Job 12-21: With Friends Like Jobs'....

So last time, we got the basic story of Job in one and a half chapters, and then saw Job argue about his situation with three of his friends for the next nine and a half chapters. The next ten chapters continue this conversation, as Job's buddies -- Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar -- continue to hector him, and he continues to rail back at them. It's all dialog, this "interior poem" of the Book of Job, and I imagine most of it being shouted accusingly between our hero and his erstwhile pals.

The buddies continue to reiterate, and re-reiterate, and re-re-reiterate, their basic argument: that God punishes the unjust and evil, and therefore Job's punishment must be based on some wrongdoing. They want him to come clean, make atonement, and humble himself before God; if he honestly does this, they think, his punishment will be lifted.

For most of this section, Job continues to counter is the same way he did in the earlier chapters. He protests his innocence, and argues that the actions and motivations of God are inscrutable. In so doing, he gets in some good digs at his friends (and perhaps at all of us):

Men at ease have contempt for misfortune
as the fate of those whose feet are slipping. (12:5)

Despite his insistence of the unknowableness of God's motives, however, Job is persistent in asserting that God is unfair in not communicating with him. I desire to speak to the Almighty and to argue my case with God, he asserts (13:3), frequently crying out for the same. Indeed, he seems less bothered by his misfortune -- his loss of property and standing, the death of his family, his personal afflictions -- than by God's refusal to explain any of this to him.

Only grant me these two things, O God,
and then I will not hide from you:
Withdraw your hand far from me,
and stop frightening me with your terrors.
Then Summon me and I will answer,
or let me speak, and you reply.
How many wrongs and sins have I committed?
Show me my offense and my sin.
Why do you hide you face and consider me your enemy?
Will you torment a windblown leaf? (13:20-25)

It's interesting that, despite an almost total submission to the acts of God, that Job is all but scolding God for not communicating and explaining his actions.

Though I cry, "I've been wronged!" I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice. (19:7)

But Who's Right?

This is not easy reading -- I continue to wrestle with it -- but its existence as an open discussion about the nature of God and God's role in the world is highly interesting. We haven't really seen anything like this before in the Bible. The closest we've been was in the books of Moses, when God was laying out the long list of laws to govern human behavior, but this is a very different sort of discussion. For one thing, it is highly ambiguous. It seems like we are supposed to think that Job is right, or at least righter than his three friends, but this is never really spelled out.

And, from everything stated in the Bible up to this point, it is hard to fault the friends. Throughout the histories, God is forever rewarding or punishing people (or whole nations) by making good things or bad things happen to them here on Earth. Writers of all the previous books of the Bible have had no problem with ascribing people's fortunes and misfortunes, even their deeds and misdeeds, to God's rendering judgment on their behaviors. By that reasonable standard, the friends are right.

Except, we know from the way the story is set up that Job is an innocent. We know that God has allowed his tremendous misfortune not as a punishment, but merely as an experiment. This certainly gives weight to Job's assertion that the ways of God are inscrutable. Whether Job is in the right in his demands for an explanation for his sufferings is an open question. I can't tell whether this is considered unseemly arrogance, or whether he is perfectly free to demand all he wants, secure in the knowledge that God has not the slightest obligation to pay his demands any attention.

Job 21: Let's Look at the Evidence

Finally, Job gets empirical with his friends. He points out something that, as much back in the day as now, must have been pretty obvious: the theory of divine retribution from evil is all fine and good, but anybody who has been around the block a few times knows it doesn't work. If things work the way you say, he points out:

7 Why do the wicked live on,
growing old and increasing in power?
8 They see their children established around them,
their offspring before their eyes.
9 Their homes are safe and free from fear;
the rod of God is not upon them.
10 Their bulls never fail to breed;
their cows calve and do not miscarry.
11 They send forth their children as a flock;
their little ones dance about.
12 They sing to the music of tambourine and harp;
they make merry to the sound of the flute.
13 They spend their years in prosperity
and go down to the grave in peace.

