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

Today’s passage starts with follow up on the people’s response to King Hezekiah’s restoration of temple worship of God.  The people were so moved by their experience of worshiping God at the temple in Jerusalem that they went through the land destroying the idols, altars, and places of worship for other gods.  It goes on to talk about Sennacherib’s invasion of Judah and how that turned out, which is something we can learn a lot from.  However, today I want to focus on Hezekiah’s on, Manasseh.  Manasseh took the throne as a boy of 12 and did evil in the sight of the Lord.  As I read the passage, Manasseh was as evil as any king of Judah either before or after him, and the people joined him in his evil.  God sent prophets to bring Manasseh and the people back to Him, but they did not respond.  So, God brought Assyrian invaders who took Manasseh into torturous captivity.  In captivity, Manasseh finally turned to God and sought His deliverance.  God answered Manasseh’s prayer and delivered him.  In response to God’s deliverance, Manasseh sought to undo all of the evil he had done in his younger years.  Over the last week or so, I have discussed kings who started out enthusiastically serving God only to turn from Him as they got older.  In Manasseh we have an example that it can work the other way as well.    Those other kings serve as a warning to us who chose to serve God at a young age.  Manasseh serves as a message of hope for those who turned their backs on Him.  If we turn to God and cry out to Him, He will listen and deliver us, no matter what evil we have previously done.  As long as this life lasts, it is never too late to turn to God and start serving Him.

I use 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.

Today’s passage reminds me of why we spend so much time focusing on Hezekiah as one of the good kings of Judah and less time on some of the other good kings, such as Asa.  Hezekiah’s father, Ahaz, had been a truly evil king.  Essentially the first thing Hezekiah did upon taking the throne was to begin reversing his father’s evil policies.  Hezekiah immediately initiated a process of purifying the temple, and as soon as the temple was purified he called the people to assemble to worship the Lord.  As I recount this, I struggle with communicating the infectious, joyous enthusiasm for worshiping the Lord which Hezekiah and the people shared as recounted in this passage.  In fact, the people were so enthusiastic in their return to public worship of the Lord that not enough priests had been consecrated in time for this celebration.  Reading the passage suggests that the “common” Levites and the ordinary people were more enthusiastic about this spiritual revival than the priests, who should have been leading the way.  That particular fact should be a lesson to us today.  The “clergy” are often less enthusiastic about the restoration of worshiping God, about spiritual revival, than ordinary people.

I use 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.

In yesterday’s passage we saw Joash and Amaziah, who faithfully served the Lord for most of their lives, but turned from him late in life and were assassinated.  Today we first look at Uzziah, who sought the Lord until he became powerful, at which point he became prideful and began acting as if he would never be held accountable.  As a result, he contracted leprosy and lived out the final years of his life in relative isolation.  His son Jotham also served the Lord and did what was right.  As a result, Jotham became powerful.  Unfortunately, he failed to turn the people from idolatry and his son chose to act wickedly.  Rather than follow the example of his father (and grandfather, great grandfather, and even great great grandfather), Ahaz chose to chase after idols which promised him pleasure.  Ahaz’s actions resulted in Judah becoming weak and being overrun by invaders.  Even then Ahaz did not turn to the Lord, instead choosing to chase after even more idols.  Fortunately for the kingdom of Judah, Ahaz’s son, Hezekiah did learn from his father’s mistakes, and, as we shall see in tomorrow’s passage, sought the Lord.   Today’s three kings give us two lessons.  First, no matter how faithful to God our parents were, we need to choose for ourselves to serve Him.  Second, no matter how faithful we are to God in our youth when we are struggling to get established, we need to remember Him later in life, or we will pay a price we would rather not.

I use 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.

