Bible Reading Challenge Blog

We move from the last of the kings of Israel to the worst of the King of Judah, or the south.  We find ourselves in the reign of Ahaz who was the weakest and the worst king in the history of the south.  All of the other kings we read did what was pleasing in the sight of the Lord, at least in the south, but Ahaz instead we read: “He did not do what was right in the sight of the Lord.”  In fact, he is compared to the kings of the north and it is stated that he walked in their ways.  He was so bad that he was willing to offer his son as a sacrifice to foreign gods in order to protect himself.  Look at vs.3 and we see that example as well as the example of him offering up the people of God to foreign gods and idols.  

As a result of his weakness the people of Israel and the people of Aram decide to attack him and he reaches out for help to the king of Assyria.  With the help of the Assyrians they are able to kill the king of Aram and take the people of Israel and Aram into captivity.  Ahaz is thrilled to the point of telling his priest, who should be leading the people to a worship of Almighty God,  to build an altar to the gods of the Assyrians.  He does, and does a great job of replicating the same kind of gods that the Assyrian king would want and be glad to see.  

What basically happens is that king Ahaz cannibalizes the temple and uses important materials which the Lord said should be in there, in order to please a foreign king and god.  It is not going to work out well for either the north or the south after this chapter.  You can just tell.

Here we find ourselves in a time period where the north and the south are surrounded by enemy powers as they try to work out their relationship with each other.  This map above is going to be pretty crucial in understanding the geography and the relationships between the nations which creates unique geo-political situations.

We find that in the south there is the long reign of king Azariah who was in power for 52 years in Jerusalem.  This means a couple of things.  It means that there was consistency and strength in the south for a long period of time.  It also had an impact on the north because there was not stability but rather a whole number of rulers who came and went in a short period of time.  This would have weakened Israel and created a situation where a form of chaos ruled the day.  

What ends up happening is that because there is so much chaos, Assyria is able to conquer the north and take the people of Israel into captivity.  This is a crucial moment in the history of Israel.  The deportation and the captivity of the people of Israel in this time period is legendary, and it is a reminder that the people of the north did not follow the way of the Lord.  This led to chaos.

In contrast we see the stability of the south, which also housed the temple, which allowed the people to live in their own houses, which was a big deal.  Each of the southern rulers did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, but not 100%.  They still had the high places.  But in the north we read repeatedly that the rulers did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.  

We end this chapter with pretty much the last of the kings of Israel (the north).  It is a sad chapter in the life of the people of God.

We find for the first time, I think, a battle between the north and the south.  So we see that there rises up a king in the south, Amaziah, who was very powerful and was successful in battle.  He did not choose to pay off his enemies, but rather to defeat them in battle.  We read in vs.3 that “he did what was right in the sight of the Lord, yet not like his ancestor David.”  That means that the people still worshiped the Lord, it was Jerusalem after all, but the high places remained.  This type of syncretistic worship seems to be permitted, not approved, but permitted by the Lord.  

We find the battle between the north and the south set up by a major victory of the south against the Edomites.  Amaziah killed 10,000 Edomites and was feeling pretty good about himself.  He asks the king of Israel, Jehoash (or Joash, they are the same person, we only differentiate between north and south), if they could have a meeting face to face.  The king of Israel told him he was feeling too big for his britches and that he should cool it and no, he did not want to meet him face to face.  Well, Amaziah was not going to take no for an answer so he goes up to see him anyway and war is waged as a result.  

Israel wins and takes over some land that used to be Judah’s, the south.  Amaziah is killed by another conspiracy, that seems to be the MO in the south.  Succession comes as a result of conspiracy.  His son, Azariah, takes over.  We find the same taking place in the north.  Joash of the north dies and his son, Jeroboam, takes over.  He dies after 41 years of ruling as a king, and then he is succeeded by his son Zechariah.  No conspiracy, just death.

This chapter is somewhat confusing because you have both Joash and Jehoash in both the north and the south and at times in this chapter their names flip-flop.  Commentators agree that there is not a consistent chronology that is deployed in this chapter.  The people and the dates and the battles and the foreign leaders bounce around quite a bit.  But then we get the death of Elisha.

