Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 15-17.

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I am going to look at what this passage says about the kings of Judah and Israel.  It says of Abijam, the son of Rehoboam, that his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God.  That is interesting because this passage says that most of the kings of Israel in today’s passage did what was evil in the sight of the Lord (the exception being Elah the son of Baasha).  It is also interesting because the passage says that Asa, Abijam’s son, did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.  I want to come back to what it says about Abijam.  While he was not wholly true to the Lord, the Lord was his God.  On the other hand, the passage tells us that the kings of Israel followed in the sins of Jeroboam, which was to maintain the worship of the calves which Jeroboam had set up and to appoint men as priests who were not descendants of Levi.  Some of the kings of Israel went beyond Jeroboam’s sins by following the worship practices of the surrounding lands.  I read this to suggest that Jeroboam had set the worship of the calves he built to follow the same practices as at the temple in Jerusalem, just with the calves at the center of worship rather than God.

What does this have to do with what the passage says about Abijam?  Because Abijam kept the Lord as his God, the worship practices and morals of the people of Judah stayed grounded.  However, the kings of Israel separated their worship practices from the Lord and this left them without a true grounding for their worship and their morals.  Without that grounding later kings had no reason to not adopt the practices of the surrounding peoples when those practices seemed appealing for one reason or another.  In fact, we see in future chapters that they stopped seeing the difference between the Lord and Baal.  Today we see that when people try to keep the morals which are at the root of our laws without acknowledging God they begin losing the true understanding of what is right and lose sight of the distinction between the God of Christianity and Allah of Islam, or the gods of various other religions.

The passage ends with God calling Elijah to call the people of Israel back to Him.  Interestingly, while Elijah begins his ministry by announcing a drought to King Ahab, the first person he draws to God is not an Israelite.  It is the widow in Zarephath, who is a Sidonian.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 13-14.

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When I was reading this passage my first thought when I read where the man of God from Judah said that the sign that the Lord had spoken was that “the altar shall be torn down” and then a little later it said that “The altar also was torn down” was that the translation was confusing.  The NIV says that the sign would be that “the altar will be split apart.”  However, when I thought about it some more I realized that while the NIV is closer to how we would understand what actually happened, the ESV is probably closer to what the people present would have understood the man of God to have said.  Then when they witnessed the altar split apart they would have interpreted that part of his prophecy as being fulfilled.  The symbolism of using the words “torn down” for the altar being split apart would not have been lost on those who heard the man of God say them.

I usually get caught up with wondering why the old prophet from Bethel lied to the man of God and thus do not write about that part of the passage.  However, I realized that even that is part of the lesson we should see in that part of the passage.  First, the lesson: we should not allow ourselves to be talked into going against what we know God has commanded us.  The man of God knew that God had commanded him not to eat or drink in Bethel, but when the old prophet told him that he was also a prophet and that an angel had told him that the Lord told him to bring the man of God back so that the man of God could eat, the man of God believed the old prophet.  Perhaps, the man of God thought to himself, “Why would this prophet lie to me?”  He should not have allowed himself to be convinced to go against what he knew that God had commanded him.  In the same way, we should not allow someone to convince us to go against what we know that God has commanded us.  I want to be clear that this does not mean that we should not listen to the counsel of other Believers.  However, the man of God did not know this prophet and had no reason to believe that God had spoken to him.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 11-12.

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In yesterday’s passage we saw that Solomon built a trade empire.  In today’s passage we see that Solomon used his trade empire to acquire many wives.  He probably used his economic might to convince many powerful people to form alliances with him by giving him their beautiful daughters to be among his wives.  In doing so, he broke God’s commands about forming alliances with these peoples.  Specifically, God’s command not to marry their daughters.  I am sure that Solomon justified doing this as necessary to secure trade agreements and maintain the security of the kingdom of Israel.  We get the impression that initially, Solomon built a temple for the daughter of Pharaoh to worship her gods, but that he did not, at least initially, join her in that worship.  He probably justified that by telling himself that Pharaoh was too powerful to offend, that he needed to do this to keep Pharaoh’s daughter happy.  Unfortunately, that started him down the path which ended with him joining his wives in their worship of their gods.  Worship which likely appealed to the hedonism he had begun practicing by taking so many wives.  Solomon did this despite the fact that God had appeared to him twice.  We must be careful not to follow Solomon’s example.  It is entirely too easy to forget God’s presence in our life and allow ourselves to little by little fall into idolatry.

We see something similar with Jeroboam.  Reading between the lines in this passage, it seems likely that Jeroboam saw that Solomon was demanding too much of the people.  He would have opportunity to do so as the head over the forced labor of the house of Joseph for Solomon.  When he started to speak on behalf of the people, Solomon sought to have him killed.  Before that happened God spoke to Jeroboam and told him that He would make him king over the northern ten tribes.  While doing that, God warned Jeroboam not to make the mistake of falling into idolatry which Solomon had made.  Despite that warning, almost the first thing Jeroboam did was to set up two idols for the people to worship in place of God.  Jeroboam justified this sin to himself as necessary to keep the people from killing him and turning back to Rehoboam.

At the root of their failure to be faithful to God both Solomon and Jeroboam made the same mistake.  Solomon thought that he needed to take many wives in order to secure his political situation.  Jeroboam thought that he needed to prevent his people from going to Jerusalem to worship God in order to secure his political position.  Both of them failed to trust that God would secure their position if they put their faith in Him and faithfully followed His commands.  Ultimately, we sin most often because we do not trust God to care for us.  We think that we must secure our position.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 9-10.

