June 25, 2022: Day 135 – II Chronicles 31-36

We find ourselves in the waning days of Judah before the entire land and people are taken into captivity, first in Egypt and then to Babylon, pretty much definitively.  Before that  we find the prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah mentioned.  We look at the kings and the back and forth between righteous and unrighteous.

Hezekiah comes along and is a super king, not only does what is right in the eyes of the Lord, but encourages the people to do what is right in the eyes of the Lord.  They do and there is peace in the land.  Again, we see this correlation between obeying God and peace.  One of the more exciting places to go in Israel is Hezekiah’s tunnel which is a feat of astounding engineering.  

Manasseh takes over and was a bad egg.  Josiah takes over and everything changes once again.  The change is seen primarily in the discovery of the law of the Lord which is brought out to the people and the people are able to obey and follow the Lord as a result.  Josiah also kept the passover and the people came to Jerusalem to celebrate it with him.  This is the last hurrah, as after Josiah things change and go from very, very good, to the worst it has ever been.  

Jehoahaz takes over and only last three months and then the Babylonians come and carry the people into captivity.  Thus ends the time that Israel was in the land.  From there we see the Israelites live in diaspora until 1948 when Israel became a nation once again.