Remember, he was a prophet to the north so it is the Joash of the north who was bitterly grieving the potential passing of his prophet.  He calls him “My father”.  He gives the king of Israel a sign of what was to come with a sign of arrows.  They served as a sign that they would destroy Aram a number of times at his hand.  Then Elisha dies and we do not see anyone who takes over for him, at least as of yet.  We find another miracle of Elisha, even when he is dead.  After he was buried another person was thrown into his grave, a person who had died, and as soon as his body touched the bones of Elisha he sprang to life.  Not Elisha, mind you, but the person who was dead came back to life.  A bit random, but here is another time that Elisha has the power, even when he died, to do the miraculous.  

I find it fascinating that in vs.5 the term used is “savior” to describe someone who liberates Israel from an oppressive power.  As a result of the presence of this savior they were able to live back in their homes like the old times.

We find ourselves once again looking at the reign of a king of Judah, so the south, where Jerusalem was located, and this time it is Joash, or in some translations, Jehoash.  He ruled for 40 years and Scripture tells us that “Joash did what was right in the sight of the Lord all his days.”  Then we get a story about the finances of the temple.  The whole chapter, pretty much, is about the finances of the temple.

First Pres has a fund to which each year we budget a certain amount which could be called a rainy day fund.  It has a technical term but I forget what it is, but I think everyone understands when I call it a rainy day fund.  When something big breaks or there have to be repairs that are important then we have a certain amount of funds set aside that we hope will cover those repairs.

The king commands the priests that any monies that they receive which come into the house of the Lord, that would be the temple, “let them repair the house wherever any need of repairs is discovered.”  That’s a great plan but as time passed the priests were collecting the money but no repairs were being done.  It doesn’t seem like anything untoward was being done, it just seems like there was an administrative shortfall in someone taking charge and telling people how to get the work done.  The king commands that they stop collecting money but just use the money that was already collected to repair the temple and the work begins as a result.

We find the king is also one who likes to avoid conflict and would prefer to pay off his enemies than to fighting them.  It works, the king of Aram withdrew from Jerusalem after he had been paid off.  There is nothing wrong with that.  We find that at the end of his time a conspiracy arose and he was killed by his own servants.  Forty years of reigning was a pretty long time.  

The story actually gets better as you follow along.  We have a queen who is ruling over Judah, in Jerusalem.  That is Athaliah, Ahaziah’s mother.  Remember Ahaziah was the one who was killed by Jehu as he was running away from him after his father was killed.  After Ahaziah was killed then his mother, Athaliah, wanted to secure her throne and so killed all of her family members.  She succeeded except for one of Ahaziah’s sons, Joash.  He was hidden by one of Ahaziah’s sisters, Jehosheba.  I hope you are following.  The queen mother wanted to consolidate her power, but her step-daughter hid one of her grandchildren so that he would be spared from the slaughter that took place in order to consolidate the queen mother’s power.

This infant grew and when he was 7 years old the high priest, Jehoiada, commanded the captains of the Carites to join him and make an oath to him.  They promised to protect this child, Joash, from anyone who might look to harm him.  Jehoiada anoints him in the temple, just like we see Jehu was anointed by a minion and the other kings who were anointed by priests, and the people celebrate the new king, even while the queen mother is trying to consolidate her power.

She comes out of the kings palace wondering what all the commotion is in the temple. When she enters the temple and sees that this new king has been anointed she is arrested and killed outside the temple.  The new king then takes his residence in the kings palace when he is only 7 years old.  We find that the Lord and His people begin to take back over the land.  In Jerusalem we have a high priest who anoints a new king and you can assume that the new king will follow the way of God.  In the north you have Jehu who kind of followed God and destroyed all the priests and the people of Baal.  Things are starting to look up.

For 28 years Jehu, the one who was anointed by the minion, rules over Israel.  But look at what he does once he comes into power.  He slaughters all of the children of Ahab, which we must assume were followers of Baal as Jezebel was.  There were 70 children in all.  He slaughters anyone who was friends with Ahab.  He calls a solemn day of sacrifice and worship for Baal and that anyone who loved Baal had to come.  They all came and they were all slaughtered.  From all across the land Jehu is involved in a theocide by destroying all the priests, worshipers, followers of Baal.

So we find Jehu cleans house, literally, and turns the people away from the worship of Baal which was very pleasing to the Lord.  He didn’t 100% follow the Lord, he maintained the sins of Jeroboam, vs.29.  But God was somewhat pleased and promised him, in vs.30ff, that to the 4th generation the ruler of Israel would come from the family of Jehu.  But God did start to trim away the territory that Israel controlled and so we begin seeing that Israel starts to lose some of the land that had originally been considered as theirs.  As a result Israel begins to lose some of its power.

