134 2 Chronicles 32-34

  Even though Hezekiah has been completely faithful to the Lord, an army from Assyria shows up led by their king, Sennacherib.  Sennacherib runs a tight propaganda campaign, yelling in the language of Judah about how the battle's all but won already and how their god isn't going to be able to protect them just like all the other gods of other nations were unable to stop the mighty Assyrian juggernaut and so on and so forth.

  Hezekaih heard about their coming beforehand though so he had time to take a few precautions.  He had the walls of Jerusalem repaired and improved and stopped up all the water sources outside the city.  When Sennacherib tried to demoralize the army, Hezekiah responded that all those other gods were made by the hands of men and that Assyria has certainly never faced a God like the theirs.  He told his own army that, with God really on their side, they wouldn't even have to fight at all.

  Reading through this part, I was interested to see how God would feel towards Hezekiah afterwords.  I sense a kind of tension from the previous stories about relying on God.  It's obviously insulting to God to sit back idly and demand God do everything to make life easy for them, but on the other hand, attempts by ancient kings to fix things themselves seemed to also offend God.  David's census of the men in Israel is an example of that.  I still can't fathom why it was such a terrible thing for him to have done.  There's another king who fell victim to this also, although his name and the specifics of his story escape me.  I believe he set up a trade agreement with Tyre or someone and they built a bunch of ships together, but they didn't consult with God first so God destroyed their plans.  Hezakiah is very devout though, so he probably spoke at length with his prophets off-camera before working on the walls and the water sources to prepare for the siege.

  In the end, Hezekiah yells prayers and God sends an angel to wipe out the Assyrian army.  With the battle over, the Sennacherib can do nothing but go back to Assyria in shame.

  God performed many miracles for Hezekiah.  He eventually got a little prideful because of it and stopped being very thankful.  God reprimanded him though and Hezekiah quickly snapped back in line.  Later on, God left Hezekiah to test him (I'm not sure what exactly this means) but Hezekiah remained faithful.  It sounds like there's a lot of this story that we're not hearing because it's covered in the Book of the Kings of Judah, but it sounds like Hezekiah is just about the most virtuous and faithful king we've heard about to date, and Judah thrives under him.  Babylon even starts sending down messengers to learn about what was making Judah so awesome.

  Hezekiah's son Manasseh however, took the throne at 12 years old and adopted the customs and gods of all the other nations around Judah.  There's an interesting line in 39:9 that says "They did more evil things than the nations the LORD had destroyed to make room for the people of Israel."  So Assyrians show up again and this time take Manasseh captive.  While a prisoner, Manasseh humbles himself and prays to God, and God takes pity on him, returning him home.  After that he straightens up and worships the Lord.  Manasseh ruled for 55 years.

  Amnon ruled next for 22 years.  He was king type 1, the bad kind.  He was eventually killed in a plot by his officials.  Then the people of Judah killed the officials and made Amnon's son Josiah king.  So, that was kind of a mess.

  Josiah became king at 8 and he must have had some really good advisers because he became a type 2 king, the King David type.  He tore down the altars to other gods, cleaned out the temple, etc, etc.  When they were clearing out all the treasure from the temple vault to get some restoration projects going, someone stumbled across the scroll of the law given to Moses, which I guess had been lost for a while.  When Josiah saw it he flipped out.  Even with all the good Josiah had been doing, nobody had really been following these rules.  He consulted with some prophets and God told Josiah that he was doing a good job and had made himself humble before God, so he was going to be okay, but yes, God was super-angry about the neglect of the law over the last several (hundred?) years, so He was going to basically wipe this country off the face of the Earth.  He would wait until after Josiah died though.

