Judges 16:18-24; 1 Samuel 5:1-8; 1 Chronicles 10:8-10, Dagon, god of the Philistines (01/31/22)

Last week we learned who a bunch of foreign kings were, and this week we'll learn who a bunch of foreign gods were supposed to be. (I say, "supposed to be," because we know that actually they were just rocks.) Surprisingly (to me at least), no Egyptian gods are mentioned by name in the Bible; however, several of the plagues seem to be directed against specific Egyptian deities, such as the Nile god Hapi or the frog goddess Heket.

I know you're familiar with Samson and Delilah, but don't forget the only other name in the story: Dagon, god of the Philistines. The Philistines seem to have been pretty religious people, because all three times we hear of Dagon, the people are bringing him sacrifices or spoils of war after a victory over the Israelites.

Leviticus 18:21, 20:2-5; 1 Kings 11:5-7; Jeremiah 32:30-35; 2 Kings 23:8-10, Molech and/or Milcom, gods of the Ammonites (02/01/22)

I've never been completely clear about whether Molech and Milcom, the abomination(s) of the Ammonites, are the same god or not. Apparently I'm in good company, because Wikipedia says that scholars are also undecided. What is clear is that the Ammonites and some of the Jews burned their children as an offering to Molech/Milcom. God had outlawed child sacrifice for the Jews a long time ago, in the time of Moses (Leviticus 18:21), and their continued practice of it until the reign of King Josiah (2 Kings 23:10), one of the last kings of Judah, irritated God no end. It is called out specifically as one of the sins for which the Jews were exiled (Jeremiah 32:35).

Numbers 21:29; Judges 11:11-24; 2 Kings 23:11-15, Chemosh, god of the Moabites (or maybe Ammonites?) (02/02/22)

Is Chemosh the god of the Moabites (Numbers 21:29) or the Ammonites (Judges 11:24)? Well, possibly both, because most (not all) religions outside the Abrahamic tradition are pantheistic, that is, they have more than one god.

I'm especially struck by one part of Jephthah's answer to the king of the Ammonites: "Will you not possess what Chemosh your god gives you to possess? And all that the LORD our God has dispossessed before us, we will possess" (Judges 11:23-24). Jephthah, one of God's own judges, is acknowledging the existence and power of Chemosh. He's saying that God is more powerful than Chemosh, not that Chemosh is completely powerless. Chemosh was a problem for the Jews for a long time; notice that our friend King Josiah of Judah has to get rid of a high place built by Solomon for the worship of Chemosh.

So why is Chemosh important? Because he is one of a number of false gods that the Jews followed, and following these gods got them into big trouble. Whether Chemosh was the god of the Moabites or the Ammonites isn't what makes him important. What makes Chemosh important – and what got God really angry – was that many Jews continued to worship him right up until the Exile! We need to be careful about polluting the worship of God with the worship of idols.

Deuteronomy 7:5-8; 1 Kings 11:31-34; 1 Kings 14:15, 21-24, 2 Kings 23:4-7, Ashtoreth, goddess of the Sidonians, and Asherah, a Canaanite goddess (02/03/22)

Ashtoreth [ASH-toh-reth] and Asherah [ASH-er-uh, plural Asherim] are either mother goddesses, fertility goddesses, or the same goddess under two names, depending on whom you believe. I'm not sure it matters very much; most pantheons seem to have a chief female deity that falls into one or both of those categories. Some, like the Greeks and Romans, have one of each. The religious rites for most of them involved cult prostitution. The symbol of Asherah seems to have been a pole, or sometimes a tree or grove of trees, erected or grown in a high place.

When the Jews came into the Promised Land, God told them not to worship the gods of the land, and not to intermarry with the women of the land because it would lead to worshiping the gods of the land. They did both, and Solomon was one the most prominent offenders. King Josiah had to take various trappings of the worship of Asherah out of the Temple and get rid of the cult prostitutes during his reforms. So the reason these gals are important is that following them got the Jews into trouble with their own God, just as following Chemosh and Molech/Milcom did.

Acts 19:23-41, Artemis a.k.a Diana, a Greek/Roman goddess (02/04/22)

One thing about pantheons is that they typically have a similar set of deities:

Somebody in charge, usually male, often a mountain or storm god;
A consort, typically female, often a family goddess, but sometimes a fertility goddess;
Definitely a fertility goddess, and often a fertility god;
A war god;
Gods for the sun, moon, and visible planets, any of whom may be any of the above;
Local, sometimes powerful, gods for geologic or geographic phenomena like rivers or volcanoes;
Lesser deities for things like hunting, drinking, eating, crafts, etc.

So what happens when one culture with a goddess of the hunt runs into another culture with a goddess of the hunt? The two goddesses very often merge, and this seems to be what happened with the Roman Diana and the Greek Artemis [AR-te-mis]. Even though the Greek New Testament has Artemis, the Vulgate, which is a late 4th-century Latin translation, has Diana. It looks like English translations are about equally divided between the two names.

