2 Kings 21-25: The End of Judah

Now we've come to my third favorite king (David is my second): Manasseh.  However, I'm not going to tell you why he's my third favorite king, and it's not going to make sense either unless you've read 2 Chronicles, because Manasseh is bad.  He is arguably the most evil king of Judah, because it is Manasseh's evil acts that move God to decide to hand Judah over to Babylon, and do it soon.  Manasseh rebuilds the high places that Hezekiah had just gotten rid of, he puts altars to false gods in the temple, he worships heavenly bodies, he sacrifices his son, he practices witchcraft and divination, and so forth.  It says that "Manasseh seduced them [Judah] to do evil more than the nations whom the LORD destroyed before the sons of Israel."  Remember that when the Hebrews took the promised land, they were not just fulfilling God's promise to give the land to Abraham; they were executing God's judgment against the sins of the Canaanites.  The Canaanites were so evil and so unrepentant for so long that God decided to wipe them out.  Judah, under the reign of Manasseh alone, becomes even more evil than the people they destroyed.  That is bad.

And this is all that the book of Kings has to say about Manasseh.  I find that really odd, because there is a lot more to his story than this, but since the Tanakh puts Chronicles at the very end, you won't find out the twist for a long while.  So you'll just have to sit there and wonder why the heck this evil evil person is my third favorite king of Judah.

Manasseh's son Amon becomes king, and he is evil like Manasseh.  His servants conspire against him and assassinate him, but the people of Judah round up the conspirators and execute them, and put Amon's son Josiah on the throne.  Josiah is a mere eight years old at the time, the second youngest king in Judah's history (Joash was 7).  Josiah is a good king, a very good king.  While some of his servants are sprucing up the temple, they find the book of the Law and bring it to Josiah and read it to him.  When Josiah hears the words - the words of Moses, the first five books of the Bible - he tears his clothes.  He is totally convicted - and this is a good king already, remember.  He wants to know what is going to happen to his country because they have not kept God's laws, so he sends people to ask this prophetess named Huldah, and she tells them that God's wrath is burning against Judah, but because Josiah heard the words of the LORD and paid attention to them, the destruction God has planned for Judah is not going to happen during his lifetime.  So then the king gathers all Judah together and reads the entire Torah to them and makes a covenant with them before God to keep the Law and follow Him with heart and soul.  Then he institutes a bunch of reforms, and chapter 23 lists all the bad stuff that he eradicated from Judah, and it's cool.  Josiah did not do things halfway, I'm thinking.  He gets rid of all the altars everywhere to every god and goddess, he destroys the place where people burned their sons and daughters, he tears down the houses of the male cult prostitutes, he defiles the high places that had been rebuilt by his grandfather, he executes all the priests to false gods, and basically just goes on a rampage throughout his whole country, destroying everything that had been an idol for Judah.  Finally, he goes back to Jerusalem and reinstitutes Passover, which has not been observed since the days of the judges.  That means even David and Solomon did not observe Passover - this book has been lost for a long time.

And just like Hezekiah, the author of this book tells us that "before him there was no king like him who turned to the LORD with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might, according to the law of Moses; nor did any arise after him."  Hezekiah, it seems, followed the LORD from the beginning.  It seems almost like Josiah turned to God because of the Torah that was found in the temple.  Maybe if that book hadn't been found, he would have just been okay.  I really believe that the Bible, even though it was written a long time ago and each book was written specifically for a particular group of people in a certain time and place, is relevant to every generation and every culture.  The Torah was already old when Josiah heard it for the first time, and he realized that those words were for him.  I think we should have the same response to God's Word that Josiah did.

Unfortunately, God has already made up his mind about Judah, and he is still going to let them get conquered by Babylon - but not just yet.  Just like he did with Canaan, he is waiting until they are past the point of no return.

Josiah's son Jehoahaz becomes king, and dangit, he's evil.  After having such a great dad, I'm at a loss as to why Jehoahaz turned away from all the good that had been accomplished in the preceding chapter.  It just goes to show you, people are individuals.  I don't know what kind of dad Josiah was, but there comes a point at which you can't guarantee the outcome of your child's life, I guess.  I'm not a parent yet, and that's already a scary thought to me.

Up to this point, it seems like Judah has had a fairly okay relationship with Egypt, but now the pharaoh imprisons Jehoahaz and sets up a different son of Josiah, Eliakim, in his place.  Jehoahaz, unfortunately for him, is held captive in Egypt and dies there.  Eliakim, meanwhile, is renamed Jehoiakim by Pharaoh, and has to pay him tribute.  He is also bad, by the way.  It's starting to look like all the good that Josiah did, was for nothing.  It only lasted one generation!

So now Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, starts encroaching on Judah.  At first Judah becomes kind of a vassal state or something, because it says that Jehoiakim serves him for three years.  But then he rebels, and so marauders from a bunch of different nations - Chaldeans, Aramenas, Moabites, and Ammonites - start attacking Judah, and the author tells us it was at the command of God, to carry out his judgment because of the sins of Manasseh.  Man, how would you like to be held responsible for the downfall of your whole entire country?  It just goes to show you, leaders and authority figures are held to a higher standard of accountability than everybody else, because they are examples, and they can influence people to follow God or not.