Today’s passage begins when the high priest puts the seven year old Joash on the throne of Judah by staging a coup against his grandmother, who had herself staged a coup to take the throne upon the death of her son.  This passage and others which reference King Joash tell us that he enthusiastically worshiped the Lord while Jehoiada, his foster father and the high priest who put him on the throne, lived, but that he turned to worshiping Asherah poles and other idols once Jehoiada died.  I have always struggled to understand how and why Jehoiada had gone wrong in raising Joash.  Today, some understanding came to me.  Usually when we read the account of Joash restoring the temple we focus on what it says about his desire to worship and serve God.  However, today it struck me that it also tells us a bit about what Jehoiada got wrong.  Initially Joash delegated restoring the temple to the priests and Levites, who answered to the high priest, Jehoiada.  Unfortunately, the priests and Levites did not act on the king’s command.  We do not know why Jehoiada failed to oversee the restoration of the temple.  A likely explanation is that he was too busy administering the government of Judah to take on that responsibility.  So, instead of having trained Joash to rule Judah, and then gradually turned responsibility for doing so over to him, Jehoiada continued to administer everything, distracting Joash with overseeing the restoration of the temple.  It seems likely that for as long as he lived Jehoiada discouraged Joash from taking on his responsibilities as king.

I use 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.

Whenever I read a passage like today’s about Jehoshaphat I am torn between writing about how we should be inspired to imitate his faithfulness to God and about how he fell short and brought disaster upon his sons and grandsons by allying with idol worshipers.  Today’s passage begins with the seer Jehu calling out Jehoshaphat for his alliance with Ahab and his family.  Then later in the passage, Eliezer prophesied against Jehoshaphat for allying with Ahab’s son Ahaziah to build a trade fleet.  In particular, Ahaziah prophesied that Jehoshaphat’s trade fleet would be destroyed because of that alliance.  To follow up on this, Jehoshaphat’s eldest son, Jehoram, who had married a member of Ahab’s family, killed the rest of Jehoshaphat’s son, his brothers, when he succeeded his father.

In between the two prophets I mentioned in the previous paragraph Jehoshaphat does things which should inspire us to emulate his love for God.  First, he appoints judges over the land whom he instructs to give their judgements, not for mortals, but for God.  Further, in every case they were to warn the people not to sin against the Lord.  Later, when an enemy army marched against Jerusalem, Jehoshaphat called the people to an assembly to call on God for deliverance.  In response God sent a prophet who told them, “Do not be afraid, do not be discouraged.”  Further, the prophet told them to go out to face the enemy because God would be with them.  Jehoshaphat ordered the people, an order which they gladly followed, to march out singing praises to God.  Let us follow their example and go out to face our enemies singing praise to God because of our confidence that He will deliver us.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Chronicles 15-18.

I think that we do not give King Asa as much attention as we should.  His story contains some great lessons for us.  Most of his reign provides us with an example we should follow, while the last few years of it provide us with a warning.  Starting at the beginning of his reign, Asa destroyed the altars and places of worship for idols and led the people to faithfully worship God.  He committed himself to serving God his entire life.  His dedication to God led Israelites from the Northern Kingdom to relocate to Judah.  After relying on God to defeat a vast invading army, he held a great festival to praise and worship God.  The people of Judah enthusiastically followed Asa’s lead and took an oath to serve God.  As I read over what I just wrote, I realized that I have failed to communicate the joy which the passage conveys that the people felt over their dedication to the Lord.  And that is perhaps the most important part of what Asa did, he led the people of Judah to serve and worship God with joy.

Unfortunately, late in his life King Asa became more “pragmatic”.  When King Baasha of Israel began fortifying the border to isolate Judah (probably at least in part in response to his own people moving to Judah), instead of turning to God for aid, Asa bribed the king of Aram to go to war against Israel.  When confronted about this by a prophet, rather than accept his criticism, Asa had the prophet imprisoned.  The passage also tells us that at the same time Asa began oppressing some of the people.  While the passage does not outright say so, I suspect that the people who oppressed were those who were critical of his actions.  Then when he was afflicted with some sort of disorder in his feet, King Asa sought only the aid of doctors, he did not seek help from God.  I find this very sad, as his life ended without the joy in serving God which filled so much of it.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Chronicles 11-14.