A little later, he implies his friends are being naive yokels for thinking like they do:

28 You say, 'Where now is the great man's house,
the tents where wicked men lived?'
29 Have you never questioned those who travel?
Have you paid no regard to their accounts-
30 that the evil man is spared from the day of calamity,
that he is delivered from the day of wrath?

Now I don't know about you, but this seems like a slam dunk of an argument to me. We'll find out what Eliphaz and his posse have to say in response next time on Michael Reads the Bible!


Next Time: What Eliphaz and his posse have to say in response!


p.s. Ever wondered about the phrase "by the skin of my teeth"? Well! In Job 19:20, Job notes that he has escaped with only the skin of my teeth, and a footnote indicates that this means his gums. In other words, he has survived, but with all of his teeth having been knocked out or having fallen out of his head.

Job 1-11: God & Satan, Job & His Pals

So, the Book of Job. You know the story. It seems like it would be about six or seven chapters worth of narrative, right? But no. The Book of Job weighs in at a whopping FORTY-TWO chapters, the most we’ve seen since any book since, well, Genesis (which has fifty). The bulk of the story as you and I know it, moreover, happens in the first chapter and a half. Which means there is a lot of Job left unaccounted for. We better get started.

The Story as You and I Know It

So there's this guy named Job, and he is both very religious and very fortunate. He has seven adult sons and three adult daughters, all of whom get along well, and he's fabulously wealthy. His lifestock holdings are in four digits. Secure and happy in every particular, he nevertheless remembers always to make the ritual sacrifices -- not just for himself, but also some extra for his children, in case they forget.

Now one day God and Satan are talking and ---

WHOA!!! Wait a minute!?! What's this about "Satan"?!?

Here we are on page 374, and the Bible is suddenly giving us what is perhaps a new character, perhaps a radical shift in theology. All through the story of creation and the history of the Israelites, there was never any mention of this Satan character. Suddenly, in the middle of what is looking to be another folktale along the lines of Ruth or Esther, up he pops.

The footnote here in the NIV indicates that the word Satan means "accuser." According to a little minimal research I allowed myself on the subject, Jewish tradition regards Satan as a servant that God might use to do the dirty work, like a bouncer or a district attorney. Could be way off on that one. In the Christian tradition, Satan is of course "the devil," the incarnation of evil. Some Christians, in fact, veer way towards the old theology of Zoroastrianism, in which the world is contested between two dieties of more or less equal power, good and evil. Old-school conservative sects that emphasize Hell and the power of Satan are really 9/10 of the way there. Is there anything in the Bible to support this line of thinking?

Well, perhaps not yet. Let's resume the story in progress.

The Story in Progress

Right, so one day God and Satan are talking, and God brings up the subject of Job and how righteous he is. "Of course he's righteous," replies Satan (I paraphrase). "It's easy for him to be. You've given him an incredibly good life. Take that away from him and he's probably no more righteous than anyone else."

So God proposes to test this theory. Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger. (1:12) A few days later, four of Job's servants run up. Each is the only person to survive a catastrophe: his beasts and agricultural laborers have been stolen or killed, the fire of God has fallen from the sky to kill his sheep and shepherds, the camels have been stolen and their drivers put to the sword, and a mighty wind knocked over the house where all of his children had gathered for a meal, killing them all.

Now all of this, I think it's safe to say, would be hard for anyone to hear, but Job remains resolute in his religion. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away," he says. "May the name of the Lord be praised." (1:21)

God and Satan talk about this later. God thinks he's really made a point about how righteous Job is, but Satan says that sparing the man any physical distress made all the difference. OK, says God, do whatever you want to him. But don't kill him. So Satan afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. (2:7) Job continues to hold to his faith. His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!" He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"

The Long, Long Conversation

So, that's pretty much the story, right? But that's only a chapter and a half! So why is Job forty-two chapters long? Well, at least as far as I've read so far, it's because he is now going to discuss his situation with passers-by. At length. What happens from 2:11 through at least Chapter 11 is that three of Job's buddies come by and argue with him. They speak in a series of speeches that appear to be in verse form; indeed, Job 3 - 42 appears to be an epic theological poem. Personally, I find this rather heavy going. I have been impressed to date that the Bible, although not always a gripping read, has never been especially difficult to read. This poem of Job, though, tries my attention span.