Jehoiakim dies and his son Jehoiachin becomes king (you can tell a country is nearing its end when the names become less and less creative).  Egypt has all but fallen to Babylon by now, Jehoiachin is only 18, also does evil in God's sight, and he only lasts three months before Nebuchadnezzar sends his army to Jerusalem.  Jehoiachin surrenders and is taken captive along with his family and a ton of people from Judah - the brave, the strong, the skilled, the talented, the educated.  Nebuchadnezzar sets up I guess Jehoiachin's uncle? Mattaniah as king, renaming him Zedekiah, who is also evil, and he tries rebelling against Nebuchadnezzasr.  So Nebuchadnezzar marches again against Jerusalem and pretty much just demolishes the city.  He kills Zedekiah's sons in front of him, then brings him to Babylon bound, and the whole of Jerusalem is burned.  Some random person named Gedaliah is appointed as governor over what's left of the people of Judah, who advises the people to serve Nebuchadnezzar - because as long as they paid tribute to him, he really was a pretty reasonable guy I think.  But a bunch of people flee to Egypt, although I'm pretty sure it was also under Babylon's control to some extent.

Remember Jehoiachin?  He's still in Babylon in prison, but he gets released and Nebuchadnezzar puts him back on the throne of Israel and treats him nicely, because he knows that Jehoiachin is going to be submissive.  And it works out pretty well for Jehoiachin after that.  He stays under Nebuchadnezzar's thumb, but he gets to keep his life, and his job, and he actually gets paid to be king for the rest of his life.  And that is the end of the story.

So man!  Judah sure went out with a bang.  I have to wonder, all those kings who tried rebelling against Nebuchadnezzar, it doesn't say any of them tried seeking God during that process.  And what I wonder is, if they had turned to God, would things have turned out differently?  God had already made up his mind to destroy Judah because of Manasseh, but because Josiah was repentant, he delayed the destruction.  I really think that if any of the successive kings had been good like Josiah, God would not have brought the destruction so soon.  But I think God knew what was going to happen.  It's sad, because Josiah tried so hard to turn the country around, but in the end it didn't work.  I don't know why.  In the end I guess that the people of Judah had hardened their hearts, and when you get to that point, it's very hard to turn back.

Believe it or not, from here the Tanakh goes to Isaiah.  So when next I write, we will be hearing from the Prophets.

2 Kings 16-20: The Fall of Israel; Hezekiah

After Judah's stunning string of good kings, Jotham has a son named Ahaz, who is not just as bad as all the Israelite kings, but arguably even worse, because he practices human sacrifice with his son.  Now for me, the inference that I've gotten from my reading of the Bible so far is that sacrificing one's child is one of the most detestable and evil things that a person could do in God's eyes.  And I don't think there needs to be any explanation as to why.  Humanly, spiritually, socially, in just about every conceivable way, this is an evil act and you have to be really screwed up to do it, I think.  I mean, we're talking about taking your living breathing child whom you have raised from birth, and setting them on fire.  People like that deserve to have their fingernails and toenails pulled off one by one, then their fingers and toes chewed off one by one, and . . . well, you get the picture.

Then Aram and Israel combine forces and attack Ahaz in Jerusalem, and this is weird - he asks for help from Assyria.  I'm thinking this was a bad move, but he didn't know what Assyria was going to become.  Oh, and also, he sends more of the treasures in the temple to Assyria.  I'm surprised there's anything left in that place, because it seems like at least every two or three generations it's getting cleaned out for some kind of tribute.  You'd think it would be drained by now.


Thank goodness, Ahaz dies shortly after this story, and his son Hezekiah becomes king.  More about him later.

Meanwhile, Israel's next king is named Hoshea.  If that name looks kind of familiar to you, I think it must be a variant of Hosea.  I wonder if it is also a variant of Joshua or Yeshua (the Hebrew name of Jesus).  I don't need to mention that he's evil, but in his reign the king of Assyria rises up against him, so Israel pays tribute to him, but then Hoshea conspires against Assyria with the king of Egypt somehow and stops paying tribute, so the king of Assyria throws him in prison.  Then they invade Israel, besiege Samaria for three years, eventually capture it, and carry the people into exile.  And that is the end of the nation of Israel.

In another rare moment, the author of this book launches into a commentary here and talks about why Israel fell, apparently because he wanted us to learn a moral lesson from this story - that's what ancient history books were all designed to do, by the way.  He writes that the exile happened not because Israel's kings weren't strong enough leaders or made bad political moves, but because the people sinned and turned their backs on God and trusted in other gods.  These are the main things that Israel did wrong, according to this passage here: 1) they worshiped other gods, built idols, etc., 2) they evil things that provoked God, 3) they did not listen to the prophets' warnings, 4) they followed the example of the nations around them, 5) they practiced human sacrifice, divination, and sorcery, 6) they led Judah into sin by example.

What happens next is that the king of Assyria brings foreigners into the land of Israel after he's taken a bunch of people out and into exile.  I think the idea was to mix the cultures by intermarriage, thus diminishing a sense of nationality, thus lessening the risk of a future uprising.  And the plan worked: the ten tribes of Israel are no longer distinguishable today, although a few of their mixed-blood descendants remain in the land, even to this day.  They are called Samaritans, and we will not hear about them again for a very long time.

Anyway, when these transplant people come in, they make up their own gods and sort of add the true God into the mix, into the pantheon as it were.  God did not appreciate this.  He doesn't want to be one of many revered objects in our lives.  You can't put him next to anything; I think it has to be just him and nothing else beside him or above him.

