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.

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.

126 2 Chronicles 3-5

  2 Chronicles is boooorrrriiing.
  I was just rereading some of my older posts from Genesis when everything was all about God walking around telling people off and angels doing stuff.  2 Chronicles is about Solomon building the temple to God in Jerusalem.  Specifically, it's about Solomon negotiating a trade contract with a foreign king for some lumber and craftsmen, then overseeing, in minute detail, the dimension and decoration of the temple.  To summerize: it was really big and pretty much everything was covered in gold.

  For me, the real take-away message is about how our deeds are so different in their scope to God's deeds.  My problem reading 2 Chronicles today was really that I was trying to compare Solomon's administration of the temple building project to God literally creating the universe from nothing.  I'm not saying that the Israelites lost sight of that difference when they were building the temple, but I know how easy it can be to be wowed by a big building project.  It would probably seem quaint to us today if we saw the first temple, since we would try to compare it to the great wall of China for size, the taj mahal for majesty and the white house or Versailles for opulence, and it would probably come up with three strikes.  So it seems silly to us to see something like Solomon's temple and compare it to the majesty of God himself, but we still do the same kind of thing constantly today, just with bigger and better buildings.
  We do this with the things we learn about how the universe works.  And don't get me wrong, I am absolutely all for scientific exploration and advancement, but anyone who gets up in arms about some struggle between science and religion must have some serious misconceptions about one or the other.  Our learning and understanding has increased a thousand fold over the last few hundred years, but it's still not that significant when you start looking at it as a percentage of the whole, of all the learning and understanding there is to be had.

  Of course, in the story of the Tower of Babel God looked at the big tower that was going up and said that He couldn't allow men to work together in such a way because then nothing would be impossible for them, and he confused all their language and made them split up into different nations.  So maybe the things we accomplish are really profoundly important on a Godly scale.  Who knows?  The book of Genesis was weird.


  The ark of the covenant is placed inside the temple once it's complete.  The text says that the only things inside are the stone tablets with the law given to Moses, but wasn't there other stuff in there too before?  Yes, I've found some other mentions of Aaron's staff from that time it grew and budded and a pot of manna from when Moses led everyone through the desert.  I wonder what happened to them.