Day 117 2 Kings 23-25

            King Josiah, upon finding the lost book of the law,  desecrated and destroyed every shrine and high place belonging to a foreign god and began following the law again as it was written.  He also got rid of all the priests who had been put in their positions by kings instead of by God and went through a ceremony renewing the covenant with God.  This wasn’t enough in itself to turn God’s rage completely away though.  Egypt comes in and conquers Judah, subjugating Jerusalem and eventually killing Josiah.  God has seen so many times how we can be so devout for a short burst and then so quickly fall back into disobedience. 

            And, sure enough, Josiah’s son falls right back into the old routine of Manasseh and the kings of the past, worshiping other gods and failing to acknowledge the lord.  God allows him to rule for less than a year, and all the while as a vassal of the Pharaoh.

            It seems like a really big deal that Josiah found the book of the law.  It certainly changed the way he saw God.  It’s interesting though that we never heard anything about it having been lost.  How long has it been gone for and exactly what have the priests been doing all this time?

            Judah was then taken from Egypt by Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon.  He completely destroyed the nation.  He took everyone with him to Babylon except the poorest people around, who he left to work the land some.  There was a little bit of politics among Judahites surrounding who got to be in charge of Judah, but they were ultimately just fighting over Nebucadnezzer’s scraps.  After he laid siege to Jerusalem, the king dismantled the entire temple and carted all the valuable metals off back to Babylon.  Solomon had built the temple during a pretty lush time and there was gold, silver and more bronze than could be measured.

Day 116 2 Kings 20-22

            King Hezekiah got sick and God told him, via the prophet Isaiah, that he was going to die.  He prayed about it and God told him he could have another 15 years and, as an added bonus, He would protect him and Jerusalem from the Assyrians.

            Some guys from Babylon came down to Judah and Hezekiah gave them a tour of everything he had.  Isaiah told him later that everything they have is going to be taken away to Babylon.  Hey, at least it won’t be the Assyrians who take it though.

            Hezekiah’s son Menasseh took the throne when he was only 12, so he didn’t get a chance to glean any of Hezekiah’s piety.  He rebuilt all the high places that his father had destroyed and did all kinds of evil.  While he ruled, God said that He was done with Judah and Jerusalem’s nonsense and He’s going to wipe out Jerusalem like one wipes a dish.  His son’s rule went pretty much the same way.

            Josiah was crowned king when he was only 8, so he didn’t have a chance to learn from his father and grandfather how to be a jerk.  Under Josiah, the priests in the temple found the book of the law, which I guess had been misplaced sometime before.  When Josiah had it read to him, he tore his robes and sent some men to go inquire of the lord.  A local prophetess told him that God was going to destroy Jerusalem and Judah because of their sin, but because of how legitimately bad about the whole thing Josiah felt, He would at least wait until after Josiah was dead to really start cursing everyone.

Day 115 2 Kings 18-19

            Now things are getting interesting again.  The king of Assyria has conquered Israel and he’s got his eye on Judah.  His officers come down to Jerusalem and run a big, loud propaganda campeign about how Assyia has conquered a whole bunch of kingdoms already and their gods never helped any of them.  They say that Judah’s only allies are Egypt and God and Egypt is useless and God won’t do anything.  They say the king of Judah, Hezekiah, is lying to them and misleading them and will get them all killed, but if they surrender, thy ‘ll all get nice new lands in Assyria.

            Hezekiah goes to the temple and prays about what’s happening and eventually God tells him that He won’t let anything happen to Jerusalem, that he’ll take care of the Assyrian situation. He sends a long reply through the prophet Issaiah that basically asserts how ridiculous and insulting He finds the claims of the Assyrians and He’s going to show them a thing or two about how He differs from the gods of the people they are accustomed to fighting.

            God sends and angel to kill hundreds of thousands of Assyrian soldiers in their camp that night and the king chooses to withdraw from the field before ever even starting the battle.  He runs all the way back to Ninivah actually, the capital of Assyria, but there his sons murder him, and that’s the end of his story.

Day 114 2 Kings 15-17

            More of the same.  A long line of kings filed through Israel and Judah.  None of them were really great guys, but most of them weren’t too horrible.  King Ahaz of Judah redecorated the temple with a foreign altar and used it for divinations.  Once upon a time God would have vaporized someone for a move like that, but I guess God is in the process of giving up on the Israelites not so there are no immediate repercussions.

            Eventually God completely turns His back on the Israelites and the king of Assyria conquers them and drives them out of the country, relocating them to Assyria.  At first the colonists he sends down to replace them are eaten by lions because the Assyrians don’t know anything about God or how to worship Him and not provoke Him into sending lions after them.  After the Assyrian king hears about these problems and sends a priest down to teach them about God.  They do a little bit of temple stuff, but they also keep worshiping their local gods.  This seems to appease God just enough to stop killing them with  lions, but still doesn’t really ingratiate them.

Day 113 2 Kings 12-14

            Joash was king of Judah.  He repaired the temple in Jerusalem with money donated by the people.  At first he tried to get the priests to sort it out, but after 23 years they had made no progress so Joash personally  took over.

            Jehoahaz was king of Israel.  He followed his ancestors, commiting the same sins as they had.  Aram was decimating Israel so Jehoahaz went to see Elisha for help.  Elisha was very sick, but he still led Jehoahaz through a little ritual and declared that they would defeat Aram, but because of a completely arbitrary thing that Jehoahaz didn’t do right, they would not destroy Aram completely.

            After this prophecy, Elisha died.  Some time later people fleeing from Moabite raiders tossed a body into his grave.  The body touched Elisha’s bones and came back to life.  That’s what happens with a double portion of God’s blassing I guess.

            Amaziah became king of Judah.  He defeated some Moabites, but then he got cocky and challenged Israel to a fight.  He lost.

            King Jeroboam II became the ruler of Israel some time after that battle.  He’s the one who defeated Aram like Elisha said and restored the borders of Israel to where God said they should be.