Back to Hezekiah.  Hezekiah, I will let you know, is my favorite king.  The first thing it says about what he did as king is that he broke down the high places!  He is the only one out of all the good kings to have done this!  He broke all the idols that the people were worshiping, even the bronze snake that Moses made for the people in the wilderness, because they were worshiping that.  Note: sometimes we can take a really good thing, a God-given thing, and make an idol out of it.  In contemporary terms, these things might be going to church, or religious practices, or service, or even, to some extent, the Bible (because the Bible is not actually God, although it was written by him).  Anything that we put before God himself, no matter how good it is, must be broken down and removed until nothing stands between us and him.  That is a freaky thing to think about, because there are an awful lot of things in my life that I value very much.

Now, everybody talks about how great David and Solomon were, but get this: Hezekiah was better.  The Bible says so!  It says, "He trusted in the LORD, the God of Israel; so that after him there was none like him among all the kings of Judah, nor among those who were before him.  For he clung to the LORD; he did not depart from following Him, but kept His commandments, which the LORD had commanded Moses."

Reread that phrase up there, "He clung to the LORD."  That brings such a powerful image to my mind.  It's one thing to keep something next to you, another to hold onto it; to cling to something is another matter entirely.  Here is how one dictionary defines that word:

1. To hold fast or adhere to something, as by grasping, sticking, embracing, or entwining: clung to the rope to keep from falling; fabrics that cling to the body.
2. To remain close; resist separation: We clung together in the storm.
3. To remain emotionally attached; hold on: clinging to outdated customs.

To me, the word "cling" conjures up the impression of a life-and-death situation.  Like clinging to a life preserver when you're lost at sea, or something like that.  It's not a casual action; it is . . . a desperate, committed action.  When you cling to something, there is no way you are going to let go, ever.

So Hezekiah is my favorite king.

It's during Hezekiah's reign that Assyria conquers Israel and carries everybody off into exile, and they go after Judah too.  In fact, it says Hezekiah rebels against the king, which I guess means he stopped paying the tribute, and that really ticks off the king.  He's already conquered Israel so he goes after Judah next.  Hezekiah gives him more stuff from the temple but that's not good enough.  The Assyrian army lays siege to Jerusalem, and the commander of the army comes out to taunt Judah and insult both Hezekiah and the God he so faithfully serves.  Luckily, Hezekiah's people keep their heads.  The soldiers ask the Assyrian dude to talk in Aramaic instead of Hebrew, because I guess the regular people didn't speak Aramaic that well and they didn't want them to hear.  And when the guy keeps threatening them and jeering and stuff, none of the people give him any kind of response, because Hezekiah had told them not to say a word.  To have that kind of self-command tells me that Hezekiah must have been held in very, very high esteem.  I think the people believed in him.  I hope they also believed in God.


But Hezekiah is not nearly as confident at this point.  He hears what's going on outside and tears his clothes and puts on sackcloth.

Okay, so I have to make a sidenote here about tearing clothes.  There have been a couple references to clothes so far - the clothes worn by the Israelites in the wilderness didn't wear out for 40 years, Samson bet his fiancee's friends so many changes of clothes for answering his riddle, and part of the gift Naaman offered Elisha was a change of clothes.  I get the impression that these people did not have a lot of changes of clothes, if any.  The king probably had a few more sets than the regular people, but still, it had to have been expensive.  Understanding that gives a very new meaning, to me, to the custom of tearing one's clothes when one was in mourning.  It was not comparable to me tearing up my clothes, because I have lots of clothes and I can replace them pretty quickly and easily.  It seems to me, this would be more like me smashing my computer.  Yipes.

But then a prophet comes and encourages Hezekiah.  You might know him; his name is Isaiah.  He says that God will take care of the army without even fighting, and Jerusalem will be okay.  Hezekiah prays for deliverance - and what's awesome is that he doesn't pray because he wants to save his skin, or preserve his kingly power, or even to save the lives of all his people, although I'm sure all those things were important to him.  What he asks is for all the kingdoms around the world to know that the LORD is God.  Hezekiah was a good king because he valued God's reputation above his own, when both were being threatened.  And he knew what Israel was about, I think, that it was supposed to be a light to the Gentiles, a revelation of the character of God.

I think the next thing that happens is cool.  God sends an answer to Hezekiah through Isaiah, and this is the answer that's given to the army commander.  It's basically God slapping Assyria in the face and saying, "everything that you think your bad self did, that was actually me, and I am going to kick you to kingdom come."  And then he does, because the angel of the LORD strikes 185,000 soldiers by night and kills them, so they go home.    Somebody needed to show that Sennacherib who was boss, and God was the perfect person for the job (because he is the boss).

Hezekiah is doing just awesome, so awesome that what happens next doesn't make sense.  He gets sick.  Just like Uzziah, the good king who got struck by leprosy, Hezekiah becomes mortally ill, and Isaiah even tells him he's going to die.  I feel so sorry for Hezekiah.  His response to this news is very short, so short I can quote it for you.  It says, "Then he turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD, saying, 'Remember now, O LORD, I beseech You, how I have walked before You in truth and with a whole heart and have done what is good in Your sight.' And Hezekiah wept bitterly."  That's all.

I don't know much about prayer, I have to admit.  Sometimes I feel like the more I pray, the better chance I have of God hearing and answering me.  And while I think there's certainly a biblical precedent for ceaseless prayer, sometimes all it takes is one sentence.  And Hezekiah didn't really even ask God to heal him.  He just asked God to remember him.  The image of this strong, wise, courageous king rolling over in his bed to face away from the prophet and just crying his eyes out, breaks my heart.  And I think it broke God's heart too, because Isaiah hadn't even gotten out of Hezekiah's house before God told him to turn around and tell Hezekiah that he was going to live for 15 more years, and moreover, God would totally deliver Jerusalem from Assyria.

