Kingdom Divided | Episode 26

In this week's podcast, we discussed the enduring thread of hope God preserves through the line of David—even in exile.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So you have this strange little note at the very end of King's word. The line of David is not finished. It's like the credits have rolled, and then there's the scene post-credits. There's a little tiny note of hope. The book ends.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

All right. Welcome back, everybody, to the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams. I'm the executive pastor at Asbury Church in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And you are?

SPEAKER_01 0:24

I'm Andrew Forrest. I'm the senior pastor here. We're reading through the Bible in a year, which we keep saying, there is a ton to go. I mean, it moves quick, quick, quick, quick. Yeah. Uh, which is good. And you just got to stay with the narrative and you can't get too down in the weeds, and there's no other way around it. It's like learning a language. You've got to be immersed in it. Yeah. And maybe that's the way to talk about this Bible reading. It's you're learning the language of the Bible and its immersion. And you want to ask more questions about that. You got your whole life to do that. And then probably in heaven you can talk to the God about it forever. But we're going to look at a lot today over the kings. Yep. And there's a question that came in that kind of is a good launching point for the whole narrative of Kings as we're wrapping up our Kings section in our reading.

SPEAKER_02 1:04

Yeah. Yeah. So we talked last week about uh the life of Solomon, his rise, his fall, some things that were kind of his stumbling blocks, and and um things are going really, really well with with the covenant people of God. And then things start to turn a little bit. Solomon, as we read, falls away from the Lord in some different ways. But it turns very quickly when Solomon, as it says in chapter 11, last verse in chapter 11, uh verse 43, and Solomon slept with his fathers and was buried in the city of David, his father. And Rehoboam, his son, reigned in his place. We can talk a little bit about chapter 12 and the narrative, but the questions are basically why like what's Rehoboam's deal? Like what is his why why did he immediately try to essentially sabotage his role? I mean, and I had that question a little bit too, or maybe not a I didn't have a like a interpretation question, but more just a note that I made that Rehoboam makes a really quick turn.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Yeah. Well, first of all, it just seems like to me, this is where one of many boam's many failures is that there's no look at this in verse chapter 12, verse 1, he went to Sheshem for all Israel come to Shechem to make him king. So there's no there's no debate about the line of succession. There has been a huge debate in David. David had issues because of Saul's people, yeah, and then Solomon had a lot of issues. Rehaboam just gets the kingdom. Like you should be really grateful that succession works out that clearly. And the people come to him and are like, we need a break from all this forced labor that Solomon is making them do. And they say, Can you give us a break? So look at verse 6, chapter 12. King Rehboam asked the old guys, What do you want me to do? And they said, I'm telling you, if you're like nice to these people, they will eat out of your hand forever. And then verse 8, which is obviously pretty good advice. Verse 8, he talks to the young guys who have grown up with him. I love that. I think that's a great note. And he said, What do you think we should do? And the guy said, You know what you need to do? You need to say, uh, y'all have seen nothing yet. I love that. My little finger is thicker than my father's thigh. It's very godfather. Um, and I'm gonna make it my father disciplined you with whips, verse 11, I will discipline you with scorpions. Such a great line. I think what he's doing is saying, I'm not gonna be a pushover. Don't you dare think that you can come and push me around. I think that's what's going on there. Now the question would be, why is anybody so stupid? But this kind of stuff happens all the time. We see this all the time. You see this in businesses that have succession. You mentioned a movie where there's this scene where this happens. Yeah. Uh you you just see it.

SPEAKER_02 4:07

Here's okay. I've I've been reading through this to prepare for this episode, the stuff I talked about last week on the on the podcast. It's different settings. I've read this chapter a fair amount of times. It's just now making sense to me. Or excuse me, something is just now catching my eye. Are the forced are the people who are um under the yoke of forced labor the Israelites?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

It would be. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:37

I th I I don't think it would make sense for the foreign Canaanite people to come and ha seek uh like okay, so again, but uh you go back to Pharaoh, the days of Pharaoh and the Exodus, like the foreigners were the forced labor. Right. Right? The the the the Israelites and the people that they had conquered were the forced labor. I don't know what they were doing with the the Egyptians, but but here um the forced labor is the people that the king is responsible for. So so he's essentially enslaved his own people. He's worse than Pharaoh. He's a he has enslaved his own people. Yep, yeah, yeah. That's a strange little note. I had not actually caught that.

