Medicine Hat Joe

Week 21 Psalm 144

David asks the question: O Lord, what are mortals that you should notice us, mere humans that you should care for us? For we are like a breath of air; our days are like a passing shadow.
I slow down. Tip-toe through this paragraph. It says I’m like a passing shadow. I’m thinking – okay, where does that leave me? What’s a passing shadow worth?
If I’m out on the prairie under a high blue summer sky and the wind is pushing clouds along I might see cloud-shadows off in the distance rushing darkly across the flat bright fields. It’s a pretty nice thing to see and I like it – a kind of visual dynamism. But even though it does register on my Things Worth Paying Attention To Scale it registers near the bottom-end. Here at 3:00:00pm. Gone at 3:00:03pm.
I don’t think David’s point is that – in absolute terms – I’m worthless. I’m not worthless. I’m noticeable. Interesting. There’s a definite worthwhile-ity to me. It’s not like I don’t register on the scale. I have a kind of low-level visual dynamism. But brief. Lightweight. Okay…but not as awesome as I think.
Psalm 144:4 isn’t the only verse in the bible that talks about what people are like.
But it’s the only verse on that topic today.
And when I think about it being told I’m not as awesome as I think is only an insult if it isn’t true.

Note: quote from Psalm 144:3-4 (NLT)

Week 20 2 Chronicles

Last Monday I decided to group each of the Judah-South kings into one of three classes: Goods-Bads-Middlers. The key question for me was: did the writer say only good things – only bad things – or both good-&-bad things about a king?
I’ve finished reading 2 Chronicles now and the fifteen candidates are: Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Joash Amaziah Uzziah Jotham Ahaz Hezekiah Manasseh Amon & Josiah. [I didn’t include Athaliah because she wasn’t officially coronated. When her son died she just took over – a decisive woman in the right place at the right time. Another thing about Athaliah – she almost eliminated David’s bloodline by killing everyone but Joash.]
So anyway my personal findings are…
Bads: Jehoram Ahaziah Ahaz Amon.
Middlers: Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Joash Amaziah Uzziah Jotham Hezekiah Manasseh.
Goods: Josiah.
Couple of Comments:
I had Jotham as a Good at first. Then I cross-referenced his story in Kings and bumped him down.
Hezekiah was a star until near the very end when the chronicler says: he became proud. It’s too bad – I’d had him batting a thousand. I counted about 620-verses in the twenty-six divided-kingdom chapters and Hezekiah accounted for 117 of them – almost 19% of the total! Almost all of it admirable. Just one minor brush with pride.
I think all Middlers started well and went astray later on – except Manasseh – a real ogre right out of the starting gate – but he did a one-eighty in the end.

Note: quote from 2 Chronicles 32:25 (NLT).

Week 20 2 Chronicles

At the beginning of the week I set myself a little mental-focusing exercise. I decided to track and categorize the kings of Judah based on three simple questions. Were they Good Kings – Bad Kings – or Middler Kings?
It seemed like an okay exercise and I guess it was. Of course it slowed me down a bit. And in the end I think the three-category classification scheme oversimplified things. But it concentrated my thinking.
I got flummoxed in chapter 36 though. What to do with those last four kings? I’d figured on Monday to map all the kings from Rehoboam (first king) to Zedekiah (last king). But when I got to chapter 36 I realized that the independent kingdom of Judah was gone by then. Kaput! Did those four reign? Well…yeah. But did they have real power? Uh-uh.
Josiah died in chapter 35 and Jehoahaz replaced him. For three months. Then his guardian the king of Egypt shipped him off to Egypt.
Eliakim (also known as Jehoiakim) replaced Jehoahaz. But Egypt determined his state policies. He was a puppet-king.
Then when Egypt was a replaced in an international rebalance-of-power Babylon attacked Jerusalem. Eliakim? Shipped into exile.
Jehoiachin replaced Eliakim for three months then Nebuchadnezzar replaced him with Zedekiah.
Anyway the point is that I decided not to include these final four plug-in kings in my list of Goods-Bads-Middlers. They weren’t Real Kings. You’re not king-of-your-castle if someone else is.
Tomorrow I’ll submit my Good-Bad-Middler Report.