I don't know why Hezekiah got sick, honestly.  God healed him pretty quickly after this incident, and it's not like Hezekiah was needing to be turned around or anything before he got sick.  Sometimes the things God does are inexplicable to me.  But I think what I learned from Hezekiah's story is that, while serving God may not prevent bad stuff from happening to you, when bad stuff does happen to you, it is good to find yourself on his side, because then he is on your side as well.

I love Hezekiah, but he does one stupid thing in his life (we're all entitled to something, I guess).  The king of Babylon sends him a get-well card and a care package, and once he's better, he comes over for a visit.  And Hezekiah is so hospitable to this king that he shows him all the valuable stuff in his whole entire kingdom.  Does the name "Babylon" ring a bell to you?  We'll be hearing from them again soon.  Now, Hezekiah must have trusted in God to protect Judah, and therefore thought there was no harm in showing Babylon exactly what they would get if they happened to conquer his nation.  But just because God is our protector, doesn't mean he gave us a license to be stupid.  I think God wants us still to make wise decisions, and Hezekiah's mistake will come back to haunt Judah - not in Hezekiah's own lifetime, thankfully, but sooner than you think.

2 Kings11-15: Polarization of Judah and Israel

I'm going to tell you in advance, in this passage we have a series of good Judean kings and bad Israelite kings.  Actually, not to spoil the surprise for you or anything, but all Israel's kings are bad.  I think Jeroboam set a precedent.  Jehu apparently was the closest thing they had to a good king.

So remember that witchy Athaliah?  When her son (Ahaziah) dies, she sets herself up as ruler of Judah, and moreover, she goes on a rampage and kills all the possible heirs to the throne - I'm guessing she was planning on living forever? - except one escapes.  Ahaziah's sister takes Ahaziah's son Joash and hides him for six years.  He was about a year old when he was hidden, by the way.  For some reason, God has the priest, Jehoiada, proclaim Joash king when he is seven.  The people probably don't like Athaliah, because when they see that Joash is king they put her to death.  Jehoiada makes a covenant between God and the people and the new baby king, and the people go tear down all the altars of Baal.  So Joash's reign starts off on a good solid foot, and we find out that he follows God for as long as Jehoiada lives.  That's kind of a bad omen to me, because these priest guys tend to be old, and if he's going to stop following God when Jehoiada is gone, it means that, like possibly Solomon, Joash didn't have his own relationship with God.  Instead his relationship with God depended on somebody else, or else he was just content to let another person make his decisions for him.

But for now Jehoiada is alive, and so Joash has the temple repaired.  It takes 23 years for the work to actually get started, and that's when Joash has the bright idea of asking people to provide money to pay for the repairs.  But then Hazael, the king of Aram (remember the guy that Elisha anointed?) comes and threatens Jerusalem, so Joash sends all the valuable stuff that's in the temple to him so he'll leave.  It works, but it sucks.  He just spent 23 years trying to get the temple looking nice again, and now he's emptied it out to ward off an enemy.  You'd think he could ask God for some kind of miraculous deliverance, right?

In his later days, Joash became very unpopular; in fact, he was assassinated by his own servants.  But then his son became king so I don't know what good it did.

Meanwhile, Jehu's son Jehoahaz becomes king of Israel, and like his father before him, he does evil.  As a consequence, Aram is constantly beating them.  So I think that is fulfilling God's word to Elijah that Hazael would kill the people Jehu didn't kill.  Jehoahaz dies, and his son Jehoash becomes king.  Now, Jehoash is synonymous with Joash, and the names are used interchangeably for the kings of both Judah and Israel.  To keep them separate, I'm calling Judah's king Joash and Israel's king Jehoash.  He also does evil and is also succeeded by his son, who is named Jeroboam (my header calls him Jeroboam II).  It doesn't seem like either of these kings does anything really significant, compared to Joash over here who is repairing the temple.

Okay, so here is where we find out about the death of Elisha.  Elisha actually dies of natural causes, remarkably - that is, he dies of an illness rather than by being murdered.  Before he dies, he tells somebody to shoot an arrow out the window and that represents victory over Aram, and then he tells him to hit the ground, and that represents how many times they'll beat Aram, but the guy doesn't know that so he only hits the ground 3 times, which means Israel will prevail over Aram only 3 times.  We don't hear anything about Elisha's actual death except that when he is getting buried, some dead guy gets thrown into his grave, and when he touches Elisha's bones he revives and gets up.  So I think that's a final sign that to the very end - and I mean the very end - the same Spirit of the LORD that resided in Elijah, was present in even greater measure in Elisha. 

Joash's son becomes king of Judah next.  His name is Amaziah, and he s also a good king.  The high places are still around, but nobody else has taken them away either.  He kills the people who killed his father, probably a good idea in case they didn't want him on the throne, but he doesn't put their sons to death because that's against the Law of Moses, which says that people cannot be punished for the sins of their fathers, but only for their own sins.  It's nice to see somebody actually following this law.  That leads me to believe that whenever God does some kind of generational punishment, like when he wiped out all Jeroboam's family, it probably was because they were all just as bad as him.

Amaziah wants to fight against Jehoash for some reason, but Jehoash sends him some flowery message that basically says "no."  But Amaziah goes out against him, so Jehoash fights back, and Israel wins.  Sorry Amaziah.  Just because you're not serving idols doesn't mean God necessarily will give you a military victory, especially since it doesn't appear that God had any desire for this battle to happen, and in fact he was the one who had said Judah and Israel should not fight against each other.  But then Jehoash captures Amaziah and also takes all the gold and silver and stuff that's in the temple, so now all of Joash's work has really been undone I think.