SPEAKER_01 5:14

I wasn't paying attention. But that's part of the logic of what we're gonna see in kings is that the very people that have been put over God's own people become worse than the people from whom um from whom they were delivered. That's the bitter irony of it. Yeah. Now, this is an interesting note. This is verse 15, chapter 12. The king did not listen to the people, for it was a turn of affairs brought about by the Lord that he might fulfill his word, which the Lord spoke by Ahijah the Shylanite, Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. Okay. This is a great example of later theological reflection on God's providential work in history. So we're not Calvinists. We believe that God does not rob people of their free responsibility to respond to his grace. Period. We don't bel we don't we don't believe that's the right way of reading the scripture. Which is not to say that God is not at work among people's free actions. When you read chapter 12, you get no sense that Rehoboam is forced against his will to be a terrible king. To be bad guy. No, he's choosing it. And the narrator later on is reflecting on this because this whole this the whole king's narrative is a later reflection on the history of Israel, right? Yeah. They they go, I can kind of see what God was doing. He used it. He he there's a providential thing that God was trying to do, which that itself ends up going badly. But uh so there you go. Roboom is just a fool. Yeah, he's trying to, you know what it comes from, probably. He is insecure in himself and he wants to prove that he is tougher than his dad.

SPEAKER_02 6:44

Yeah. And I don't, again, it doesn't really say this, and so I don't want to make conjectures that I don't that aren't true, but I said last week on this on this podcast that basically Solomon, through God's providence or whatever, had created like a wonder of the world. So Rehabam as a child that grew up there's everybody knows that children that grow up in extremely wealthy households have potential for for you know not being well adjusted, not not, you know, failure to adapt, so to speak, later in life. Um just because if they don't really face any difficulty, just kind of makes me wonder if there's something in in Ray Bohem, you know, his dad's preoccupied with basically all the women in every other country that come and visit him, and he grows up in this like ultra-wealthy place. And I don't know, again, it doesn't say that, but there to me, there's definitely like a character shift. Like David was a man after God's own heart. The scripture says it over and over and over and over again. Solomon, you know, God pours out blessing on Solomon, he asks for wisdom, he gives it to him. Um, he consecrates the things that he's building to the Lord, you know, before things kind of start to go awry. So there's he has some character about him, like some good, good character qualities, but Rehboam seems to have none. Yeah. The scripture doesn't at least record any of them for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

And it all goes badly from here. So look what happens, verse 16. This is this would be a really important point, Rodney, for our folks to get their heads around because the words are used uh and the same word means different things depending on the context. And it's the word Israel. Here we go. When all Israel saw that the king did not listen to them, this is first Kings chapter 12, verse 16. They said, What portion do we have in David? We have no inheritance in the son of Jesse. To your tents, O Israel, look to your own house, David. So Israel went to their tents. So the word Israel both means the entire nation kingdom, and from now on, it'll also mean at times the ten northern tribes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 8:52

And that's so confusing to me. Yeah, it's gonna be hard to figure out. Okay, so look. Well, and you have one, you have one right here. So um, verse 17, but Rahboam reigned over the people of Israel who lived in the cities of Judah. Yeah. Right, right. Right? So, so you have people who were from the northern tribes of Israel who somehow were in the Judea, the Judah cities for whatever reason, maybe because of labor or something. And Rehoboam ruled over them. So he kind of rules over the territory, and if you're in, if you're in the if you're in that territory, you're subject to that.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah, because just to remind everybody, David comes from the tribe of Judah. So there are twelve tribes, David comes from Judah, and the rest of the tribes, with the exception of Benjamin, they go, Well, what are we? They see it as more a tribal thing. Yeah. Okay, look. So they first this poor guy, King Rhoboam sent Adoram, who was taskmaster over the forced labor, and all Israel stoned him to death. It's like one of these, you can see them, it's like a modern thing where they send the representative of the government in and he gets beat up. Yeah, it doesn't work for him. Yep. So King Jeroboam feels he has to flee. Verse 19. So Israel has been in rebellion against the house of David to this day. Yeah. And then they make, this is confusing to people too. They make is the ten northern tribes make a king out of a guy named Jeroboam. So we have Rehoboam in the south and Jeroboam in the north. Now, from now on, the Bible will talk about the king of Israel, who is the king in the north, and the headquarters is Samaria, and the king of Judah, and that's Jerusalem in the south. And that's going to be a really important kind of cleavage point in the rest of the narrative of the kings. And then look here. So verse 21. When Arahoboam came to Jerusalem, he assembled all the house of Judah and the tribe of Benjamin. So those two tribes stay in the south. Uh, and the other ten are in the north. And and there's a divided kingdom from this point on. They're not, and from this point on, in the south, in Judah, it is a descendant of David who's the king. And in the north, there's a series of different uh dynasties that take place until the northern kingdoms are destroyed, which uh happens uh by the kingdom of Assyria a little bit later.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