Day 112 2 Kings 9-11

            Elisha sends a member of his prophet corps to go anoint Jehu the new king of Israel so he can overthrow the family of Ahab and make good on God’s decree that Ahab and his family be wiped out.

            The prophet shows up on Jehu’s doorstep, tells him he’s the new king of Israel and that Jezebel and all of Ahab’s family are going to die horribly, the implication being that Jehu is going to help kill them, then the prophet immediately opens the door and runs, runs, away back to Elisha.  Jehu, kind of confused, comes back outside and tells his men about what happened (he was a commander in the military) and his men lay out their cloaks and declare him king.

            This is the third anointment Elijah was told about by God after the anointment of Hazael as king of Aram and Elisha as his own successor.

            Jehu rode up to the front door of king Joram, son of Ahab, and shot him in the back with an arrow, then shot Ahaziah, the king of Judah, but he ran away to Megiddo and died there.

            Jehu rode up to Jazebel’s tower and yelled up the the servents there asking if any were loyal to him.  A couple gave him the nod so he commanded them to throw Jezebel down.  She died from the fall and then Jehu’s men’s horses trampled her body.  They went out later to bury her but the body was gone, presumably eaten by dogs like God said it would be.

            Ahab had 70 sons spread across the nation and Jehu sent letters to the officials in all the cities they were in and told them to come claim the thrown of Israel if they would like it.  Everyone was afraid of Jehu, so they sent messages back to him saying that no, thank you, but no one would like to be king that much.  Jehu wrote a second time to the officials of the towns and told them that if they were going to follow him like they said they would, order number one was to send him the heads of all of Ahab’s sons.  So that’s what they did.

            Ahab’s family had worked it way into the royal family of Judah as well, so Jehu had to kill some of them too.  All three appointments have been made now though and the family of Ahab wiped from the Earth, so I guess that’s the end of that prophecy.

           

Day 111 2 Kings 6-8

            Aram has been stirring up trouble with Israel for some time now, but God is angry with Israel so basically both sides are losing the fight.  Aram’s army will be run off by a miracle, but only after really ruining Israel’s day.  In a siege on the city of Samaria, the food shortages were so bad that people were eating their kids.  This was something that Moses prophesied would happen to Israel when they angered God enough to make Him turn on them back in his last speech at the end of Deutoronomy.  In the end though, God makes the Aramian army run away and leave their camp and all their supplies, so the city isn’t taken or destroyed.

            The king of Aram got sick and sent an officer to inquire of Elisha whether he would get better or die of the sickness.  That seems like an odd move sine Elisha lives in Israel, but maybe it’s public knowledge that he’s not very patriotic.  The officer, a man named Hazael, asks Elisha about the king’s health and Elisha gives him a very strange answer, explaining that the king will die, but that the officer should go tell him that he will recover.  Then he stares the officer down until things get awkward, and starts crying.  When the officer, Hazael, asks him what is going on, Elisha says that he, Hazael, is going to kill tons of Israelites.  He will accomplish this because he’s going to be king of Aram.

            All this borderline gibberish is apparently exactly what Hazael needs to hear though to go back home and kill the king.  This reads different to me than most prophecies in the past.  Before, the prophecies we heard about sort of described things from a distance, either reffering to things happening generations into the future or about other people unaware of the prophecy or something like that.  This prophecy seems to be one of the major causes of the event being prophecied.  The text seems to imply that Hazael would not have killed the king if Elisha had not said that he was going to kill the king.

            I know that God tends to use people to fulfil prophecies anyway, but it’s interesting that this prophecy was the motivation for the fulfillment of itself.  It’s like a trick-shot.

Day 110 2 Kings 4-5

            Elisha got double portion of Elijah’s magic powers so he performed lots of miracles:

            He multiplied the small bit of oil so a widow who only had one small jar of oil was able to keep pouring out oil until she had plenty to use and to sell.

            He brought a lady’s son back from the dead by laying on him.

            He unpoisoned some stew for a prophet’s meeting.

            He fed a hundred men with only a few loaves of barley bread.

            And, finally, he healed a man named Naaman of leprosy.  He was a foreign warrior, but after Elisha healed him, he swore that there is no God in the world but the God of Israel.  He tried to reward Elisha with treasure and nice clothes, but Elisha refused.  Later his servant ran out and collected a little of that reward for himself, but Elisha knew about it and gave him Naaman’s leprosy.

            This particular set of miracles seems awfully familiar.  With the exception of that poison stew trick, Jesus is going to do all these things too when He comes.  He does them all to a greater degree too.  Instead of feeding a hundred, He feeds thousands, and in stead of healing people with rituals and stuff, He does it with just a thought, even Lazarus who was dead for days before healed.

Day 109 2 Kings 1-3

            Ahaziah injured himself and sent some men to inquire of Baal whether he would live.  Elijah intercepted them though and sent back word basically that, because Ahazian had snubbed the God of Israel and not even bothered to ask him,  he would die.  Then he died.

            Elijah is finally ready to die himself.  He asked God to let him die earlier when Ahab and Jezebel were hunting him down, but now he’s done everything he needs to so I guess he’s done.  He’s carried directly to heaven in a tornado without having to actually experience death, but only after his apprentice Elisha asks for a double helping of Elijah’s faith.  This is a big request, but it seems to work out okay.  After Elijah leaves, Elisha heals a well that was poisoning the area and then summons some bears to eat a bunch of kids who were making fun of him so he’s clearly got no shortage of magic powers.

            King Joram of Israel and King Joshaphat  of Judah team up and attack the king of Moab after he refuses to pay a big tribute to Joram.  The Moabite king feels safe ignoring Israel on account of Ahab no longer being around to enforce their agreement.  They ask Elisha about how the battle’s going to go and he kind of leads them on, asking are they sure they don’t want to ask some other prophets?  When they insist on hearing what Elisha has to say, they win the battle easily.

            The theme I see here is that, yes, even foreign prophets may be able to predict what’s going to happen once in a while, I mean, honestly, I can predict what’s going to happen once in a while if I know enough about what’s going on, but when God gets involved, He can actually change what’s going to happen.  Knowing the future is great and all, but it’s not quite as powerful as controlling the future.