We find that Jehu, that crazy driver (II Kings 9:20), is succeeded by Jehoahaz, his son.

I have always said that violence begets violence.  We find Elisha who takes the leading role in deciding who is going to be the king over Israel, which then also has an impact on who is going to be the king in Judah.  He tells one of his minions (read a member of the company of prophets) to go to the north and anoint one of the commanders of the north as the king of Israel.  Then when you do that run away as quickly as you can.

So this member of the company of prophets (read minion) goes to Israel and calls out the commander and anoints him with oil.  Remember, this is a tradition that goes all the way back to Saul who was anointed king of Israel, the united kingdom, by Samuel, and then David who was also anointed king of Israel by Samuel, and Solomon was anointed by the priest Zadok.   Here, instead, the king of Israel is anointed king covertly by a minion and not by the head of the priestly class which would have been Elisha.  Elisha could never have gotten close to Jehu because he was known and also kind of a wanted, despised man.

As a result Jehu takes the reigns and kills the current king of both the north and the south so that things are completely shaken up.  The queen mother, Jezebel, is thrown off the wall even while she was wearing her makeup and all dolled up.  Look at vs.30.  So we find that all the prophecies come true which the prophets had foretold.  Jezebel would die and would not be buried but rather would be eaten by the dogs, that is except for her skull, her feet, and her palms.  That is a bit random.

We find ourselves with a lot of transition in the house of Judah, read Jerusalem, and in the house of Israel, read Samaria.  We do see that the king who made it out of the famine was not only very curious about Elisha, but he also does a very good deed on behalf of Elisha.  What you see in vs.1-6 is a type of repayment to Elisha for all that he had done for the nation of Israel.  And I said we would never hear how the king felt about what Elisha did.  I was wrong.  The king begins by wanting to know everything there was to know about Elisha and all the good that Elisha did.  He is talking with Elisha’s old right hand person, the one who went back to the king for a kickback, and the topic of the woman with the son who died and then was raised from the dead comes up.

She was told by Elisha to flee to Philistia during the famine, and then return once it is over.  She does that and on her return the king grants not only her land back but all of the profits that she would have made had she been on the land when she was gone.  She was treated right and it is primarily because of her relationship to Elisha.

We see Elisha has a hand in the transition of power in Aram as the king is ill and the one waiting on him kills him and takes over the country.  We see that Jehoram ruled in Judah.  For 8 years he lived the type of life that Ahab had lived, which was walking away from the Lord.  We see a theme coming up that whenever a king was unfaithful he is described as walking in the way of Ahab.  That is not a good moniker and that describes a person who is walking away from God toward their own desires, while drawing the people away from God.  One never wants to be described as someone who walked in the way of Ahab.

I hope you are following along with this story.  I am finding it much easier to follow along in the life of Elisha and what happens to him and with him as he ministers to the north.  The Arameans are still amassing against Israel on the city gates of Samaria, which is the capital.  The people are starving, the king, in the last chapter, sent people to kill Elisha because he was to blame for this failure of provision.

The chief guard was told by Elisha that tomorrow, the next day, food would be sold at the city gates at a rate which was normal.  Basically, Elisha said that by tomorrow things will go back to normal.  The guard said there is no way that is going to happen.  Elisha responded by saying: it will happen, oh it will happen, but you will not be able to enjoy it.  

Outside of the city gates there are four lepers who find themselves in a difficult situation.  If they choose to go inside the city they will die from starvation.  If they go to the camp of the Arameans they could potentially die at the hands of the Arameans, but at least they had a chance.  So they go to the camp and notice that they had deserted it because God had sent a squadron of angels which scared away the Arameans.  So they go back and tell  the people of Samaria, the capital of Israel, that they were free to roam about the cabin. 

The words of Elisha are fulfilled as they plunder the camp.  But when they open the gates of Samaria the people get a bit excited and crush the commander who opened the gate, the same one who came to kill Elisha earlier and who heard the prophecy that next day things would go back to normal.  So the famine passes and the siege is over simply because the Arameans have run away from the presence of the Lord.  

The question I am asking is how is the king going to treat Elisha after this situation?  I’m guessing that we do not find out how the king responds.