I will summarize brutally, and to the best of my understanding. Job's buddies, anticipating John Calvin by a few millenia, are convinced that God would only punish the unjust. They chastise Job for not coming clean; if he only admitted his wrongdoing and performed some kind of atonement, they tell him, God would cease to punish him. Job counters that he is blameless, that he really has done nothing wrong. He resolutely resists cursing God, but he repeatedly calls on God for an explaination of why so much misfortune has befallen him.

Now these speaches are long and florid, as I say, and there is very little contextualizing, so it is hard to say what exactly we are supposed to make of them. Are we supposed to agree with Job, or with his buddies? I'm guessing the answer is neither. The buddies are, I think, supposed to be seen as in error when they claim that God will reward righteousness with favor. God, we are supposed to gather, will do whatever he wants -- up to and including ruining a man's life for the sake of a divine parlor bet -- and we are not to presume to guess whom he favors or considers righteous. Job, I think, is supposed to be seen as somewhat less wrong. He is right to accept whatever God throws at him. However, he persists in error by demanding an explanation. No explanations, the story seems to indicate, will be forthcoming, and Job would do even better to accept his fate and keep his yap shut.

I'm only a quarter of the way in, so this interpretation remains open to drastic revision. Plus, as I said, I don't feel like I'm "getting" Job as well as I have the more straightforward material. So take my thoughts, here as always, with a grain of salt. I will say, though, that this section of Job contains a passage I have long known, and which is one of my favorite things to grumble to myself when I'm having a crappy day:

hardship does not spring from the soil,
nor does trouble sprout from the ground.
Yet man is born to trouble
as surely as sparks fly upward. (5:6-7)


NEXT: Job and his friends chat some more!

The Book of Esther

After Ezra and Nehemiah, the twin chronicles of the Jews’ return to Judea from Babylonian exile, comes Esther, a story about events during the captivity. I say “story,” because it feels more like a tale than the various forms of historical account that we have read in the Bible up to this point. Certainly, it has the narrative arc of a fairy tale, and many of the usual tropes: a beautiful queen, treachery punished, and happiness ever after. I’ll give you the condensed version.

How Esther Became Queen

It all starts with a big party. Xerxes the Great throws a half-year extravaganza to show off the magnitude and splendor of his empire, which stretches from Ethiopia to India. After this proto-World’s Fair, there’s a seven-day afterparty for everybody who lives in the capital, complete with an open bar. The text goes into particular detail about the open bar. Then, as ever, a fine thing.

At the end of the party, the king calls for his queen to appear before the nobles, so he can show off how beautiful she is. She says no. This causes much consternation, and the nobles are afraid that when word gets out that the king’s wife disobey him, wives everywhere will stop obeying their husbands. It’ll be chaos! CHAOS!!!

So, it’s decided that the queen will lose her standing, and Xerxes will pick a new queen from among the most beautiful virgins in all the empire. Esther, a lovely Jewish orphan girl who was raised by her uncle Mordecai, enters the contest. Since this is the Book of Esther, not the Book of Mary Lou, you will not be surprised that after much rigmarole she is selected to be the next queen of the Persian Empire.

Enter the Villain

Now that he’s a royal hanger-on, Mordecai takes to loitering about in the palace courtyard. One day he overhears two guards making a conspiracy to assassinate Xerxes. He tells Esther, who tells the king, who escapes the plot and executes the conspirators. Things are going well for the Queen and her uncle.

