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 3-4.

Each of the accounts in today’s passage illustrate ways in which God provides for needs.  In the first account, King Joram got himself and others into a bad situation, and even then he only sought God’s aid at the nstigation of Jehoshaphat.  Nevertheless, God delivered him, and those with him, from the mess of his own making.  In the second account, a widow seeks God’s aid to escape debt and provide for her sons and herself.  Through Elisha, God provides her the means to  earn the funds needs to do so.  In the third account, the woman provided Elisha with food and a place to stay and asked nothing in return.  Elisha asked God, and He gave her a son.  The woman had not asked for a son, had even asked Elisha to not raise her hopes.  When the child died, the woman was distraught and blamed Elisha for giving her the son in the first place, but did not ask for anything.  Elisha raised the boy back to life for her.  The final two accounts describe different ways in which God can provide food for the hungry..

In the first account, Joram did not have faith in God, but God rescued him because of his friend, Jehoshaphat.  Let us seek to be Jehoshaphat to our non-believing friends (although, perhaps we could work a little harder to convince them to turn to God than Jehoshaphat appears to have done).  In the second account, God provides the woman with a way to work her way out of her precarious position.  When we seek God’s aid, we need to recognize that He may provide us with a means to work towards solving our problems.  In the third account we learn that serving God may bring us joy we did not seek, and that God can overcome the inevitable sorrow.  The last two accounts show us that we need to be open to God using different solutions at different times for the same problem.

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.

When Joram became king of Israel, the writer tells us that while he did evil in the sight of God he was not as evil as his parents.  The writer praises Joram for getting rid of the sacred stone of Baal, but then condemns him for continuing the sins of Jeroboam.  This, combined with the other places where kings of Israel are condemned for following the sins of Jeroboam, suggests to me that the worship of the calves built by Jeroboam was closer to the worship of Yahweh than was the worship of Baal.  Along the same line of thinking, when Joram consulted Elisha during the invasion of Moab, Elisha told him to consult the prophets of his father and the prophets of his mother.  Elisha’s reference suggests that Joram had continued the worship of those gods, although he had reduced their prominence in the kingdom.

As I read the rest of the passage I was struck by how some of the miracles which Elisha performed were reminiscent of miracles recounted elsewhere in the Bible.  The account of providing for the widow with olive oil is reminiscent of Elijah and the widow of Zarephath, and Elisha raising the son of the Shunammite woman is reminiscent of Elijah raising the widow’s son.  Finally, Elisha feeding one hundred with twenty loaves of barley foreshadows Jesus feeding the 4,000 and the 5,000.  The similarities between these accounts does not mean that they were copied from each other.  Rather, it suggests that there are certain themes which accompany the display of God’s power.  One of those themes is that God has the power of life and death.  And He will sometimes restore life to those who have lost it at our request.  Another theme is that God uses our existing resources to accomplish more than seems possible, and provides to the extent that we can handle.  The widow did not stop having more oil to pour out of her jar until she ran out of containers to put it into.  Despite the amount of food provided being inadequate, the one hundred had enough to eat with leftovers.  In the same way, we should trust God to provide, whether what we have on hand is sufficient to the need or not.

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.

I started out to write a summary of the events as described here, but realized my time would be better spent reviewing some of the meaning of these stories.  The stories in today’s passage feel like legends every time I read them.  I suspect that most of those who were present for when these stories happened would barely recognize them.  Not because the stories as told inaccurately reflect what happened, but because it would have felt much different to someone going through these experiences.  In each of these stories, tragedy seems to be about to strike when people turned to God.  In each case, God provided a seemingly miraculous deliverance (in some of the stories, the deliverance was truly a miracle, in others it may have just been revealing important information to Elisha that no one else present knew).

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 3-4.

The story about the woman from Shunem provides several interesting lessons.  Elisha wanted to do something for her to thank her for the care she provided him, but she was content with her life as it was.  So, Elisha did some research and found something she would like: he had God give her a son.  The woman chastised Elisha for giving her such hope.  When a few years later her son took sick and died, she felt justified in her castigation.  She had been content with her life and would have preferred to continue in that contentment rather than risk the grief which was the possible companion to the joy of having a son.  This is a normal human reaction.  Many times we pass up opportunities for joy in order to avoid the risk of grief, failure, or some other form of suffering.

But there is more to it than that.  By providing the woman with the joy of a son, Elisha obligated himself to offsetting the risk of grief.  Elisha accepted this obligation.  When the boy became sick and died, he went to great lengths to restore the boy to his mother.  This lesson is an important one to keep in mind.  When we choose to do something good for others we need to measure our ability to follow through.