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.