So you need to know this basically to read the rest of to read the rest of the kings, because we'll get to this in a minute, but it's gonna start switching back and forth between uh the the certain leaders. And this is where our modern Bibles are helpful, like because you have the little headings, the headings on the different chapters, and it's gonna switch back and forth. And so you just need to know that when there's a there's a geographical shift being being made, when um when someone from the line of David is spoke of as a ruler, they're talking about the territories of the south, correct. Jerusalem, particularly. Jerusalem, clear. And you have to, you have to, and Judah, right? Right, yeah. Yeah. So you have to you have to pay attention to the name. So um just to give some examples, later, you know, chapter 14, verse 21, my little heading says Rahboam reigns in Judah. Um, and then chapter 15 starts with Abidam reigns in Judah, and then later Asa reigns in Judah, and then later Nadab reigns in Israel, Basha reigns in Israel. It's like you it's gonna start, we're gonna kind of start flying through these different leadership changes, and it matters which part of the territory that they're in.

SPEAKER_01 12:22

It does. Yeah. So think everybody, Israel means northern kingdom now, and Judah means southern kingdom. Every now and then, and that definitely in the prophets, the word Israel will mean the totality of God's people.

SPEAKER_02 12:35

God's covenant people.

SPEAKER_01 12:36

When the word Israel is used in the New Testament, they mean God's covenant people. They don't mean a territory, but in the narrative of the kings, Israel means the northern kingdom. Yep. And the northern kingdom in general is worse off than the southern kingdom. But the narrator seems to imply here at the end of uh in in 1 Kings 12 11 that the fact the kingdom split is a sign of God's discipline on David's house, and it's meant to get them to repent.

SPEAKER_02 13:01

He said he was gonna do it. Yes, he said he was gonna do it, and then he said, But I'm gonna retain, I'm gonna retain Judah basically for your line, for the line of David.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

So that and and you'd think you'd think Rabom would go, Oh my gosh, I just lost half the kingdom. I gotta repent. And he doesn't. No.

unknown 13:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 13:17

And by the way, maybe another quick little note. So some readers or listeners had emailed in, and um there you'll notice back in the Samuels, there's already some Judah and Israel language being used. Um so chronologically in the Samuels, the split had not yet occurred. Right. But but there were times where like Judah and sometimes along with Benjamin would kind of start acting politically a little bit different. That kind of happens with Ephraim and and some of the territories of the north. And also you have this this is being written much later. Yeah, it's just some anachronism. So they already they're writing with with not revisionist history eyes, but they're looking backwards. So as the writers are recording things through the Samuels, uh I wouldn't just I just wouldn't get hung up on the chronology of this. The split is recorded in 1 Kings chapter 12, but there's already kind of some split language happening earlier than that, and I just wouldn't get too hung up on that. But that's what's happening.

