Friday, August 12
First Kings 12: Rehoboam was almost the perfect example of what the Bible means by the word “fool.” Because he was the son of Solomon, Israel’s wisest king, furthermore, this foolishness was a matter of irony as well as tragedy.
After Solomon’s death in 922, this heir to Israel’s throne traveled to Schechem, to receive the nation’s endorsement as its new ruler. The move was especially necessary with respect to Israel’s northern tribes, a people touchy about their traditional rights and needing to be handled gently. Even David, we recall, had to be made king twice, first over Judah about the year 1000 (2 Samuel 2:4,10) and then over the north some years later (5:4-5).
Those northern tribes, for their part, seemed willing to be ruled by Rehoboam, but they craved assurance that the new king would respect their ancient traditions and customs. Truth be told, they had not been entirely happy with Rehoboam’s father, Solomon, and they sought from his son a simple pledge that their grievances would be taken seriously in the future (1 Kings 12:1-4). A great deal depended on Rehoboam’s answer.
The new king apparently took the matter seriously, because he sought counsel on what to say. He began by consulting the seniors of the royal court, the very men who had for forty years provided guidance for his father. These were the elder statesmen of the realm, those qualified to give the most prudent political counsel.
Significantly, these older men urged Rehoboam in the direction of caution and moderation with respect to the northern tribes: “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them when you answer them, then they will be your servants forever” (12:7).
Rehoboam, nonetheless, eschewing the instruction of his elders, followed the impulses of his younger companions, who encouraged him to stand tough and not let himself be pushed around. Indeed, they urged Rehoboam to be insulting and provocative to the petitioners (12:8-11). Pursuing this foolish counsel, then, he immediately lost the larger part of his kingdom (12:12-16).
As I suggested above, there is great irony here, for it may be said that one of the major practical purposes of the Book of Proverbs, traditionally ascribed to Solomon, was to prevent and preclude exactly the mistake made by Solomon’s son. According to Proverbs, the fool is the man who ignores the counsel of the old and follows the impulses of untried youth.
Many a life has been ruined—and in this case a kingdom lost—because someone preferred the pooled stupidity of his contemporaries to the accumulated wisdom of his elders. Those whose counsel Rehoboam spurned, after all, were not just any old men—they were the very ancients who had provided guidance to Israel’s most sagacious monarch.
Rehoboam’s reign of seventeen years knew its ups and downs—the downs dominant. Five years after the story narrated above, Pharaoh Shishak, founder of Egypt’s twenty-second dynasty, invaded the Holy Land and took pretty much whatever attracted his eye: “In the fifth year of King Rehoboam, Shishak king of Egypt came up against Jerusalem. He took away the treasures of the house of the Lord and the treasures of the king’s house. He took away everything. He also took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made” (14:26).
The Sacred Text goes on to remark, “King Rehoboam made in their place shields of bronze” (14:27). By setting bronze shields in the Temple to replace the golden shields of Solomon, Rehoboam enacted a truly wretched symbolism. Some of the ancients (Daniel, Hesiod, Ovid) spoke of an historical decline from a golden age to a silver age, and thence to a bronze age. No one disputes, of course, that Solomon’s was a golden age (10:14-29). However, the reign of Rehoboam, his heir, was a declension, not just to silver, but all the way to bronze. The lplunge, when it came, came at once, in a single generation.
Rehoboam remained, Josephus tells us, “a proud and foolish man” (Antiquities 8.10.4). He never recovered from the singular folly of his first political decision. After Shishak’s invasion, this thin, pathetic shadow of his father and grandfather reigned under a humiliating Egyptian suzerainty for a dozen more years. Like every fool, he had a heart problem. The final word about Rehoboam asserts, “he did evil, for he did not set his heart to seek the Lord” (2 Chronicles 12:14).