Day 108 1 Kings 21-22

            King Ahab found a vineyard he liked near his palace and tried to buy it for a vegetable garden.  The owner refused to sell it though because it was part of his ancestral plot of land handed down from the origins of Israel.  Jezebel had him killed so Ahab could have it anyway.  Elijah gets dispatched to meet him as he goes to take possession of the vineyard and tells him some scary stuff about how he and Jezebel are both going to be eaten by dogs.  What he says is so jarring that Ahab repents all his evil and pretty much just languishes around his palace sulking.

            He must legitimately be sorry (or at least scared) though because God is moved by his repentance and agrees not to destroy his line until his son’s time.  His son is no better than he’s been, so God kills them all.

            This book ends with an odd little story about the king of Israel and Jehoshephat, the king of Judah, teaming up to take some important land back from Aram.  The section headings all say this is talking about Ahab, but the text itself keeps referring to the king in the story only as “the king of Israel.”  Either way, all of the king of Israel’s prophets keep telling him about what a great idea it is to attack Aram, but Jehoshephat insists on asking a true prophet of God.  The only good one they have there is named Macaiah, but the king of Israel doesn’t like him because he only says bad things about him all the time.

            When they bring him out, he tries to fall in line with the other prophets and fawn over how great this victory is going to be, but the kings see through his ruse and coax the truth out of him that he’s had visions of a total defeat and the death of the king of Israel.  He gets thrown in prison and mistreated until the king returns safely, but of course the king does not return safely, he’s killed in battle and his blood licked up by dogs.

            Maybe we’ll hear more about what happened to Macaiah in second Kings. For right now, I guess we just assume that he eventually died in a horrible Israelite prison :(

Day 107 1 Kings 18-20

            God told Elijah to go meet with Ahab.  Elijah sent a message that he would be on Mt. Carmel and that Ahab should bring all the priests of Baal and Ashera and the whole nation of Israel out to watch what was going to happen.  Once there, he challenged all the priests of Baal and Ashera to light on fire a sacrifice that they had prepared.

            They prayed and chanted and cut themselves for half the day before Elijah finally prepared his own sacrifice and set it up on a little altar that he repaired with some stones.  Even after pouring a ton of water over his sacrifice, Elijah prayed to God and fire rained down from the sky and consumed his offering.  Now that the crowd was won over, Elijah told them to grab all the priests of Baal and Ashera and kill them.

            Elijah then told Ahab to hitch up his chariot so he could get home before the rains started.  This is during a huge drought without a cloud in the sky, so that’s quite a warning.  Then, just to make sure he’s got everyone’s attention, Elijah ran all the way back to the nearest city ahead of Ahab’s chariot.

            Once she found out what happened, Jezebel sent a message to Elijah that she was going to have him killed for what he had done to all her favorite prophets, so Elijah ran away.  After wandering the wilderness in despair for a long time, God spoke to him and told him to anoint new kings of Aram and Israel and a new prophet to succeed him.  Among the three of them, they’re supposed to kill pretty much everyone in Israel except 7000 men who have never worshipped an idol.

            A little later the current king of Aram starts stirring up trouble in Israel.  He captures Samaria and demands Ahab give him treasure and his best wives and servants.  Ahab agrees to this, but then refuses when the king of Aram further demands that he and his men get permission to loot the homes of Ahab’s officials.  It’s pretty clear at this point that he’s just trying to pick a fight.

            Ahab’s in luck though because God hates Aram at this time even more than He hates him, so a prophet comes to tell Ahab that God’s going to hand Aram’s army over to him.  They beat Aram once, but the aramian advisors think that they only lost because the God of Israel is a god of the hills, so they can win if they go back next year and fight the same fight again, but in the plains this time.  They were mistaken however, even though they had a way bigger army than Israel, they get routed in the next battle too.  Rumor has it that kings in Israel are open to negotiation though so they try to reason with Ahab, which works just fine actually.  Ahab lets them go after a treaty is formed with Aram.

            If you’ve been following along this far, you know that God hates treaties.  When God hands an army over to you in battle, it’s because he wants that army to not be an army anymore.  You’re supposed to destroy them and eat their children and kick their puppies.  So that same prophet confronts Ahab again on his ride home and tells him that God is going to take his life in exchange for the king of Aram’s life, which rightfully belongs to God.

            Ahab sulks back to his castle.

Day 106 1 Kings 15-17

            Rehoboam’s son Abijah takes over Judah and there is a lot of tension along the border with Israel.  Abijah committed all the same sins his father and grandfather had before him, but God didn’t strike him down because of how great David was.  The family finally turns itself around after Abijah is succeeded by Asa, who does follow the Lord.  He tears down almost all of the totems and shrines and puts all the treasure back in the temple that his forbearers had spread around Judah.  He sends most of that treasure to a foreign king though to try to reestablish a treaty that David had created back in the day.  With the foreign king backing Judah now in stead of Israel, Israel is forced to back off a little and quit skirmishing along the border.

            These kings and the Israelite kings up north did a lot more than what’s covered in this book, but apparently all their other adventures were recorded in other books that we don’t have.

            In Israel, Jeroboam’s son rules for a little while, but then Basha, the son of the very same prophet who told Jeroboam he and his family would be killed, kills Jeroboam and his family.  Of course, Basha committed all the same sins as Jeroboam once he became king.  This scene pretty much just repeats itself for a few generations until finally Ahab becomes king of Israel and sins more than any of the kings before him.  He actually served another God and put a shrine to it in the temple.

            Ahab’s rebellion was met with an equal and opposite series of acts by a prophet named Elijah.  Elijah decreed that there would be no rain in Israel except on his word, and then he promptly ran away and hid from a nation of angry and hungry farmers and shepherds.  God took care of Elijah on the banks of a small stream in the wilderness for a while, and then sent him to live with a foreign widow once his stream dried up.