The trouble starts when Xerxes promotes a guy named Haman to be his second-in-command. Everybody is supposed to bow down to Haman, but because Mordecai is Jewish (and so only supposed to bow down to God, I think the reasoning is here) he won’t. Whenever Haman comes through the courtyard, there’s everybody bowing down except Mordecai. It stands out. It rankles Haman, who develops such a loathing for Mordecai that he tricks Xerxes into letting him proclaim a pogrom against all of the Jews in the reign. A day is chosen by lot when all of the Jews will be rounded up, plundered, and killed, and Haman sends out a proclamation to this effect throughout the empire.

This naturally causes considerable consternation in the Jewish community, and Mordecai implores Esther to try to use her influence on Xerxes. It turns out, though, that this is very tricky. No one, not even the Queen, is allowed to approach Xerxes without him calling for them. If you enter his presence without being asked, you will be put to death – unless he decides on the spot that it’s OK, in which case he will point a special golden scepter at you. You touch the tip of the scepter, and everything’s OK. Freudians, start your engines!

The Villain’s Comeuppance!

Esther works up the nerve to disturb Xerxes, and luckily he is so fond of her that he points his special scepter at her and, after she has touched it, promises to give her whatever she wants. She says that she will prepare a banquet for Xerxes and Haman the following evening, and make her request then.

At the banquet, Esther reveals Haman’s plans and pleads for her life and the lives of all the other Jews in the Empire. Xerxes, who is only just now learning about the pogroms, is livid that he has been tricked, and goes out in the garden to cool off. Haman stays behind to try to beg Esther for mercy, but when Xerxes comes back inside it looks to him like Haman is putting the moves on her. Haman’s goose is pretty much cooked at this point, and shortly afterwards he can be seen dangling from the same high gallows that he had been recently hoping to hang Mordecai from.

So Xerxes calls off the pogroms, the Jews are saved, Esther is happy, and Mordecai is promoted to be Xerxes’ new chief of staff. And this is where we would fade out in the modern after-school special version of the tale.

More Comeuppance!

In the rough and tumble world of the Old Testament, though, there is an important additional aspect to this particular happy ending. The letter that Xerxes sends out doesn’t cancel the pogrom, because the King’s word once proclaimed – or forged, apparently – can not be rescinded. Instead, Xerxes grants all Jews in the empire permission to defend themselves against the pogroms, and

To destroy, kill and annihilate any formed force of any nationality of province that might attack them and their women and children; and to plunder the property of their enemies. (8:11)

With the imperial administration now clearly rooting for the Jews, many converts begin discovering the attractions of Judaism.

The big day comes, and the Jews kill 500 people in the capital, including Hamam’s ten sons. Xerxes, in celebration, asks Esther if she has any additional wishes, and she says yes please: Can we string up the corpses of Hamam’s sons, and can the slaughter continue tomorrow, too? Spunky girl, the queen, and Xerxes indulgently grants her wishes. Three hundred anti-Semites are dispatched in the capital the next day; the two-day body count in the provinces is 75,000. Much feasting and celebration ensues. The end.

Historical Note

The modern Jewish celebration of Purim, I read here in the Wiki, is a commemoration of these events. It is traditionally viewed, reasonably enough, as a celebration of national self-preservation, and a reading of the Book of Esther is a key part of the Purim service.

The Book of Nehemiah

The Book of Nehemiah has a lot in common with the Book of Ezra. Like Ezra, it is a first-person account of the return of the “Jews” – Nehemiah, too, uses the new word – from Babylon to Jerusalem. It recounts some of the same events, and indeed contains some of the same lists of how many of which people went where, and when. The same lists, that is, with only enough deviation to disturb the mood of a strict literalist. How many descendents of Arah returned from Babylon to Jerusalem, for instance? Ezra (2:5) says 775; Nehemiah (7:10) says 652. Can’t be both!

