Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 13-14.

The passage begins by telling us that Jehu’s son, Jehoahaz, “did evil in the eyes of the Lord by following the sins of Jeroboam.”  It goes on to tell us that Jehoahaz, in the face of the terrible suffering Israel experienced at the hands of Hazael, king of Aram, sought the Lord’s favor.  And that God answered his pleading.  It tells us that God provided a deliverer for the people of Israel.  It follows that by telling us that, despite what God had done for them, the people of Israel did not turn from the sins of the house of Jeroboam.  Then later when discussing Amaziah becoming king of Judah, it says that he did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but “not as his father David.”  It then tells us that the high places were not removed and the people offered sacrifices and burned incense at them.  In both of these places it seems to indicate that it was the people who were at fault for the sin.  The only blame given to Amaziah appears to be that he did not lead the people away from their idolatry.  I would also say that it appears as if the writer is implying that Jehoahaz turned from the sins of Jeroboam, but failed to lead the people to do the same.  Whether or not my interpretation about the actions of the rulers is correct, the passage clearly tells us that, at the time being recounted, the people sinned because they chose to sin, not because their leaders led them into sin.

I use 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.

Today’s passage begins with the acts Jehu took to consolidate his control over Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  One of the key things we learn about Jehu’s desire to serve God comes from his interaction with Jehonadab, whose descendants are later held up by Jeremiah as examples of faithfully following God.  The passage tells us that Jehu completely wiped out Baal worship in Israel.  Unfortunately, he was unwilling to get rid of the calf idols which Jeroboam had constructed and continued the practice of worshiping them.  Which suggests that, those who lived in the Northern Kingdom, Israel, considered that those who worshiped according to the practices established by Jeroboam thought they were following the covenant which God had established with their ancestors.  I suspect that leaders, such as Jehu, knew better, but convinced themselves otherwise out of political expediency.

I use 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.

I am not quite sure what to make of the thought which struck me about today’s passage.  In today’s passage, Elisha instigates a coup in Aram, and one in Israel.  First, Elisha goes to Damascus, then the capital of Aram.  At the time, the king of Aram was Ben-Hadad (a name which multiple kings of Aram had), who was also ill.  When Ben-Hadad heard that Elisha had come to Damascus, he sent one of his top aides, Hazael, to ask if he would get better.  Elisha told Hazael to tell Ben-Hadad that he would get better, but that Ben-Hadad would not get better.  Then Elisha told Hazael that God had revealed to him that Hazael would be king of Aram.  Hazael returned to Ben-Hadad and killed him, making himself king.  Then later in today’s passage, Elisha sends a messenger from the company of prophets to anoint Jehu, one of the commanders of the Israelite army, king of Israel.  Jehu then launches a coup and kills Ahab’s son, who was at that point the king of Israel, and Ahab’s grandson, who was king of Judah.  The passage explains why God had Elisha have Jehu anointed.  Well, not why Jehu specifically, but why Elisha precipitated the overthrow of Ahab’s dynasty.  But it does not explain why Elisha precipitated the overthrow of the dynasty in Aram.  Perhaps these two accounts of coups are here to remind us that every king and every ruler is in their position because God put them there.  Hazael, who did terrible things to the people of Israel, and Jehu, who overthrew Ahab’s dynasty and destroyed the cult of Baal in Israel, were equally chosen by God to be in the positions of power they occupied.

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

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

I want to look at the lessons we should learn from three of the accounts in today’s passage.  First, we have the story of Naaman, a commander in the army of Aram.  Naaman was an enemy of Israel and had wrought significant damage against it and its people.  Yet, when he came to Elisha for healing, Elisha healed him.  However, that is not the lesson I want to focus on.  Elisha told Naaman that in order to be healed he needed to wash in the Jordan River.  Naaman was angry about this, but his aides asked him if he would not have undertaken some “great quest” in order to be healed.  In the same way, we often look for the great deeds we can do in order to serve God, when what God is asking us to do is more mundane.  Are we willing to do the mundane tasks to which God calls us?