SPEAKER_01 14:17

Yeah, and in American history, we do this all the time with pre antebellum uh America. We'll talk about the South and the North, but that's not a thing. It doesn't right. We we see it through those eyes of a later civil war, but in 1850 or 18 even 1860, that hasn't happened yet. It was like shaping. Yeah, or we do it in the 1930s. Maybe that's even a better example. We talk about, oh, the Nazis and the war. The war hasn't happened yet. There are no, you know, Pearl Harbor hasn't happened. So okay, here this is key too. 1225. Jeroboam, who's the king in the north, chosen by God, by the way, and he immediately goes south. Jeroboam built Sheshem in the hill country of Ephraim and lived there. And then he built Penuel. And Jeroboam said, You know what's gonna happen? Verse 26, chapter 12. The kingdom is gonna go back to the house of David. You know why? Well, because they're gonna go, verse 27, and sacrifice in the temple that Solomon built. And when they go back every year, if they go every year back to the temple, they're gonna be committed to the king of Judah, and then they're gonna kill me. So, look what he does. So, of all the things he could do, look what he does. Verse 28. He took counsel and he made two calves of gold, and he said to the people, You've gone up to Jerusalem long enough, behold your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. So you Jeroboam makes these idols to keep the people from going to worship in Jerusalem because he worries that then he'll lose his place, which is a great example of human machination to try to bring about our preferred end rather than God's end. If God set him up as the king, God wants to bless him and will work with him. Yeah. There's some way around it, but Jeroboam doesn't do it. And that that's kind of the founding sin of the northern kingdom. And it basically all the northern kingdom. He can never recover. Never recover from that, ever.

SPEAKER_02 16:02

Yeah. Just an interesting geographical note. It says that he built Shechem or Sheshem and he built Penuel, but those are names that we heard earlier in the scripture. So he didn't literally build them, maybe he rebuilt them, or he has he established something there, something like cool. It's where Dinah is raped. Yeah, and it's also I think where where um maybe where Joseph's boys or no um Jacob's boys were were out tending the fields.

SPEAKER_01 16:32

Well, the Sheshem is where Dinah is raped, and then they do that for forced circumcision, and then they go and murder Levi and uh uh who's the other one? It's Levi and Simeon go and kill all the guys who raped their sister.

SPEAKER_02 16:47

I want to say it's where, and I could be wrong. I'd have to go back and check. I'm doing this off the top of my head. I think it's where the boys were out farming, and Jacob sends Joseph to like check on them. Is that where they are?

SPEAKER_00 16:56

I I think so.

SPEAKER_02 16:58

Okay, well I can't remember. You can look it up yourself, and if I'm wrong, don't email me.

SPEAKER_01 17:01

Um that's what happens there, Jeroboam, and it begins to go south. And then the rest of the kings, you have a series of prophets who come and go and some other things, and it's all very interesting, but you basically have um often this. So this is this is a summary statement, 1 Kings 13 33. After this, Jeroboam did not turn from his evil ways, but made priests for the high places again from among the peoples. He ordained priest to the high places, and this became the sin to the house of Jeroboam. When they say high places, I mean these places of sacrifice. He's doing pagan sacrifices. And you get these summary statements over and over and over again. Uh I love this. Look, okay, this is 1 Kings 14, 19. It makes you have so many questions. Now, the rest of the Acts of Jeroboam, how he warred and how he reigned, behold, they are written in the books of the Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, which we don't have. That's not an existing thing. We have no idea what that is. It obviously existed, and it's so interesting. You're like, man, I'd love to read that. At that time, Jeroboam reigned, was there and the time he reigned was twenty-two years, and he slept with his fathers, and his son reigned in his place. You get these statements over and over and over.

SPEAKER_02 18:13

Yeah. And they said that about Solomon, too. Like, are all the rest of the acts of Solomon not written in the book of Solomon or something like that? Yeah, that and that comes up a lot in this narrative. So there's clearly other written sources.

SPEAKER_01 18:26

Which we don't have. Yeah. Which is just fascinating to me. Okay. So the north goes badly, and they do they do a lot of bad sacrificing. In the south, in Judah, it goes pretty badly. There's really two pretty decent kings, and then some that are kind of medium.