But Jehoash doesn't kill Amaziah; Amaziah actually outlives him, but when he dies (he's actually assassinated like his father was), his son becomes king.  Like both Joash/Jehoashes, Amaziah's son has two names too.  The name my Bible gives right here is Amaziah, but the name he's best known by is Uzziah.  If you know Uzziah's name, you probably know that, like his father and grandfather, he was a good king.  Meanwhile, Jeroboam II has just become king, and no surprise, he's a bad king, just like his namesake.  Interestingly though, God gives Jeroboam II some military victories or something because he's able to restore some of Israel's land that had been lost before.  Why would this happen, you ask?  Fortunately the Bible gives us the answer right here.  It says, "For the LORD saw the affliction of Israel, which was very bitter; for there was neither bond nor free, nor was there any helper for Israel."  Elijah and Elisha, remember, were prophets specifically for Israel; they didn't do much work in Judah.  Even though Israel had crappy kings, God still loved the people of Israel; they were still his chosen people, and it was actually hard for him to see them suffering because of their bad decisions and the bad decisions of their leaders.  This just reinforces the teaching of Peter that God doesn't want anybody to perish but all to come to repentance, and that God is patient with us.

Meanwhile, Azariah/Uzziah is a good king, and guess what happens to him?  He becomes a leper.  He has a super-long reign, but he doesn't have his health.  To me that almost seems backwards - Israel, under a bad king, enlarges its border, while Judah's king serves God and gets leprosy.  Sometimes bad things happen to good people, and God doesn't even always give us an explanation why.  See, the good and bad things that happen to us aren't necessarily the consequence of our actions.  Suffering and grace alike can be completely undeserved.

Meanwhile, Israel gets a bunch more kings.  The first is Zechariah, and he is the fourth of Jehu's descendants to rule, so just like God promised, he is the last of his line.  A guy named Shallum kills him and becomes king, but he only lasts a month before a guy named Menahem kills not only him, but also all the pregnant women in the city!  I already don't like him.  He rules for ten years and is, as you probably guessed, evil.  During his reign Assyria starts creeping in, and Israel begins to pay them tribute.  Amazingly, nobody kills Menahem, and his son Pekahiah becomes king.  A guy named Pekah kills him and becomes king, and during his reign Tiglath-pileser of Assyria captures some of Israel's cities.  Slowly, Israel is beginning to crumble.  Think it has anything to do with the fact that every single one of their kings has not followed God?  Personally I sure do.  God gave them a bunch of chances, and he even showed them grace by restoring their border, and they kept screwing up.  I think God is withdrawing his blessing from Israel now.  I think he is going to let them go their own way and see what life without him really is like.  Sometimes God does that too.  Pekah also gets assassinated by a guy named Hoshea.

Okay, so Uzziah's reign didn't cover quite all that time.  Around the same time Pekah came to the throne, Uzziah's son Jotham became king in Judah.  And guess what?  He was also good!  We've had five whole chapters of good kings in Judah - four in a row!  I think that is a record, and that is why I am stopping at chapter 15, because the one after Jotham will break the trend.  Anyway, Jotham rebuilds some part of the temple, the upper gate.  Still nobody has taken away the high places, but the fact that Israel has managed to stay more or less on track for four generations is really amazing to me.

I think that up till now it's been kind of even between Israel and Judah, as far as who was following God and who wasn't.  Sure, Israel had all the bad kings and Judah had a few good ones, but Israel had some kick-awesome prophets to keep the people on track.  But now things are kind of going  chaotic in Israel, and Judah is on a roll in the right direction, or at least they're trying to be.  So it's not surprising that Israel is the one succumbing to Assyria as the empire begins to move toward the Holy Land.

2 Kings 6-10: The Final Prophesies of Elisha

Okay, so I didn't exactly finish chapter 6 last time. The Arameans beseige Samaria, and the people inside run out of food, to the point that inflation skyrockets and people start cannibalizing their children, and when the king hears about it he blames Elisha (don't ask me why) and wants to kill him.   But then, in chapter 7, Elisha prophesies that food will be plentiful the next day.  What happens is that some lepers go out to the Aramean camp thinking that since they're about to die anyway, they might as well throw themselves at the mercy of the enemy.  They discover that the Arameans have abandoned their camp - God apparently made them hear the sound of an approaching army - and left all their stuff.  At first the lepers take stuff and hide it, but then they feel bad and tell the people of Samaria.  So the people go and find food and riches and stuff, and then Elisha's prophecy comes true - awesome, and totally unexpected.  Good thing the lepers had consciences.

But apparently the famine continues, because Elisha goes to that Shunamite woman and tells her that her family should take a vacation to another country, so she lives with the Philistines, who I assume aren't much of a problem anymore, for seven years.  When she comes back, the land where she lives is now occupied by somebody else, so she appeals to the king and tells him about how Elisha gave her a son and then resurrected him and all that, so the king says she should get her land back. I take it from this story that the woman's husband has now died.

Remember at the end of 1 Kings, when God told Elijah to anoint 3 people? - Hazael as the new king of Aram, Jehu as the new king of Israel, and Elisha as the new prophet?  The only person he anointed was Elisha.  I don't know if that was okay with God or not that he didn't do it, but God never reprimanded him for it or anything.  But anyway, now Elisha goes and finishes the job.  But he's really upset over anointing Hazael because he foresees all the destruction he's going to bring to Israel.  So then Hazael goes and murders the current king of Aram, who was very sick at the time, and becomes king.  Reminds me of Macbeth.

