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.

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 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 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 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 70 Joshua 5-8

            When Joshua first comes to approach Jericho he sees a man with a drawn sword standing in front of him.  Joshua asks him if he’s on the side of Israel or their enemies and the man says  “Neither, I’m the commander of the armies of the Lord.”  I think it’s interesting the distinction made by this guy, I assume he’s an angel or something.  He’s basically telling Joshua “Look, I’m not a part of your army, I’m not here to serve your side, but as long as you play your cards right, you can be part of my side.”

            The army marches around Jericho six times in six days blowing trumpets just like they’re told to do.  On the seventh day they march around the city seven times and when they blow their trumpets the walls collapse and the Israelite army is able to slaughter everyone inside.  God says that all the plunder of this city belongs to Him so they have to round all of it up and put it in the Lord’s treasury.

            Later, Joshua sends a small force of a couple thousand men to conquer a little city called Ai, but they’re routed and come running back defeated.  Joshua comes to God to ask why this happened and finds out that some guy kept a bunch of God’s treasure.

            Once they find this guy, Achan, and stone him and his entire family to death, God takes them back to Ai and hands the city over to the Israelites.

            Before all this though, Joshua makes camp just inside Canaan and has everybody circumcised.  They have to stay there and heal for  couple days before moving on, but fortunately the rumors about that trick with the Jordan river are spreading quickly and everyone is afraid to attack the camp during this time because of the Israelite God.  Apparently they haven’t been keeping everybody circumcised while they wandered the desert, which is surprising considering what a big deal it is to God for everyone to be circumcised.  He almost killed Moses over it that one time.

            God decrees that Jericho is never to be rebuilt, which it actually has been.  Jericho is there today, but it’s in Palestine so I guess you could say that it’s cursed because I’m sure it sucks to live there.

Day 66 Deuteronomy 28-29

            After a quick round of descriptions of the amazing blessings God will bestow upon everyone who follows the law, He continues with a much longer section outlining the terrible wrath you incur for not following the law.  Good little Israelites will get bounteous harvests and leisure time, land and children to continue their line.  Bad Israelites will be conquered and enslaved, way worse than they had it in Egypt.  They’ll crawl back to Egypt to try to sell themselves as slaves just to survive but the Egyptians won’t buy them.  You buy a house and watch it be destroyed.  You become engaged to a nice girl and she’s raped.  Your animals are stolen and slaughtered by your enemies; you don’t get any of the meat.  Even the gentlest and noblest will be so desperate they will eat their own children.

            In 28:49 God describes a nation swooping down like an eagle and taking over everything with no sympathy for anyone.  The description it gives sounds to me like the kind of officious, impersonal conquest the Roman Empire was known for.  The symbol of the emperor himself was an eagle.  That’s not necessarily connected, but it’s kind of interesting to speculate on isn’t it?

            Moses rounds up all the Israelites and gives them a little pep talk reminding them of some of the things God has done over the past fifty years as well as His covenant with Abraham and all of their responsibilities to God under their covenants.  Don’t screw this up guys.