Week 20 2 Chronicles

The story of Manasseh got me puzzling over how the Lord operates.
Manasseh was one of the worst kings of Judah. Maybe the very worst.
The chronicler says that Manasseh: did what was evil in the Lord’s sight. And then he lists those things.
The Lord warned Manasseh. Manasseh just ignored the Lord. What wasn’t so easy to ignore was the Assyrian army when they arrived in Jerusalem. Manasseh was taken captive – led away with a chain hooked through his nose.
It was there in captivity that Manasseh had a serious change of soul: Manasseh sought the Lord his God and cried out humbly to the God of his ancestors.
The chronicler says Manasseh’s prayer was recorded in The Book of the Kings of Israel & in The Record of the Seers. I couldn’t find either of them but I found the prayer online.
It’s fifteen verses long and Manasseh prayed it from a place of abject hopelessness. For example:
The sins I have committed are more in number than the sand of the sea…
I have provoked your wrath and have done what is evil in your sight…
I earnestly implore you, forgive me, Lord, forgive me!
And what-do-you-know…the Lord did forgive Manasseh.
After all that he’d done it seems like a pretty big forgive.
Makes me wonder why; wonder if he should have. Manasseh was one of the very worst.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 33:2 & 12 (NLT). Manasseh’s prayer 9, 10, 13 at biblegateway.com (May 20, 2021)

Week 20 Psalm 139

In 139 the writer is preoccupied with the fact that the Lord knew everything about him. And he didn’t just know…he took interventionary steps: you chart the path ahead of me and tell me where to stop and rest. But the Lord’s comprehensive knowledge didn’t seem to bother him at all. Really the only problem was: such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too great for me to know!
The writer realized he couldn’t dope out the totality of the Lord’s operating capacity. He knew that his own knowledge-deficit was pretty sizable. But the fact that he didn’t know everything didn’t get him in a big psychic contort. It just was what it was.
In the second paragraph the writer wonders – hypothetically – if it was possible to escape the Lord’s scrutiny…
Since the Lord’s in heaven I could hide in the place of the dead.
Yeah except for the fact that Lord has full access to the nether world.
Hmmm…
I could hide in the dark.
Wrong again. With the Lord: the night shines as bright as the day.
So there’s no escaping him.
But the two things I notice in 139 are that a) the Lord has exhaustive awareness of the writer and b) the writer seems fine with that.
Sure…he could say the Lord is invasive sinister dangerous objectionable revolting – he’s maybe even contravening Alberta’s Privacy Laws.
But that doesn’t sound like the writer’s take. He thinks it’s a good thing.

Note: quotes from Psalm 139:3, 6, 12 (NLT)

Week 20 2 Chronicles

The chronicler says that when Uzziah became king: he did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight…(He) sought God during the days of Zechariah, who instructed him in the fear of the Lord. So the young king had a mentor who helped him along in revering the Lord. Uzziah learned that being top dog in Jerusalem didn’t mean he was top dog.
Over time he gained reputation as a capable domestic & international ruler: his fame spread far and wide, for the Lord helped him wonderfully until he became very powerful.
So that was good. Nothing wrong with a little fame. Nothing wrong with a little power. Nothing wrong with a couple of social-status assets in your back pocket.
But then the chronicler says: when (Uzziah) became powerful, he also became proud, which led to his downfall.
Power that’s sitting there as an independent and neutral factor is okay.
Power gets less okay when it hooks up with pride.
I don’t get the feeling at all that power necessarily connects to pride – it’s like when I buy a hamburger I’m not legally obligated to buy fries.
And you gotta think Uzziah had other options. He could have been powerful-humble. Powerful-selfless. Powerful-compassionate. Powerful-kind & helpful.
But for Uzziah pride seemed like such a perfect natural desirable irresistible companion for his power. An unfortunately whatever it seemed to be it turned into a marriage made in hell.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 26:4-5, 15, 16 (NLT)