SPEAKER_02 18:46

Ace is okay, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:47

Ace is okay. Yeah, he's all right. The good ones are Hezekiah, and then the best one is Josiah, which we will talk about here shortly. It's worth probably mentioning very quickly that in the northern kingdom, this is a sign that God is not. I don't think the northern kingdom's fate is sealed because God sends Elijah, the great, he's the greatest prophet in the whole Old Testament. He sends Elijah to the north. Yeah. To the northern kingdoms, King Ahab. To the worst guy. The worst guy. Well, and the his wife is real bad. So King Ahab is bad. He's he's an Israelite, he's he's a descendant of Abraham, a king, but he marries Jezebel, who is from um modern-day Lebanon, from Tyre and Sidon, those cities out there. These are pagans, they're um Phoenician cities, cities of the sea peoples. So that's real bad, and there it's real bad. And then out of nowhere, so we have no other previous interaction with him. Look at this. He rises from nothing. 1 Kings 17. Now Elijah the Tishbite of Tishba in Gilead said to Ahab, We have no previous interaction with Elijah at all. He comes from nowhere, and then he is just dominates the scene, and he's so awesome. And then he has a uh uh an unfortunate ending in a way. He comes up and he predicts stuff against Ahab, and God does it, and Elijah is amazing. And Elijah confronts Ahab, and there's that amazing moment on the Mount Mount Carmel where all the prophets of Baal are put to death, and it's like the greatest, one of the greatest ministry uh successes in the Old Testament, apart from maybe Jonah or something. It's awesome.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Okay, so I have a question about that. Yeah, so um all the prophets of Baal. Yeah, so so Elijah's in the north, Ahab is this is the bad guy who's in the north, uh and Elijah does this thing with God and they they they break down all these well the prophets of Baal, like they they kill them all. Yeah, they kill all these guys. Yeah. So would that would that have come out of I don't know how many years have passed, but going back to what you just pointed out in chapter 13, verse 33. After this thing, Jeroboam did not turn away from his evil way, but made priests for the high places again from am all the among all the people. Any who would, he ordained to be priests of the high places. Are these I wonder if these are the same kind of like yeah, descendants of those guys, like the same people. I never thought of that. Right. Probably not literally the same guys.

SPEAKER_01 21:22

I don't know how much time has passed, but like they wouldn't literally be the same guys, but are they the families?

SPEAKER_02 21:27

But it's uh I wonder if like this is Jeroboam like basically like establishing all these at least the um the line or the he's he's establishing these prophets of Baal, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:38

Well, it's like um yeah, you basically are they Canaanites or are they Israelites who are worshiping them? Who are they? And I think that I think you're right. I think that makes more sense to think of them as Canaanites. You know, we've talked I've talked before about the the drug um the drug economy. And it's easy to pick on the foreigners, it's the Mexicans that are doing this. But of course it's It's American drug dealers who are just distributing it to Americans. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:04

We're all buying it.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, we're all buying it. It's our people. So this may be a foreign religion, but it's Israelites who are practicing it. Yeah. I never thought of that before. Now, Jezebel is a foreigner, and some of the prophets seem to be kind of her people. Whether they're her people ethnically are more like she's the patroness of them. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 22:21

Well, this reminds me of judges, though. Or yeah, and judges where there's so much conflating of worship practices between all the gods to include the one true God. Like it's all just kind of mashed in there.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

Totally. Yeah. By the way, this happens on Mount Carmel. This is uh 1 Kings 18. Uh, we have been there. Uh, it's near the coast in uh Israel today, and you can go to Mount Carmel. It's just weird to go there and you're like, this happened here. This is weird. This is wild. Okay, so the greatest ministry success in the Old Testament apart from Jonah, and just like Jonah, it doesn't produce a good thing in Elijah's heart. Isn't that interesting? So Elijah is showing that the that Yahweh is the Lord and he has power because Yahweh sends the rain, not the prophets of Baal. Look at the and they they do this crazy dance. Um look at this, 1 Kings 18, 28. And they so Elijah is, okay, actually, 1 Kings 18 27. And at noon, Elijah mocked them, saying, Cry aloud, for he for he is a god. Either he is musing or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he's asleep and must be awakened. Yeah, he's saying, He's going to the bathroom. Uh verse 28. And they cried aloud and they cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances until the blood gushed out of them. So they're cutters, they're cutting, they're saying, Look how dedicated we are, oh Baal, come and listen to us. Nothing happens, nobody pays attention, and then Elijah finally prays, and the fire from God comes, and it's so hot the rocks are licked with the fire. It's awesome. And they kill all the prophets of Baal, and they do it. And then it starts to rain, and it's great. Uh, and it's awesome. Everything's great. And then look at 1 Kings 19, one of the great chapters of scripture. And Ahab told Jezebel all that Elijah had done, how he had killed all the prophets. And Jezebel said to Elijah, this is 1 Kings 19, too. So may the gods do to me if I do not make your life as the life of one of them by this time tomorrow. So she says, You're dead. This dude's done. Yeah, and it's so interesting. He's seen this amazing power of God, and that for whatever reason, and I'm a man in ministry, you're a man in ministry. It doesn't, there's not a logic about the things that strike you and that hit you down. And this, Elijah has been so brave and so strong, and he's seen amazing miracles, and this gets him. It pierces him for some reason. He's obviously physically exhausted, as we shall see, but it's really sad in a way. Because what Elijah should say is number one, God controls my life, and if you kill me, so what? Like so be it. Yeah. And or two, he should be like, you know what he should be like, is Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Bring it on.

