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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 34-36.

    Josiah’s father was assassinated when Josiah was eight years old and Josiah became king. When he was 16 he began to seek God. When he turned 20 he began systematically destroying and desecrating all of the idols, symbols of idolatry, and places “holy” to other gods. He did this not just in the territory of Judah, but in all the land that had been part of Israel. He then ordered the repair of the Temple. During that repair the priests found a copy of the Book of the Law. Josiah was horrified when he learned how badly he and the rest of the people of Israel had failed to keep God’s commands and immediately sought God’s guidance for what they should do. The response Josiah received was that it was too late to prevent the disaster which God was going to pour out on the people of Israel, but because Josiah had repented in sorrow for the sins God would delay it. Josiah chose to continue in faithfulness despite that being insufficient to prevent the coming disaster. I am always inspired by Josiah and his leadership. Under his leadership the people enthusiastically worshiped and served God in the face of impending tragedy.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 31-33.

    As part of the revival and religious reform which he was leading, Hezekiah asked the people of Jerusalem to bring offerings for the support of the priests and Levites. The reason for this was so that the priests and Levites could dedicate themselves to studying and teaching the Law of God. We get an understanding of the degree to which Hezekiah’s reforms were supported by the people in the response to his edict. The response came not just from the people of Jerusalem, to whom Hezekiah had directed his edict, it came from all of the people of Judah AND from the people who had moved to Judah from other parts of Israel. The response was vastly more than Hezekiah, or his officials, had expected. My interpretation of this passage is that before this reform was instituted by Hezekiah those priests and Levites who were not politically connected were living a subsistence life and barely getting by (both in Jerusalem and in the countryside). Initially, the intention had been to provide for the priests and Levites just within Jerusalem (at least as I understand what is written here). However, the response of the people was so overwhelming that they set up a system to distribute these goods to those priests and Levites living outside of Jerusalem as well. This is the sort of thing which happens when people wholeheartedly seek God.

    I could talk about what happened when the Assyrians invaded Judah during Hezekiah’s reign, but I have already covered that his year when I read it in 2 Kings. What I want to focus on next is Hezekiah’s on, Manasseh. When Manasseh first became king he was self indulgent and pursued various pagan worship practices, leading the people of the land to do likewise. He even set up an idol which he himself had made in the Temple (the wording in the passage could indicate that he had it made, but I think from the context that he actually carved this idol himself). As a result of his sines, Manasseh was taken captive and into exile by the Assyrians. While in captivity, Manasseh repented of his sins and turned to God. When Manasseh returned to Jerusalem he was a changed man. He himself started worshiping God and led the people to return to worshiping God. While he failed to restore the centralized worship which his father had championed, he did convince the people to devote themselves to God.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 29-30.

    When Hezekiah took the throne upon his father’s death, his first act as king was to reopen and begin repair on the Temple. He then gathered the priests and Levites and ordered them to purify both themselves and the Temple. Once the purification was completed, Hezekiah gathered all of the city officials of Jerusalem for a day of consecration and worship. It is interesting that the passage tells us that the Levites were more conscientious about purifying themselves than the priests. Hezekiah led a revival. The revival under Joash was led by the priests and Levites. This revival was led by the secular leadership. King Hezekiah and his officials recognized that the kingdom needed to return to God. Repeatedly in this passage the secular leadership is recounted as ordering the priests and Levites to take the next step, purifying themselves, offering the sacrifices, praising the Lord with psalms. However, this was a genuine revival. When the people saw what was happening they rejoiced and joined in to worship the Lord. As evidence of this, when Hezekiah summoned the people to celebrate the Passover, they not only gathered for the Passover, but they spontaneously removed from Jerusalem all of the incense altars for worshiping other gods.

    Hezekiah took the throne shortly after the fall of the Northern Kingdom to Assyria. As part of his religious reform, he invited the people remaining in the land of the Northern Kingdom to come to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover. An unspoken part of this invitation was the rejection of Assyrian gods and sovereignty. By coming the Jerusalem and taking part in the Passover, with its purification before God, the people of the Northern Kingdom would be putting themselves under Hezekiah’s authority. Initially, the bulk of the people in the area of the Northern Kingdom rejected Hezekiah’s overture. We will see that over time Hezekiah was able to extend his sovereignty over some of the land of the Northern Kingdom. Those who did come from the North for Hezekiah’s Passover celebration had failed to properly purify themselves, probably because they had forgotten how in the many years since God was truly worshiped there. In regards to these people Hezekiah made a statement that we should follow to these days. Those who chose to follow the Lord should be commended and encouraged to start from where they are, not told they have to wait until they get to where we think they should be. In addition to those from the Northern Kingdom who had forgotten the proper ways to prepare to worship the Lord there were many foreigners, who had never known how, who were welcomed to join in the celebration of Passover by Hezekiah.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 26-28.