Day 105 1 Kings 12-14

            When Rehoboam goes to be crowned king of Israel the people ask him to reduce their workload.  Solomon used a lot of forced labor for his ambitious building projects and everyone was hoping that Rehoboam would ease off on them now that everything was built and Solomon was dead.  Rehoboam ignored the requests of his people and the advice of his advisors opting in stead to listen to his buddies who told him to snub the people and give them even more work.  For this the people drove him out of Jerusalem and killed the guy he had in charge of the forced labor program.

            Only the tribe of Judah stayed loyal to Rehoboam.  He was going to mount an offensive to take back the rest of Israel by force, but God told a nearby prophet that this was His doing, and they should just let it be.  That must have been pretty disappointing for Rehoboam to hear.

            I wonder what the tribe of Levi does here.  They still seem to have priests in Judah so I don’t imagine all the Levites just ran away when the tribes finally split for good.  I guess Levites are exempt from military sevice anyway so it probably doesn’t much matter where their political loyalties lie.

            While Rehoboam may not have been as bright as his father, down in Israel Jeroboam was proving that he wasn’t a great king either.  Not satisfied that God had given him the throne of Israel, he started getting paranoid about losing it.  He worried that people would go through the cycle of holy days and celebrations and they would remember that David’s line is God’s line of kings.  Then they would rebel against him and try to reinstate Rehoboam.  To prevent this, he set p a bunch of local altars and shrines and some new holidays to distract people from interacting with anyone from Judah or from going to Jerusalem.  It seems like kind of a lame plan, but it seemed to work, and Israel plunged into idolatry as it seemed inclined to do at the slightest provocation.  The ancient Israelites are developing a habit of being led astray by empty religious pageantry and showy approximations of the kind of worship God actually gave them.

            Oh, that reminds me.  Happy Easter everyone.

            Anyway, Jeroboam is not glorifying God and a prophet comes down from Judah to tell him as much.   That prophet actually got kind of screwed in this story.  On his way back home to Judah he was met by another, older prophet who I guess maybe thought he was doing this guy a favor by telling him that and angel of the Lord had told him to bring the foreign prophet home with him and feed him.  This, if it were true, would have overridden the earlier command that he not eat or drink anything until he was back home.

            As soon as the foreign prophet ate though, the older prophet actually did prophesy that since he had broken God’s command, and eaten in Israel, he would be punished and not buried with his people.  After what I’m sure was a very awkward goodbye, he started back home again and was killed by a lion.  So it’s not a good enough excuse to claim to have been misled I guess.  When it comes to what God tells you to do, don’t trust anybody.

            Jeroboam’s son gets sick and dies.  The prophet Ahijah, who first told Rehoboam that he would get to be king, tells his wife that God is super-pissed about all the ashera poles and shrines to foreign Gods and that Israel is going to be cast out of this good land and scattered beyond the Euphrates river.  Also, Jeroboam’s family is going to be completely destroyed.  This must be the fulfillment of the prophecy from Deuteronomy about how God new that the Israelites were going to screw up so bad that God was going to unleash horrible curses upon them until they straightened out.

            Those curses were pretty awful so the next couple of books might get pretty rocky.

Day 104 1 Kings 10-11

            Solomon was a major celebrity among the rulers of the world for his wisdom.  Kings from all over paid him tribute and Israel was very wealthy.  Eventually though, he took a bunch of wives from nations that Israelites aren’t supposed to interbreed with and they perverted his faith and got him to worship their gods and build altars to them around Jerusalem and the city of David.  God told him that this slip up was going to cost him the kingdom, but, because of his father David’s faith, He would wait until after Solomon died to take the kingdom away from his family.

            God lifted up a couple people to irritate Solomon, one of whom served as Solomon’s official.  Jeroboam rebelled against Solomon and the prophet Ahijah told him that God would give him 10 tribes to rule over, but one would still be left for David’s line.

            Solomon died and was succeeded by his son Rehoboam, but I have a feeling there’s going to be some changes soon.

Day 103 1 Kings 8-9

            Solomon built the temple and his palace with forced labor from the remnants of the groups of non-Israelites in the land.  When he dedicated the temple, God approved of it and filled it with his cloud-form body with such power that the priests couldn’t even do their work.

            Solomon prayed with all the elders of Israel at the temple dedication, mostly about forgiving them for their sins because no one ever lived completely without sin, and about hearing the prayers of both Israelites and of foreigners so that they would also see how great God is.  The Lord responds similarly to the way He spoke with Moses just before his death, promising great things for Solomon and his people as long as they don’t stray away from Him, but horrible curses if they screw up.  In fact, here’s an excerpt from the beginning of chapter 9:

            “Israel will then become a byword and an object of ridicule among all peoples. ⁸ This temple will become a heap of rubble. All who pass by will be appalled and will scoff and say, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this land and to this temple?’ ⁹ People will answer, ‘Because they have forsaken the LORD their God, who brought their ancestors out of Egypt, and have embraced other gods, worshiping and serving them—that is why the LORD brought all this disaster on them.”

Day 102 1 Kings 6-7

            Solomon made a temple over the course of the next four years.  It was built with cedar and bronze and fancy stones, but all of the actual stone work had to be done at the quarry so no iron tools were used to work the stone at the temple.  This sort of thing has been mentioned in passing a couple times now.  It kind of seems like God has a problem with iron tools.

            Solomon also builds a palace, but that takes 13 years.

Day 101 1 Kings 3-5

             God asks Solomon what he wants and Solomon asks for wisdom.  God is pleased with him for asking for something more selfless than long life or wealth or military conquest, so he gives him wisdom plus all those other things he didn’t ask for.  Solomon quickly becomes famous for his wisdom all through Israel and beyond.  People come from all over the world to hear him adjudicate disputes among his people.  One such dispute is that famous story of Solomon threatening to cut a baby in half when he hears two women fighting over it.  The baby’s true mother would rather see it given to the other woman than killed.

            Solomon also gets the ball rolling on building a proper temple for God.  He contracts with the king of Tyre because he says those people are the best at collecting lumber and he needs them to get this job done right.  The king of Tyre blushes and gives Solomon a good deal on the labor, trading his men for Israelite grain and oil.