SPEAKER_01 24:58

I'm in God's hands. Bring it on. Yeah. But he flees. And he wants God to kill him. First nine chapter 19, verse 4. And he sleeps, and an angel says, Don't you get up? And the angel gives him a little bit of food and some water. God is so merciful with him. And then he goes and he makes his way out into the wilderness, this amazing wilderness journey to Horeb, the mountain of God, and he's totally alone and bereft. By the way, this is worth mentioning. We should do a whole special edition podcast on the book Father Elijah. I know. So it's a great, great, great novel. Came out in 1999, maybe 93, 94 in the 90s, by Michael D. O'Brien, the great Catholic writer. It's an amazing novel, Father Elijah, and it's named, his name is particular for this reason. And Father Elijah, after some amazing successes, has a moment like this, a moment of kind of darkness of the soul, right out by himself. This is the famous moment, 1 Kings 19, where Elijah steps out on the mountain of God. He's alone in the wilderness, and the God's voice is not in the wind and the earthquake and the fire, but that famous, beautiful phrase, uh verse 12, and after the fire, the sound of a low whisper, or uh in the King James, remember? The small voice is still a small voice. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's beautiful. It's like there's a sound of nothing, and the sound of nothing is the sound of God. And Elijah walks outside, and God says, What are you doing? And he says, I've been doing all this for you, God, and then they're trying to kill me. And the Lord says, Okay, I want you to go somewhere, and I have a king that you're gonna use. And uh there's a guy, there's kings I'm raising up, and then I'm gonna get a prophet to take your place. Uh, and then the my one of my favorite verses in the whole Bible, 1 Kings 19, 18, yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him. In other words, you're not the only one. I got my people everywhere, which is one of the great, I think, Christian lessons. You're never alone. There are always other people out there, even though you always feel alone. And this is an equivocal story because God is merciful to Elijah, but his ministry also basically ends here. And does it end here because it's his time? And God has time for everybody, or does it end here because he's not capable of continuing? Elijah, the great hero, is he's kind of broken here. I don't know. I don't know which one it is. Yeah. And so then Elijah comes after him. So uh Elijah's great. We love Elijah, and I love these stories, and he's so human, and he's one of my favorite characters in the Bible. But we don't have time, we move along. Gotta keep moving. And the same things keep happening. Ahab, by the way, none of this slows Ahab down. No. But he gets what's coming to him, and even worse, Jezebel gets what's coming to her. This is worth pointing out. Uh okay, where is this? And the blood that's licked up by the dogs. Okay, here we go. Uh uh, okay. This is awesome. 1 Kings 22, 37. So the king died and was brought to Samaria. This is Ahab, and they buried the king in Samaria, and they washed the chariot by the pool of Samaria, and the dogs lipped up its blood. So that's like it's bad. Yeah, bad scene. Bad for Ahab. Yeah. Bad Kings keeps going. Uh then we move to 2 Kings. You have Elijah and Elisha in there. Elisha does some cool stuff. He's awesome. And some of the same miracles that Elijah does, Elisha does, moves along. There's some interactions, some foreigners, which is awesome. There's the chariots of fire, but the same pattern happens, which is the northern kingdom does bad and the southern kingdom doesn't do great. And then ultimately the northern kingdom is destroyed by the Assyrian Empire. Yep. And the ten northern tribes are lost to history forever. So that's another thing to remember with people is that the ten northern tribes are lost. They go away. They never come back. Let's look at that particularly here. We're skipping ahead a lot of centuries, a lot of years. There's a ton we're missing here, but you kind of have to. That's okay. Okay, here we go. Uh 2 Kings 17, verse 6. In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah and on the Habor in the river of Gosan in the cities of the Medes. And that's it. That's the end of the Northern Kingdom. It goes away forever. This is in 726 BC. Terrible, terrible thing that happens and never is never recovered. So from then on, the rest of Second Kings, it's just Judah, the southern kingdom, that stands alone.

