1 Kings 15-20 - Jumpin' Jehoshaphat!

The readings - days 108 and 109 - 1 Kings15-20

Kings continues with a few chapters the various lines of succession in the two kingdoms (Israel and Judah), and descriptions of the various nefarious characters that take over the thrones.

Well... the nefarious characters that take over one of the thrones, anyway. A good general rule of thumb seems to be that Israel sucks, while Judah tends to be alright. Time and time again, the kings of Israel fall in with idols, false gods, bad business of all kinds, and generally prove to be quite an irritant for God.  Down in Judah, however, things seem to trend towards God, rather than away from Him.

Pop quiz! Anyone remember which kingdom David's line continued in? Anyone? Anyone?

1 Kings 10-14 - Solomon screws up

The readings - Days 106 and 107 - 1 Kings 10-14

So it turns out that seven months of sleep deprivation is about the limit that my brain can handle. That's my story for why these posts have ground to a bit of a halt, and I'm sticking to it. It's also an explanation as to why I can't even type a few words in sequence without having to correct a whole mess'o'typos...

Anyway.

The Queen of Sheba! She's come to visit Solomon!

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure why this particular story is in here, but maybe I'm trying too hard to relate everything together. Kings is a history book (fine - two history books), and it's quite self-aware of itself as a recording of events (particularly a bit later on when it keeps trailing off and telling its readers that if they really want to know more they should just read Chronicles), so maybe the whole point is just to tell the story.

It's an impressive story, after all. This foreign dignitary arrives positively blinged out and is duly blown away by the extravagant wealth, power and wisdom of Solomon. Quite a feather in Solomon's already considerably decorated hat.

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It's a well-known story, and (as I said) I'm super tired, so I'm not really going to get into Solomon's idiocy, what with letting a few of his 700-odd wives convince his sorry self to screw things up for everybody. Stuff sucks.

So then the kingdom gets divided, and that's pretty much that until 1948. It's pretty much Israel vs. Judah from here on out.

2 Sam 1-3 - Altruism and Politics

The readings - Day 95 - 2 Samuel 1-3

When we last left Saul and Jonathan, they were dead.

They're still dead.

But what I wanted to bring up again was how that happened. At the end of 1 Sam, Saul's sons are killed in battle, and the enemy's coming for him, too, so he asks his armour bearer to kill him so that he's not killed by his enemies. His armour bearer declines, so Saul offs himself. His enemy, deprived of the opportunity to actually kill him, instead parades his bits all over their kingdom.

Judges 8-12 - on civil wars and kids as collateral

The readings - Days 80 and 81 - Judges 8-12

Hooray! All caught up!

*one small note, because it may give insight into why I get behind in this thing. When I started this post (yes, the one link and that one line) it was around 10:45 p.m. and I was ready to go. I then spent the next two hours reading about pirates on the Internet. I will now type a sentence that is simultaneously genuine/heartfelt and bitter/sarcastic. Thanks a lot, Internet.

So... Judges, eh? Israel still generally sucks at remembering/following the rules, which by now shouldn't come as a huge surprise. However, what does come as something of a surprise (although maybe this shouldn't either) is how bad they seem to be at just getting along with each other. Once you get borders and factions involved in a nation, there's bound to be conflict, I suppose, but it just seems like the whole country is one or two tequila shooters away from ripping itself to pieces in a civil war.