Saturday, August 13
Mark 13:28-37: There have always been Christians persuaded that they can discern, from a close reading of biblical prophecy, the various stages of world history and even the specific events attendant on the end of history. In the present reading, however, Jesus warns against such speculation, saying that no one knows of that day and hour except the Father (verse 32).
These prophecies of the last times, whether in the present chapter of Mark or elsewhere in Holy Scripture, are too general to disclose such particulars of time. They serve, rather, as warnings for all times, exhortations of vigilance to the Church in every age. They instruct us less about God’s schedule than about our responsibilities.
In this final section of Mark 13, Jesus takes up the question with which the chapter began: When will these things happen and what will be the signs thereof? That question, we recall, was raised by the Apostles in response to the Lord’s prediction of the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple. All through this chapter the Lord has described, in dramatic imagery, the complex events that will culminate in that catastrophe. He could truly assert, therefore, “I have told you all things beforehand” (verse 23). Jesus has clearly prophesied the destruction of Jerusalem within a generation, destruction so complete that it could foreshadow the end of the world itself.
And what are Christians to do in the face of these impending disasters? They are to remain vigilant, to watch and to pray and to trust in God.
Acts 21.15-36: : The day after his arrival in Jerusalem, Paul goes to pay his respects to James, the Lord’s “brother,” who appears to be the chief pastor of the church in that city and the leader of its presbyters. This impression is consonant with the early preserved lists of the bishops of the churches, where James is invariably listed as Jerusalem’s first bishop (along with Mark as Alexandria’s, Evodius as Antioch’s, Linus as Rome’s, and so on).
Unlike the earlier gathering at Jerusalem in Acts 15, this meeting does not mention the “apostles.” These latter have by now all left Jerusalem and have gone to preach the Gospel in other lands, some of which have preserved memories of earlier apostolic evangelization. There is evidence that the apostle Thomas preached in India, for example, Philip in Phrygia, Matthew in Syria and Ethiopia, and Andrew in Thrace. The apostle Peter had moved westward by this time, but the absence of his name from Paul’s letter to the Romans indicates that he had not yet reached the Empire’s capital, where he would, along with Paul, suffer martyrdom.
Sunday, August 14
First Kings 14: The similarities between Samuel and Ahijah are truly striking. Both of them prophets from Shiloh, both were likewise appointed to designate new kings for Israel: Saul in the case of Samuel, Jeroboam in the case of Ahijah. Both of those kings, each of whom reigned roughly twenty years, proved to be failures. Finally, toward the end of their reigns, the same two prophets, both of them now quite old, were once again commissioned to announce the downfalls of the aforesaid kings and the impending changes of dynasty. Thus, Samuel prophesied the rise of David (1 Samuel 13:14), and Ahijah foretold the coming of Baasha (1 Kings 14:14).
Although the story of Samuel, because of its greater length and the richer detail in its telling, is doubtless the better known of the two, the account of Ahijah is no less dramatic and every bit as memorable.
Ahijah first appears on the biblical scene late in the reign of Solomon. By way of preparing for his appearance, Holy Scripture tells of the evils attendant on Solomon’s rule (11:1–9) and the external political enemies who rise to challenge his kingdom (11:14–25). It is at this point that the Bible introduces young Jeroboam, whom Solomon has appointed an overseer for the northern tribes. As Jeroboam leaves Jerusalem to undertake his new responsibilities, he is met by the Prophet Ahijah, who abruptly proceeds to tear his clothing into twelve parts. Having thereby gained his total attention, Ahijah explains to the young man that these twelve torn fragments represent Israel’s twelve tribes, and he goes on to prophesy that Jeroboam will govern ten of those tribes, leaving only two tribes for the dynasty of David (11:26–39). All of this prophecy is fulfilled in the events that immediately follow the death of Solomon (11:30—12:16).