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At several points while I was reading this I debated interjecting a minor thought, but I decided to wait until I was done reading to include those thoughts here.   Hopefully I will remember all of those thoughts because I think they better understanding of Scripture.  The first thing I noted was the phrase, “All the people who were left of the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, who were not of the people of Israel…”  My first thought when I read that was that it said that there were people who were left of those groups who had become part of the people of Israel.  Perhaps, that is not the correct.  When I thought more about it, I realized that it could also be interpreted as saying that the people listed were not of the people of Israel.  Nevertheless, I am inclined to think that the writer is suggesting that many of the peoples of the land assimilated into the people of Israel.  I would even say that Solomon’s practice of enslaving those peoples who did not do so accelerated that process.

Then I noticed that the account about the queen of Sheba hearing about Solomon and coming to Jerusalem to investigate comes immediately after it mentions that Solomon built a fleet of trade ships on the shore of the Red Sea which brought back gold from Ophir.  That led me to conclude that the queen of Sheba heard about Solomon because of those trade ships.  A little bit of investigation showed me that Sheba was about where Yemen is now and that it was a civilization which traded by sea with India and East Africa.  In fact, it seems to me that Sheba filled a role in the Arabian Sea similar to the role Tyre filled in the Mediterranean Sea.  So, when a new power began trading in her area of influence, the queen of Sheba went to check them out.  The queen of Sheba’s visit to King Solomon was that of the head of one trading empire checking out a competitor.  She appears to have concluded that attempting to destroy this competitor was futile.  Fortunately for Sheba, Solomon’s son did not have the wisdom to successfully continue his trade practices into the next generation.  I am sorry that I have no spiritual insights for today.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 4-6.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

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Wow, that was a tough read, reading some of those names out loud really challenged me.  On the other hand, as I said shortly after I started making a video of me reading the Scripture for my Bible study every day, reading it out loud really helps me pay attention on parts which I generally find little of interest in, such as the detailed description of who Solomon’s officials were.  It says here that Zadok and Abiathar were priests.  Yet in yesterday’s passage it tells us that Solomon expelled Abiathar from being a priest.  Hopefully you can understand that this is not a contradiction.  Because in that same list of Solomon’s officials it says that Azariah the son of Zadok was the priest, and that Zabud the son of Nathan was priest.  That means that at the beginning of Solomon’s reign Zadok and Abiathar were the priests.  At a later point in Solomon’s reign, Zadok’s son was priest and Nathan’s son was also the priest.  I do not think we can tell whether Abiathar’s son and Nathan’s son were priests at the same time or not.  It would certainly be consistent to believe that Zabud, Nathan’s son became priest alongside Zadok when Abiathar was expelled from the priesthood, and then continued to serve as priest when Ahaziah, Zadok’s son, succeeded his father as priest.  I mention this because there are other places in the Bible where someone is mentioned as having a role which seems to contradict what is said elsewhere about who had that role.

One example of this is Mark 2:26 (I have linked to the entire story so you can see the context) where Jesus refers to when David was fleeing King Saul and came to Ahimelech.  In that passage Jesus says that David “entered the house of God, in the time of Abiathar the high priest.”  Some people say, “But the high priest in that story was Ahimelech, Abiathar’s father.  How can Jesus be God if He mistakes Abiathar for Ahimelech?”  My answer to that is this.  Abiathar was alive when David did that, which means that it was in the time of Abiathar.  Abiathar was also later the high priest.  We often speak in this manner.  We might say, “When President George H.W. Bush was a fighter pilot.”  When George H.W. Bush was a fighter pilot, someone else was the President of the United States, but no one would say I was wrong for saying what I wrote about him.  So, Jesus was not wrong, David ate the bread of the presence in the time of Abiathar.  I am just using this story as an example of ways in which a biblical passage might refer to things which a casual reader might think was a contradiction, but is not.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on 1 Kings 2-3.

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I am going to start writing about Solomon’s judgement in the case of which woman was the mother of the child.  When I was first exposed to Solomon’s judgement in this passage it was explained to me that Solomon made this decision because he understood that the child’s biological mother would do anything to save her child, even giving it up to be raised as another woman’s son.  However, as I have gotten older I have realized that this is not necessarily true.  I have known several mothers who were willing to sacrifice the well-being of their child in order to satisfy their desires.  Further, I have heard and read of many more such situations.  And that is when I realized that Solomon’s wisdom far exceeded what was attributed to him by that first explanation I was given.  When Solomon said that the woman who was willing to give up the child in order to save the child’s life was the mother, he was saying that she was the woman who demonstrated motherly love towards the child.  Solomon did not give two tosses for who the child’s biological mother was.  He made his judgement based on who would look out for the child’s best interests, an who would raise the child best.  Solomon’s decision was not based on deciding who was the child’s actual biological mother.  It was based on determining which woman would sacrifice her desires in order to achieve what she believed in her heart was in the best interest of the child.  I want to note that even though Solomon’s judgement did not determine which of the women was the biological mother, most of the time the woman who chooses to sacrifice her interests for the sake of the child will be the biological mother.

I want to note that the child’s true parents, in the sense of the above commentary, may not do what you or I think is in the best interest of the child, but they will do what they believe in their heart is in the best interest of their children.

When I started writing I was debating whether I would go back and review other parts of this passage.  I have decided that I will conclude here.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.