Esther - maybe not about Esther? Maybe not such a great morality tale...

The readings - Days 150 and 151 - Esther 1-10

Esther is an interesting story. Weighing in at only 10 chapters, it's a pretty easy story to read in one sitting, which is why I thought I'd combine posts to include both halves of it at once.

However, unlike many of the other short, punchy books bearing a specific name throughout the Bible (Ruth, Job, Philemon, etc) it's actually a bit hard to tell whose story Esther really is.

Neh. 1-6 - From a certain point of view

The readings - Days 144 & 145 - Nehemiah 1-6

This is pretty cool. I knew the basic story/history surrounding Nehemiah and the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem, but I don't know that I've spent much time actually reading it, as is the case with large swaths of the rest of the OT. I like it.

For starters, despite the fact that the nation of Israel and the People of God could, at this point, as near as makes no difference not possibly get any worse off (they've been divided, then conquered, then exiled, and everything they held most dear - Jerusalem and the Temple of God - have been absolutely laid waste by the invading Babylonian and then Persian hordes), the book strikes a decidedly hopeful, optimistic and - I hesitate to use a word like this when talking about anything other that fruits/veggies - fresh tone.

Ezra 1-10 - Caught up

The readings - Days 141-143 - Ezra 1-10

So I now have an official answer to give people who try to act like never having read the Bible cover-to-cover is somehow anathema to being Christian. (Yes, I have been told that before, by both crazy Christians and crazy Atheists alike)

It was never meant to be read this way.

I'm not saying that I'm regretting doing it, or that I'm planning on stopping, or even that it's not (at times, at least) incredibly rewarding and enlightening to do it this way. What I'm saying is there's no way that this book was intended to be read through like a novel.

The only alternative to that conclusion is that whoever compiled it had absolutely zero concept of how stories work, and how people would like to read things in order to actually comprehend them effectively.

As if the complete discord of reading through the summarized history of Israel (the single and split kingdoms)  - twice - in Samuel, Kings and Chronicles wasn't enough to convince you that this is not a linear collection of episodes/chapters, here we are in Ezra, which opens with a reference to a prophesy that will not actually be made (according to the way the books of the Bible are laid out) for quite some time.

Cyrus lets the Israelites go home and rebuild stuff, and he does so, according to the text, to fulfill the prophetic words of Jeremiah. For those keeping score, we still have to go through Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon and Isaiah before we get to Jeremiah. Anyway, rant over.

Anyway, so the exiles are on their way home to rebuild the Temple and Jerusalem, but because nothing can ever be straightforward, the neighbours had to go and cause trouble, resulting in a three-king delay before the construction can actually finish. Artaxerxes gets a letter from Judah's enemies, who point to Jerusalem's "rebellious past" and successfully convince him to put a stop to the rebuilding process, and it's not until Darius takes over that Cyrus's original "send them back" decree was dug out of the archives and followed.

And then, as soon as they're back on home soil, what happens? The good ol' intermarriage things starts up again... This time, though, there's a twist. We get a sense of Ezra maybe being a fair shake more attentive to God's wants for His people than previous rulers - and by a remarkable coincidence, he's not actually a king, but instead is acting as Israel's leader from the office of priest. Funny how the whole "king" thing never took off all that well, eh?

Oh well.

This post is another in an alarmingly long list of posts that are shorter than usual for the somewhat counterintuitive reason that it tries to cover too much stuff, but I'm happy to say that we're now completely caught up. Tomorrow should bring another post that's more focused and, therefore, likely a lot longer and more in-depth.

2 Kings 2-25 - A desperate attempt to catch up

The readings - days 113-119 - 2 Kings 6-25

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...