We do not again hear of Ahijah for a long time, nor does the Bible give us reason to suppose that Jeroboam further consulted the prophet for advice in the governance of the realm. Unlike David, whose reign benefited from the prophetic counsel of Nathan, Jeroboam puts all thought of God behind him (14:9). On one occasion when he is accosted by an anonymous prophet from Judah, Jeroboam asks for the man’s prayers but pays no heed to his prophetic warning (13:1–9). Furthermore, if Jeroboam had conferred with the Prophet Ahijah, whom God sent to him in the first place, he likely would not have erected those two golden calves at Bethel and Dan, thereby doubling the ancient infidelity of Aaron. (Compare 12:28 with Exodus 32:4, 8).
No, Jeroboam does not place himself under the judgment and discipline of the prophetic word. He is one of those men who want God on their side, without taking care to be on God’s side. Craving the divine aid without the divine ordinance, Jeroboam will not consult Ahijah again for many years.
When he does so, it is because his son is sick, and he sends his wife to the prophet in hopes of obtaining a favorable word. Jeroboam sends her, moreover, in disguise, evidently too embarrassed to let Ahijah know who it is that seeks that word. The prophet himself, by this time, has grown very old, and his sight is failing.
Foolish Jeroboam, thinking to deceive the prophetic vision! Ahijah had been able to read the signs of the times during the reign of Solomon, but Jeroboam now fancies he can deceive the old seer with such a clumsy ruse. Inwardly guided by the Almighty, Ahijah reads the situation perfectly, and the Lord himself dictates “thus and thus” what he is to say.
Monday, August 15
First Kings 15: Asa (913–873 BC) was Judah’s initial “reform” king, in this respect a forerunner to Hezekiah and Josiah. He was the first of those very few kings of whom it was said that he “did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, as did his father David” (1 Kings 15:11).
When Asa came to the throne as David’s fourth successor, the realm was not doing very well. During the reign of Asa’s grandfather, Rehoboam, Judah’s financial state had been greatly weakened by incessant war with the Northern Kingdom (15:6) and by an invasion from Egypt (14:25–26). Hardly better was the nation’s spiritual state, for idolatry and gross immorality were rife (14:22–23). Rehoboam was followed on the throne by Asa’s father, Abijah, but the latter, too, “walked in all the sins of his father, which he had done before him” (15:3).
These problems seem not to have daunted the young Asa, who cleaned up Judah’s idolatry and immorality with such dispatch and efficiency that 1 Kings can account for the work in a single verse (15:12).
Although the longer description of Asa’s reign in 1 Chronicles 14—16 describes in greater detail some of the more serious problems he encountered, there is reason to believe that Asa’s greatest single headache came from his . . . grandmother!
Had Asa’s accession to the throne followed traditional policy on the point, this grandmother, known to history as Maachah the Younger, would have retired to spend her remaining days rocking and knitting in some quiet corner of the palace, occasionally stopping to dandle a grandchild or take some cookies from the oven. Her role as queen mother, or gebirah, would have been assumed by Asa’s own mother.
As it happened, however, the old lady did not step down, and evidently, on the day that Asa took the throne, no one in the realm was sufficiently powerful to make her step down, not even the new king.
Maachah doubtless enjoyed occupying what was a very powerful position in ancient courts. Since royal sons were hardly disposed to decline reasonable requests from their mothers (cf. 1 Kings 2:17), it was no small advantage for other members of the court to cultivate the favor of the gebirah. Her special place in the realm is further indicated by the fact that the Books of Kings normally list the names of the mothers of the kings of Judah.
The case of Maachah demonstrates that an especially shrewd gebirah, were she also unscrupulous, might manage to maintain her position at court even after the death of her son. A woman so powerful, after all, was able to put quite a number of people in her debt over the years—influential and well-placed individuals on whom she might rely later on to keep her in power. The Bible’s truly singular example of this was Athaliah, the mother of Ahaziah, who actually usurped the realm itself during the years 842–837 BC (2 Kings 11).
