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.

125- 2 Chronicles 1 and my triumphant return

  Things have been very busy the last few months, with drastically, rapidly changing plans and developments in various ministries and what have you, but those are all stories for other blogs.  I'm going to try to get back into a regular posting schedule here and someday maybe even finish this giant book that's been keeping both my soul and my coffee table so stable all these years.

  There will be a few changes from the last round of posts though.  For starters, no more of this trying to post every day.  The reading schedule is doable, but trying to summarize and comment on another passage every day can quickly get really shallow or really sloppy, and sometimes both.  With everything else I'm working on, I think it will be very doable to shoot for one post per week, maybe two when I'm overcome with the spirit.
  Posting less often means that my system of numbering posts according to how many days it's been from the begining almost completely meaningless, so that's going to have to change.  Call me obsessive, but I just like it when things are numbered, so I'm still going to keep posting a number before each post, but they're not going to mean quite the same thing.  Actually I guess the only difference is that I'm just not going to write the word day in front of them anymore.  That should be pretty easy to get used to.


  In the first chapter of 2 Chronicles, David is dead and Solomon is the new king of Israel.  He goes to the tent of meeting and makes a huge sacrifice to the Lord.  When God appears to him that night and asks him what he wants, Solomon requests the knowledge and wisdom to  rule well.  God considers this a very classy request since Solomon could have used this opportunity to increase his own holdings, which is the sort of request we've seen from most people to date.  God grants Solomon's wish and also grants him all the riches and power that he could have asked for but didn't.  Afterword, Solomon had a lot of nice things imported from other places and the economy of Jerusalem thrived.

  This is more or less unrelated, but bear with me.  We always write the titles of books like 1 and 2 Kings and Chronicals and John and so forth with numerals in the titles, but when we say them out loud, we say first and second.  So how would these books be alphabetized?  Is 1 Kings under F or in that weird section off to the side where you find books that start with numbers and symbols?  Most lists of Bible books just omit the numbers and treat the sets as complete books just broken into parts, like the last two Harry Potter Movies, which I suppose is exactly what they are.  I suppose it doesn't matter much either way, but this is just a warm-up question anyway.  We'll get into some more controversial stuff later.  Promise.

A short break

  Obviously I haven't been updating this blog regularly.  I've had some other projects demanding my attention and I just am not able to maintain a regular posting schedule.  Even though this is supposed to run over the course of a year, I would like to simply pause for a while until I can get back on track and then pick up where I left off, starting 2 Chronicles.  Maybe in the fall.

Day 124-8 1 Chronicles 15-29

            David brought the ark of the lord to Jerusalem and celebrated with a lot of music.  He was about to build a temple for the ark too, but God told him not to via a nearby prophet.  God also told David that He would raise up David’s son and establish his rule forever.  This son would build a house for God and God will be his father, never withdrawing His love.  David’s son was Solomon who did build the temple and I don’t think God ever did get really angry with Solomon.  Israel hardly lasted forever though, under the rule of David’s line.  It split into two nations and then a few generations later both were taken prisoner and carted off to Babylon.  I think a lot of people would argue that this promise to David is actually about Jesus.  The word son seems to be pretty much interchangeable with a more general idea of a descendant in a lot of these stories and Jesus was a descendant of David’s.

            With God happy, David won battle after battle with the Israelite army against everyone around them.  Everything was going great until David ordered a census taken of all the fighting men in Israel.  For some reason, this was a horrible, sinful thing for him to have done.  This story is really strange, but it already came up at the end of 2 Samuel so there’s no real need to go over it again.

            David had a son, Solomon, and he wanted to start early cashing in on God’s promises about the son of David.  David made a lot of preperations for the temple Solomon would build, saying that Solomon was young and inexperienced so he was just getting things set up for him, he was just helping.  My mom used to help me write essays the same way when I was young.  It can be a little frustrating.

            At the end of his life, David made Solomon king of Israel and delegated groups of Levites to different tasks around the temple according to their families.  Then chapters 23 through 26 of 1 Chronicles give a breakdown of the Levite family tree and the divisions of the priests.  Levites were assigned by David to be musicians, gatekeepers, treasurers and other things in the new temple.  The word prophecy is used around the musicians a lot, which seems like a new development.  The role of music so far in scripture seems like it’s mostly been to talk about how awesome God is or to record some historical event in verse so people will remember it better.  Music seems to be a big deal to David though and these temple musicians sound like they actually have some connection to God through their music.  This raises further issues though because, if that’s true,  and being a musician is supposed to give these Levites the ear of the Lord, David is way overstepping his authority appointing them.  Kings don’t get to make prophets, prophets make kings.

            The rest of the book is a list of military and government officials under David’s administration up until Solomon is crowned king and David handed over to him the plans for the temple.  David had drawn up plans for every part of the temple in such detail that there were already designated weights for the gold to be used for the forks and sprinkling bowls inside.  David was not taking any chances on this temple not turning out the way he wanted it.  From the story in 1 Kings it sounded like Solomon had no trouble planning and building the temple on his own, but by this account, it seems that all Solomon really needed to do was say go and David’s temple would essentially start building itself.

            David then took up a collection from the whole assembly for the building fund, gave thanks to God, had Solomon acknowledged as the new king of Israel a second time, and then died.

Day 123 1 Chronicles 12-14

            This is a summary of the story of David as he took over Saul’s office as king of Israel.  A lot of men follow him as the Lord is on his side.

            The brevity with which 1 Chronicles covers these important figures and events brings to mind the time I spent in high school and college doing my best to follow the teachings of the Buddha.  No matter what is happening, whatever crisis, the universe continues onward.  Any issue seems trivial when compared to the progress of creation as a whole.  There are epic battles, great heroes, incredible acts of valor, and then the next thing happens and none of it matters anymore.  Time marches onward.

            Imagine if one simple sandstorm had happened at the wrong time and robbed us of the book of 1 Kings the same way some series of events has obviously robbed us of the books of the kings of Israel and of the kings of Judah.  All we would know of David would be based on the couple chapters we have in Chronicles talking about him and his men being great warriors.  How would that have changed our idea of king David the shepherd, the vulnerable father and reluctant leader of the nation of Israel appointed by the prophet Elijah?

Day 122 1 Chronicles 9-11

            Wow, I could have saved myself a lot of time reading through 1 Kings if I’d known about this section.  It basically recounts the short version of that whole book.

            I’m glad we have both versions to compare though.  It’s interesting which facts each account considers important.  1 Kings tells like a story at it’s core, something that could be told to the kids.  This version in Chronicles is for the historical ledger though. It tells who begat whom and not much else.

            It still mentions Saul falling on his sword, but none of the stuff about Samuel, Elijah or Elisha pulling the strings behind the scenes.  This section is pretty clearly written after the exile in Babylon so maybe the prophets just got marginalized over the years.  After all, kings leading armies around make a way better story than a dusty old man hiding out uneventfully by a stream in the wilderness.

Day 121 1 Chronicles 7-8

            Geneologies for the tribes that no one really seems to care about as much.  Naphtali, Asher, Benjamin.  Saul came from Benjamin, so there’s some extra care given to his line.

            This section also covers the half tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, which I think are kind of under-valued.  For one thing, Manasseh seems to be involved somehow in every third major even that happens in Israel.  Come to think of it, Ephraim seems to have more than their fair share of important people and events too.  If you look at all the Josephites together, they’re pretty major players in the shaping of Israel.