Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 10-12.

I want to start by looking at two things in this passage which connect to ideas about the worship of God which I have touched upon from time to time.  The passage mentions that when Jehu came upon Jehonadab he asked if he was in accord with him.  The context suggests that Jehu was referring to worshiping God and eliminating Baal worship (and possibly worship of all other gods).  What is interesting about this is that Jehonadab was not an Israelite.  He was a Kenite, a nomadic group of people who lived among the Israelites (and possibly elsewhere in the Middle East).  This tells us that while we don’t have much of a record of the religious practices of others who worshiped God during this time, the Israelites were not the only ones who did so.  The existence of other peoples who worshiped God is consistent with what one would expect to see if the Genesis account is true.

I also want to look at what Jehu did when he called the assembly to honor Baal.  Once he had the Baal worshipers gathered, he asked the leaders of Baal worship to make sure there were no worshipers of God present.  This confirms two things which we see throughout the Old Testament: many worshipers of God were seduced into Baal worship by being convinced that Baal was just another name for God, and those who were fully into Baal worship knew this was not true.  On the first point, we also see throughout the Old Testament that while many worshipers of God were convinced that Baal was just another name for God, many saw through this deception.  This incident is probably the clearest example of the second point.  However, there is also the incident where King Ahab knows what Jehoshaphat is looking for when he asks for a prophet of the Lord after Ahab tried to pass off prophets  of Baal as such.

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