    For most of my life my perception of the kings of the Divided Kingdoms (Israel and Judah) was that they were mostly wicked kings punctuated by the occasional righteous king (Joash, Hezekiah, Josiah). I have realized that while the kings of Israel in this period were universally men who “did not do what was pleasing in the sight of God”, a large number of the kings of Judah “did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight.” In fact, it was probably the majority. Of course, in today’s passage we have an example of something which was not uncommon. Uzziah did what was pleasing to God for most of his reign, but when he became powerful he became proud and took the prerogative of burning incense on the incense altar in the Temple. When Uzziah was confronted by a large number of priests (the number noted was probably to ensure that he could not do to them what Joash did to the son of the priest who had raised him) he became enraged. In the middle of his confrontation with the priests, symptoms of a contagious skin disease broke out on his forehead. King Uzziah lived in quarantine for the rest of his life.

    It is worth noting that according to the Law, Uzziah would have needed a priest to declare that he was no longer infected with the infectious skin disease. Uzziah’s son Jotham was made regent for Uzziah and succeeded him upon his death. The passage tells us that Jotham also did what was pleasing in the sight of God. Both Uzziah and Jotham were powerful kings who were able to expand the borders of their kingdom. However, when Jotham’s son Ahaz took the throne he did not do what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord. From a purely secular standpoint, it is clear that Ahaz decided from when he first took the throne to break the power which the priests and Levites had exercised over his father and grandfather. The result was that he was weak and repeatedly defeated in battle. In his efforts to weaken the priests and Levites, Ahaz established the worship of other gods. This created division among the people of his kingdom which resulted in the weakness which he experienced in foreign affairs.
    This passage is one where the connection between politics and religion in the Old Testament is made clear. David and Solomon had blurred the lines between the priesthood and the kingship, but they had done so in a manner which strengthened the priesthood by lending some of their power to the priesthood. On the other hand, when Uzziah attempted to blur the lines, he was seeking to weaken the priesthood and gather some of its power to himself. Later Ahaz attempted to break the power of the priesthood by encouraging the people to worship other gods…gods whose priests owed their authority to him. It is interesting to note that Ahaz did not stick with just one set of gods. When he first became king he set up idols and worshiped the gods which had been worshiped by the people who had lived in the land when the Israelites first arrived there. Later, after his defeat by the king of Aram and betrayal by the king of Assyria Ahaz turned to the gods of Damascus, but he never considered returning to the Lord. Ahaz never learned that his failures as a king resulted from his abandonment of God. Fortunately, his son Hezekiah did learn from his father’s mistakes.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 23-25.

    Athaliah, King Ahab of Israel’s daughter and King Jehoshaphat’s daughter-in-law, took over the throne of Judah when her son was killed. She attempted to ensure her power by killing all of the males of the Judean royal family. However, her daughter, or step-daughter (we are told that she was Ahaziah’s sister) took Athaliah’s grandson from the nursery and hid him in the Temple. When the boy Joash turned seven, the priest under whose care he was raised staged a coup to overthrow Athaliah and place him on the throne. This story reveals a lot about the politics in Jerusalem at this time, and probably throughout the period of the Divided Kingdom. The priests and Levites were a separate power base from the secular leadership.

    In many ways we see this even more clearly in Joash’s later years, after the death of Jehoiada, and in Amaziah’s reign. As long as Joash’s stepfather Jehoida was alive, Joash enthusiastically served God. However, after Jehoiada’s death the secular nobles were able to convince Joash that he needed to stand up to the priests and the Levites. When Jehoida’s son, who was in effect Joash’s stepbrother, dared to confront Joash for worshiping idols, Joash had him killed. After Joash was killed his son Amaziah took the throe. When Amaziah first took the throne the passage tells us that he was faithful to God, but unenthusiastically. This suggests that Amaziah “learned” from his father’s assassination that he needed to placate the priesthood. I would even say that Amaziah set up the worship of the gods of Edom after he conquered Edom as a competing religion to the worship of God to weaken the political power of the priests and Levites. Time and again we see various people attempt to use religion for political ends. It usually ends badly for them. Our religion should serve God, not our political agenda.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on 2 Chronicles 19-22.

    It has long bothered me that Jehoshaphat, a king who “did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight”, was a friend of King Ahab. I am not sure that I ever noticed before the prophet who confronted Jehoshaphat when he returned from the battle where Ahab died. Marrying his son to Ahab’s daughter was probably the worst thing he did as king, something which contributed to his son not being a godly king. Despite the prophet condemning Jehoshaphat’s friendship with Ahab, the prophet commended him for his commitment to seeking the Lord.

    What makes Jehoshaphat remarkable for a political leader of any time in history is that even though he lived in the capitol, Jerusalem, he spent time traveling throughout the land interacting with the common people. He encouraged them to seek the Lord. It is in the context of doing so that he appointed judges throughout the land, whom he charged to judge cases with integrity. He instructed the judges to seek to please God rather than any man or group of men. Jehoshaphat showed that he understood the need for government officials to understand the common people and to be responsive to their needs. He did so here through his own actions and the appointment of judges. He also did so through his actions where he sent government officials out to the towns and cities of Judah to teach people as recounted in 2 Chronicles 17:7-9. The principle which Jehoshaphat followed here is one which any leader would do well to heed. In order to be a good leader a leader must listen to their followers and know what motivates them. Then the leader must empower and motivate those followers to seek God.