            There’s a story of Benjamin Franklin turning a rival into a friend in the continental congress by borrowing a rare book from him.  He said that if he had just acted friendly and said nice things to the man, it would have come off as insincere and they would have gotten along even worse.  By getting the man to do him a favor though, it made the man basically justify to himself that Franklin must be someone worth doing a favor for, so he must be an okay guy.  I think Solomon’s probably wise enough to run that game on the king of Tyre.

            The workers from Israel and from Tyre collect lumber from the city of Byblos.  The Middle East isn’t really known for its lush forests these days, but there used to be some good places for harvesting wood.  Byblos was a big place for getting wood, so they had a lot of wood by-products around all the time like sawdust and stuff.  Eventually someone decided to see what he could do with wood pulp and invented paper.  There’s not a lot of paper left over from back then because it wasn’t nearly as tough as the flattened, woven reed mats called papyrus that the Egyptians used, so they didn’t hold up as well over the last couple thousand years.  These sheets also didn’t travel very well.  They would basically fall apart if you looked at them the wrong way.  The only advantage they had over papyrus was that they were much thinner and could more easily be collected into sheaves.  In Byblos, they started affixing these sheaves together and the resulting invention was named after the town.  In Latin, they called it a biblius, which we translate into English as something like book or library.  It is also where we get the word bible.

Day 100 1 Kings 1-2

            David is really old now and one of his sons, Adonijah start setting himself up as the new king.  Once he hears about what’s happening though, David quickly makes his other son Solomon king before Adonijah gets back to Jerusalem.  That goes pretty well, with Adonijah stepping down and immediately recognizing his younger brother’s rule.  All he asks is that Solomon not kill him and Solomon says that he will be just fine as long as he’s a helpful part of the kingdom and doesn’t try to do sneaky political stuff.

            David dies around this time, but he gives Solomon some peculiar advise.  David’s rule was marked by astounding forgiveness and grace.  Every time something aweful happened, as soon as they got it sorted out, David’s men would want to go kill everyone who had stood against them and David would say something like “No way, we’ve won.  This is a time for celebration.” And let everyone go about their business for the most part.  Apparently he’s been taking good notes though because now he tells Solomon to start off his kingship by killing a bunch of these guys that David spared before.  All those times he swore not to kill somebody, he just filed it away so he could have his successor kill them decades later, which is kind of like what a sociopath would do.  David’s really old and near death now though so maybe he’s just getting jaded.

            Amidst Solomon having all these guys killed, Adonijah shows up again trying to marry the concubine assigned to keep David warm at night.  That’s not a euphemism, she was just supposed to lay down with him and keep the bed warm because he was too frail to keep himself warm anymore.  They never had sex so it isn’t taboo for David’s son to marry her, just a little bit weird.

            Solomon sees this as a political move though, which it probably was to be fair, and has Adonijah killed.

            This seems like a rocky start to Solomon’s rule, but I guess everyone knows he means business now.

            This is the 100^th passage which means I’m almost a third of the way through the Bible.  I had no idea what a commitment writing this was going to be, but I’m glad to have some accountability at least.  I don’t think I ever would have made it through Numbers if I didn’t feel obligated to post something about it online.  I’m feeling very thankful for those four or five guys in India, Russia and Washington who are regularly reading my entries.  Thanks guys.

Day 99 2 Samuel 22-24

            David sings the praises of the Lord, calling Him his fortress and singing of how God protected him and destroyed his enemies.  The song is presented as the last words of David, but David goes on to do other things afterword, so maybe David just wanted to make sure to get his legacy written down before it was too late.

            The best of David’s fighting men were also mentioned honorably and some of their exploits told so they would not be forgotten either.

            David takes a census of all the fighting men in Israel and Judah (which are different enough to warrant separate mentioning now I guess) at God’s behest, but after it’s done, David goes to the Lord apologizing and begging mercy for what he’s done.  I have no idea what David is supposed to have done wrong in this passage, but it warrants a plague from God.  He goes pretty easy on them all told, he let David chose from among famine, military conquest, or sickness.  David chooses the disease, but then is guilt-stricken when people start dying for his own sin and he runs off to build an altar and pray to God.

            Another thing that I don’t understand in this passage is David’s burnt offering.  It’s been the case so far that only priests can make burnt offering, and maybe prophets once in a while.  Being king is pretty clearly a political position and does not give you any special rights with God.  When Saul tried to make a burnt offering because Samuel was running late that time, God and Samuel were both furious with him for it.  Maybe when it says David made a burnt offering it actually means that David just prayed and had his priests make a burnt offering.  It’s a pretty minor point today I suppose, since we don’t make these offerings anymore and anyone can petition God personally, but people have died over this before in the old testament.

Day 98 2 Samuel 19-21

            David mourns the loss of his son, but his army is disheartened by his sadness.  One of his generals chews him out for it, telling him it’s obvious to the men that David would rather all of them had died and they’d lost the battle.  He told David he loves those who hate him and hates those who love him, and that if he doesn’t go out and act thankful and happy in front of the men, he’s not going to have any men left by morning.

            Obviously there’s a whole lot of “Oh, I knew you were going to come back the whole time my lord.  I always said you were the true king of Israel, of course” on David’s trip back to Jerusalem.  Escorting him back through the land, the armies of Judea and the combined armies of the rest of Israel are practically fighting over who gets to carry David’s tent poles for him.  Even Mephibosheth shows up again, claiming that his servant had lied and that he wanted to come out and meet David to support him earlier but his wicked servant stopped him.  David, gentle soul that he is, accepts pretty much everyone back into the fold and stops his men from killing those suspected of disloyalty.  He didn’t restore all of Mephibosheth’s lands, which he had given to his servant before, but he splits them and lets each keep half.

            There was one guy that David had to kill.  A man named Sheba was stirring up trouble and trying to incite rebellion.  David said that this guy would be even more trouble than Absolom had been and ordered his men to chase him down.  He holed up in a city, but when David’s army laid siege to them they quickly killed Sheba and threw his head out to David’s men.