In today’s passage we have three successive kings of Judah and four wars (sort of).  After Jeroboam led the northern tribes in rebellion against him, Rehoboam mustered the fighting men of Judah and Benjamin to force an end to the rebellion.  However, God sent the prophet Shemaiah to tell them not to fight against their fellow Israelites.  When the army heard Shemaiah’s words, they went home.  (as a side note: this always reads to me like Rehoboam did not have a choice about whether to contest the rebellion after this because his army refused to fight to reclaim the northern territory).  Initially after this, most of those who lived in the northern territory who rejected Jeroboam’s idol worship moved south to Judah.  In Rehoboam’s fifth year, Judah was invaded by Egypt.  Once again, the prophet Shemaiah delivered God’s word to Rehoboam and the people of Judah.  Shemaiah told them that God had abandoned them to the Egyptians because they had abandoned Him. In response, Rehoboam and his officials humbled themselves.  Since they humbled themselves, God turned aside from His anger.   After Rehoboam died his son, Abijah ruled in Jerusalem.  During Abijah’s reign he was at war with Jeroboam.  In one battle, the army of Judah was vastly outnumbered by Jeroboam’s army.  Abijah appealed to God, and his army cried out to God, and they routed Jeroboam’s army.  The final battle in today’s passage occurred when Asa, Abijah’s son was king.  The king of Cush marched against Judah with a massive army.  Asa called out to God, and God struck down the Cushite army.

There are two lessons to learn from this.  First, we need to listen to God when we choose which battles to fight.  Second, we need to learn to call on God and trust Him when we do fight battles.  And, actually there is a third lesson: if we do not listen to God, we may end up having to fight battles we would have been better off avoiding.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Chronicles 8-10.

In today’s passage, chapters 8 and 9 are written to highlight Solomon’s wealth, power, and wisdom.   In particular, chapter 8 discusses how he used the wealth he acquired to strengthen Israel by building fortified cities and settling Israelites into border territories.  Chapter 9 illustrates how word of his knowledge and wisdom spread far and wide, with the Queen of Sheba coming to see for herself that the rumors were true.  Perhaps I am reading too much into it, but in the account here, and in the one in 1 Kings, the Queen of Sheba comes to Jerusalem after Solomon had partnered with Hiram of Tyre to send a trading fleet into the Arabian Sea.  This is significant because the best sources I can find place the kingdom of Sheba as being on the Arabian Peninsula in the area where Yemen is today.  With such a location, Sheba would have traded with the east coast of Africa and with India.  Reading the descriptions of Solomon’s trade fleets suggests that they also traded with the east coast of Africa (perhaps as far south as modern South Africa) and with India.   It is likely that Solomon was taking goods obtained from the lands along the western Mediterranean, transporting them overland the short distance to the Red Sea, then carrying them by boat to lands to the east.  The Queen of Sheba traveled to Jerusalem to determine what kind of threat this new trading empire was to her own country’s prosperity.  I believe her comments about Solomon’s wisdom indicate that she found Solomon intent on making mutually beneficial trades with all his subordinates encountered (after all, Solomon and his father before him had a mutually beneficial relationship with Tyre).

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Chronicles 5-7.

I want to start today’s blog by noting more about the compilation of this book.   A few days ago I had noted that the genealogies at the beginning suggested that this book was compiled after the return from exile.  I still believe that to be true.  However, today’s passage was originally written before the Exile.  We know this because Solomon’s temple was destroyed at the time of Exile, but this passage tells us that the carrying poles for the ark of the covenant could still be seen from in front of the inner sanctuary at the time of writing.  This tells us that the genealogies, and perhaps other notes, were added on to copies being made of a source document which predated the Exile.  It would not surprise me to someday learn that parts of multiple source documents were combined into this one document.

I have always thought of the temple which Solomon had built as a temple of God or a temple for God.  However, as I was reading the passage today, I noticed that while Solomon was addressing the people during the dedication of the temple he referred to it as “temple for the Name of the Lord.”  So, Solomon did not perceive himself to have built a temple for the Lord, he only considered it as being for the Name of the Lord.  I take two things from this.  On the one hand it indicates, as Solomon noted in his prayer of dedication, no building, or even city or nation, can contain God.  So, we do not need to go to a specific location in order to call on God.  God can hear us and come to our aid, no matter where we are on earth.  On the other hand, the Name of God is no small thing to be used without care or thought.  We must be careful to give God’s Name the honor it is due.   And I just realized there is a third thing that I take from this.  Solomon built the temple for the Name of the Lord rather than for the Lord in an attempt to keep people from starting to worship the temple itself.

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