Jehoshapat's son Jehoram now becomes king in Judah, and since two generations of good kings was apparently too good to be true, Jehoram is pretty much like all the kings of Israel, probably because he marries Ahab's daughter (and I'm sure she was the spitting image of dear mother Jezebel).  Maybe helping out Ahab and Ahaziah wasn't such a good idea, eh Jehoshapat?  Now, if you're confused, yes, you have heard the name Jehoram before - he's the brother of Ahaziah who is now the king of Israel.  Get this - when Jehoram of Judah dies, his son becomes king, and guess what his name is? Ahaziah.  And you thought all the Henrys of England and Louis (Louises?) of France were confusing.  Anyway, he's also bad, but even worse is his mother.  Her name is Athaliah.  That name makes me cringe, because one time a guy told the story of Athalia and Ahaziah and his son, and to make it more interesting he said Athaliah's name in a high-pitched, freaky, cackly voice.  So I always remember her name, and it sounds like fingernails on a chalkboard.

Then Elisha anoints Jehu.  In another stroke of irony, Jehu's father was named Jehoshaphat.  He basically tells him that he's going to destroy Ahab's family.  So Jehu gets right to business: he tells his people what Elisha said, and they proclaim him king right then and there.  Only then do they go about killing the current king.  Jehu makes short work of Jehoram.  Then he has Jezebel thrown out the window, and he basically runs her over with horses.  Then he kills all the males in Ahab's family after tricking them into coming to him under the pretense of peace.

Jehu is a pretty tricksy character.  He pretends to be a devoted Baal-worshiper and gathers all the priests and worshipers of Baal together for a big sacrifice, but he kills them all.  It almost looks like he's going to follow God, right? Wrong.  He still worships other gods, he just has a thing against Baal apparently.  God commends him for destroying the altars of Baal and the house of Ahab, and promises that he'll have four generations of sons on the throne, which I don't totally get because Jehu was still bad.  He even brought out the golden calves that Jeroboam made and worships those.  Do you ever notice yourself making a really big deal about getting rid of one evil in your life, while ignoring others?  God, it seems, is amazingly patient with us, but unless we tear down all the altars in our lives and eradicate all the false gods from our hearts, we will not really accomplish anything good in the end.

So what did we learn in this passage?  I think this passage was mainly about fulfilling God's prophecies through Elisha.  It's sort of tying up loose ends, because I think this is the last we hear about Elisha.  I don't know how he died or anything, although I'm pretty sure he was killed (all the prophets were, except obviously Elijah).  I think we'll have to wait until Chronicles to find out. Anyway, so we find out that God is serious about what he promises, whether it's for good or for bad.  He provided food as he promised to Samaria, and he also executed judgment on Ahab's family as he promised.  And he was pretty gracious with Jehu, and Jehu is the only Israelite king who was promised a legacy (although Jeroboam was offered a lasting legacy in the beginning).  Sometimes God's promises are unconditional, like the food for Samaria in the midst of the famine.  But sometimes they're based on what we do, like how Jehu destroyed the altars to Baal and killed off Ahab's family.  He doesn't always act exactly in the same way, so don't try to predict him, but he does always keep his promises, so you can definitely count on him.

2 Kings 4-6: There Can Be Miracles When You Obey

It's time for more stories about Elisha! One day Elisha meets a widow who is broke, and about to lose her sons to slavery, so Elisha makes her fill up a bunch of pots with oil, and all she has is a tiny little jar, but it fills every pot and jar and jug that she owns or could borrow from her neighbors, so she can pay off her debts and keep her sons. Now, what I find interesting is that when this woman came to Elisha, he didn't make a sack of gold drop from heaven, or the creditor drop dead. He made her do something. And the miracle only happened because she did what she was told. Sometimes when we look for miracles, I think we assume a miracle happens when we sit back and do nothing, when in reality, God is often calling us to do something that he will use in a miraculous way.


Now we meet another woman, and Elisha's always passing through her town of Shunem, so she invites him to dinner whenever he comes through, and then she convinces her husband to prepare a guest room for him so he'll have a place to stay. Elisha is so grateful that he asks her what he can give her as a thank-you, but she says she is perfectly fine. Elisha asks his servant what he should do, and his servant, Gehazi, points out that her husband is old and they don't have any kids. So Elisha tells her she'll have a son, and she does. Then when the son gets older, he gets sick and dies. She runs for Elisha and tells him what happened. First Elisha sends Gehazi off with his staff to see if that will cure the kid, while he follows the woman back. Gehazi is unable to resurrect the child with Elisha's staff, so when Elisha gets there, he goes into the room and prays and lies right on top of the kid, then stands up and walks around, then repeats, and the kid sneezes seven times and is fine. Talk about a funny resurrection story! Maybe he had a posthumous allergic reaction to Elisha's beard.


Next there's a famine, and some people make a stew, but it's poisonous. Elisha happens to be passing by and asks for meal, and he throws that into the stew and tells the people to eat it. Now, I don't know much about cooking, and I'm guessing these people didn't either since they made something poisonous, but I don't think that adding more ingredients typically cancels out a poisonous one, and I'm pretty sure the people knew that. So this was a very counter-intuitive move, and probably took a lot of faith in Elisha to obey. I mean, what if he was wrong? But they ate it, and sure enough, it was fine. Once again, in this case, obedience was required for a miracle to take place.


