Daily Bible Study Tips: 1 and 2 Chronicles
Comments on 1 Chronicles Chapters 1 - 15
Comments on 1 Chronicles Chapters 16 - 25
Comments on 1 Chronicles 26 - 2 Chronicles 13
2 Chronicles 22:10 – 23:15, Priests and Levites ensure the succession.
2 Chronicles 30:18-26, Everyone was so excited!
2 Chronicles 31:1-21, King Hezekiah re-establishes the priests and Levites.
2 Chronicles 35:1-18, King Josiah celebrates the Passover.
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2 Chronicles 22:10 – 23:15, Priests and Levites ensure the succession. (7/7/2010)
You probably know that Prince Charles is the first in line to the British throne. Did you know that Maximilian Lascelles - whoever he is! - is #54? All Max would have to do to inherit is arrange for the deaths (or conversion to Catholicism) of 53 of his relatives who are in line ahead of him. (see http://www.unofficialroyalty.com/british-royals/35-succession/48-scott )
The civil war between Israel and Judah ended when the northern king married his daughter to the southern king's son. Unfortunately, Princess Athaliah was a Baalist, not a Jewish woman. Even worse, the northern kingdom's tradition was succession by assassination. When her own son Ahaziah, by then the king of Judah, died in battle, she immediately decided to take the throne herself by killing everyone in the line of succession in front of her. These included all of her male children and grandchildren.
However, she missed one. Ahaziah's sister, Jehoshabeath, was married to the high priest. She grabbed one of Ahaziah's baby sons, Joash, and hid him in the Temple. The priests and Levites kept him hidden until he was old enough to be titular head of a coup, and then they killed Athaliah and put Joash on the throne. Queen Athaliah was the only monarch of Judah who was not descended from King David.
By the way, I think it's pretty funny that Athaliah yells, "Treason!" The rebels were only following her example.
2 Chronicles 30:18-26, Everyone was so excited! (11/17/2009)
If you ever have the opportunity to participate in a Passover celebration, I urge you to do it. Our Jewish readers can correct me if necessary, but I think I'm safe in saying that Passover is the most important Jewish holiday. It’s a religious holiday that celebrates God’s mercy to the children of Israel in saving them from death, like Easter, and also their freedom as a nation from a foreign power, like the Fourth of July. No wonder everyone was so excited! By the way, God had already told Moses that Jews could celebrate the Passover even if they were unclean (Numbers 9:10), so apparently they had just gotten confused on this issue.
2 Chronicles 31:1-21, King Hezekiah re-establishes the priests and Levites. (7/8/2010)
Anyone who thinks that the Jews - even in the southern kingdom of Judah - were monotheistic before the Exile has only to look at the periodic cleanups carried out by the occasional kings who tried to push back the tide of apostasy. One such king was Hezekiah. Characteristically, II Kings 18 devotes two verses to Hezekiah's religious reforms and then turns to politics. In contrast, Chronicles devotes most of Chs. 29 - 31 to Hezekiah's religious reforms and his repairs of the Temple and reestablishment of its priestly and Levitical personnel.
2 Chronicles 35:1-18, King Josiah celebrates the Passover. (7/9/2010)
Yesterday we saw that King Hezekiah carried out a number of religious reforms; however, his son Manasseh and grandson Amon put all the false shrines and idols back, reinstituted all the evil practices that predated Hezekiah, and in fact made things even worse. So when Amon's son Josiah came to the throne, he had an uphill battle. You can read about the physical aspects of his reform in II Kings 22-23 - about all the idols he destroyed and his restoration of the Temple. The Passover he celebrated gets three verses. In Chronicles, the King's reforms get about a chapter, and the Passover gets nineteen verses.
I've enjoyed our study of Chronicles, and I hope you have, too. It's always good to read history from more than one perspective, and certainly the writers of Samuel/Kings and Chronicles had different perspectives. We've seen that to get a complete picture of the history of the Jews under the kings, we need to read both the political history and the religious history of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel.
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