136 Ezra 1-3

King Cyrus unites all of Persia and takes over Babylon, then he releases all the interned Israelites and sends them back home.  I guess it would be more accurate to call them Judans than Israelites, since the nation of Israel was conquered by Assyria before the Babylonian exile.  I guess I'll start gradually switching over to just calling them Jews.

Not everyone decides to return home, but many families are influenced by God to come back to Jerusalem and rebuild.  King Cyrus returns all the treasure that Nebachadnezzar had looted from the temple when he attacked and more cedar wood is imported from Tyre and Sidon.  Persian influence must reach through this whole area because Cyrus has to sign off on the transfer of wood before it can be delivered to Jerusalem.

Even though they're scared of the neighboring peoples, the Judans observe all the rituals and ceremonies from the law of Moses.  Things seem to be looking up.

135 2 Chronicles 35-36

  King Josiah, now having the Law of Moses again, gives instructions to have the first proper passover feast since the time of Samuel.  He helps out at the temple constantly to make sure everything is done right and going smoothly and it seems to come off pretty well.  There is basically no cultural tradition left surrounding passover since it has been so long since anyone followed the rules, but just going by what's written in the Law, they seem to do okay.  The text doesn't mention anything about God being especially pleased  by the event, but at least He wasn't angered by anything there.

  13 years later, according to the timelines given, the king of Egypt went up to attack someone around Babylon.  He had no qualm with Israel, but Josiah wanted to attack him for some reason.  The Pharaoh, Neco, told Josiah that not only did he not want to fight him, but God had told him that they weren't supposed to fight.  This is another interesting case of God talking to someone outside the covenant, adding king Neco to the list with Balaam and Melchizedek.  Josiah didn't listen and attacked him anyway so he was killed.

  Recall that God said He was going to destroy Judah after Josiah died, so we can expect something terrible to happen soon.

  Jehoahaz was king for three months before the king of Egypt came and removed him from his throne.  He placed Jehoahaz's brother Eliakim on the throne in stead and took Jehoahaz back to Egypt with him.  Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, came down 11 years later and took away Eliakim, who had his name changed to Jehoiakim when he became king, by the way.  Nebuchadnezzar chained Johoiakim up in Babylon and looted the temple.  Johoiakim was an evil king.

  Just in case you'r not already confused by all these complicated names, the next king after Johoiakim was Johoiachin.  He was another evil king, but he only ruled for three months anyway before Nebuchadnezzar brought him to Babylon and placed his uncle, Zedekiah, on the throne of Judah.  Guess what?  Zedekiah was also an evil king.  He not only rebelled against God though, but Nebuchadnezzar too.  He refused to look to God for help with the problems with Babylon and under his rule the priests and the people all fell back into their old customs and ignored the Law.

  God sent prophets all over the place to try to turn people around, but they kept doing evil things and worshiping other Gods.  Finally, God sent Nebuchadnezzar to destroy Jerusalem and Judah all together.  The Babylonians burned down the temple and looted the city.  Everyone who wasn't killed was taken away to Babylon to serve Nebuchadnezzar and his sons. This lasted for 70 years until Cyrus, the king of Persia, became more powerful than Babylon and took over.  God got him to send all the Judans back home.

134 2 Chronicles 32-34

  Even though Hezekiah has been completely faithful to the Lord, an army from Assyria shows up led by their king, Sennacherib.  Sennacherib runs a tight propaganda campaign, yelling in the language of Judah about how the battle's all but won already and how their god isn't going to be able to protect them just like all the other gods of other nations were unable to stop the mighty Assyrian juggernaut and so on and so forth.

  Hezekaih heard about their coming beforehand though so he had time to take a few precautions.  He had the walls of Jerusalem repaired and improved and stopped up all the water sources outside the city.  When Sennacherib tried to demoralize the army, Hezekiah responded that all those other gods were made by the hands of men and that Assyria has certainly never faced a God like the theirs.  He told his own army that, with God really on their side, they wouldn't even have to fight at all.

  Reading through this part, I was interested to see how God would feel towards Hezekiah afterwords.  I sense a kind of tension from the previous stories about relying on God.  It's obviously insulting to God to sit back idly and demand God do everything to make life easy for them, but on the other hand, attempts by ancient kings to fix things themselves seemed to also offend God.  David's census of the men in Israel is an example of that.  I still can't fathom why it was such a terrible thing for him to have done.  There's another king who fell victim to this also, although his name and the specifics of his story escape me.  I believe he set up a trade agreement with Tyre or someone and they built a bunch of ships together, but they didn't consult with God first so God destroyed their plans.  Hezakiah is very devout though, so he probably spoke at length with his prophets off-camera before working on the walls and the water sources to prepare for the siege.

  In the end, Hezekiah yells prayers and God sends an angel to wipe out the Assyrian army.  With the battle over, the Sennacherib can do nothing but go back to Assyria in shame.