            There was a famine for three years, so David asked the Lord about it and He said that it was because of the way that Saul had tried to wipe out the Gibeonites, who were descended from the Ammorites, whom the Israelites had sworn to spare back when they had first arrived.  David went to make amends with them, and they were cool about it.  They said they didn’t want riches or land or war or anything, they said they would call it even if they were given seven males from Saul’s line to kill.  David didn’t send Meshibopheth because of his oath to Jonathan, but he found seven other descendents of Saul’s and sent them.

            Israel fought some more wars with the Philistines.  David got old and can’t go fight with the men anymore.

Day 97 2 Samuel 16-18

            David had some meaningful encounters on his flight from Jerusalem.  He ran into a servant of Mephibosheth’s bringing mounts and provisions for them.  Mephibosheth was the knob-footed grandson of Saul’s, the only remaining male in that line, who David had given some good lands and an honorable position at court.  Mephibosheth himself had gone up to Jerusalem thinking that the people were going to give him back his grandfather’s throne, but his servant had brought out some supplies for David as he passed by.  David declared that all that had belonged to Mephibosheth now belonged to this servant.

            Later, someone else not directly related to Saul, but from the same clan, came out screaming and hurling curses and rocks at David and his officers.  One of them wanted to go kill him for it, but it sounds like David was feeling a little down and he waved them off, saying the Lord has told him to curse them, so let him be.

            Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, Absolom rides back into the city and a wise and highly trusted advisor of David’s tells him to sleep with his dad’s concubines, which David had left in charge of the city as he fled.  This, the advisor said, would make everyone know that Absolom had made himself obnoxious in his father’s sight and would polarize Israel, making his followers stronger.

            Next, this advisor told Absolom to take a few thousand guys and go track down David.  Before he went though, he checked in with another official who stayed behind.  This guy said that David was way more experienced a fighter and he had good men with him so this plan would definitely not work.  He needed to collect all of Israel to go after David.  Absolom didn’t realize that this guy was still loyal to David though and he sent news to David as soon as he determined that Absolom was going to follow his advice.  That advisor went back to his hometown and hung himself when he found out that Absolom wasn’t going to follow his plan.

            The big battle came and, dispite David’s request that everyone be gentle with Absolom, one ofhis officers found him stuck in a tree and killed him.

            What happens next is kind of funny.  An eager young man who was there when Absolom was killed wanted really badly to go deliver the news to David.  His commander knew that David would not be happy when he heard it though.  After all, he reacted to news of the deaths of Saul and of Saul’s heir by having the people involved killed, so he told this man that he could take the news back some other time after a victory, but not this time.  Then he dispatched some nameless cushite to go tell David in stead.

            The eager man said he wanted to run behind the Cushite then.  He was just so excited, he really wanted to be involved with David getting this good news.  I can practically see his commander rolling his eyes at this and imploring him “Why do you want to go so badly?  You’re not going to get any kind of reward you know.”  But the man insisted still, so he let him go.  He ran so fast he overtook the Cushite back to the city, so he got to deliver the news to David first after all.  Fortunately David didn’t have him killed, he just started mourning the death of his son, while the man who delivered the news of his death stood awkwardly off to the side being confused.

Day 96 2 Samuel 13-15

            Two of David’s sons and one daughter get into a tense relationship.  One son, Amnon, falls in love with his sister and, after some scheming to get her alone, rapes her and then kicks her out of his home.  She’s devastated by what’s happened and runs away to live with the other brother, Absolom.  Absolom does some scheming of his own and murders Amnon for it later.

            Absolom went into exile after that, but he was tricky, and after a while he set up a series of events that got him back in David’s good graces.  He had an old widow approach the king and give him this story about one of her sons killing the other and got him to feel sympathetic for her and for her hypothetical son who was in danger of being killed by the village for revenge.  After David vowed by God to protect her remaining son (I really wish he would quit vowing things all the time, it’s going to come back on him eventually) someone else pointed out that this situation was just like Absolom’s.  David then allowed Absolom to come back to Jerusalem, but he was not allowed to see the king.

            After a couple years back in Jerusalem, Absolom hatched another plan and got invited back into David’s presence anyway.

            Once he was reestablished, Absolom got immediately to work on furthering his political ambitions.  Every time someone from Israel came to Jerusalem to petition the king for something or other, Absolom would meet them at the gate, listen sympathetically and say “Boy, that’s a legit case, it’s really too bad the king doesn’t have a representative you could talk to about that.  If I  were appointed judge, then I would totally help you out with that.  It’s too bad I’m not though.”

            After he’d made lots of friends, he invited a bunch of officials to come with him to Hebron, where he had all his agents celebrate and yell his name as he walked into the city.  Davids officials came home and reported that the people favored Absolom and David was so shaken up he fled Jerusalem, I guess under the assumption that Absolom was about to stage a coup.

Day 95 2 Samuel 8-12

            David conquered pretty much everyone around and collected treasures and keepsakes from his victories, including his former friends the Ammonites following a social gaffe that they tried to war their way out of by hiring an army of Aramean mercenaries from across the Euphrates.  He didn’t make that same mistake that Gideon did and display them as memorials of his own awesomeness. David dedicated all his trophies to the Lord, and everything was good for everybody under his rule.

            His sons became priests somehow.  The first Priests were related to Aaron who was a Levite.  It sounded like all priests were to be from Aaron’s family, but maybe that line was broken or they lost track of it.  It was a long time before this.  Samuel seems to represent a break in the line of priests since he was adopted and all the priests he studied under were killed.  Still, David was from the tribe of Judah.  I would think priest would have to at least be from the tribe of Levi.  Maybe that was one of the perks of being the king’s son.

            In between conquests, David tracked down that last descendant of Saul’s, a lame grandson named Mephibosheth.  He was Jonathan’s son so this gave David a great way to honor his promise to Jonathan that he wouldn’t wipe out the whole line of Saul.  He set Mephibosheth up with all of the lands that had belonged to Saul and put some servants to work on the land to keep Mephibosheth rich and fed and invited him to eat at his own table with his family any time.