Maachah herself never went so far, but she did manage to hold on to her privileged position at court after the accession of Asa (1 Kings 15:10). She had been around for quite a while and was well acquainted with the ways of power. Named for her grandmother, Maacah the Elder, a Geshurite princess married to David (2 Samuel 3:3), this younger Maachah was a daughter of Absalom. She was still a child during the three years that she spent with her father in his exile in Geshur (2 Samuel 13:38). Doubtless it was there that she first learned the ways of idolatry.
For Maachah was most certainly an idolatress. Raised in the easygoing atmosphere of her Uncle Solomon’s court after the death of her own father, she further learned the lessons of idolatry along with the habits of political power. Given in marriage to her cousin Rehoboam, who would eventually succeed Solomon on the throne, Maachah knew that someday, when her son Abijah became king, she would become the gebirah. She longed for the day.
That day, when it came, did not last very long, for Abijah reigned only three years. No matter, for the determined Maachah somehow found the means to stay in power for a while longer. Except for her idolatry, Asa might have left her in place for good. But the king, as his position grew stronger, was in a reforming mood, and Maachah stood in the way of his reforms. “You know, Granny,” he finally said to her one day, “it’s about time for you to take up knitting” (1 Kings 15:13; 2 Chronicles 15:16).
Tuesday, August 16
First Kings 16: The Northern Kingdom, protected by no divine covenant, quickly becomes the possession of whoever gains sufficient political advantage. In this chapter we are introduced to several northern kings, including Elah (886-885), Zimri (one week in 885), and Omri (885-874, with a co-regency with Ahab from 881). The entire period of these kings is contemporary with the reign of just one king in the south, Asa (911-870, with co-regency with Jehoshaphat from 873).
Also introduced is King Ahab, about whom we will learn a good deal in the next few chapters. His reign in the north (874-853) is roughly contemporary with that of King Jehoshaphat in the south (873 to 848, with co-regency with Jehoram from 853). A study of the reign of Jehoshaphat provides useful insight into the wider political, social, and religious developments of this period.
Although the Prophet Eliezer leveled a half-verse of criticism against Jehoshaphat near the end of the king’s life (2 Chronicles 20:37), the Bible is, on the whole, rather positive in its assessment of that king of Judah. An earlier historian of the period summed it up: “And [Jehoshaphat] walked in all the ways of his father Asa. He did not turn aside from them, doing what was right in the eyes of the Lord” (1 Kings 22:43).
Still, it is instructive to examine some unforeseen results of certain practical choices made by Jehoshaphat during the course of his admittedly virtuous life, because those unintended consequences bear witness to the human condition of sinful helplessness, our native inability to accomplish the good we will (cf. Romans 7:15–19). However pure his intentions, it is a fact that some terrible things came to pass by reason of Jehoshaphat’s political decisions. Indeed, they nearly led to the downfall of the house of David.
When he took his place on the throne of Judah in 873, Jehoshaphat resolved that there would be no more fighting with the kingdom of Israel. As much as anyone, he was sick of the strife that had ravaged the Promised Land for half a century, ever since the division of the region into two kingdoms at the death of Solomon in 922. The reign of Jehoshaphat’s own father, Asa, had been particularly bellicose. “Now there was war between Asa and Baasha king of Israel all their days,” wrote that same historian of the period (1 Kings 15:16, 32).
Naturally, so much warfare exacted a heavy toll from Judah, in loss of life, disruption of families, devastated crops, impaired commerce, and swollen taxation, leading to a general weakening of the economy and the social order. None of this fighting, furthermore, had accomplished much. Since the only sane reason for a nation to wage a war is to decide something, hardly any national experience is so disheartening as an indecisive war, and Judah, by this time, was very disheartened.
Wednesday, August 17
First Kings 17: Although the institution of the northern throne, unlike the Davidic throne, is blessed by no covenant, God does not forsake His people in the north. As we see throughout these chapters, He continues to bless them through the non-institutional ministry of the prophets, several of whom are anonymously mentioned in the story of the Northern Kingdom. Of those who are named, special attention is given to Elijah, Micaiah, and Elisha. In First Kings, the dominant prophetic person is Elijah the Tishbite, who is introduced in the present chapter.