Another famous story happens in chapter 5. Remember that country Aram, that Israel's been fighting for the last several chapters? Well, there's a guy in the Aramean army who has leprosy, named Naaman. His wife has a little girl slave who's an Israelite, a captive from a raid. Now first of all, the fact that the Bible calls her a "little girl" tells me that she really is a little girl. Girls were women around 13 (and boys were men at the same age). Anyway, this little girl is so beautiful to me. She's been taken away from her mommy and daddy to be a slave to some pagan woman and her husband in a foreign land, and her master has a disease which, in her homeland, people got banished for, and yet she has compassion on him. Is that amazing or what? I love this little girl. She says she wishes that Naaman could be with the prophet in Israel (Elisha) because he could be healed. And Naaman, far from simply patting the girl on the head and saying "isn't that nice," actually goes to the king of Aram and tells him about it.


Now remember, Israel and Aram have been at war for the last several chapters, spanning a few generations at least. Yet for some reason the king says Naaman should go find this prophet guy – not only that, he volunteers to write a letter himself to the king of Israel, who, remember, is his enemy.

Now, the king of Israel isn't quite as cucumber-cool as the king of Aram. He sort of freaks out when he reads the letter because he thinks the king of Aram is demanding that he heal Naaman, or something like that I guess. He thinks it's another incitement to war. But Elisha hears about it – seems like word traveled fast in Israel, even without the Internet – and he sends a message to the king to invite Naaman over.


Anyway, you know the story. Naaman comes and Elisha sends a messenger to tell him to wash in the Jordan River seven times. Apparently the Jordan is really muddy and gross. Naaman gets angry because he wanted to see the real prophet and get a magic show. But one of his servants, who seems to be more sensible than Naaman, points out that if the prophet had asked Naaman to do something really hard, Naaman would have done it. So why can't he do something retardedly easy? So he does, and he gets healed! And a third time, the miracle was a result of obedience. And from what I can tell, Naaman wasn't 1/7 healed after his first dip, then 2/7, and so forth. He had to completely finish, and then he was completely healed – more than that, his skin became baby smooth! Seriously, it says his skin became like the "flesh of a little child."


Okay, so this is my favorite part. Naaman offers to give Elisha a present, but Elisha doesn't want anything. Naaman asks for some dirt, I guess to make an altar? Because from now on he is only going to sacrifice to the LORD and not to the pagan gods of Aram. Can you believe it?! Naaman didn't come here to be converted or to encounter God; he just wanted to get rid of his leprosy and go on with his life. But having been healed, Naaman has also been washed on the inside. He even goes on to explain that he helps the king into their temple to worship and he has to bow down for the king to lean on him, so he asks for God's pardon when that happens. I just can't believe the change in Naaman. He was angry before that Elisha didn't come out himself to see him and wave his hands and pull birds out of his hat. Now he seems really humble and grateful. I can see why he was well respected in Aram though; he's a dedicated guy.


Anyway, remember how I said Elisha doesn't want anything? Well, his servant Gehazi does. He goes out behind Elisha's back and asks for the gifts that Naaman had offered, lying and saying they're for somebody else (the sons of the prophets again, to be exact). Naaman gives him twice what he had offered to Elisha (also a very generous guy), and Gehazi takes it. But Elisha knows he took it, so he fires him, and more than that, he gives him Naaman's leprosy. Greed doesn't pay.


Then there's a short weird story about the sons of the prophets. They are building a new neighborhood, and while they're cutting down trees, somebody's axe head flies off the handle and sinks into the water, and he freaks out because it was borrowed. Have you ever lost something that you borrowed from somebody else? It is the worst feeling in the world. Especially when it was something important or valuable. But Elisha is a really nice guy and he makes the axe head float up to the top of the water so the guy can get it back. I wish that would happen to me when I lost something.

Okay, so now we go back to the Arameans. The king of Aram – Naaman's boss, the guy who sent him to Elisha – is at war with Israel already again. Israel is winning so badly that the king things there's a traitor among his servants. But his servants are like dude, that prophet in Israel, he can hear the things that you whisper in your bedroom and tell them to the king of Israel. Remember when Elisha asked for a double portion of Elijah's spirit? I think this story confirms that he's got it. The king tries to capture Aram, but he can't because Elisha asks God to let them see all the angelic warriors who are surrounding Samaria, and then he makes them go blind and leads them right into the middle of the city so they can get captured. But he doesn't let the Israelites kill them. On the contrary, he feeds them and sends them home, and they never come back – at least, not the "marauding bands" of the Arameans. 


Once again, I'm going to stop early because this is just going to be too long. I think I've made the main point of my post clear: miracles are not just the result of believing something good can happen. Sometimes they are the result of doing what God tells you to do. Sometimes they require doing things that are illogical, like the woman with only enough food for her and her son, or downright stupid, like washing in a river that's dirtier than you are. I think the point is, if God asks you to do something, you should do it, because you never know what will happen. Sometimes God does miracles when we don't do anything, like the Shunamite woman who got a son just because she was nice to Elisha. Contrary to the popular belief that "there can be miracles when you believe," I think that there can be miracles regardless of whether you believe or not, because if God wants to do a miracle, I think he's just going to. However, it sure does seem to help if you believe, because belief leads to obedience, and God blesses obedience.


I think we have also learned that it's best not to borrow or lend something valuable to another person, unless you have a prophet handy to recover it when it gets lost.