Day 94 2 Samuel 4-7

            When he heard that Abner was dead, Ish-Bosheth lost heart.  Then a couple guys came into his house one day and killed him.  They brought the head to David in kind of the same way a cat might leave a starling on your porch but David did not seem very grateful.

            “When I heard news of Saul’s death I killed the man who told me.”  He exclaimed at them.  “How much more angry then do you think I am about your sneaking in and killing an innocent man in his own home?”

            So David had those guys killed too.

            With Saul’s whole family dead though, (except some grandson who was disabled and too young to do anything) all the other tribes came around and followed David.  He ruled for 33 years after that.  He conquered Jerusalem and built a fortress next to it they called the City of David.  It’s still there, you can go on little walking tours of it.  He also defeated the Philistines and made Jerusalem the capital, bringing the ark of the covenant to live there.

            On the way, the oxen stumbled and a priest reached out to steady the ark, but no one was allowed to approach it or touch it, so God killed him.  After that incident, David decided to store the ark at someone else’s house.

            God promises David that He will establish a house for His people and they won’t be oppressed by wicked people any more.  He will establish his kingdom with David’s descendant.  Most Christians who are aware of this prophecy assume this is talking about Jesus.

Day 93 2 Samuel 1-3

            Sorry for the frequent delays.  Once I get caught up again I’m going to try to get a week or two ahead so I have some buffer space again.

            Samuel was so awesome that he got two books, even though he’s dead for the second one.

            In second Samuel, David learns about the death of Saul from a guy who says he helped Saul kill himself.  He’s an Amalekite, which is a strike against him already, then David and his men mourn deeply for Saul and execute the Amalekite messenger for having killed God’s anointed.  I think that’s kind of a technicality, but it wouldn’t be the most obtuse interpretation of God’s will we’ve seen so far.

            When the Lord tells David that it’s a good time to return to Israel, he goes into Hebron and explains that he is now the king of Israel.  The tribe of Judah is on board, but no one else is buying it.  The rest of Israel is following Saul’s son Ish-Bosheth propped up by Saul’s general Abner.  Just as one would expect, things go pretty well for David and the tribe of Judah, but not so hot for Israel.  David starts having lots of sons and stuff, but Ish-Bosheth winds up losing the support of Abner over some accusations regarding one of Saul’s concubines.  Abner actually went to join David over the quarrel, but David sent him away.  Once David’s general heard about what happened though, he had Abner brought back again and killed him, believing the whole thing to be a ploy and that Abner was a spy.

Day 92 I Samuel 28-31

            Now that Samuel’s dead, the Philistines are going to come square off against Saul and his army.  Achish, the king where David’s staying, makes David his personal bodyguard for life.

            Without Samuel to talk to God for him, Saul is really nervous about this fight.  Even though he had expelled all the media from the land, he sets his men to work finding one for him.  That’s medium like someone who talks to the dead that he’s looking for, not like music and movies.

            They find a medium on the forest moon of Endor, I mean in the town of Endor, and she summons Samuel for Saul to question.  Samuel says that Saul is an idiot for even asking, and his nation will be taken from him and given to David.

            Once Achish meets up with the other Philistine leaders, they all kind of flip out about David and his men being there.  They insist that Achish send them back home because they might turn on them in the battle.  It’s a good thing they did too because David returned home just in time to find the whole place plundered and burned to the ground.  Some Amalikite raiders had come through and taken all the goods and the women.  Fortunately they left an ephod, which David was able to use to consult with the Lord.  God told him to pursue the raiders and they got all of their gold and livestock and wives and other valuables back.  They also killed all but a couple hundred of the Amalekites.

            Meanwhile, back at the war, Israel was losing badly.  Saul’s three sons were all killed and on that same day Saul jumped on his own sword when his armor-bearer refused to kill him.  He was hoping to escape the abuse of the Philistines when they caught him.  Once they found his body they took it back to Beth Shan and hung it on a wall.  Some soldiers mounted an expedition to go retrieve it later on, but, more importantly, the Philistines occupied a big chunk of Israel now.

Day 91 I Samuel 25-27

            David petitioned a wealthy Calebite to give his men some supplies, citing the good treatment this guy had received from David’s men at some earlier time.  The Calebite tells David’s men to get lost.  Several things all happen after that in rapid succession.

            First, The Calebite’s wife, Abigail, heard about what had happened, correctly surmised that David was going to swoop in and wipe them all out, and started frantically scrambling to collect bread and oil to run out and give to his army.  Next, David’s messenger’s return with the news from the wealthy Calebite and David immediately rounds up four hundred men to go stomp on this guy.  Abigail and David end up meeting partway, but not until after David had just sworn something along the lines of “May God deal with me however harshly He sees fit if even one male is left of his by morning.”  Of course then Abigail shows up and smooths everything over and it would be pretty ridiculous for David to go wipe out Abigail’s family after that.  It seems for a moment like David has really put his foot in his mout.  He’s sworn this oath to God, but he did it in ignorance, and now there’s no way for him to do what’s right and still uphold his word to God.  Remember what happened to Saul’s army after Saul’s son Jonathan broke that stupid vow that he didn’t even know about.  He just ate some honey off the ground after Saul had sworn that no one would eat anything, and God allowed the Philistine army to escape annihilation at the hands of Israel because of it.

            David doesn’t even seem to register this problem though, and merrily goes back to his camp with Abigail’s supplies.

            As always, God has David’s back on this one though.  When Abigail returns to her husband, he is very drunk and the news of what had happened that day stopped his heart.  Vow fulfilled, David sends word that he would like to take Abigail as his wife.  She accepts.

            David has another encounter with Saul, much like the last one.  Saul catches wind of David’s camp and takes an army to go catch him.  David sneaks in with a couple other guys during the night and steals Saul’s water jug and his spear from right next to his head as he’s asleep.  His men try to get David to kill Saul, but he’s still not okay with killing ‘God’s anointed’ so he just leaves and then comes back in the morning to tell Saul about how he could have killed him again, but didn’t.  Saul again admits David’s superiority in all things and then leaves.