Nehemiah, the man, starts off as a cupbearer to (one of the) King Artixerxes(es) in Babylon. One day, noticing that his servant looks glum, the king asks him, well, why the long face? Nehemiah says that he is sad because his ancestral city lies in ruins. Artixerxes asks what Nehemiah would like him to do about it. Nehemiah says send me to the city in Judah where my fathers are buried so that I can rebuild it. (2:5)

Counter to what you might expect, Artixerxes says “sure thing!” He throws in a substantial allocation of timber from the royal forests, and letters to the local governors, who can not be expected to be enthused about this project. One assumes that ol’ Arti might have had some ulterior motives having to do with regional geopolitics, but who knows? Maybe he just really liked pleasing his servants. Or maybe, as the text implies, he was being manipulated by God in all this.

Class Relations in Early Second Temple Jerusalem: The Rough Guide

The first half of the text is largely an account of the rebuilding of Jerusalem’s walls, recounted in great detail. Ezra appears prominently in the second half of the text, as the priest who leads a great religious revival in the rebuilt city. Again, the accounts of events in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah line up pretty well. Here, as in Ezra, what is presented as the glorious rebirth of the Israelite kingdom leaves a distinct impression of a ruling elite, back from Babylon, imposing a strict and unwelcome authority on an underclass of locals whose grandparents escaped the captivity.

When the walls are first completed, for instance, there is a big rally in the city. Ezra reads from the Laws of Moses, and a posse of Levites either clarify or interpret – it’s not clear – the text to the assembled people. Then you get this interesting passage:

Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, “This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law.

Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

The Levites calmed all the people, saying “Be still, for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.”

Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them. (8:9-12)

Well, maybe. But when a large group of people is weeping and agitated when laws are being read to them, it’s a reasonable inference that these laws are being forced upon them, and they are mourning their humiliation and loss of freedom. Somehow the offer of snacks and drinks seems fairly cynical in this light, and the sudden “celebration with great joy” perhaps an overstatement? But who knows. I wasn’t there.

Nor was I there when all of the people decided to join their brothers the nobles, and bind themselves with a curse and an oath to follow the Law of God given through Moses. (10:29) It’s interesting and revealing that the people of Judah suddenly have “nobles” – they never did before – and even more interesting that they would unanimously adopt the rigorous laws of Moses, with its strict limitations on personal and economic freedom and its steep taxation of crops and flocks for the benefit of the priesthood.

Nehemiah, like Ezra, wants to take some credit for the ethnic cleansing of Judah. In the final chapter of his book, the narrative takes the form of a prayer, in which he reminds God of various virtuous acts he has carried out. These include a very strict reimposition of the Sabbath, expulsion from Israel of all who were of foreign descent, and the physical punishment or exile of those whose close relatives married outsiders.

Remember me with favor, O my God, the Book ends, and one has to wonder. On the one hand, this is a man who clearly made critical contributions to the ability of one of history’s most influential small cultures to endure. And, doubtless it is sheer anachronism to judge his more draconian measures against the human rights ideals of the current day. But at the same time, I don’t think that every citizen of Judah felt that the governorship of Nehemiah was an occasion to “celebrate with great joy.” And I feel some measure of sorrow for the losses of those nameless Israelites, all those centuries ago.

Ezra: The Return of the Israelites

OK, Listen Up People! The 2009 session of MichaelReadsTheBible is now in session, and there's a lot of Bible left to read. So let's get eyes to Scripture, People! Hu-ah!

Ezra

We'll jump in feet first today by covering the entire Book of Ezra. That's not too tough a task, because Ezra is short, heavy on lists of names, and really has only one key message.

That key message: The Jews come back to Jerusalem.

You'll remember that Jerusalem had fallen at the end of 2 Chronicles, and the Israelites had been taken off to forced resettlement in and around Babylon. Between then and the events of Ezra, roughly 70 years go by. Now, at the beginning of the book, God moves the Persian Emporer Cyrus to allow the exiles to move back to Jerusalem, taking some of the Temple treasures back with them. He gives them permission to rebuild the city and the temple, as well.

