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 Kings 22-25.

    We tend to think of Hezekiah as being the most godly of the kings of Judah after David, but Josiah appears to have led the people of Judah to their highest level of faithfulness to God’s law. Upon discovering the Book of the Law during Temple renovations, King Josiah immediately recognized how badly the people of Israel had broken God’s Covenant with them. He lamented their failure to be faithful and sought God’s guidance. Despite receiving word that it was too late to avoid the coming disaster, Josiah led religious reform throughout the land, including in areas previously controlled by the Northern Tribes. Unlike his predecessors, including Hezekiah, he destroyed all of the pagan shrines throughout the land, including shrines built by King Solomon. He even celebrated the Passover for the first time since the founding of the Kingdom. Unfortunately, Josiah’s heirs did not share his dedication to serving 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 Kings 19-21.

    The story of the Assyrian invasion of Judah and King hezekiah’s response to it tells us a lot about how God controls history. The Assyrians were sure that nothing could stop them from conquering Jerusalem. Certainly, Hezekiah’s military could not do so. The Assyrians had been successful in conquering the peoples and powers of the Middle East. Some of those peoples had been sure that their gods would defend them against the Assyrians, but each had fallen. Now, once again, the Assyrians marched into a land whose people thought that their god could protect them. King Hezekiah knew that he could not stand against the might of the Assyrian army. He may have even been considering surrender. However, when the Assyrians told him that God could not stop them, surrender came off the table. By warning Hezekiah that God could not stop them, the Assyrians had made surrendering a sign that Hezekiah did not have faith in God. In response, God told Hezekiah, through a prophet, that the Assyrians would not only fail to take Jerusalem, but would never even besiege it.

    The Assyrians had gone too far. They challenged God. God’s response was that not only would the Assyrian army not attack Jerusalem, it would return to Assyria the way it had come. It would not turn aside from Jerusalem to attack some other land. Before their withdrawal, the Assyrian army fought and defeated the army which the Egyptian Pharaoh had raised to relieve the siege of Jerusalem. Sennacherib returned to Nineveh and never marched against Jerusalem again. His death at the hands of his sons marked the beginning of the end of the Assyrian Empire. Some historians look at the records kept in Assyria and suggest that Hezekiah submitted to the Assyrians. However, it is worth noting that those same historians recognize that the Assyrians believed that they had a divine mandate to conquer the world, but the expansion of the Assyrian Empire ended with the withdrawal of their army from Judah. In fact, the prophet Isaiah acknowledges that the Assyrians had a Divine mandate for their conquests. A mandate which God withdrew because they had defied Him.

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 Kings 17-18.

    When the Assyrians conquered they took a large number of the Israelites and settled them elsewhere. Then they brought in people whom they had conquered elsewhere and settled them in the land. This was, and is, a practice conquerors often use to minimize the risk of rebellion in conquered territories; break up the bonds among the people living in the conquered territory and introduce people with no loyalty to those living there. Like many of the people of the day, the Assyrians believed that many gods were local. So, when things went badly for the new settlers, they brought back some of the priests from exile to teach the settlers how to worship the god of this land, who happened to be God. The religion which these priests taught the settlers was the origin of the Samaritan religion. The settlers worshiped according to the teachings of these priests, but continued to also worship the gods of the lands they came from. Despite the differences between the practices of the people of Israel and the practices taught in the law of Moses, and the differences introduced by these foreign settlers, by the time of Christ the Samaritan religion had become a corrupted form of worship of the one true God. One which looked back to Moses and forward to the Messiah. The Samaritans were at least as receptive to Jesus’ teachings as the Jews.

    This evolution of the Samaritan religion reminds me of something which C.S. Lewis wrote in his “The Chronicles of Narnia” series. In the book, “The Last Battle” he wrote that no service which is vile can be done to Aslan (who is an analogy of Jesus and God) and no service which is not vile can be done for Tash (who is an analogy for Satan, and other idols). Which is another way of saying what Jesus said in the 2Sermon on the Mount, ” Keep on seeking, and you will find.” Those who seek God will eventually find Him. My observation is that, if the people who follow a false religion genuinely seek goodness, over time that false religion will begin to more and more resemble true Christianity. The Holy Spirit can, and will, use even the least smidgen of Truth to reveal more Truth to those who seek that Truth.

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 Kings 15-16.