130 2 Chronicles 18-20

  Jehosephat allied with Ahab, the king of Israel, through marriage, and started repairing the fracture between the two nations.  Ahab asked to Jehosephat to go to war with him against Ramoth Gilead, some random middle-eastern parcel of desert.  Befoire Jehosephat would agree to such a war though, he asked about what the Lord thought.  Ahab brought all his prophets out and they all said that whatever Ahab wanted to do would be awesome, but Jehosephat pressed him and asked if he had any prophets of the Lord.  Ahab admitted that there was a prophet of the lord in Israel named Micah, but he complained that it was a drag to listen to Micah because all he did was say negative things all the time.  Jehosephat insisted that they hear what Micah had to say though so Ahab dutifully summoned him.

  Micah heard that all the cool prophets were telling Ahab that he would crush Ramoth Gilead and be awesome forever, so he tried to tell the two kings the same thing they had been hearing so far.  Micah was a bad liar though and Ahab ordered him to tell them what the Lord had actually revealed to him.

  Micah told the kings that things would not go well at all in battle, so Ahab had him put in prison and ordered that he have nothing  but bread and water until his own safe return from the front.  So really there's no way for Micah to win here.  The warning must have had some effect though because Ahab wore a disguise to the battle so no one would know who he was.

  When they actually went out to fight Ramoth Gilead, the enemy had orders to ignore all of the Judean and Israelite soldiers and to concentrate only on the king.  Since Jehosephat was dressed as a king and Ahab was disguised as a random charioteer, this did not bode well for Jehosephat.  Enemy soldiers began pursueing him immediately.  He prayed to God though and the Lord protected him.  The enemy soldiers realized that he was not the king of Israel and stopped following him.  Meanwhile, Ahab was struck by a random spear and died by nightfall.

  Jehosephat wasn't completely off the hook though.  He had gone to war on the side of Ahab even though he knew that a prophet of the lord had spoken out against it.  As soon as he got back home, his own prophets of the Lord gave him an earfull.  But, he did tear down all the Ashera poles so he bought himself a little bit of leeway I guess.

  Some people from the east came in later and tried to invade Judah, but Jehosephat went before the Lord and prayed about it.  He asked God if He would allow someone to come in and take the land that God had given to the Isaraelites back in the day, especially since the only reason they were neighbors with these people from the East anyway was because God had forbidden Aaron and the original Israelite armies from wiping these guys out.  Now God is surprisingly susceptible to cogent arguments in the Old Testiment so He agrees that it's not fair for foreigners to come in and swipe the land He gave to them, so if the Judean army goes out and stands their ground in an act of faith, they won't even have to fight.  They do, so they don't.  Judah wins without firing a shot when the other army tears itself apart in the night.  Judah even gets the plunder.

  Jehosephat rules for 35 years which it a huge amount of time compared to most other kings.  The impression I get from him is very devout, but a little naive.  Aside from that misguided alliance with Ahab, he also tries to reconcile with Israel a second time by allying with Ahzakiah, another king of Israel, to build some ships for trading.  God still doesn't like Israel though so all his ships sink.

Day 119 1 Chronicles 3-5

            More recap, genealogies from David through the sons of Elioenai.  We haven’t heard about that guy so far, the book says that he came after the exile so I guess we haven’t gotten there yet.  The narrative kind of jumps around here.

            Jabez is mentioned in this section for the first, and I believe only time in the Bible.  The prayer of Jabez is a popular thing, spawning a multitude of books on its own.  All of this hype is based on a throw-away line in 1 Chronicles chapter 4 about how Jabez was more honorable than his brothers, which, lets not forget, does not mean he was honorable, but merely more honorable than his brothers.  He was from one of the other clans of Judah, the ones that weren’t directly related to David.  Jabez prayed for his lands to increase and for nothing bad to happen to him. 

            Revolutionary, I know.

            I’m certainly not saying that some parts of the Bible are not important.  The prayer of Jabez is a part of the history of God’s interaction with humanity.  I feel like this section is well-known for the wrong reasons though.  I worry also that it is famous at the expense of other passages that may have a more profound day-to-day influence on our faith.  This is getting kind of frustrating honestly.  Methuselah, Onan, Jabez.  If these guys didn’t have catchy stories attached to them, there is no way they would be better known in our culture than the people of real importance to the narrative of the Bible.

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.