Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 19-21.

When Hezekiah received Sennacherib’s letter, he read it then took it to the Temple and laid it before God.  When he did so he made a statement of faith.  Sennacherib had stated that Hezekiah should not rely on God to save Jerusalem because the gods of other nations had failed to save them.  Hezekiah stated that of course the Assyrians were able to throw those gods into the fire because those gods were not actually gods at all.  He then went on to beg God to show the nations that He alone was God by saving Jerusalem.

Which brings me to Isaiah’s prophecy in response to Sennacherib’s letter.  Isaiah reminds us that it was not Hezekiah whom Sennacherib was ridiculing in his message.  Rather it was God.  In the same way, when people today make fun of us, or criticize us, for following God’s commands, let us remember who they are actually deriding.  Sennacherib thought that his successes proved that he was greater than any god.  God responded by telling him that all of his success was just part of the plans which God had laid out long ago.  Sennacherib claimed that he would besiege Jerusalem and make it fall before his armies.  God told him that He would send him back the way that he came and that his armies would never stand before Jerusalem.  Sennacherib’s claim proved false, but God’s proclamation came true.  Let us not fear those with power because whatever power they have comes from God.  Let us fear God, and serve Him.  Then He will protect us from those who seek to direct their power against 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 17-18.

We are told that Hoshea, the last king of Israel, did evil in the sight of the Lord, but was not as bad as his predecessors.  Nevertheless, the sins of the people of Israel had reached the point where God had had enough and He sent them into exile.  The writer suggests that the sins of the people of Israel were worse than any were aware of until after the fact.  He writes that they secretly against the Lord that were not right.  This suggests to me that the people of Israel were not aware of how prevalent the sins they themselves were committing were among their countrymen.

The writer lists out the reasons that God sent the nation of Israel into exile.  He tells us that they worshiped idols and rejected God’s decrees.  They made idols for themselves and set up an Asherah pole.  They bowed down to the starry host and worshipped Baal.  They sacrificed their sons and daughters.  They imitated the nations around them.  All of this strikes me as a warning we should take to heart today.  I think the line which should be our greatest warning is the one I used to title today’s blog: “They followed worthless idols and themselves became worthless.”  All human beings have value, but that value derives from our being made in the image of God.  If we stop trying to reflect his image and instead reflect the image of an idol, we will become worthless.

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.

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

So, in today’s passage we have a series of kings of Israel and kings of Judah.  The passage tells us that the kings of Israel, descendants of Jehu, did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, while the kings of Judah did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.  Further it tells us that the kings of Judah were not as righteous as David had been.  The passage tells us that the evil done by the kings of Israel was because they followed in the sins which Jeroboam had caused Israel to commit.  On the other hand, while the kings of Judah did what was right in God’s eyes, they did not get rid of the high places where people worshiped.  This leads me to conclude that the key difference between the kings of Israel and the kings of Judah in this time period was that the kings of Israel encourage the idolatry intorduced by Jerogoam, while the kings of Judah allowed, but did not encourage, idolatry.

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.

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.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  2 Kings 8-9.

King Jehoshaphat of Judah was a good king, but he allied himself with King Ahab of Israel to the point that he allowed his son, and heir, to marry Ahab’s daughter.  When Jehoshaphat’s son took the throne he followed the example of his father-in-law rather than that of his father.  As a result, when the Jehu overthrew Ahab’s son, Jehoshaphat’s grandson was there and was killed as part of Jehu’s revolt.  Reading between the lines of these events suggests that while Ahab’s son, King Joram, was injured in battle, the wounds were relatively minor and he used them as an excuse to withdraw from battle and indulge himself.  King Ahaziah of Judah, Jehoshaphat’s grandson, joined him in doing so.  We do not exactly know the sins which Joram and Ahaziah committed during their reigns, but we do know that King Ahab and his wife Jezebel had worshiped Ashtoreth and that Ashtoreth worship involved promiscuous sexual practices.  I suspect that Joram and Ahaziah also partook in human sacrifice.  All of this led to the breakdown of social order in both kingdoms.

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.

We rarely pay attention to what Naaman says to Elisha after he was cleansed of leprosy.  Well, we pay attention to the first part, where Naaman says he will no longer make burnt offerings or sacrifices to any god but the Lord.  However, Naaman begs that the Lord forgive him for those occasions when he must accompany his king into the temple of his king’s god and there bow down to that god with his king.  Elisha’s response to this request was to tell Naaman to go in peace.  Elisha’s response seems to affirm that God would indeed forgive Naaman for doing so.  This suggests that we do not always need to make it known that we disagree when those around us worship other gods.  I believe that this short exchange is very significant, but I am not sure of its full meaning.

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.

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

There are two accounts in this passage which at casual reading we find unsettling.  In the first account, the king sent a troop of 50 men under a commander to bring Elijah to him multiple times.  The first two times Elijah called down fire from God to consume the commander and his 50 men.  This seems rather harsh, but let us look closer at what happened.  The first two commanders called Elijah a man of God, but believed that they had the authority, based on the orders the king had given them, to command his obedience. The third commander recognized that Elijah’s authority as a man of God was greater than his authority as a man of the king.  The primary lesson here is for those who think they have authority over others.  If the first and second commanders had been polite and respectful, they would have lived, but they thought that Elijah was obligated to obey their commands because the king had given them those commands.  However, we must recognize that all people answer first to God, and we should treat them with respect and courtesy.

The second unsettling story occurs when some “boys” jeered at him and threatened him.  When we read the word “boys” in this passage, we tend to think children in the range of 5-10 years old.  However, the Hebrew makes it seem more likely that these “boys” were young men in the 14-18 year range.  The story seems more likely to have been a gang of ne’er-do-wells who got a kick out of  bullying and robbing defenseless strangers who passed near their town, which they took Elisha to be.  This story tells us that bad things happen to those who live to cause trouble for those they believe weaker than themselves.  More importantly, it teaches us that God will protect us from those who attempt to bully us.

Both of these stories teach us the importance of treating others with respect and warn us that bad things happen to those who ignore this lesson.  They also teach us that God can protect us from those who threaten us because they think they can get away with it.

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 20-22.

There are many lessons we can learn from reading the account of Ben-Hadad’s assaults on Israel given here.  First we see that Ben-Hadad got himself into trouble because he overreached.  King Ahab and the people of Samaria were willing to give tribute to Ben-Hadad rather than risk fighting against his army.  However, when Ben-Hadad increased his demand to allow his troops to sack the city, the people of Samaria decided to fight.  Ben-Hadad demonstrates his over confidence several more times in ways which led to his defeat.  Then, Ben-Hadad and his advisers made the mistake of thinking their defeat was because God was a god of the hills and that they could defeat Israel in the plains.  And once again they suffered defeat.  This second defeat occurred for two reasons, two closely related reasons. Ben-Hadad and his advisers refused to accept that their first defeat resulted from their own mistakes, mistakes which were caused by their arrogance.  This led them to their second mistake.  Since their first defeat could not possibly have been their own fault, it must have resulted from the power of the God of Israel.  That could have been the start of wisdom.  However, they concluded that God was limited and they could outmaneuver Him.  God’s power is not limited and He caused them to repeat their mistake.

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