2 Chron 1-36 - yup: one whole book...

The readings - days 130-140 - 2 Chronicles 1-36

So this post, once again, will be far too short, and more than a little meta.

I thought for sure that I was caught up, or at least very far along to road to being caught up, but Chronicles had other plans, so here we are - first post in ten days and a full book behind me.

Chronicles, part deux, was better than the first, but only slightly. It had more ups than the last one did in terms of kings actually behaving themselves, and there were a few points that, while I was reading them, did actually leap out at me as being interesting. However, since I was reading through the entire book in a matter of days, and desperately trying to catch up, they were sacrificed to the god of necessary expediency, and were lost.

Speaking of idolatry, these Israelites sure were good at it. Even kings that were mostly good at not worshipping small wooden statues didn't often go all the way and disassemble other temples, home shrines, and "the high places," like they were supposed to.

Whether it's intentional or not, the Bible sure is setting up a repetitive, cyclical rhythm of Israel screwing up and then waking up, then repeating over and over again.

And then Babylon comes, destroys the Temple, along with Jerusalem, and takes everybody into captivity.

And then Persia destroys Babylon and Cyrus says to the Israelites, "yeah - you guys should probably just go ahead and head home to rebuild your temple and your city. Sorry about Nebuchadnezzar..."

Reading the closing bits of 2 Chronicles is a little like spending an hour looking through a microscope, and then to have the room bulldozed around you. The story is so wrapped up in the goings on of these two comparatively minuscule kingdoms that when a few real local superpowers come barreling through it's a pretty harsh reminder that even at the best of times, the kingdom of Israel was in a pretty precarious spot. Shame they didn't seem to really grasp that either...

And that brings us to Ezra, which will have us caught up on posts and readings by tomorrow.

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.

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.

Judges 1-7 - Times have changed. Or not.

The readings - Days 77-79 - Judges 1-7

I suppose there's something worth addressing, now that we're in the books of the Old Testament normally categorized under the heading of "history."

While these works contain decidedly more detailed and intentionally historical documentation of events, etc, and therefore ought to be treated as more accurately depicting events/people/places/etc than other portions of the OT (IE the Psalms or bits of the Pentateuch), there's something that still strikes as odd about using these books in the same way that we would use a modern history text.

Joshua 16-24 - Of altars and over-reactions...

The readings - Days 74-76 - Joshua 16-24

And the catch-up continues... We're just going to close out Joshua, because the first two of the remaining three days were more geographical specifications, which would normally interest me, but not really knowing any of these places gives no frame of reference. I'm sure it's all fascinating though. Maybe.

Chapter 22, however, is interesting.

Ex. 25-32 - settling

The readings - Days 25-28 - Exodus 25-32

As it turns out, this wasn't a half-bad section to fall a bit behind on, post-wise. I'm glad that I managed to keep up with the readings every day, though, because slogging through these eight chapters in one go could bog a fella down.

Taken all together, and viewed from a bit of a more distanced perspective, this is a cool chunk of text.