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.

Comparing what the passage tells us about the kings of Israel with what it tells us about the kings of Judah gives us some interesting insight.  The kings of Israel in today’s passage did what was evil in God’s sight by committing the sins which Jeroboam had first led the people of Israel to commit.  On the other hand, there was a stretch of four kings of Judah who did what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, but did not destroy the pagan shrines.  Then there was King Ahaz, who did not do what was pleasing in the Lord’s sight, but instead followed the example of the kings of Israel, going so far as to sacrifice his own son to a pagan god.  Jeroboam’s primary sins were setting up two gold calves in place of God, and making the priesthood a political appointment with no connection to the descendants of Aaron, or even descendants of Levi.  By making appointment to the priesthood merely another sinecure which the crown gave out with no connection to a knowledge of God, or His Law, the kings made God’s Law subordinate to their law.  One example of the end result of this was King Ahaz viewing the gods of Assyria as more powerful than God because Assyria was powerful.  Rather than seeing the rise of Assyria as a judgement on the failure of the people of Israel and Judah to be faithful to God, he saw it as the result of God’s inferiority to their gods.  All too often, we make similar mistakes, we view the success of wicked people as an indicator that they are doing right, rather than as an indicator that we are failing to follow God’s will.