    For the longest time my perception was that Judah had one or two good kings followed by one or two evil kings. I had a similar perception of the kings of Israel, except that the ratio was tilted towards evil kings. However, I realized reading today’s passage that this was not true. In actuality, most of the kings of Judah did what was pleasing to God. The only shortcoming of those kings was that they failed to convince the people to give up their worship at pagan shrines. On the other hand, the kings of Israel continued to encourage the people to worship the gold calves commissioned by Jeroboam and likely various pagan gods as well. We get this last from the account of King Ahaz of Judah. King Ahaz followed the example of the kings of Israel, going so far as to sacrifice his own son. That last bit suggests that when the kings of Israel encouraged their people to worship Jeroboam’s gold calves, they also encouraged them to adopt the worship practices of the surrounding peoples. When Jehu took the throne of Israel, the sect which worshiped the gold calves was similar in belief and practice to the one which worshiped in the Temple in Jerusalem. Over time it appears to have become more like the Baal worship which Jehu wiped out.

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 Kings 13-14.

    King Jehu’ descendants who ruled over Israel continued to follow the practice of worshiping the gold calves created by Jeroboam. They also continued to allow the worship of Asherah, even though Jehu had wiped out the worship of her consort Baal. It is also noteworthy that both Jehu’s son and grandson were given names which referenced God. This continues to support the idea that those who worshiped the gold calves were attempting to worship God, even though they were doing so in a way which He had rejected. However, Jehu’s grandson visited Elisha on his deathbed and mourned his passing. The story of King Jehoash’s visit with Elijah gives us a lesson.
    Every time I read Jehoash’s response to Elisha’s command to strike the ground with the arrows I imagine him doing so 3 times in a half-hearted manner. The lesson here is that we should do the tasks we are given by God’s representatives with enthusiasm, even when they seem pointless. Elisha tells Jehoash that if he had been more enthusiastic about hitting the ground with the arrows, he would have completed defeated the Arameans, who were Isreal’s greatest enemy in Jehoash’s lifetime. While he would have success against his enemies, his lack of enthusiasm would result in it being only limited success. Enthusiasm in the small things God calls us to will yield positive results in the big tasks God has for us.

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 Kings 10-12.

    As soon as Jehu gained power he proceeded to kill all of the remaining family of Ahab in Israel (the northern kingdom). He also killed members of King Ahaziah’s family who had come to visit the sons of Ahab. We tend to read this as a group who was visiting family that got caught up in the revolution. However, they were probably coming from Judah to Israel to take part in worship ceremonies which would have hurt their standing if they had been seen to be involved in them by the common people of Judah. This is similar to the way in which the extremely wealthy and members of high levels of government hold conferences in exotic locations to avoid the eyes of the common people and enjoy things which might harm their reputations if they were commonly know to enjoy them. Jehu followed this up by holding a national festival of Baal worship…at which he had all of the priests and worshipers killed.

    So, we discover that Jehu was motivated to act by the words of the prophets of God and acted decisively to eliminate Baal worship in Israel. Yet, he did not destroy the gold calves which Jeroboam had built and appears to have continued the worship of them. This tells me that Jehu did not see a conflict between worshiping God and worshiping at the gold calves, although he did see that Baal worship was not consistent with worshiping God. Or to put it another way, all of this suggests that the sect which worshiped at the gold calves worshiped in a manner similar to the sect which worshiped at the Temple in Jerusalem. It also suggests that the teachings of the two groups were similar as well. Furthermore, we see that the Baal worshipers tried to pass themselves off as just another variation on the same theme. All three groups, the Jerusalem sect, the “gold calves” sect, and the Baal worshipers, were fully aware that the first two were similar and related sects, but the Baal worshipers were something else entirely.

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 Kings 8-9.

    King Jehoshaphat of Judah had been good friends of King Ahab of Israel and arranged for his son to marry Ahab’s daughter (or perhaps sister or niece, my understanding is that the Hebrew in the different places she is referred to is inconsistent and no one is quite sure if the different words used necessarily mean different things). Jehoram, the son in question, followed the practices of Ahab, rather than the practices of his father. I think this supports what I wrote yesterday about religious belief and practice among the people of Judah and Israel. Many of the people of that time and place did not see Baal worship as a separate religion from the worship of God. Jerhoram’s son, Ahaziah, followed in his footsteps in promoting the worship of Baal in Judah.

    I find this passage a fascinating insight into the military and political structure of ancient Israel. King Joram went to war against King Hazael of Aram (Syria) with the assistance of King Ahaziah of Judah (his nephew). Yet, at the same time, Jehu, one of his army commanders was in Ramoth-gilead (which was in what is now Jordan) with a number of other army commanders and sufficient troops to launch a coup. The triggering factor for Jehu’s rebellion was a prophetic message he received from a messenger sent by Elisha. A motivating factor in Jehu’s rebellion against King Joram, Ahab’s son, was his opposition to the idolatry, specifically Baal worship, which Ahab had introduced because of the influence of Jezebel. Jehu perceived himself as acting to fulfill the prophecies which Elijah had made against Ahab and his family.