Except, it's not quite that easy. After a few years, and after Cyrus dies, local leaders around Jerusalem send a letter to the new emporer saying "Hey! You're letting these troublemakers rebuild their fortress-city! Check the archives, and you'll see what a pain they were before they were conquered." The archives are checked, and the rebuilding project is defunded.

A few more years go by, another emporer is on the throne, and there is another exchange of letters. "Hey," the governer says, siding with the Israelites. "This project was authorized by Cyrus! Cyrus THE GREAT!! Check the archives!" The archives are again checked, the order is confirmed, and the Temple is allowed to be completed.

It is very confusing to keep the chronology of Ezra straight, however, because events are all situated in years of the reigns of the Persian emporers Xerxes, Artaxerxes, and Darius, and the Persian dynasty of the 6th Century B.C. is (as one finds with a quick peek at the Wiki) has multiple kings by all these names. I believe that Biblical historians have worked through all of this to their satisfaction, so if you are curious, I recommend you consult your local Biblical historian. I'll let it slide.

A Little Ethnic Cleansing

It appears that the exiles return in at least two separate waves, and if I read the text correctly there is quite a bit of tension between the groups who were in Babylon and the Israelites who remained in the countryside after the fall of Jerusalem. The returnees are more insular and religious, having had the shared experience of living as exiles in Babylon, while the locals have been doing what locals do in a multicultural environment, intermarrying and sharing cultural ideas back and forth with the neighbors.

At the end of the book, Ezra -- the leader of one of the waves of returnees -- prevails on the Israelites to enforce an expulsion of all "foreign" wives and and any children by these wives. The text presents this as an excellent idea, carried out with minimal opposition and by popular acclaim. It doesn't take much imagination to realize that this had to have been a brutally devastating wielding of power by the social conservatives. The fate of the wives and children is not mentioned.

Ezra "resolved the identity threat which arose by the intermarriage between Jews and foreigners," is says here on the Wiki, and for this is "highly respected in the Jewish tradition." So as usual my way looking at things is a bit non-traditional, I suppose.

Interesting Bits

• This is, to my memory, the first time in the Bible that we have seen the word "Jews." It was the Israelites that were taken away to Babylon, but it is the Jews that return. There's no indication that this represents any change; it's just a new term introduced without explaination.
  
• Ezra 8 and 9 are written in first person, by Ezra. Other books of the Bible have traditionally recognized authors -- Moses for the Books of Moses, for instance -- but I believe this is the first time we have an account that is directly written by participant in the action.
  
• Finally, one of the human details that occasionally reward a close reading of the Bible. The people have been forcefully assembled in the central square of Jerusalem, knowing that they will be told that all "foreign" women and children will have to be expelled. ...all the people were sitting in the square before the house of God, we're told, greatly distressed by the occasion and because of the rain. (10:9) And wouldn't it just be like that? Not only do you have to endure bullying by social extremists, but to cap it off it has to rain on the outdoor meeting? It must have been a really, really awful day.

NEXT WEEK: Whatever book comes after Ezra!

2 Chronicles 33-36: The Fall of Judah, Again

Manasseh

In 2 Kings 21:1-18, we learn that Manasseh about as bad as it gets in terms of religious orthodoxy. It doesn't look like there is any diety that he didn't worship, and he builds altars to just about anybody with a cult right inside the Temple. Manasseh leads the people of Judah so far astray, we are told, that they become worse than the peoples that God had wiped out to make space for the Israelites.

We are given the same story in 2 Chronicles 33:1-20, but the story continues on in an interesting arc. In the Chronicles account, God punishes the lapsed Israelites by having them defeated by the Assyrians, and Manasseh is led on an unpleasant trip to Babylon in shackles and with a hook in his nose. Perhaps not surprisingly, this experience makes him feel pretty repentent, and in his distress he sought the favor of the Lord his God and humbled himself greatly before the God of his fathers. God is sympathetic, and somehow he brought him back to Jerusalem and to his kingdom. A reformed Manasseh becomes a more effective king, and has all the altars he had built early in his reign torn down again.

