b) a humble person works in a kind of inverse way. The standard distance between the Lord and people is stretched by pride. But humility reduces the space.
This raises a practical question. What if a guy feels proud of himself (maybe he’s talented popular good-looking & successful)? What if he’s asking: how do I feel less proud? Unfortunately David doesn’t give advice on that How-To question.
His point is: the Lord is great. That’s the fundamental thing. If I think that the Lord is awesomely distant – and I’m wondering about closing-the-gap – then that’s my starter-step in the right direction. By contrast if I think that the Lord isn’t so great then that’ll be an important distance-maintaining or distance-extending decision that I get to make.

Note: quote from Psalm 138:6 (NLT)

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 my normal reading approach is to think & adjust & assess & evaluate soberly. And so pretty quickly I realized that panning chapter 24 was just a knee-jerk reaction on my part. I needed to pull-back. Hold-my-horses.
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 I’d have to admit that my personal interest in the chapter is still very minimal.
One other thing I notice at the end is that all the 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 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 nation)?

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 and either a) making the Lord part of the mix or b) disregarding the Lord. My choice of a) or b) will determine the project’s Degree of Usefulness.
He says: IF I do something BUT I give zero consideration to the Lord THEN what I do is useless.
Let’s say there’s 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 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. Initially both guys successfully got their houses built and they moved in. And both showed high initial Degrees of Usefulness. But eventually inclement weather would be the real test of the build.

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 looking for). But I think he’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. 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 3 times. Jehoram isn’t personally named
Chapter 6 Arameans. A ‘king of Israel’ is mentioned about 8 times. Jehoram isn’t personally named
Chapter 7 Ben-had. An unnamed ‘king of Israel’ is mentioned twice
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 Elijah was his contemporary. Now I don’t.
And I thought that Jehoram was only 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 – a bit-player behind the main man. That might be true but looking at the Ahab-specific content I see he was pretty important too (of the 209-verses 167-verses are about Ahab). But there’s more to it. The Lord actually communicated with Ahab using the prophets:
• Elijah forecast the three-year drought
• There were the miraculous and shocking events at Carmel
• a prophet gave Ahab battle intel 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 signposts. And so 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.

Week 18  1 Kings 9-10

Jehu is the last member of the club that I’m calling the Big Four (I’ll come back to Ahab & Jehoram later).
Jehu’s story covers 73-verses – two full chapters – so it’s pretty thorough. It starts with Elisha forecasting that Jehu will be the linchpin in the destruction of the Ahab-family.
I’ve read the story of Jehu the Annihilator before and words like thug liar conspirator deceiver murderer & executioner come to mind. Jehu looks like an all-round Bad Guy.
But there are two contrary things going on:
First. When the Ahab-family was gone and Baal-worship in Israel was eliminated the Lord’s verdict to Jehu was this: you have done well in following my instructions to destroy the family of Ahab. Because of this I will cause your descendants to be kings of Israel. The Ahab-family had crossed the line and Jehu had become the Hammer of the Lord. Sure…he had something personal to gain from it. But he still got credit.
Second. Later on: Jehu did not obey the law of the Lord with all his heart. He refused to turn from the sins of idolatry. So he was discredited.
I think that Jehu – way more than any other king of Israel – did what he was told to do. But like all the others he latched onto things he was told not to do. And the not-to-dos outweighed the to-dos.

Note: quotes from 2 Kings 10:30 31 (NLT). End-of-month reading report: I’ve read 443 chapters. Reading is 37% completed in 33% of the year.

Week 18  1 Kings 11-14

Out of the nineteen kings of Israel there’s only four that had actual stories told about them (not just summaries). I wasn’t sure why that was but I decided to slow down for a couple of days to see if I could find out why the Big Four – Jeroboam Ahab Joram & Jehu – were treated big.
Jeroboam was the first king of Israel. He began his career as a hard-working official of Solomon until the relationship broke down (Solomon tried to kill him).
After Solomon died Jeroboam led the anti-Rehoboam faction that split away ten tribes from the southern kingdom of Judah-Benjamin.
One of the first things Jeroboam did was to create a new state-religion for the north (a good practical decision but a bad religious one). An unnamed prophet gave Jeroboam a pretty solid negative-prophecy about that. Later another prophet (Ahijah) gave him another dire warning. Jeroboam disregarded both.
The Jeroboam story covers about 80-verses (way more than the 7-verse average of the 15 “obituary-column” kings). I think there’s two reasons Jeroboam got the coverage he did: a) because he was the very first king of Israel and b) because he re-invented religious practices in the north and reoriented everyone away from the Lord.
There isn’t much doubt that Jeroboam was a bad king. Ahijah told him: you have done more evil than all who lived before you…Since you have turned your back on me (the Lord), I will bring disaster on your dynasty.

Note: quote from 1 Kings 14:9-10 (NLT)

Week 18  1-2 Kings

All the kings of Israel are mentioned in the two books of the kings. But with fifteen of them the accounts are very short.
(I wondered if the length-of-the-story corresponded to the length-of-the-reign. But I don’t think so. Jeroboam the Second – for instance – had a long reign (41-years) but his story is told in just seven verses.)
I decided to list the king’s names on a sheet of paper and then add the number of verses allocated to them:
Nadab 7 verses. Baasha 14. Elah 7. Zimri 6. Omri 6. Ahaziah 12. Jehoahaz 9. Jehoash 4. Jeroboam II 7. Zechariah 5. Shallum 3. Menahem 7. Pekahiah 4. Pekah 7. Hoshea 4.
That’s an average of about 7-verses per king. I get the feeling that with these 15 I’m getting something like an obituary column. For example:
Nadab son of Jeroboam began to rule over Israel in the second year of King Asa’s reign in Judah. He reigned in Israel two years. But he did what was evil in the LORD’s sight and followed the example of his father, continuing the sins that Jeroboam had led Israel to commit.
That’s pretty much what I get with all fifteen – give or take:
1. Name
2. Family Line
3. Length of Reign
4. Religious Performance
The stories of the other four kings of Israel are different. With Jeroboam I Ahab Jehoram & Jehu I’m getting multiple chapters tracking their stories. I wonder what’s going on with the Big Four.
So I think I’ll have to look at them a bit more carefully.

Note: quote from 1 Kings 15:25-26 (NLT)