Israel's Apostasy and Ours

2 Kings 17
      I can completely anticipate that someone, reading 2 Kings 17, would leap to what sounds like a reasonable conclusion but to what is, in reality, completely wrong-headed.
      2 Kings 17 records that the northern kingdom was destroyed by Shalmaneser of Assyria and says, "All this took place because the Israelites had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up out of Egypt from under the power of Pharaoh king of Egypt."  Then, the rest of the chapter lists off examples of their wickedness:  worshiping other gods, tolerating the wickedness of the Canaanites, etc.  Here's the conclusion I can anticipate:  "The U.S. better watch out, because we tolerate entirely too much wickedness!"
      Now, let me go on record as saying that I see an awful lot of examples of the U.S. tolerating wickedness.  I see the corruption at all levels of government; I see the dissolution of the family; I see violence and sexual excess.  I see it all.  I don't disagree that the U.S. tolerates sin and that that's a problem.
      I do disagree that the fate of Israel is the appropriate analogy for the fate of a modern nation-state.  Old Testament Israel was sui generis, its own kind of thing, one of a kind, unique.  It was a nation and it was the people of God.  In our language, Israel encompassed both church and state.  However, Israel fulfilled its , purpose in the coming of the Messiah Jesus.  And, significantly, Jesus reconstituted Israel by appointing 12 apostles.  When He sent His Church out, He did not bind them to a specific land nor to a specific nationality (cf. Matthew  28).  He declared the entire world their inheritance (Matthew 5:5).  Paul points out that the Good News is for the Jew and the Gentile (Romans 1).  The Church in the New Testament is the people of God, but it has no 'nation-state' quality.  It is, in the words of one church father, at home in every society and in no society.  ("Every foreign country is their homeland and every homeland a foreign country," Epistle to Diognetus, 180 AD.)
      So, if you're looking for an appropriate analogy for the U.S., you need to look at the prophets' oracles against the nations.  Look at the way Habakkuk said the Lord would deal with Babylon or Jeremiah's warning that the Lord both plants and uproots the nations according to His purposes.  The prophets assume that the nations will not naturally be aligned with the Lord's will and ways, and they prophesy that He will use them as tools for His purposes and set them aside when they've served that function.
      The appropriate analogy for Israel is the Church.  Or, better said, specific manifestations of the Church.  (The Lord has promised that He will always have a people, so the Church in some shape will endure.)  History is littered with churches that have come and gone.  Colossae?  Ephesus?  Those churches are long gone.  Literally hundreds of congregations close in North America each year, too.  The church does well to pay attention to its faithfulness to the Lord and His Word and His mission.  Losing sight of those things are the appropriate analogy for Israel's apostasy.

A Quick Note on Chronology

2 Kings 13-16
           Dating the Old Testament isn’t as straightforward as one would think.  The authors of Kings and Chronicles give the length of reign for each of the kings, so you’d think it was simply a matter of stringing those numbers together.  Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

            First off, an historian has to make sure all of his sources align.  For the kingdom period of Israel, that means that we need things to account for Assyrian, Babylonian, and Egyptian history, too.  Without going into the details, we can reliably say that Samaria (the capital of the northern kingdom) was destroyed by the Assyrians in 723/722 BC.  That’s a fixed end date.  Then we have to fit all of the chronological evidence into the 200 years between 931/930 (the civil war) and 723/722. 

            One of the things that scholars generally acknowledge that helps with that task is that Israel and Judah (especially Judah) both practiced what is called co-regency.  That is, a son would often ‘co-rule’ with his father for a period of time.  That means that not all reigns were simply consecutive; some of those numbers overlap.  Co-regency helps us fit most of the kings in where they belong.

            The one exception to that is the reign of Pekah (2 Kings 15).  Pekah is said to reign for 20 years, but that would extend his reign well past 722.  So, is the Bible in error at that point?  How do we explain a rather substantial discrepancy?  Many scholars suggest that Menahem and Pekah were contemporaries and co-conspirators against Shallum, who was assassinated in 752.  Menahem assumed the throne, but Pekah may have thought that he should have taken the throne.  There is some hint that Pekah set himself as a rival ruler in Gilead (across the Jordan).  After Menahem died, Pekah deposed Pekahiah and claimed that he had actually been king since the time of Shallum.  I don’t know that I explained that very well, but a lot of really respectable scholars argue that position and it preserves the records of the Bible as reliable historical records, too.

            I guess my point is that it would be easier to just chuck the books of Kings and Chronicles and say, “Well, maybe the Bible just isn’t reliable.”  However, the Bible demonstrates its historical reliability over and over again.  Sometimes it takes more homework to figure out how, but the Bible can be trusted.