Amon

A young man who serves only two years before he is assassinated, Amon gets the last four verses of 2 Kings 21 and the last six of 2 Chronicles 33.

Josiah

Josiah is the king of Judah during whose reign Moses' Book of the Law is found in the Temple. The account in Chronicles 34-35 is pretty much the same as that in 2 Kings 22-23. Realizing that the Israelites have strayed far from the Law of Moses, Josiah does his best to restore religious practice.

In the Kings version, God appreciates Josiah's efforts but subsequently allows Judah to be destroyed anyway because he's still so angry about Manasseh. This doesn't work in Chronicles, where Manasseh has managed to rehabilitate himself. In this version, God informs Josiah -- through a female prophet named Huldah -- that he will destroy Judah out of a more general anger for the generations of religious neglect. Since God promises not to start until Josiah is dead, the people must be especially horrified to see him attack, for no good reason I can divine, an Egyptian army on its way to war with someone else. He is killed by archers, and it's all over but the shouting for the last independant Israelite kingdom.

The Shouting

Johoahaz, Johoiakim, Johoiachin, and Zedekiah are covered in 2 Kings 23:31 - 24:7 and 2 Chronicles 36:1-14. None of them is able to do anything but preside over the erosion of Judah by the rising powers of Egypt and Assyria. Both books end with an account of the fall of Jerusalem, the corruption and destruction of the population of Judah, and the enslavement of everyone who remained in Babylon.

Both books, however, end on a positive note. 2 Kings ended with the release of Jehoiachin, the penultimate king of Judah, and his humane treatment under King Evil-Merodach of Assyria. Here in 2 Chronicles, if I'm reading it right, an Assyrian king apparently undergoes a religious conversion after the Israelites have been in exile for seventy years. Here's how it ends:

22 In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, in order to fulfill the word of the LORD spoken by Jeremiah, the LORD moved the heart of Cyrus king of Persia to make a proclamation throughout his realm and to put it in writing:

23 "This is what Cyrus king of Persia says: " 'The LORD, the God of heaven, has
given me all the kingdoms of the earth and he has appointed me to build a temple for him at Jerusalem in Judah. Anyone of his people among you—may the LORD his God be with him, and let him go up.' "

Well, THAT certainly seems like a lucky break for the Israelites. Perhaps we'll read all about it next time.

But first!

It's time for the annual MRtB Winter Sabbatical. In fact, it's a little past time, but I wanted to finish up Chronicles before taking the break. I'll start up again sometime in January with the Book of Ezra. It's kind of exciting to me that I'm getting into some of those really short chapters of the Old Testament that I've always wondered about. What's in those chapters, anyway? Guess we'll find out!

Got Stats?

I've finished 14 of the Bible's 66 books now, which puts me 21.2% of the way in. In chapters, though, I've finished 403 of 1189, a little more than a third of the way through (33.9%). My favorite measure is verses, though; having completed a whopping 12017 verses, I'm 38.6% of the way through the 31102 verse Bible.

I stayed on task pretty well in 2008, covering 7124 verses (compared to 4687 in 2007 and 206 in 2006). At the current pace, I would wrap up in Summer 2011, at which point I guess I'll have to find a new hobby.

Thanks to anybody who's reading. See ya sometime in January!

2 Chronicles 26-32: Four More Kings!

2 Chronicles continues to parallel the time span covered in 2 Kings, focusing on the lives of the kings of Judah. I'm kind of fascinated by this parallel narrative, so I'm going to continue to compare and contrast.

Uzziah. Or, um, Azariah.