Second, we have the story of the king of Aram sending an army to capture Elisha because God revealed the king of Aram’s plans to him and Elisha passed that knowledge on to the king of Israel.  When the forces of Aram surrounded the city in which Elisha was living, Elisha’s servant panicked.  Elisha told his servant that there were more on their side than those mustered against them.  Some translations render what Elisha said as, “Greater are those who are for us than those who are against us.”  Elisha then asked God to open his servant’s eyes to those who supported them.  In the same way today, we often think there are more opposing us in our attempts to serve God than there are supporting us.  However, not only are there more supporting us than we realize, since one of those supporting us is God, they are greater than those opposing us.

Finally, we have the story about the famine in Samaria caused by Samaria being besieged by the armies of Aram.  When Elisha told the king of Israel that by the same time the next day, the prices for food would go from being completely unaffordable to practically free, one of the king’s officers said that even if God opened the floodgates of heaven, that was not possible.  Elisha told him that he would see it happen, but not get to eat any of the food.  When the residents of the city discovered the next day that the army of Aram had fled in the night, the officer in questioned was trampled by the crowds.  The officer’s sin was not in his failure to believe what Elisha said.  His sin was in thinking that God was unable to do it.  I struggle with having faith that God will do miraculous things in my life, but I pray that I never doubt that He can do them.  Let us never doubt that anything is possible for God, and pray that we have the faith to believe, and to act on that belief, that He will perform miracles around 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 Kings 3-4.

Today’s passage contains various accounts which relate how God will provide when we turn to Him.  In the first account, when Joram, son of Ahab, attacked Moab along with Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and the king of Edom, he led the armies through the desert.  Joram had planned badly and the armies ran out of water.  At Jehoshaphat’s recommendation, Joram sought Elisha’s counsel.  Through Elisha’s counsel, Joram and his allies found victory over Moab from a disastrous start.  In the second account, a widow under overwhelming debt comes to Elisha out of desperation.  God provides a way out of that debt with sufficient left over to support her family.  Then there was the woman of Shunem who provided Elisha with a room to stay in when he travelled through.  She wanted nothing from Elisha in return, but Elisha prayed to God to give her a son.  Then after the son was born, the boy died and the woman came to Elisha and said that the grief of losing the child was why she had asked for nothing.  Elisha came and prayed for God to raise the child and the child was raised.  We have two more stories, one where Elisha makes an accidentally poisoned stew edible and another where God caused a few loaves of bread to stretch to feed a large number of people with leftovers.  When Jesus fed the five thousand and the four thousand it would have reminded his followers of this last account.   All of these stories remind us that God will provide for our needs, if we do His will.

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

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

When King Ahaziah, Ahab’s son, fell and injured himself, he sent messengers to the god of Ekron, Baal-Zebub to find out if he would get better.  I did a little searching to see what information we had from other sources about Baal-Zebub and there wasn’t much.  However, scholars believe from the etymology of Baal-Zebub and a few other ancient references that Baal-Zebub was a god of healing.  Which explains why Ahaziah sent messengers to Ekron rather than just consulting the prophets of Baal in his own court.  I’ve mentioned before that I see evidence that the worshipers of Baal in Israel tried to present Baal worship as worshiping God, just with different worship practices.  Ahaziah sending to the Baal of Ekron runs counter to that idea, because God was clearly God of healing (as well as being God of everything).  Then, after Elijah intercepts his messengers and sends them back to him, Ahaziah orders Elijah brought to him.  The first two captains, along with their troop of fifty men, call Elijah a “man of God” and order him, under the king’s authority, to come with them.  Both of them discovered that, in a dispute between the government and God, they had taken the wrong side.  The third captain also called Elijah a “man of God”, but this third captain recognized that Elijah’s authority as an agent of God exceeded his authority as an agent of the king.

Ahaziah claimed that in worshiping Baal he was worshiping God.  Yet when he sought healing, he did not ask for healing from either the Baal he worshiped or from God.  Instead he sent to a foreign god, a Baal other than the one he worshiped.  Since God claimed dominion over the whole earth, this put the lie to Ahaziah’s claim that Baal was just another name for God.

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 18-19.