SPEAKER_02 29:52

And is Judah with is just geographically, do you know if Judah is also kind of with Benjamin? Sometimes those are together. I think so. Is that kind of that's kind of what they're calling Judah, but it is Judah and Benjamin.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

Yes, I think so. Benjamin's so little.

SPEAKER_02 30:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:08

And later on, the Apostle Paul is a member of the tribe of Benjamin. So it's kind of cool.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

He's a Benjaminite.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Yep. Okay, so then you have the Southern Kingdom persists, so the Northern Kingdom in 726 BC destroyed, and the Southern Kingdom persists all the way until 586 BC. You have a couple of good kings. The greatest king is Josiah, who's basically good in every way, and he dies early in battle. And it's one of those questions where you're just like, but why God? Yeah. Why did that happen? You know? And the answer is, we don't know.

SPEAKER_02 30:40

Yeah. He's famous for like reforming some of this stuff. So chapter 23 and 2 Kings, like he's he's famous for actually like restoring some order to to the to the the the kingdom and also just practices of of the Israelites.

SPEAKER_01 30:57

Yeah, this is kind of this is a fun note. This is in 2 Kings 22, verses 8 and following. When they're cleaning up stuff. Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan, the secretary, Hey, I found the book of the law in the house of the Lord. And Hilkiah gave it to Shaphem. He read it. And Safan said, Hey, King, you gotta read this. They were cleaning out and they found this, and they read it. Verse 11. When the king heard the words of the book of the law, he tore his closed. So it seems like they find Deuteronomy rolled up in the corner covered with dust. And Josiah is like, Oh my gosh, we have not been following this. Isn't that amazing? They lost one of the books of Moses. Yeah. It's like in the attic. It's in the attic, yeah. And that's why, and and remember, Deuteronomy lays out the blessings and the curses, and that's why Josiah is so so bereft, because he realizes we haven't been following all this. So he's Josiah's awesome, and he gets killed in battle. Another fun point for New Testament readers, this is 2 Kings 23, verse uh verse 10. 2 Kings 23, verse 10. Josiah defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of the sun at Hinnum, that no one might burn his son or his daughter as an offering to Molech. Okay. This this in Hebrew sounds like Gehenna. It's a ravine outside of Jerusalem where they had done some human sacrifices, and Josiah, to prevent it from ever being used from human sacrifices, defiles it. So when Jesus is talking about Gehenna, he's drawn there's now the centuries have passed, it's a trash dump for for the modern Jews in the time of Jesus. And that's where we get our concept of hell as this burning, disgusting place. It's from there. Because they had done so the son of Hinnom, Gehenna, ultimately is kind of what it sounds like in Hebrew. The valley of Hinnem.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

And he's he's kind of going through and defiling it, essentially. Defiling it and breaking its power kind of thing. Yeah, I don't know what using it or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Yeah, but so nobody after him will do human sacrifices there. Yeah. Okay. So then terrible scenes uh when Babylon comes in, second Kings 25. Ugh, awful, awful, awful. Nebuchadnezzar comes and he breaks down the walls and he takes the people away, and then where's the part where his eyes are put out? Uh look at this. Verse 6, chapter 25. They captured the king and brought him up to the king of Babylon. They passed sentence on him. Can you imagine the scene? He's in chains. They slaughter the sons of Zedekiah before his eyes. He's the final king there, and they put out his eyes and bound him in chains and took him to Babylon. So the idea is the last thing he sees is the death of his son.

SPEAKER_02 33:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:45

Terrible. But look at how the book ends. And in the 37th year of the exile of Jehoiaking, king of Judah, he's the one who finally counts, he's the last one. Uh, there's another Babylonian king. He frees him. Verse 28, he spoke kindly to him, gives him a seat, and he doesn't have to wear prison clothes, and he dines at the king's table every day of his life. So you have this strange little note at the very end of Kings where the line of David is not finished, and this foreign pagan king is being nice to him. So this is terrible tragedy, and this you know, I like to talk about the movie cinematic thing. It's like the credits, the credits have rolled, and then there's that scene post-credits, and you have him kind of there's a little tiny note of hope in the book ends.

