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.

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 85 I Samuel 4-6

            God punishes Eli’s sons and the rest of Israel by letting the Philistines win an important battle against them.  After the first defeat, the ark of the covenant is brought out, but God isn’t with Israel so Eli’s two sons are killed and the ark taken by the Philistines.  When Eli heard about this, he fell over and died too.  Samuel had gained quite a reputation by now though as someone with a direct line to God, so he was in a prime position to move in politically.

            Meanwhile, the Philistines were jazzed about having captured the God of the Israelites and took the ark to live with a giant statue of their god, Dagon.  When they came back the next morning, the statue of Dagon was on its belly on the ground in front of the ark of the covenant.  This happened a couple more times, along with some nasty curses and stuff.  Everyone started getting bad tumors.

            They moved the ark to another city, but then that city started having problems too.  Finally they decided that the ark was more trouble than it was worth and they needed to give it back.

            Once the ark was back in Israel’s hands, Samuel got everyone to worship the Lord properly again without trying to mix in a bunch of foreign gods and idols, and then organized an army to meet the Philistines, who had still been steadily soaking up more and more of Israel’s land.

            When Samuel prayed for God to help them in the battle, there was so much thunder and noise that the Philistines were routed before the battle even started.  Samuel’s army just waded through and killed them all.

            After such a high-profile victory, of course Samuel was the people’s choice for a leader.  For years he did laps around Israel mediating and teaching.  They wanted him to give them a king too, but he balked at that.  God was supposed to be the king, that was what was to set them apart from other people, what made them set apart for God.  The Israelites specifically wanted a king to make them more like the other nations around them though, and finally Samuel gave into their demands for a king.

            God told him first to explain to the people that a king would roll in and take all their best stuff for himself and his court and require taxes and tribute and service and all this material stuff on top of what was to be set aside for God.  Samuel di his best to convince them that they didn’t want a king, but the people had made up their big, loud, communal mind and they would not be swayed.

            Samuel told God about their demands for a king and He said to give them one.

            I have a friend who’s an anarchist as well as a Christian.  Well, he might not identify himself as an anarchist, but he’s sympathetic to their cause.  I don’t agree with him all the time in his interpretations of scripture, but I feel like the last couple books have really promoted an anarchistic political system.  Obviously there are clans and priests and all these official sounding social artifacts, but in practice, the way things work is that a need arises and then God drops in a judge with the skills needed to resolve the situation.  If there’s a battle that needs to be fought, God calls up a good general and tells him to build an army.  If there’s a whole bunch of Philistines that are going to need to be put in their place, God releases a super-human psychopath to terrorize them.  If there had been some great need to build a relationship with the Latin tribes in Italy, God would have called a judge who was really into the shipping industry or something.

            Now contrast that system with America today.  If there’s a battle to be fought, we have a standing military already prepared to keep us safe.  If there’s a famine or a natural disaster, we have federal programs already set up to deal with them, the national guard, FEMA, and so on.  This reminds me of another facet of the arguments made in Steven Levitt’s Ishmael which I mentioned several times back in Genesis.  Levitt opines through the titular character that it’s ridiculous to insist upon such a high degree of personal control over the world as we exercise in our culture.

            On a personal level, Jesus talked about how we shouldn’t spend all of our energy worrying about where our clothes or shelter or even our next meal are going to come from because those things are under God’s control.  When we spend all our energy trying to bring them under our own control, it’s disrespectful and only serves to show our own ignorance, but I’m getting ahead of myself now.

            I’m interested to see how this king thing works out.

Day 82 Judges 16-18

            Some time later, Samson went to Gaza and saw a prostitute he wanted to spend the night with.  The Philistines still hated him though so when they found out about it they shut the gates of the city to trap him so they could kill him.  Samson just tore the gates off the wall and carried them off when he felt like leaving.  This kind of scenario was not uncommon with Samson.

            Eventually he fell in love with a Philistine woman, a different Philistine woman than the one from before though.  Her name was Delilah and shortly after they started sleeping together, some Philistine leaders promised to pay Delilah if she could learn Samson’s weakness.

            Three times she asked him the secret of his strength and each time he lied to her, and when she tried to weaken him and called the Philistines, he broke free and killed them all.  I mean all of them except her.  Finally the forth time, when Samson had had a lot to drink one night (again, breaking his vow to never drink) he showed incredibly poor pattern recognition skills and told her the truth, that he was a Nazarite and that he could never cut his hair.

            So, of course, Delilah cut his hair.  The Philistines came to capture him, he fought back, but his strength was gone and he was taken.

            The Philistines put out Samson’s eyes and threw him in jail.  Later, they brought him out at a party to dance for their entertainment.  Samson prayed to God and was given back his strength just long enough to push over a pillar and topple the building they were in, killing himself and all of the Philistines.

            It seems to me in this reading though that Samson still didn’t learn anything about humility to God or glorifying God.  His final prayer isn’t apologetic for any of his own sins or even about showing God’s power to the Philistines or helping the oppressed Israelites.  Samson asks for the strength to take revenge on the Philistines for putting out his eyes.  But it still works.

            Man, God must have really hated Philistines.

            Okay, next judge:

            Micah and his mother made an ephod and a bunch of household gods.  Just to round out their collection of blessings, Micah also hired an errant Levite to be their household priest.  I guess an ephod is an okay thing to have now.  I know idols are forbidden, and you can only worship God properly with the help of some priests at a stone altar at the temple, but maybe an ephod doesn’t count as an idol.  I understand the desire for a physical object to focus your worship, but these ephods seem like bad policy, especially when it’s surrounded by other little idols.

            I guess I’m not in any position to judge the practice of displaying ephods though when I go to a church with an 18 foot tall cross hanging over the stage.

            So Micah’s got all his god ornaments in order and everything’s going great when some scouts from the tribe of Dan come through looking at land.  The Danites still haven’t received their inheritance so they’re looking around for land to conquer.  These scouts stay with Micah and they get a blessing from his priest before heading out again.  With this blessing, they find some nice land just past the lands of the tribe of Ephraim.

            The scouts return home and report what they saw and the Danites move out to conquer this good land.  On the way, they stop by Micah’s house, take his ephod and his household gods and convince his personal priest to come with them.  Micah and his neighbors go out and yell at the Danites about taking all of his stuff, but they tell him to go back home before they get angry and kill him.

            The Danites conquered the land and made a city  there named Dan (named after their ancestor, Dan).  They used Micah’s idols the whole time they were there.

            So, is this story about Micah being punished for having such a materialistic faith?  Is it about the dangers of investing too much in physical idols when they might be lost?  Is it just a sad story about a nice guy who got all his silver stolen by the Danites or a happy story about God providing blessings and silver for the righteous tribe of Dan?  I have no idea.  This one’s a little too foreign for me to make sense of I guess.

            That’s okay though, it doesn’t all have to resonate perfectly.  There’s so much different stuff in here that I’m pretty comfortable chalking one up to our cultural differences every once in a while.

            That seems to be happening a lot in this book though.