Kings of Israel                        Kings of Judah
Jehoahaz                              
   814-798                              

Jehoash                                  Amaziah
   798-782                                797-768

Jeroboam II
   Co-regent 793-782
   Sole rule 782-753                Azariah/Uzziah
                                                  Co-regent 791-768
Zechariah                                   Sole rule 767-751
   753-752                                 Co-regent 751-740

Shallum
   752

Menahem
   752-742

Pekahiah                               Jotham
   742-740                               Co-regent 751-740
                                                Sole rule 740-736
Pekah                                      Co-regent 736-732
   Rival rule 752-740
   Sole Rule 740-732            Ahaz
                                               Co-regent 736-732
                                               Sole rule 732-729
                                               Co-regent 729-716

Chronology of 2 Kings

2 Kings 11-12
          Maybe I'm spending too much time on this, but the chronology of Ahab and the succeeding generations is driving me a batty.  Here's my attempt to sort it out:

Kings of Judah                                                            Kings of Israel
Jehoshaphat                                                              Ahab
+born ca. 908, died 848 (about 60 years old)             +born ???, died 853
+reigned 873-848 (25 years)                                      +reigned 874-853
                                                                                    (22 years)

Jehoram                                                                    Ahaziah
+born ca. 881, died 842 (about 39 years old)             +born ca. 870, died 852
+reigned 853 (co-regent)-842 (12 years)                    +reigned 853-852
                                                                                     (2 years)

Ahaziah                                                                     Joram (Ahaziah's brother; Ahab's son)
+born ca. 864, died 842 (about 22 years old)             +born ???, died 842
+reigned 842 (1 year)                                                 +reigned 852-842
                                                                                    (12 years)

(Athaliah)                                                                  Jehu
+Jehoram's wife and Ahab's daughter                          +born ???, died 815
+seized the throne in 842, reigned 'til ca. 836               +reigned 842-815
                                                                                      (28 years)

Joash
+born ca. 843
+reigned from 836 (only 7 years old)

So, basically, in the dozen or so years  from 853 BC to 842, Judah went through 3 rulers:  Jehoram (wicked king; married Ahab's daughter; died young); Ahaziah (killed by Jehu); and Athaliah (wife of Jehoram; seized throne).  In that same period, Israel went through three rulers:  Ahaziah (died young following an accident); Joram (not to be confused with Jehoram of Judah, his brother-in-law and contemporary; killed by Jehu); and Jehu (who began a new dynasty in Israel).

Phew!  That's a lot of turmoil.  No wonder I'm going batty!

Such Brutality

2 Kings 9-10
          The reign of Jehu is marked by brutality and bloodshed.  On the one hand, we might see Jehu as the Lord's executioner.  The Lord had said that the house of Ahab would be destroyed, that Jezebel would not be buried, and so forth.  However, we have to leave open the question about whether the Lord's words merely described what would happen (that is, that He know the brutality of Jehu's heart) or whether His words caused the brutality.  So, the possibility exists that the Lord appointed Jehu as the successor of Ahab's house, but that Jehu got 'carried away.'
          The deaths of Joram, Ahaziah, and Jezebel are the least troubling.  They were rulers; they had led Israel astray to false gods; and they were only one generation (or less, in Jezebel's case!) removed from Ahab.  Nevertheless, the manner of Jezebel's death is particularly gruesome, even for someone so involved in Ahab's wickedness.  The deaths of the 'sons of the house of Ahab,' though, are hard to stomach.  We should be careful, but it seems as if these were not the adult children of Ahab so much as his grandchildren.  (Note that verse 6 talks of those who were rearing them!)  With that wrinkle, the beheading of 70 becomes even harder to fathom.  (Contrast this violence with David's attempts to care for the remnants of the house of Saul.)  Finally, the manner of execution for the prophets of Baal is troubling, too.  When Elijah confronted the prophets of Baal, it was in an open contest:  Yahweh of Israel versus Baal of Canaan.  In Jehu's case, they are deceptively lured into a death trap.
          Does the Lord condone such brutality?  The Lord did indeed command the extermination of whole populations of Canaanites, especially in the era of the Conquest.  I have written different times about why that may have been the case, namely, that the Lord knew His promise would be in danger if it were surrounded by Canaanite idolatry.  On the other hand, the reign of Jehu seems to be as much about his own brutality as about the Lord's desire to punish the house of Ahab.
          I'm thinking about Elijah's protest that he had been very zealous for the Lord (1 Kings 19), and I'm thinking that zeal for the Lord is a good thing.  However, I'm also thinking that the boundary between zeal for the Lord and zeal for our own glory is very fine.  I think Elijah's protest reveals what he thought about himself, namely, that he deserved some recognition.  I think Jehu's zeal may have been motivated in part by a desire to secure his own reign.  And I think that we need to be careful that our zeal for the Lord doesn't mask a desire to enlarge our own reputations.
          "For it seems to me that God has put us apostles on display at the end of the procession, like men condemned to die in the arena. We have been made a spectacle to the whole universe, to angels as well as to men.  We are fools for Christ, but you are so wise in Christ! We are weak, but you are strong! You are honored, we are dishonored" (NIV; 1 Corinthians 4:9-10)!