SPEAKER_02 34:30

Yeah. Which we'll then see patterns later, like when Daniel has favor from the king. We saw that back with Joseph, back with Pharaoh, like the some Ezra, Nehemiah have favor. Even in exile, somehow God has preserved favor for even just like a little green shoot almost.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Um the prophets talk about. He preserves, we sing it in Christmas, some uh from the tribe of Jesse, uh the root of Jesse. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And it might be helpful here as we're wrapping up to explain Chronicles. So when you read our English Protestant Bibles, you have Kings and you have Chronicles, and they're almost identical. There's some different interesting points in there. Sometimes Chronicles helps explicate weird passages in kings. For example, Bathsheba comes to Solomon and says, No, Bathsheba comes to David and says, You promised Solomon would be the king, which hasn't occurred, and we don't see that in the Samuel books. There's a reference to that in 1 Chronicles. Okay. But you read through it and you go, Why are we reading this? I just read this. Yeah. Okay. This is mind-blowing for me and very helpful when I found this out. In the Jewish Bibles, Chronicles is not part of the history books. Chronicles is part of the poetic books, the writings, which is the catch-all of some weird stuff, Job and some other things. And it occurs at the very, very, very end of the Hebrew Bible in the collection. Chronicles is last. So in our Bibles, Malachi is last, like the prophet saying, Well, we're looking for another Elijah. Chronicles is an even later theological history of Israel. So from the time of exile, they're looking back and going, How did we end up here? And what is God doing? So it's actually not a repetitive thing in a boring way that it occurred. Where it's juxtaposed in our Bibles is not helpful. But if you if you can see, if you were reading the historical books, then you read the prophets and the Psalms and all this, and the very last thing you read in your Bible is Chronicles, it actually is pretty cool. It's like another history of Israel.

SPEAKER_02 36:27

Trevor Burrus, Jr. Yeah, maybe it'd be kind of like um oh gosh. Well, it'd be like right it'd be like reading a long-form article about Vietnam in 1981, and then Ken Burns does a documentary about Vietnam in 2015 or whatever. Like, yeah, it's the same stuff. Like you've heard a lot of it at the city, but it's a much more time has gone by and much more political reflection has happened and stuff. And who are we? And what is God doing?

SPEAKER_01 36:59

And and why did we fail? Yeah. And in in yeah, that's exactly what it is. So I just want to tell our readers enjoy the chronicles. Yes, there's a lot of names, there's a lot of history, but just enjoy the narrative as you work through it. And yes, it's repetitive, but keep in mind where it occurs. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Well, and the genealogies and the names don't last forever. They're kind of at the beginning, and you just power through them and then and then you're just gonna be able to do it. Yeah. Yeah. Uh okay. Well, I think that's good for this um for this episode. I think it's helpful that we made it. Remember, we've made it from now the creation story through sort of the flood and the unmaking of of creation to the to Abraham, and now um through kind of God establishing his people, we made it through the Torah. What is what does it mean to be the people of God, and then into finding the promised land, judges where everything descends into chaos, through the royal period, the kingship sort of period, and then now into exile um because of their unfaithfulness. And so that's kind of the the literal 20-second narrative of of how where we've ended up.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

And once you see the forest or the trees, it does make sense. And by the way, so the books of the Torah, the books of Moses, they are obviously a unified um collection. We all we've talked about that, the five first five books. But then the rest, Bible scholars call the the these other books the Deuteronom Deuteronomistic histories. There's a clear narrative cohesion from Judge from Joshua all the way to the end of Kings. Like there's a their history, and they're they're brought into the promised land, but they can't do it. And you just see the same thing. So now we're about to enter new stuff in the Bible for the first time in a while.

SPEAKER_02 38:38

Yep. All right, very good. Well, that's it for this episode. This has been the Year Through the Bible podcast. My name is Rodney Adams. You are? Andrew Forrest. Let's go. All right. We'll see you next time.