The names aren't important. What's important is that the Way, i.e., Christianity, was spreading so rapidly by the mid to late first century that the silversmiths in Ephesus were concerned that it would supplant the worship of Artemis. And eventually, of course, it did.

Numbers 13:3-8, 16, 13:25 – 14:10, Caleb (02/07/22)

I'm certain you've all heard about Joshua, because in Sunday School we learned a song about him: Joshua fit the Battle of Jericho, and the walls came tumblin' down! But who ever heard of Caleb? Actually, Caleb is so important that we're going to read about him for three days.

After the children of Israel had stopped at Mt. Sinai for a couple of months and then walked toward the Promised Land for a few weeks, Moses sent twelve spies on ahead, one from each tribe, to check out the opposition. When they came back, ten of them said, "Aaiiieee! No way should we go there! The men are too big and too strong, and their walls are too high! We should never have left Egypt." But one man, Caleb, stood up and said, "What are you saying? God brought us here, and God will give us this land. Man up, and let's go!" And then Joshua stood up with Caleb and said, "Right. What he said." Without Caleb, we might never have heard of Joshua.

Numbers 14:22-24, 30, 26:65; Deuteronomy 1:34-38; Joshua 14:6-14, Caleb (02/08/22)

The LORD forced the Egyptians to let the children of Israel go, demonstrating his power over nature and the gods of Egypt with a series of miraculous plagues. Then he parted the sea to let the Israelites go through, but let the waters go back over the pursuing Egyptians. And then when they started complaining about not having enough to eat or drink, the LORD brought them great flocks of quail and water in the desert. You might think that when they got to the border of the Promised Land a few months later, they'd have enough confidence in GOD to go on in, but you would be mistaken. Oh no, they start in again saying how much better off they were in Egypt, and how the LORD or Moses, whichever name is handy, brought them out so that they would die in the desert. The LORD has finally had enough and says, "You want to die in the desert? Fine! Every man jack of you will die in the desert! Except Caleb! He gets to go into the Promised Land! And I guess Joshua can go in, too." Forty years later, when they are the only two men of their generation left, Caleb and Joshua go in.

Joshua 15:13-19; Judges 1:12-20, Caleb (02/09/22)

Caleb belongs to the tribe of Judah. When the new generation of Israelites, led by Joshua, enters Canaan, Joshua assigns Caleb the land of Hebron, which Moses had promised to him. You may recall that Hebron is where David (a few hundred years later) ruled the tribe of Judah for seven years before being accepted as king by the 10 northern tribes.

When you read the book of Joshua, you get the impression that the Israelites came in, defeated everybody, and occupied the land completely. When you read the following book, Judges, you find out that (in the words of the Secretary of Defense in "Independence Day") "That's not... entirely... accurate." There were lots of towns from all the Canaanite nations, and the whole land of the Philistines, still to be conquered. In both Joshua and Judges, however, Caleb gets full credit for driving the descendants of Anak out of Hebron.

Caleb is important enough that you probably should remember his name. Along with him, you might want to remember Othniel (OTH-knee-el), his nephew and son-in-law. We'll come back to Othniel in a couple of months when we read about judges other than Samson and Deborah.

And by the way, take special note of vss. 17-19, where "Judah and his brother Simeon" take the hill country. Judah and Simeon, as individual sons of Jacob, have been dead for hundreds of years. These verses are talking about the tribes of Judah and Simeon. This is a convention you'll see throughout the whole Bible, where "Jacob" or "Israel" is talking about the whole nation descended from Jacob a.k.a. Israel. "Esau" often means the whole nation of Edom, which descended from Esau. A couple of good examples of this are found in Romans 9:13 and Hebrews 11:20.

Exodus 6:23, 28:1-2; Leviticus 10:1-20, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, sons of Aaron, and the importance of correct ritual. Eleazar was the priest during the Conquest. (02/14/22)

Jacob had twelve sons, one of whom was Levi. You remember that Jacob said Levi would be scattered in Israel. After God passed over the firstborn during the tenth plague in Egypt (Exodus 12), all firstborn males belonged to God (Exodus 13:2); animals had to be sacrifice or redeemed, and sons had to be redeemed. God later decided that he would take all the Levites as a substitute for the firstborn sons of all the tribes (Numbers 3:12), and the Levites did all the work in the tabernacle and later in the temple. They were still scattered: their towns were distributed throughout the lands of the other tribes (Joshua 21). (I've always suspected that that was because they also had the duty to decide what persons, diseases, animals, and houses were clean or unclean, and the people needed to know where to find them, but I don't think it says that anywhere.)

Among the Levites, the descendants of Aaron became priests, and one of them would become the high priest. So there was always a high priest, although for the most part, we don't know their names. The son of Aaron who became high priest after him was Eleazar [el-ee-A-zar]. We'll read some more about him tomorrow.