2 Kings 1-3: The Rise of Elisha

Now we're on to 2 Kings. Ahab has died and his son is on the throne, but he's gotten sick. He wants to know whether he'll recover, so he sends somebody to ask of some random god, Baal-zebub (is this the good later known as Beelzebub or Belzebul in the New Testament, a synonym for the devil?). God tells Elijah to say to King Ahaziah, are you asking Baal-zebub for help because there is no God in Israel? And also, you're going to die. Elijah sends the message, and Ahaziah sends fifty men to go bring Elijah to him. This is really funny. The captain of the fifty says to Elijah, hey man of God, come down right now. And Elijah says, if I'm a man of God, fire will come down and burn you up. And it does. So then Ahaziah sends another fifty men, and the same thing happens. He sends another fifty men (whatever happened to "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?), and the captain of the third fifty really doesn't want to die, so he goes to Elijah and bows down and begs for his life and the lives of his men. Smart guy. So Elijah knows this guy is going to show him respect and not kill him, so he goes with them. And he tells the king exactly what he already told him. Ha! I like Elijah. And of course, Ahaziah dies, but he doesn't have a son, so his brother, Ahab's other son, becomes the king.


As far as we know, only two people have ever made it out of this world alive. One was named Enoch. The other was Elijah. I wonder why these two are the ones who never died, and why not anybody else. Ever wonder about that? Well, the Bible doesn't tell us why. But Elijah knows ahead of time that it's about time to go, and so apparently does everybody else. Now, there's this group of guys collectively called "the sons of the prophets." I don't know who they are or why they all hang out together, but they show up from time to time in these books. When Elijah and Elisha pass by them, the sons of the prophets say to Elisha, "do you know that the LORD will take away your master from over you today?" and he says, yes I know; shut up. I like him already. Elijah and Elisha cross the Jordan with a cool river-parting move, and then Elijah asks Elisha if there's anything he wants. Elisha asks for a double portion of Elijah's spirit to be given to him. I don't know if he meant Elijah's supernatural power, or his ability to speak with God, or his courage, or his vitality, or something like that, but apparently he gets it. And a fiery chariot – I'm thinking that Elijah rode in style, like a stretch limo chariot – comes down from heaven and takes Elijah up.


  After Elisha can't see his master anymore, he takes Elijah's coat that he dropped, and he says something funny. He says, "Where is the LORD, the God of Elijah?" Why on earth did he say that? He just saw Elijah get taken up to heaven, so obviously God is pretty close by. What did he mean by asking that? But anyway, he touches the water of the Jordan River with Elijah's mantle, just like Elijah had done to get the water to part on the way over, and the river parts again. Now, to me, when they crossed over the first time, I thought that was a totally pointless stunt. "Hey Elisha, look what I can do!" something like that. But now that Elijah is gone, Elisha needs to know that God really is with him and Elijah wasn't just speaking off the cuff. When he is able to do the same miracle Elijah did, maybe he knows that God truly is with him. And maybe that answers his question.


  So Ahaziah's successor, Jehoram, is just as bad as he and their dad were. But when Moab rebels against Israel, he goes to king Jehoshapat (who is good, remember) for help, and Jehoshapat says he'll help again. Now, we haven't heard a whole lot about Jehoshaphat, mostly just a paragraph saying he was good, and a little anecdote about him and Ahab fighting Aram together, but I'm inclined to like him. He wants peace between Judah and Israel, because remember, God wanted peace between Judah and Israel. Every time a king of Israel asks for his help, this is what he says: "I am as you are, my people as your people, my horses as your horses." In other words, your battle is my battle because we are all God's chosen people. He isn't uppity and elitist like "no, you Israelites seceded from Judah, so we don't want to have anything to do with you. We're the good side and you're the bad side." That's not the way it is, and Jehoshapat knows it. This, I think, is how we should treat other Christians, even the ones who belong to churches we may not fully agree with. I'm not talking about cults or living in sin or anything like that (although that would more accurately describe Israel); I mean other people who are believers, just as the Israelites were just as much God's chosen people as the people of Judah. At least, that's what I take away from this.

 
So they go, and the king of Edom joins them, and they get stuck in a place without water. So they need to call a prophet for help, and somebody suggests Elisha, the former servant of Elijah. So far, Elisha is kind of an unknown – the person has to say that he was Elijah's helper or nobody would know who they were talking about. Anyway, Elisha doesn't want to talk to the kings of Israel or Edom, and only does so because of Jehoshapat, but he won't prophesy to them. Instead he makes a minstrel do it, and the spirit of the LORD comes on the minstrel. Weird! Anyway, so they go into battle, and Moab is losing, and so the king of Moab sacrifices his oldest son as a burnt offering, which is gross and evil, but then a great wrath comes against Israel – super freaky. Maybe because Israel didn't follow God, they were not protected from the dark forces that Moab served. Now, up to this point in the story (meaning the whole Bible), pagan gods have been portrayed as relatively impotent. God made a mockery of Egypt's gods, the gods of Canaan were powerless to save them from destruction, the Philistine idol of Dagon can't even stay upright in the presence of the ark of the covenant, and 6+ hours of screaming and cutting doesn't arouse the attention of Baal. For pretty much the first time, here we see a result, and it comes from what God depicts as one of the most heinous acts a person can do, human sacrifice. These people may just be serving blocks of wood and stone, but there are other powers in this world than good and other supernatural beings besides God and the angels. The darkness is real and so is its power. And that, I believe, is why God wanted Israel to stay far, far away from it. This is a scary part of the story to me.

I was going to go through chapter 8, but this seems like a good place to stop to me.