These next three chapters are united around the theme of the drought that took place during the reign of Ahab. It was invoked by the Prophet Elijah as a divine punishment against the infidelity of the Northern Kingdom, chiefly through its compromising alliance with the Phoenicians and their god, Baal.
We observe that Elijah, rather like John the Baptist in the Gospel accounts, receives no adequate introduction in the narrative. We find him shouting as soon as he appears. Elijah appreciates the irony of this punitive drought; the people have forsaken the Lord and given themselves over to this Phoenician-Canaanite divinity, Baal, who is a rain god. Now, as a result of this new adherence, the rain suddenly stops for three and a half years. And Baal is powerless to do anything about it! The ensuing famine also hits Phoenicia (cf. Josephus, Antiquities 8.13.2).
When the crisis of the drought is resolved, at last, it will be resolved in a very dramatic way. It will not simply start raining again. It will start raining only after Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal to a sensational “rain match” in chapter 18. When Elijah is on the scene, there is never a boring moment.
Meanwhile, for the next forty-two months, everybody suffers the drought, including Elijah himself, who finds a bit of water in small Wadi Cherith and is fed daily by two ravens that bring him meat and bread. We have here a clear parallel with the manna eaten by the Israelites in the desert during the time of Moses. Elijah is certainly aware of this parallel. His mental association with Moses is so sharply a feature of his identity that we will find him, in just a few chapters, standing before the Lord on the very mountain where Moses received the Torah.
When the wadi dries up, Elijah must seek other arrangements. As he travels in search of sustenance, he comes to the village of Zarephath, on the Phoenician coast, south of Sidon. Here he meets a widow—clearly a pagan —with a son, whose resources have been reduced to their single meal. Elijah requests the gift of that meal, and the compassionate widow gives it to him. From that instant on, the woman and her son are miraculously provided with food until the end of the drought. Here there is a parallel with the earlier experience of Elijah himself, who was daily fed by the ravens.
When the widow’s son dies, Elijah’s prayer brings about his resuscitation. Jesus, in his first sermon in Luke’s Gospel, refers to this woman (cf. Luke 4:25-26). There is also a parallel with the widow who gave her last bit of resources to the Lord in the Gospel story (cf. Mark 12:41-44; Luke 21:1-4).
Thursday, August 18
Acts 24.1-21: Paul makes his defense before an official representative of the Roman government. To be his prosecutor, the Sanhedrin put forward a trained orator, Tertullus, who begins his argument by attempting to ingratiate Felix. It is shameless. When he credits Felix’s administration with the blessings of peace (24:2), for instance, the statement is true only in the sense that Felix had rather ruthlessly suppressed rebel uprisings and acts of terrorism (cf. Josephus, Jewish War 2.13.2 [252]). Tertullus diplomatically passes over those activities of Felix which effectively fomented rebellion and terrorism, those displays of his administration’s rapacity and harshness that would in due course lead to the Jewish rebellion against Rome.
Tertullus, aware of the attitude of Felix toward anything smacking of sedition, endeavors to portray Paul as a sort of revolutionary. The allegedly seditious party represented by Paul and here called the Nazarenes, is described as a “heresy” (24:5; cf. 24:14; 26:5; 28:22). This is hardly the first occasion on which Paul is portrayed as a trouble-maker (cf. 16:20; 17:6).
The opening sentence of Paul’s rebuttal is an exercise in irony that may, without exaggeration, be paraphrased as follows: “Well, there you have it, your Honor, you already know what these Jews are like, so you surely are not impressed by these trumped up accusations.”
In the course of Paul’s argument we learn that only twelve days have elapsed since his arrival in Jerusalem, a sum attained simply by the compound of seven (21:27) and five (24:1).
