So it's come to this...
When I started this blog I wasn't anywhere near convinced that it was going to be a project I could keep up with, and I'm surprised it took me more than 30 per cent of the way through the Bible to really hit a giant lag. In my defense, it was the result of my being on the opposite side of the planet without reliable or consistent Internet service for more than a week, but still... here we are.
So I'm now epically behind, and as far as I see it, the only way I'm ever catching up is if I break one of my initial rules, which was to always limit posts to just a handful of chapters, ideally no more than two days' worth of readings per post, regardless of how far behind I was.
Up till now that's been serving me fairly well, since I've managed to keep up with readings and not actually get all that far behind on postings, but now that I'm well over an entire book behind, I'm going to have to do a grave disservice to 2 Kings (and to 1 Chronicles, but that's for tomorrow...) and just give a brief, not-at-all-sufficient, summary of the book with some specific thoughts and then move on.
So here we go: a short post covering almost all of 2 Kings...
The first 14 chapters are largely the continuing story of Elisha and the establishment of the monarchies of Israel and Judah. This generally follows the trend established so far in the Bible wherein the narrative follows a protagonist (of sorts) that is more or less on God's side most of the time.
A quick rundown:
- Adam
- Seth
- Noah
- Abraham
- Isaac
- Jacob
- Joseph
- Moses
- Joshua
- the succession of Judges
- Samuel
- Saul/David/Solomon
- Elijah
- Elisha
There are a couple of spots where these guys weren't the main focus all of the time, but they represent a nearly unbroken string of Godly (again, most of the time, more or less) representation by a human in the meat of the story.
Once Elisha dies, though, the rest of 2 Kings reads a bit like a simply chaotic ledger. The book itself feels like a mere summary, punctuated by the constant refrain of "Now the acts of _______, King of _______, aren't they written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of _______?" before moving on to the next (almost universally disappointing and morally vacuous) king.
In isolation, the book might just appear to be, as I said, chaotic and summary, but in the broader context of the preceding books, it's actually a little depressing. The constant stories of terrible kings completely abandoning all of the foundational principles of the nation of Israel becomes a mind-numbing beat that bores its way into your brain. It's actually quite tiring.
I made it through the whole thing, but it was tough.
===
Elisha was odd, for me.
In almost every other case that I can think of, C.S. Lewis's general description of the concept of miracles stands up to scrutiny. In essence what he says is that there are two type of miracles - one that acts as an example of natural laws, accelerated or somehow clarified, and one that offers a glimpse into a future type of existence (IE miraculous modes of being demonstrated by Christ after the resurrection). He describes what many people would consider miraculous as being simply "magic" and passes them off as being either nonexistent or demonic in nature (the fairy-tale idea of turning a tree into a person or vice-versa - that type of thing).
However, Elisha's miracles strike me as just that - stuff out of fairy tales. I can't quite make head or tail of them, really. Summoning a bunch of bears to kill a gaggle of "young men" who were taunting him? Throwing a stick into a river to make a borrowed iron axe head float so that a guy wouldn't owe another guy a replacement? They smack of some lackadaisical Jedi using the Force to tie his shoes or grab a beer from the fridge without having to miss any of the game... It's just weird, and I have absolutely no idea what to make of it.
The other thing that strikes me as unnerving about Elisha's 'miracles' is that God's really not involved in any explicit way at all. When Moses parted the waters, or Elijah won the "battle-of-the-Gods" on Mount Carmel, God was either directing the shots, or actively participating, but here we just have Elisha running into spots of trouble and then just tapping into the supernatural to solve them.
I'm genuinely unsettled by these things, so I'm going to close with a Far Side comic. Tongue in cheek? Yes. Relevant? Absolutely.
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