  God performed many miracles for Hezekiah.  He eventually got a little prideful because of it and stopped being very thankful.  God reprimanded him though and Hezekiah quickly snapped back in line.  Later on, God left Hezekiah to test him (I'm not sure what exactly this means) but Hezekiah remained faithful.  It sounds like there's a lot of this story that we're not hearing because it's covered in the Book of the Kings of Judah, but it sounds like Hezekiah is just about the most virtuous and faithful king we've heard about to date, and Judah thrives under him.  Babylon even starts sending down messengers to learn about what was making Judah so awesome.

  Hezekiah's son Manasseh however, took the throne at 12 years old and adopted the customs and gods of all the other nations around Judah.  There's an interesting line in 39:9 that says "They did more evil things than the nations the LORD had destroyed to make room for the people of Israel."  So Assyrians show up again and this time take Manasseh captive.  While a prisoner, Manasseh humbles himself and prays to God, and God takes pity on him, returning him home.  After that he straightens up and worships the Lord.  Manasseh ruled for 55 years.

  Amnon ruled next for 22 years.  He was king type 1, the bad kind.  He was eventually killed in a plot by his officials.  Then the people of Judah killed the officials and made Amnon's son Josiah king.  So, that was kind of a mess.

  Josiah became king at 8 and he must have had some really good advisers because he became a type 2 king, the King David type.  He tore down the altars to other gods, cleaned out the temple, etc, etc.  When they were clearing out all the treasure from the temple vault to get some restoration projects going, someone stumbled across the scroll of the law given to Moses, which I guess had been lost for a while.  When Josiah saw it he flipped out.  Even with all the good Josiah had been doing, nobody had really been following these rules.  He consulted with some prophets and God told Josiah that he was doing a good job and had made himself humble before God, so he was going to be okay, but yes, God was super-angry about the neglect of the law over the last several (hundred?) years, so He was going to basically wipe this country off the face of the Earth.  He would wait until after Josiah died though.

133 2 Chronicles 28-31

  This is getting ridiculous.  It's taking me longer to get through first and second Chronicles than the entire rest of the bible combined so far.  I thought it was going to get more interesting once I got through the laws of Moses, but those were actually pretty interesting.  These kings are so boring that God had to write them all down in two different places in the Bible just so we wouldn't miss them if we fall asleep in 1 and 2 Kings.  It's like there are only two kings in Judah and they just alternate for 600 years.  Once king is wicked and defiles the temple and puts shrines to other Gods up everywhere.  He dies of something gross and isn't buried with his people.  The other king is pretty good like David was.  He is allowed up to one major sin or personality flaw and still finds favor with the Lord.  I think on my next pass through the Bible I'm going to have to come up with some kind of short hand for writing about these guys.

  Anyway, Ahaz is king for around 16 years, but he's one of the first type of king.  After he dies his son Hezekiah becomes king and he's one of the second type.  He opts out of his one freebie sin and seems to live completely virtuously, so he's really favored by God.  Not being as ambitious as some of the other kings though, he mostly seems to use his favor to help out the people in their dealings with God, so he sounds like a pretty good guy.  He intervenes on behalf of a lot of people who try to enter the temple without cleansing themselves first and God is okay with it.  That's the kind of thing that God has shown no reservation about killing people with fire over so you can tell Hezekiah must have had some serious pull.

  What's really interesting about the story of Hezekiah, in its own way, is how boring it is.  The history of Israel and Judah seems so full of political conflict and rebelion against God and all this nasty stuff, but reading this story, and thinking about how much I wished it wasn't included in the final draft of the Bible as I went through, made me realize that there are probably a ton of stories far more boring than Hezekiah's that actually did get cut.  After all, we already know that we're getting an incomplete account because every story ends with a reference to a book of kings that we don't have anymore.  So, there could have been whole families that were left out of Kings and Chronicles because they were deemed uninteresting and their account is only available in the official Book of the Kings of Judah.  King Steve ruled for 6 years and did all the same things his predecessor did, but not quite as much.  He neither pleased nor angered God and then he died.  That would certainly explain why all these kings seem to fit into one of two archetypes, they're all the extreme cases.

  I guess trying to go through the history of this many kings this quickly will always seem incomplete though.  We just don't hear about anybody long enough for me to start caring about what happens to them.  This book has poor character development.  The next couple are named after specific people though so I've got high hopes for them.

132 2 Chronicles 25-27

  Ahaziah was a pretty good king.  Not the best king, he was maybe like a 7 as far as kings go.  He followed the Lord most of the time.  Like, when he bought some soldiers from Israel once, a prophet came and told him that he was acting against God using Israeli soldiers since God did not favor Israel.  Ahaziah paid them what he'd promised and then sent them home unused, even though it was not a popular decision.  When he conquered the Edomites though, he ruined his pious streak by bringing their gods home and consulting them about things.  This seems like a baffling thing to do, seeking the counsil of these, what I assume were some kind of little clay figurines or something, when he had seen first hand what the true God was capable of.