            At this point, it’s pretty clear that Saul’s not going to stop being a problem any time soon to David goes to live among the Philistines.  King Achish gave him and his men a small town to call their own an they spent the next year and four months raiding the country side from there.  They would go into a town and be sure to kill everyone in it before looting all their goods and animals.  That way, when the king asked where they had gone raiding, David could lie to him and say they went out into the Negev somewhere.  David told Achish that he was going into Israel a lot to raid the towns there, which he was pretty happy with.  He figured that with David stirring up all this trouble among the Israelites, they would all hate him forever and he would have to stay and be a loyal subject forever.

  Oh, also, Samuel died.

Day 90 I Samuel 21-24

            David and his men run from Saul through Israel and a lot of different foreign places, and Saul pursued them.  Finally in some mountains, Saul went to relieve himself in a cave and he just happened to enter one that David and his men were hiding in.  David was able to get so close to Saul that he clipped off a bit of Saul’s robe.  His men urged him to kill Saul as this was the fulfillment of God’s promise to deliver him to David, but he refused and actually felt kind of guilty for taking that bit of his robe.

            Once Saul turned to leave the cave, David revealed himself and explained that he was not Saul’s enemy and basically that he could have easily killed Saul but chose not to.  Saul was moved by David’s speech and realized that God was with David and that he would be king.  He asked David to swear not to wipe out his whole family and then he leaves.  David and his men still went up to the stronghold in the mountains though.

Day 89 I Samuel 18-20

            Saul is starting to get concerned about David’s growing popularity.  Everyone knows that David is getting these great military victories all the time and everyone except Saul seems to realize that it’s because God is with him.  Saul reacts mostly by yelling at people and throwing his spear at David a couple times.

            David went to seek refuge with Samuel for a while and when Saul sent men after him, they ended up prophesying with Samuel there in stead.  Twice more Saul sent men, but each time they kept getting caught up in the spirit of the lord and prophesying.  Finally Saul came himself.  He saw what was going on and started prophesying.

            I feel like they mean something different when they say prophesy than I mean when I say prophesy.

            All this time David has cultivated an extremely close relationship with Saul’s son Jonathan.  Like, it kind of sounds like they’re sleeping together, close.  They set up a very Hardy Boys scheme to prove that Saul is out to kill David because Jonathan is having trouble believing it.  Their plan works and Jonathan is convinced, but not before Saul throws a spear at him and calls him a “son of a perverse and rebellious woman.”

            In the end, David and Jonathan part ways with an oath that there be friendship between their families forever.

Day 88 I Samuel 15-17

            God decides it’s time to make good on that curse He laid down back in I think Exodus about how He would wipe out the Amalekites for interfering with the Israelite’s flight from Egypt.  He tells Saul to wipe out every man, woman, child, goat and cow among the Amalekites.

            Saul goes down south to Amalek and sets an ambush.  He tells the Kenites to go take a walk because they’ve been good to the Israelites and he doesn’t want them to accidently get vanquished as well.  After they leave, Saul slaughters all the Amalekites.  Well, almost all of them.  He takes the Amalekite king prisoner and sets aside a few of the choicest of their livestock to sacrifice to the Lord, but that hardly counts.

            Well, actually, it turns out that it counts a whole lot.  God is so incensed at Saul’s impertinance, and his fundamental misunderstanding of how to make the Lord happy, that He tells Samuel that He’s done with Saul.  He is withdrawing Saul’s divine mandate.

            God tells Samuel to go up to Bethlehem to anoint a new king form the sons of Jesse.  Saul is beset by demons though and no longer connected to God at all so Samuel has to hide his intentions to keep Saul from killing him.  He goes up to Bethlehem and anoints David as Israel’s new king.

            Unfortunately, being anointed king doesn’t automatically give David any super-powers or an army, so Saul’s still running the country for now.  Saul’s attendants suggest that maybe he’ll get some relief from this whole evil spirit thing if he listens to some nice music, and you’ll never guess who just so happens to be a great musician.  Yes, David is brought in to sooth Saul’s episodes.  Saul feels much better and keeps David around as his armor bearer.

            Shortly after this, Saul completely loses all memory of David, because when a giant Philistine starts causing trouble in the battle field and David shows up and kills him, Saul shows no sign of recognition.

            Obviously, the philistine’s name was Goliath, by the way, and David showed up that day simply to deliver some grain to his older brothers who were following Saul.  When Goliath issued a challenge to all of Israel to come and fight him one on one, no one would respond except David, who was confident that the Lord would see him through it.

Day 87 I Samuel 13-14

            Saul was king for 42 years.  During that time the Philistines were a big problem.  Fearing an Israelite rebellion, they barred any Israelite from becoming a blacksmith so they had no weapons.  Anyone who wanted to get their metal tools sharpened had to have it done by philistines out of town.  With God on their side though, it doesn’t matter much what they have for weapons so Saul went to war anyway.

            They had things set up so Samuel would come in and petition God for victory before the battle, but he was late so Saul gave an offering in his place.  When Samuel arrived, he was angry at Saul for doing that and told him that his line could have ruled forever, but now it was going to end with him.  As far as punishments go for offering improper sacrifices though, saul seems like he got of kind of easy.  The last people to screw up the burnt offering were killed with fire from God on the spot.

            The battle looks bleak.  Saul’s army is outnumbered, but his son Jonathan crept around to a Philistine outpost and killed about 20 men, throwing the Philistines into a panic.  They ran away, and Saul was going to pursue them, but some divinations revealed that Jonathan was a little bit cursed, so they shouldn’t go.  His faith was exemplary and he hadn’t broken any commands, but Saul had made some vow on behalf of the rest of the army saying that cursed is anyone who eats before they win the fight.  Jonathan hadn’t heard that vow so he ate some honey off the ground on the walk back.  So, the Philistines live to fight another day.