Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 15-16.

In today’s passage we have accounts of three kings in Judah, the Southern Kingdom, and five kings in Israel, the Northern Kingdom.  The passage tells us of the first two kings of Judah mentioned that “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, just as his father …had done.”  About four of the kings of Israel the passage says some variation of, “He did evil in the eyes of the Lord, as his predecessors had done. He did not turn away from the sins of Jeroboam son of Nebat, which he had caused Israel to commit.”  The one king of Israel it does not say that about only reigned for one month.  Then we come to the third king of Judah.  It says of him that he did not do what was right in the eyes of the Lord, that he followed the ways of the kings of Israel.  It goes on to say that he even sacrificed his son to the fire, following the practices of the people God had driven out of the land.  It is not clear to me if the writer is trying to say that the kings of Israel had sacrificed sons in fire, or that Ahaz, the king of Judah being referenced, had gone beyond the kings of Israel in following detestable practices.  In any case, when Israel and Aram allied with each other to attack Judah, instead of turning to the Lord and seeking His aid, Ahaz sent tribute to the king of Assyria and swore fealty to him.  Then he visited a temple with the Assyrian king and sent orders for an altar duplicating it to be made in the temple in Jerusalem.

I wrote the above not quite sure where I was going.  However, I realized that the sins of Jeroboam were in using religious practices to further his own ends, rather than using religious practices to build a closer relationship with God.  In following the practices of the kings of Israel, Ahaz was doing the same thing.  Ahaz followed ever more “exotic” religious practices.  There are three possible reasons that may have motivated him.  Perhaps he was seeking to use these religious practices to consolidate his political power.  Perhaps he was seeking spiritual enlightenment.  Or, perhaps he was seeking a new “thrill”.  Whatever his motivation, he started by rejecting the God of his fathers and went ever further afield in seeking to satisfy his craving.  But he started by following a path laid out by the kings of Israel, Jeroboam, and later Jehu.  They were men who were called by God to lead His people, but they did not fully put their faith in Him.  So, they gave themselves exceptions to His Laws in ways they thought would help them better fulfill the plan He had for them.  Ahaz just took what they did to its logical conclusions and threw over worship of God for worship of the gods of the most powerful nation on earth.  Where are we on that path?  Is there still time for us to give up all of the pagan practices we have introduced into our worship and turn back to God?

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 15-16.

In today’s passage, we read of two kings of Judah who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, which makes it four kings in a row who did so.  For the two mentioned today the writer gives a caveat to the fact that they did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.  That caveat was that the high places were not removed and that the people continued to offer sacrifices there.  In the past, I have always read that as a (mild) condemnation of these kings.  I realized today that this was actually a statement on the limits of the government to turn people away from sin.  Despite having a good ruler who led them to worship God, the people, at least, some of them, continued in their idolatry.  The good rulers in Jerusalem are in stark contrast to those in Samaria.  In Samaria, the kings outright encouraged the people to commit idolatry.  The end result being that the ruling house was overthrown by a violent result about every other generation, reflecting an ongoing breakdown of the rule of law.  This stands in stark contrast to the two kings of Judah mentioned in yesterday’s passage who were assassinated, but still succeeded on the throne by their sons.  And while the writer merely says that the kings in Samaria did evil in the eyes of the Lord by not turning away from the sins of Jeroboam I, he clearly implies they did much worse in what he says about King Ahaz of Jerusalem.  The writer tells us that King Ahaz followed the ways of the kings of Israel and even sacrificed his son in the fire.  And while the writer tells us that the people offered sacrifices at the high places under King Ahaz’s father and grandfather, here he tells us that King Ahaz did so as well.

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 15-16.

I have thought about this from time to time, but I do not think I have ever written about it.  Up through King David, and even early in the reign of King Solomon, the Bible references various people, including David and Solomon, offering sacrifices at various places throughout the land of Israel, and does so in a positive manner.  However, after King Solomon there are numerous kings of Judah about whom the Bible says  some variation of this, “He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.  The high places, however, were not removed; the people continued to offer sacrifices and burn incense there.”  The context seems to suggest that the writer considered that second sentence to reflect poorly on the king in question.  What changed?  Actually, the real question is, why weren’t the biblical writers as bothered by it in the times before King Solomon as they were after?

In Deuteronomy 12 Moses told the Israelites that they were to destroy all of the high places where the people they were dispossessing worshiped their gods and make their offerings at the place God will choose to put His name, and only there.   So, clearly, failing to get the people to stop worshiping at the high places violated that command.  But why was it not a problem for those leaders who preceded King Solomon?  The answer I think is twofold.  First the passage in Deuteronomy suggests that God would not choose that place until after He had given the Israelites peace.  Following up on that the writer of 2 Samuel clearly suggests when recounting David’s desire to build a Temple that this did not happen until Solomon was king (or, more precisely would not happen until David’s son was king, since that writer does not specify Solomon).  The second piece, which really is related to that first piece, is that while the Israelites worked together under Moses and Joshua, they were very much separate tribes until they started to truly become one nation under David.  The process actually started under King Saul and did not complete until Solomon was king (and then only lasted his lifetime).  The Temple represented the culmination of that unification and, of course, that was why Jeroboam felt it necessary to replace it with golden calves at both ends of the Northern Kingdom when he rebelled against Rehoboam.

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 15-16.

I don’t know about you, but my perception of the kings of Israel was that they were universally Baal, some of whom gave lip service to worshiping God.  And my perception of the kings of Judah was that they were mostly idolators, with the occasional good king who tried to bring the people back to God.  However, over the last few years as I read through the books of Kings and Chronicles I have come to realize that these books tell us that most of the kings of Judah did what was right in the eyes of God.  And, while most of the kings of Israel did what was evil in the eyes of God, most of them chose to follow in the steps of Jeroboam, who attempted to worship God in the form of the golden calves which he had made.  In fact, it occurred to me today that most of the kings of Judah recognized that they were answerable to God and needed to follow the dictates of the religious practices which He had laid down, while most, if not all, of the kings of Israel felt that the religious leaders should be answerable to them.

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

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.