  I guess people thought about gods differently then though.  The only way I can make any sense of it is in thinking about Ahaziah like a rich man.  Jesus says sometime later that *spoiler alert* it will be difficult for a rich man to enter heaven.  This is because (I believe) a rich man accustomed to feeling secure and safe and believes that his own resources can sustain him and protect him.  So it's easy for a rich man to have a little bit of faith because, hey, what's it going to hurt?  Even if he's wrong, he's still got some layers of contingency plans tucked away.  In ancient Judah, you couldn't just buy insurance plans and bullit proof vests and parachuets.  Even rich men had to be a little bit wary of what was happening around them.  So maybe having extra gods around felt for Ahaziah  kind of like having extra money around feels for us, like a harmless back plan.

  Anyway, God killed him for that later on.  His 16 year old son, Uzziah, took over and did what was right in the eyes of the Lord.  At least for a while, until he bacame a little conceited because of his victories and went to go light some incense in the temple.  The priests confronted him and told him that that was not his place, but that just made Uzziah angry.  While he yelled at the priests, leprosy broke out on his forehead and he suffered from leprosy until the day he died.

  Jotham, Uzziah's son, became king next and he walked with the Lord for reals.  Even though the people of Judah were not doing a great job of following the law at that time, Jotham followed the Lord and so he grew powerful and ruled for 16 years.

Political blog day

  I'd like to make the claim that I'm not posting today to show solidarity with internet giants like Wikipedia, Reddit and XKCD, but there's a good chance I wouldn't have gotten a segment done today anyway.  I will point out however that in a world with SOPA and PIPA as they are currently written, free casual blogging sites would not be possible because domain holders would be held legally and financially responsible for the content posted anywhere on their networks.  That means any user-generated content has to make it through the legal department before it can be put online.  So no more comments sections, no more online fora and no more blogs from U.S.-based websites.

  All of the copyright infringement will still happen because there's obviously nothing our government can do about foreign web servers, but the hope is that by enacting tough legislation that gives devastating powers to the Justice Department and several large corporate copyright holders to shut down American websites, they can cut off some traffic and intimidate most of the rest.  Support from Congress generally seem to split between those who are willing to cripple American online industry in favor of taking mediocre action to protect the intellectual property of a handful of major companies, and some old guys who just don't know how the internet works.

  At the end of the day I don't have a lot of personal stake in this.  I'll be fine either way, but it kind of seems like as a nation, online industries are about the only ones we're making money with right now so I would be hesitant to monkey with the way they work.

http://blog.reddit.com/2012/01/technical-examination-of-sopa-and.html

131 2 Chronicles 21-24

  Jehosephat died and gave his sons all kinds of land and riches, but he made Jehoram king or Judah because Jehoram was the oldest.  Jehoram then turned around and killed all his other brothers as well as anyone else who may have gotten the idea into their heads to challenge the throne and began living like Ahab.  He married a descendant of Ahab and started building high places and did all the things that we're coming to find as stereotypical bad king behaviors.  This included ignoring the warnings and rebukes of the prophet Elijah, which finally landed him in hot water with God, who set some foreign armies on Judah.  The Arabs and the Cushites both decided to invade.  They didn't take over, but just looted the palace and the countryside.  After that Jehoram got sick for a long time and died, largely unmourned by his people.

  Jehoram was succeeded by his youngest son Ahaziah because all the older sons were killed by the Arabs.  Ahaziah wasn't a bad guy, but his mother was from Ahab's family and she gave him bad advice all the time.  He only ruled for a year because he got mixed up with the family of Ahab and sort of got caught in the cross-fire as God was wiping them all out.  Bad luck man.

  After Ahaziah was dead, his mother set to work wiping out his whole line.  I guess this was because of something to do with the family of Ahab again.  Ahaziah had still been carrying the torch for the line of David though so it's no surprise that events conspired to preserve exactly one son of Ahaziah and his nurse.  The boy was hidden away in the temple while the wicked grandmother ruled Judah.  His name was Joash, and when he got a little older, all the priests and Levites and God-fearing men of Judah got together and made him king.  There was no subterfuge this time, no raising an army up in the desert and launching a surprise attack.  They just got together and held a coronation ceremony in the temple.  When the queen heard the commotion and wandered down to see what was happening she shouted and made a big stink about treason, but I guess all her guards must have supported Joash too because she didn't really do anything about it.  Except get killed with a sword.

  Joash worked with the chief priest to rebuild and repair the temple which they funded by building a big wooden chest and setting it outside the front gate.  All the officials in Judah came and put money in the chest as Moses had decreed they should do back when they were still setting up the tabernacle.  The temple repairs went well and all the shrines to foreign gods were removed, but after the priest died, his son, Zachariah, spoke out against the idol worship that was starting to pick back up again and Joash had the people stone him to death.  For killing that good priest, God allowed Aram to invade and wound Joash.  Later the temple officials, still angry about the death of Zachariah, killed him in his bed.