King Uzziah is covered in 2 Chronicles 26. You won't find him if you look back to my coverage of 2 Kings, because he is called "Azariah" back there. We don't hear much about him, only 7 verses, and even that little bit is ambivalent. We're told that he is a good kind who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord (15:3), but also that because he didn't destroy the altars in the "high places" (which are altars to God, but unauthorized -- there's only supposed to be the one alter in Jerusalem) God afflicted him with leprosy and he had to abdicate in favor of his son.

Here in Chronicles, you get a very positive picture of an able administrator who expanded agricultural production and defense and built fortifications and artilliary pieces, the big-budget military expenditures of the ancient world. After that, though, he has a confrontation with the high priest, whose name is... wait for it... "Azariah." God then afflicts him with leprosy during the argument, and he has to move out of the palace and abdicate his rule.

It's entirely possible that Azariah was an incredibly common name, and that both the civil and religious leaders could have both had that name or one much like it. But, it's hard not to wonder if this confusion of names is static in the historical record.

Jotham

Jotham is dealt with in six verses of 2 Kings 15. He gets his own chapter in 2 Chronicles 27, but it's one of the shortest chapters we've seen so far. You get a brief portrait of another king who expanded Judah's influence, build towns and public works, and enjoyed military success.

Ahaz

Ahaz is covered in 2 Kings 16 and 2 Chronicles 28, and they tell stories with very different spins. In the Kings version, Ahaz is attacked by both Aram and Israel, and seeks help from the king of Assyria, who stomps on Aram and provides Judah some relief. Ahaz, impressed by Assyria's success, builds a new Assyrian-style temple in Jerusalem and conducts sacrifices there, an obvious no-no.

The Chronicles story casts Ahaz as a pathetic figure. Here, Judah is completely at Israel's mercy, but God makes the army of Israel play nice and give up their prisoners and plunder. When Ahaz turns to Assyria for help he gets no assistance, but is set upon by a new enemy to whom he has advertised his weakness. And instead of just borrowing Assyrian temple architecture, he actually turns to worshiping the Assyrian gods. The two Ahazes of Kings and Chronicles are not impossible to reconcile as two different takes on the same guy -- but it takes some real effort.

Hezekiah

Of Hezekiah, too, we get very different depictions, but in this case they are not hard to reconcile. The 2 Kings 18-20 version focuses on his foreign policy, his successful resistance to Babylonian encroachment. In 2 Chronicles 29-32, you hear a little of this, but a lot more about his restoration of the Temple and of religious orthodoxy. Note that he gets six chapters all to himself. Hezekiah is a big shot!

His restoration of the Temple is kind of interesting. Ever since Moses -- hell, ever since Adam -- we've seen a regular rhythm of ebb and flow, where people fall away from God and then return to him, fall away and return, fall away and return, over and over and over. Hezekiah's religious revival could just be the 300th iteration of this pattern. But, you get the impression in Chronicles that the population as a whole has completely abandoned the practices of Moses, and that when the new king restores the Temple and the Levite priests, everything has to be reestablished from scratch. They aren't even able to celebrate Passover the first year, because no one remembers how and because there aren't enough priests. They end up having an ad hoc celebration several months later, and Hezekiah has to intercede with God because none of the people understand ritual purity and they are all practicing the sacrifices and ceremonies while they are completely unclean.

Hezekiah lives at the same time with, and interacts with, the prophet Isaiah. This makes sense: you've got a active, famous figure of religious revival coinciding with a big push to reform and reestablish the state religion. But the depth from which the religion needs to be salvaged really makes you wonder what was going on before them. Both Uzziah and Jotham are described as kings who "walk in the way of the Lord," and only the 16 year reign of bad King Ahaz is between them and Hezekiah. I'm unsure whether we're supposed to infer that worship had been on the skids for generations, despite the good behavior of many of the kings, or whether Ahaz was just so irreligious that worship according to the laws of Moses nearly disappeared under his watch.


Next Time: Only seven more kings! Only three more chapters!