2 Kings 1-5 - Bears!

The readings - Days 111 and 112 - 2 Kings 1-5

If you had to assign different musical genres the various Biblical characters, I'm pretty sure that heavy metal would be a not-bad fit for Elijah. He commands respect, dresses funny, plays (from the perspective of the crappy kings of the time, at any rate) by his own rules, and has a particular love for pyrotechnics.

This time, he follows up on his Mount Carmel hit by calling on God to torch two successive groups of soldiers who have been sent to fetch him by the king. The king was irritated at Elijah for telling him that he was going to die because he sent for word from another god in a neighbouring land instead of consulting with God about it.

1 Kings 21-22 - sniveling kings and Godly staff meetings

The readings - Day 110 - 1 Kings 21-22

Remember that time when I referred to Ahab as one of the most unlikable people ever? I was actually doing a bit of foreshadowing, looking forward to this story.

Don't get me wrong, he's never been a peach, but at least in the past he was despicable for being out-and-out malevolent, and acting entirely outside of the established rules for a king of Israel. He was a villain all the way, but he at least had a sort of internal consistency. He was a little bit like a well-cast movie villain; you love to hate him, but that in itself is a sort of psychologically mitigating factor on your opinion of him.

Then we get to the final two chapters of 1 Kings, and all of that goes out the window, because Ahab becomes genuinely pathetic.

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.

---

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.

1 Kings 6-9 - architecture and priorities

The readings - days 104 and 105 - 1 Kings 6-9

If I had a TARDIS, one of the places I would definitely like to visit would be the original Temple in Israel. Chapter six and most of chapter seven are dedicated to describing it in detail, and the level of luxury and beauty described here is incredible. It's a fitting successor to the Tabernacle, and correspondingly more ornate, since this one gets to have actual walls, and doesn't need to be portable.

It's no wonder that the construction of the first temple is, after the generic "he was wise" thing, the thing that Solomon is most known for. Seven years in the making, with tens of thousands of workers involved at every step of the process, and an intentionality and reverence (workers hewing the stone had to do all their carving off-site so that even while it was being built, the inside of the Temple was undisturbed by excessive noise) that is truly inspiring.

Then we find out that Solomon spend nearly twice as long working on his own palace, which was almost twice as big as the Temple. Huh.

Still, God doesn't seem to sweat it, and Solomon seems to be keeping on the up-and-up on other fronts - making his proper dedicative sacrifices and instructing the people to remember/keep God's commandments, etc, so maybe it's not so big a deal.

1 Kings 1-5 - Solomon = good people

The readings - Days 102 and 103 - 1 Kings 1-5

Here we are, playing catch up again. Things were going so well, too. It's funny how the books/passages that are more boring (IE the dry philosophical/statistical/historical bits) often actually end up being better fodder for writing/reflection that the faster-paced narrative stuff...

Not that the book(s) of Kings starts off at a particularly riveting clip, but still - it's story, and stuff's happening, but maybe that's what makes it a bit harder to write about. The stuff happens, you read about it, and that's pretty much that.

On to Solomon.

2 Sam 22-24 - Census taking and forgetfulness...

The readings - Day 101 - 2 Samuel 22-24

And so the pair of Samuels draws to a close, and befitting David, who held by far the pre-eminent place in the books, it ends (almost) with a song/psalm.

I'll admit, I've always found reading songs to be fairly boring. I'm pretty sure that's why I've still never made it all the way through The Lord of the Rings - Tolkien loved him some ballads, etc, and I just end up getting bored and finding something shiny to look at instead.

2 Sam 19-21 - Dear David, stop sniveling...

The readings - day 100 - 2 Samuel 19-21

There's a trend emerging with David. First, he was pursued all over the country by Saul, who desperately wanted him dead. Then Saul died, and David was grief-stricken. Then Saul's kids started dying, and David was grief-stricken.

Then Absalom comes along, plans a revolt, conspires (successfully) to usurp the throne, and sends David fleeing into the countryside east of the Jordan River. Then Absalom dies. And David is grief-stricken.

2 Sam 13-18 - What?

The readings - days 98 and 99 - 2 Samuel 13-18

It's funny how Biblical history so resembles the rest of history - moments (all too infrequent, unfortunately) of incredible brilliance, examples of humanity at its best and brightest, followed almost immediately by harsh reminders that a lot of people, a lot of the time, suck.

It had to happen, but it's still sad to see it - the rise and reign of David at the heights of reverence and upstandingness have now fallen flat on their faces in the wake and midst of his almost impressively dysfunctional family.

2 Sam 4-12 - David's great! And crappy.

The readings - Days 96-97 - 2 Samuel 4-12

Remember that time when I was in awe of how different our world is from that of the Bible, in terms of the abundance and ubiquitousness of violence on an epic scale?

Yeah, I'm there again. These chapters open up with a hapless and, if we're honest, fairly sniveling/sycophantic pair of guys who sought out and murdered Saul's son Ishbosheth in his sleep, and then brought his head to David's camp, having either never heard, or completely ignored, the story of what happened to the hapless guy who brought the "good news" of Saul's death to David, expecting to be rewarded.

David himself is a little taken aback by the lack of memory or knowledge displayed by these two guys, and he promptly has them killed. And then he cuts off their hands and feet and strings them up by the pool like so many patio lanterns.

Yeah... guess whose voice you're going to be hearing in your head all night now... You're welcome.