I love today’s passage, there is so much to write about in it.  It starts with Elijah approaching Obadiah, King Ahab’s palace administrator to take word to Ahab that Elijah wanted to meet with him.  We are told that Obadiah was a devout follower of the Lord who had protected 100 prophets of the Lord from Jezebel’s campaign to kill them all.  Obadiah reminds Elijah that he had done this.  Yet when Elijah confronts the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel, he claims that he is the only prophet of God left.  Perhaps something had happened to those 100 prophets in between Obadiah protecting them and Elijah’s speech on Mount Carmel, or, perhaps Elijah was referring to himself as the only prophet of God willing to appear before King Ahab by that point.  While he was on Mount Carmel Elijah was the perfect example of the boisterous showman, playing to the crowd and capturing its attention.  A few days later, when he was fleeing from Jezebel’s threat to kill him, he exhibits the symptoms of someone experiencing depression, he had had enough and wanted to die.

Elijah flees through the wilderness for forty days and forty nights until he ends up at Mount Horeb.  When he gets there. God asks him why he is there.  To which he replies that he has been zealous for the Lord, but the people have not responded and now he is the only one left and they are trying to kill him.  Then God tells him, “Stand up for I am about to pass by.”  So Elijah stood up while God sent a fierce wind, an earthquake, and a mighty fire before arriving as a gentle whisper.  Once more God asked Elijah why he is there.  Elijah replies with the same answer he had just given.  Which leads God to tell Elijah, “Get over yourself.  You are still alive because I still have work for you to do.  And you are not alone.  I have reserved a multitude who have been just as faithful as you.”  Elijah had become depressed because he had exhausted himself and he thought he was alone in this world in being faithful to God.  He felt like it was all pointless, like he was useless.  God’s answer was that until you are dead, you are not useless, and none of us are alone.  The best treatment for depression is to seek, and perform, what tasks God has for you, and the company of those who love the Lord.

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 15-17.

I find it interesting that the passage does not tells us that Abijah, son of Rehoboam, did evil in the eyes of the Lord.  Instead it tells us that he committed all of the sins of his father and was not fully devoted to the Lord.  I find this interesting because it seems to be in contrast to what it says about the kings of Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  Of each of those kings it says some variation of. “he did evil in the eyes of the Lord.”  This suggests to me that Abijah at least tried to serve the Lord, but allowed himself to be led into sin by his desires.  Later, it describes Omri as doing evil in the eyes of the Lord AND sinning more than all of those before him.  It then describes Omri’s son Ahab as doing more evil than any of those before him.  The passage explains saying this about Ahab by saying that he not only committed the sins of Jeroboam (worshiping the calf idols Jeroboam had made and appointing non-Levites as priests), but he began to worship and serve Baal.  So, we have Abijah, who ruled in Jerusalem was not fully devoted to the Lord, but was not quite as bad as the kings of the Northern Kingdom, who followed the sins of Jeroboam.  Then we have Ahab, who went beyond the sins of Jeroboam to fully embrace the worship of pagan gods.  This suggests that those who followed the cult established by Jeroboam followed the worship practices established by Moses, but directed them at the idols made by Jeroboam rather than at God.  However, it also tells us that as we fail to follow one of the commands which God has given us will lead us to move further and further away from 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 13-14.

The account of the otherwise unidentified man of God who testified against Jeroboam, and his altar, always strikes me as strange.  Why did the old prophet deceive him into breaking God’s command?  Why did the man of God not follow the commands God had given him?  Why did God allow the man of God to be deceived?  I have never been satisfied by any of the answers I have come up with to those questions.  However, the story does act as an object lesson for us.  When the man of God spoke the prophecy God had given him, as God had commanded him, Jeroboam ordered him seized, but God intervened and Jeroboam relented.  So, the man of God demonstrated that he was a man of God.  When the man of God allowed himself to be deceived into violating the command which God had given him, God sent judgement upon him.  So, we see that God will protect us when we do His will, but when we go against His will, we will suffer the consequences.  Even when we are encouraged to go against what God has told us by those who have spoken God’s word in the past.

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