Prophets to the Nations?

2 Kings 8
          This passage includes something that I don't think we've seen yet as we've read through the Scriptures.  Elisha, the prophet of Israel, demonstrates that he is a prophet to other nations, too.  In Exodus, Moses confronted Pharaoh, but the freedom of Israel was the issue there.  In Numbers, Balaam was named a prophet who was hired from the nations to curse Israel, but we discovered that he was more a flim-flam artist than a true prophet.  But here, Elisha wanders off to Damascus and Ben-Hadad honors his prophetic office.
          This might be the first time a prophet of Israel works in a pagan nation, but it certainly won't be the last.  When we come to the writing prophets, we will discover that the prophets of Israel have a lot to say to the pagan nations around them.
          Now, why would the prophets of a rather small country presume that they had a message for the great powers around them?  Why, because their God claimed to be the Lord of all the nations.  He claimed to be the Creator of heaven and earth.  He claimed to raise up kings and to cast them down.  The nations may have found this presumptuous, but that was the Lord's claim.
          We New Testament believers make similar claims.  The most basic confession of the Christian faith has always been, "Jesus is Lord," and that means that He is Lord over heaven and earth.  We believe that Jesus is the Lord, that all earthly powers will on the last day be subjected to Him, and that He is already exerting His royal will over the whole earth to work all things out for the good of those who love Him.  (To be sure, we have to be careful with this kind of language.  Too often we try to use the Lordship of Jesus to justify our desire to run this fallen world.  It is true that Jesus rules this fallen world, that He is Lord of it.  However, by the mysterious design of God, we endure its fallenness and the evil that results from it.  Our dream ought not be to rule a fallen world but to reign with Christ in a restored world.)
          So, like Elisha and the other prophets we have a message for the world, that the world is not in charge of its own affairs like it thinks it is, that there is a Lord over all who will bring all things into conformity with His purposes, and we have an invitation for that world, that they might follow this God with us.

2 KIngs 6-7

2 Kings 6-7

          One aspect of these two chapters is an explanation of why the kings of Israel were not supposed to count the fighting men or build up a contingent of chariots.  The Lord has chariots aplenty all by Himself.  The horsemen and chariots of Israel had swept down and snatched up Elijah (2 Kings 2), and here they fill the hills around Dothan.  In addition, the Lord has other tools to accomplish His purposes.  Who knows what happened to so spook the Aramean army, but they fled without an arrow being fired.  So, there's lesson one:   "[The Lord's] pleasure is not in the strength of the horse, nor his delight in the legs of a man; the LORD delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love" (NIV; Psalm 147:10-11).

         A second thing to note is the reliability of the prophet's word.  An axhead floats at his word.  (I know the whole thing with the stick sounds like 'magic,' and, no, I can't explain it.)  The host of the Lord appears at his word.  The siege is lifted, just as he said.  And the king's officer dies, just as he said.  So, first note that the mark of a true prophet is that his predictions happen.  Second, note that the thing that matters is not the words of Elisha but the words of the Lord. "The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of our God stands forever" (NIV; Isaiah 40:8).

          Two aspects of the story; two important lessons:  rely on the Lord's strength and count on the Lord's words.

"Ordinary" Water

2 Kings 5

            I wouldn’t be much of a Lutheran if I didn’t point out how thoroughly the story of Naaman draws us to Christian Baptism.  So, a man in need of an impossible healing is sent to bathe in very ordinary water.  The ordinariness of the Jordan offends him, because he wanted something flashy—calling on the name of the Lord, waving hands, and so on.  But the Lord uses ordinary water to bring him healing.  Note the similarities: humans stand in need of an impossible healing, namely, forgiveness and new life.  We are directed to the most ordinary of water—Baptism.  And Baptism is ordinary.  We Lutherans don’t even have tanks for full immersion.  It’s a splash of water—and tap water at that!  We don’t even have consecrated, holy water.  Ordinary, ordinary, ordinary!  Baptism is pretty easy to underestimate, even to ignore.  No wonder that so many Christians are drawn to something flashier—dramatic conversion experiences, for example!  But we don’t judge Baptism based on the water but based on what God says happens through that water.  And that miracle Paul describes like this:  “a washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit” (Titus 3:5).  New life and renewal?  Pretty big claims for a splash of water.  So, let’s learn from Naaman: it’s not the water that matters; it’s the Lord who works through that water.