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.

1 Sam 28-31 - On seers and faith

The readings - Day 94 - 1 Samuel 28-31

So in case anybody hasn't noticed, it turns out the Middle East (and particularly Israel/Palestine) has pretty much always been a bloodbath region. Here in the closing chapters of 1 Samuel, we get a couple of snapshots of that - the picture painted by the Bible shows a land of nearly constant conquest and re-conquest. Not only are the Philistines still causing problems for Saul and the Israelites, but while David is on campaign with the Philistine king (and he wasn't even gone that long, since he was sent back before the fighting even started) the Philistine region (as well as chunks of Judah) were ransacked and pillages by Amalekite armies, who carry off David's wives and stuff, along with the wives, children and stuff of all the others who are away at the time trying to carry off the wives and stuff of other cities and countries.

1 Sam 25-27 - meals and marriage

The readings - Day 93 - 1 Samuel 25-27

The nice thing about actually keeping up with the readings and posting with them on time is that I have the luxury of much more bite-sized posts, at least for now.

I'm a big, big fan of the storylines that are involved with David's rise to power, as you may have gleaned from yesterday's post.

In the "times have changed" department, I should mention that one of the things I'm most looking forward to in life is getting to tell youngsters (grandchildren and the like) that I'm older than the Internet, and watching their tiny brains smolder and spin as they try to grapple with the very notion of a world without it.

1 Sam 21-24 - Good stuff.

The readings - Day 92 - 1 Samuel 21-24

It's still sort of difficult to find something interesting-seeming to write about when the whole story your reading is so well-known, but such is life.

This story of David, though... It's quite the tale. I think the biggest loss from David becoming such a well-known character is that the sheer drama and excitement of this bit of the Bible can get lost in the shuffle. It becomes a sort of glossed-over cliche, in a way. It's a little like the way people talk about Casablanca or The Godfather - they're so well-known for being tremendous movies that you often only think about them; there's almost no need to watch them anymore. Yes, they're great. Everyone knows that. Let's watch Zoolander instead! (And then maybe we can take turns stabbing ourselves in the eyes with razor-sharp knives made out of vinegar-soaked lemons...)

1 Sam 15-20 - For tonight's performance, the role of Samuel will be played by Sir Ian McKellen

The readings - Days 90 & 91 - 1 Samuel 15-20

We're rapidly approaching what is (now that we're out of the drudgery of Leviticus/Numbers) becoming one of the hardest types of passage to write about - the "all-too-familiar" story.

Within these five chapters, we encounter what is quite possibly the most famous story in the entire Old Testament: David and Goliath. Its message is one of faith, hope and triumph against seemingly hopeless odds, and two out of three of those have been gladly co-opted by modern society, almost ad nauseum (guess which one tends to get left out?), and with good cause. It's a great story - you've got the enormous, lifelong-trained warrior (a whopping nine-and-a-half feet of him at that) against the puny talks-big-for-his-britches shepherd boy who has rocks and a strip of leather, and the 'underdog' wins. Perfect.

1 Sam 9-14 - That Saul, folks!

The readings - Days 88 & 89 - 1 Samuel 9-14

Two important lessons can be learned from these six chapters of First Samuel.

1) Saul, as generally vilified and derided as he remains, was at the beginning a chosen God-picked superstar.

and

2) Kings (dictators, tyrants, etc) are more often than not undone (at least initially) by their own irrepressible arrogance and stupidity.

1 Sam 1-8 - The king and I... srael...

The readings - Days 86 and 87 - 1 Samuel 1-8

If Judges is any indication, the fact that 1 Samuel starts with a man who is from the hill country in Ephraim is hardly the most optimistic sign... Hopefully this one turns out better.

A couple of interesting things about the opening chapters of 1Sam struck me over the course of this run-through.

The first is that I find it somewhat bizarre that people blindly throw out a phrase like "traditional Biblical interpretation of marriage" without, apparently, much of a fleshed-out idea of what that might mean. Samuel himself is the son of a second wife. Anyway... moving on.

Ruth - A breath of fresh air

The readings - Day 85 - Ruth (all four chapters)

Well we're finally out of the book of Judges. Sweet.

The relationship between Judges and Ruth is interesting to me. In Judges, we got a very macro-level view of the goings-on in Israel, and for the most part, they were appalling. Covenants broken, punishments doled out left, right and centre, and generally terrible people doing terrible things. There were glimmers of hope, etc, to be sure, but few and far between. I don't think anyone would try to argue that Judges is an optimistic book.

That's why reading Ruth immediately afterwards is such a refreshing experience. After the bloodshed, idolatry, treachery and violence of the nation as a whole, we get zoomed in to an intimate series of snapshots in the life of a single family. Make no mistake, there's still tragedy here, and not all is rosy, but the story as a whole just can't help but be uplifting.

Judges 17-21 - The dregs

The readings - days 83 and 84 - Judges 17-21

I had a professor once named Ephraim. He remains the only man I've ever met (or really even heard of) by that name.

Not that many of the names Jacob gave to his sons has really caught on through the centuries, other than Joshua, Benjamin (I'm pretty sure that most Dans are actual Daniels, so that doesn't count) and the occasional Levi. You don't meet a lot of Manessehs or Naphtalis these days, and as much as I'd love to, I'm pretty sure I'll never meet anyone named Zebulun.