Week 20 2 Chronicles

So far I’ve read the stories of eight rulers of Judah-South – Rehoboam Abijah Asa Jehoshaphat Jehoram Ahaziah Athaliah (a queen) Joash.
A couple of days ago I’d decided to group kings under three categories: Goods-Bads-Middlers. My simple rule-of-thumb was that if the chronicler only said good things about the king then he’d get a thumbs-up.
Things got complicated when I read the Abijah story. In Chronicles I didn’t find anything bad about Abijah. Only three pretty good things:
His long historical speech seemed pretty good
In his battle with Jeroboam (Israel-North) he got help from the Lord
And the chronicler said: Judah defeated Israel because they trusted in the Lord.
So on my checklist Abijah landed in the Good King column.
Anyway then I saw that Abijah’s story was cross-referenced to 1 Kings and when I flipped over there it said: (Abijah) committed the same sins as his father before him, and his heart was not right with the Lord his God.
And just like that Abijah got X-ed out of the Good King column.
And also just like that my simple & straightforward exercise got more time-consuming because now even if a king scores 100% in Chronicles I’ll have to double-check the story in Kings.
Which – I admit – might not end up being a whole lot of extra work because so far even though my sample size is small good kings are looking to be about as common as mountain gorillas.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 13:18 & 1 Kings 15:3 (NLT)

Week 19 2 Chronicles

Once you’re past the chronicler’s stories of David & Solomon things get a bit more tangled. Fortunately for readers Chronicles is only interested in the Judah-David line of kings – by contrast Kings ricochets back-and-forth between Judah & Israel.
To help focus my reading I decide to track each of the kings. My plan is to rate them under three categories. Good Kings – Bad Kings – Middler Kings. How will I decide? I’ll use a pretty simple mechanism…
If the bible says nothing but good about a king he’s Good.
If the bible says nothing but bad about a king he’s Bad.
If the bible says both good and bad about a king he’s a Middler.
I read about Asa today.
At the start of Asa’s reign a prophet told him: the Lord will stay with you as long as you stay with him. And for a while Asa did stay with the Lord. Which is good.
Then in chapter sixteen he hired foreign mercenaries. Completely disregarded the Lord.
Another prophet came to tell Asa he’d missed-the-boat: 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! Which is bad.
Asa stared out pretty well but declined as time passed.
It’s unfortunate. Sobering. You wonder what happened.
I feel let down, and I have to check Asa off as a Middler.

Note: quotes from 2 Chronicles 15:2 & 16:9 (NLT)

Week 19 2 Chronicles

I think that a frequent bible-reader’s complaint is: There’s Just Too Much Data.
But today my problem was: There Isn’t Enough…because I was at the story of the clash between the Northern & Southern Tribes. I knew that Rehoboam being a hard-nose was the tip of the iceberg reason. But not why they split along N & S lines.
For example I wonder why Ephraim-Manasseh didn’t join the South? They were geographically close to Judah and had close family ties – Benjamin & Joseph were the favoured sons.
And if you were forecasting a split the tribes east of Jordan would seem more likely candidates.
I also doubt that all twelve tribes were equally good-buddies before Rehoboam. There must have been other rivalries and vendettas. Or had Solomon absolutely & maximally alienated everyone else?
I went back to the story in Kings. It said that All-Israel had come to make Rehoboam king. But then they called in Jeroboam to see what he thought. If Rehoboam was the legitimate hereditary heir why-in-the-world bother consulting Jeroboam at all? He was an outlaw.
In the end the anti-Rehoboam group said: down with David and his dynasty! We have no share in Jesse’s son! Let’s go home Israel!
And just like that everyone – except Benjamin – ganged-up on Judah.
I guess it’s not critically important to know what all was behind the civil war divide.
But today was one of those days when I wished there was more to read, not less.

Note: quote from 1 Kings 12:16 (NLT)

Week 19 1 Chronicles

About forty days ago – April 3/21 – I posted on Solomon. At the time I was thinking about how Solomon’s Temple-building project seemed quite a bit different from when Israel built the Tabernacle in the wilderness. One point of difference was that the Lord gave Moses very specific directions about constructing the Tabernacle. I said that in contrast: Solomon didn’t go to Sinai and the bible doesn’t say anything about him getting blueprints from the Lord.
So…now I have to revise that idea because of what I read a couple of days ago. David was handing over the reins of power to Solomon: then David gave Solomon the plans for the Temple and its surroundings, including the treasuries, the upstairs rooms, the inner rooms… and et cetera for eight more verses of specifications. Then David ended by saying: every part of this plan…was given to me in writing from the hand of the Lord.
In April I said that the bible didn’t say anything about Solomon getting blueprints from the Lord. And I guess I could argue that that was technically true (he didn’t get them directly from the Lord). But non-technically I was wrong. Solomon got them from the Lord via his dad.
So a good bible-reading reminder for me is this: if I don’t keep reading I might miss a chance to discover that I’m wrong.

Note: quotes from 1 Chronicles 2:11 & 19 (NLT)