Explaining that he has come to Jerusalem solely as a pilgrim (“to worship” in 21:11) and to bring aid for the poor (21:17), Paul makes three points by way of “defense” (apologoumai in 21:10): First, no witnesses have testified to the charges brought against him (24:12-13,19). Second, he is, and has always lived as, a loyal, religious Jew. This is a scoring point, which Paul emphasizes by mentioning the Law and prophets (24:14). Because the Sadducees do not accept the prophetic books of the Bible as canonical, Paul is appealing once again to the judgment of the Pharisees. Third, Paul shares in the hope of the resurrection of the dead, a standard doctrine taught by the Pharisees (24:15,21) and which he himself had proclaimed before the Sanhedrin. As in his earlier appearance before that body, Paul is endeavoring to draw attention to an internal doctrinal split among his accusers.
Friday, August 19
First Kings 19: In the Books of Kings it is not difficult to perceive the ways in which the prophets Elijah and Elisha resemble the great Moses. Indeed, emphasizing that resemblance pertained very much to the author’s purpose, for he had in mind to portray them both as Moses’ latter-day successors, each providing some measure of fulfillment to Moses’ own prophecy that he would be succeeded by a prophet like himself (Deuteronomy 18:15–18). This perspective is likewise part of the Bible’s more general care to regard the prophetic corpus as the proper sequence to the Law. In fact, the expression “the Law and the Prophets” is sometimes employed to mean simply the whole Hebrew Bible.
In due course we shall explore the ways in which Elisha (introduced in the present chapter) resembles Moses. For now, let us limit our consideration to Elijah, who resembles Moses in several particulars of his story: a miraculous provision of meat and bread in the wilderness (1 Kings 17:4–7), a fast of forty days while journeying through the desert on the strength of miraculously provided bread and water (19:4–8), and, in the present chapter, an encounter with the Lord on Mount Horeb, complete with all the sounds and sights associated with Moses’ own experience in that place. Elijah receives his prophecies on the very mountain where Moses received the Law. Like Moses too, Elijah covers his face in response to his mountaintop experience (19:9–13). Then, when the time comes for Elijah to leave this life, he repeats Moses’ act of parting the waters and then disappears east of the Jordan, where Moses disappeared (2 Kings 2:8–18).
As the present chapter begins, Elijah is afraid, this same Elijah who acted so fearlessly in the preceding story. He flees the vengeance and wrath of Jezebel, whose prophets he slew after the episode on Mount Carmel. Elijah is also very tired from the exertions of the previous day, to say nothing of the ordeals associated with the long drought and famine. As he flees southward, he comes to Beersheba, at the southern boundary of Judah. Even for northerners this city is a popular site of pilgrimage (cf. Amos 5:5; 8:14). Here he leaves his servant, for Elijah has in mind to go much further south.
He proceeds another day into the Judean desert and sits under a tree, feeling very discouraged. In this respect Elijah resembles two earlier discouraged travelers in the desert, Moses and David. Totally distressed, he falls asleep from the heat and great fatigue. Twice an angel from the Lord feeds him with bread and water in the wilderness. Strengthened by these modest meals, he travels another 40 days—reminiscent of Moses’ forty years in the wilderness—until he comes to Mount Horeb (Sinai), where the Lord entered into covenant with Israel. He climbs the mountain to the place where Moses met the Lord, amid earthquake, fire, and whirlwind. Elijah’s own revelation from the Lord, however, takes place in a still small voice.
The prophet is warned about the dangers of isolation and self-pity. He is instructed to go back down the mountain and make contact with some of the seven thousand of the Lord’s loyal servants. Elijah must stop all this I-alone-am-left nonsense. There is still work to do. First, he must anoint two new kings, Hazael over Syria and Jehu over Israel. We take note that the Lord has a covenant with neither of these men, but He does choose them.
Finally, Elijah is to anoint Elisha to be his own replacement in the prophetic ministry.