Numbers 16:36-40, 20:23-29, 27:18-23, 34:16-18; Joshua 17:3-4, Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar, sons of Aaron, and the importance of correct ritual. Eleazar was the priest during the Conquest. (02/15/22)

Numbers 16 tells the story of Korah and some other Levites who decided that they had just as much right to perform priestly duties as Aaron and his descendants. (This is about the same as if our music director or our chef decided to perform a marriage ceremony at St. John's.) It ended badly for them, and Aaron's son Eleazar the priest is put in charge of the aftermath. When Aaron dies, Eleazar becomes the high priest, and when the Israelites enter the promised land, Eleazar and Joshua are the ones who direct the assignment of specific lands to each tribe. Notice that women inherited the familial land if they had no brothers, and it appears to be Eleazar who implements that in Joshua 17:4, although it's possible that "he" means Joshua.

So why do we care about Aaron and Eleazar at all? Because two high priests, Ananias and Caiaphas, are important in the trials of Jesus and Paul. If we know nothing about the high priests Aaron and Eleazar, then Ananias and Caiaphas appear out of nowhere. And the Parable of the Good Samaritan makes a lot less sense if you don't know that the priests and Levites belonged to God and performed holy work in the Temple.

1 Kings 16:1-14; 2 Chronicles 19:1-3, 20:34, Prophet Jehu, son of Hanani (02/16/22)

One thing about the movies and TV is that you rarely get two characters with the same name in the same show (except for Larry, Darryl, and Darryl). This is not at all true in real life, as we saw earlier with the names Jesus, Ananias, Iddo, and Gad. Now we're going to read about two guys named Jehu (JAY-hew), the prophet Jehu and King Jehu, who both lived in the northern kingdom of Israel. Now, there are two things you need to know about the kings of Israel. First, the first king, Jeroboam, set up shrines at each end of the kingdom to keep his people from worshiping in Jerusalem, as they were supposed to. This is "the sin of Jeroboam," and all the kings of Israel were guilty of it – including Zimri, who only lasted a week! – and it seems to be the main reason that God got rid of Jeroboam's dynasty two years into the reign of his son.

Second, there were 19 kings of Israel, and nine of them came to the throne by either revolt or assassination. The first assassin was Baasha, and the LORD sent the Jehu to prophesy that his dynasty would be struck down. Again, the only sin mentioned is walking in the way of Jeroboam, and his son reigned two years before being assassinated by Zimri. Zimri was besieged by Omri, and apparently Zimri burned the house down around himself, so I suppose you could argue that Omri wasn't actually an assassin.

The next we hear of the prophet Jehu, he confronts King Jehoshaphat of Judah on the road as the king is returning from assisting Ahab, the son of Omri. Ahab not only continued in the sins of Jeroboam, but he introduced the worship of Baal, which explains Jehu's question, "Should you help the wicked, and love those who hate the LORD?"

1 Kings 19:15-18; 2 Kings 9:1-20, King Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi, a.k.a. Jehu son of Nimshi (02/17/22)

Before Drive Like Jehu was a band, it was an idiom meaning "to drive very fast, carelessly or recklessly." Don't say you never learn anything interesting in this study.

You may remember from yesterday's study tip that King Ahab of Israel was the son of Omri, who overthrew Zimri, who overthrew Elah the son of Baasha, who overthrew the son of Jeroboam. By now you have figured out that assassination was a fairly standard means of coming to the throne in the northern kingdom. Our next assassin is King Jehu, who overthrows Joram the son of Ahab. Ahab and his queen, Jezebel, had introduced Baalism into the kingdom, which was even worse than Jeroboam's shrines. Then Jezebel had all the prophets of the LORD killed, except for Elijah, and she was after Elijah, too. God has had enough of the house of Omri and decides to replace it with the house of Jehu, which will last for four generations after him.

We'll continue this story about King Jehu tomorrow.

2 Kings 9:21 – 10:10, King Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi, a.k.a. Jehu son of Nimshi (02/18/22)

A fellow-reader wrote to say that she needs to re-read Kings because she's forgotten so much of it. I don't think the problem is that we forget so much as that Kings is really confusing. In fact, that's to some extent the point of this section. Even if we were talking about King Fred and King Sam, there would be two Freds and two Sams! King Joram (a.k.a. Jehoram) is talking to his cousin King Ahaziah son of Jehoram of Judah, not his own father, the old King Ahaziah son of Ahab and Jezebel of Israel. Jehu is the son of Jehoshaphat, but this is not King Jehoshaphat of Judah! And we already saw there was also a prophet Jehu. "Who Is This guy?" is a really appropriate question when you're reading Kings.

Here's the secret decoding ring. Somewhere in the passage, the text will almost always say, "King X of Judah" or "King Y of Israel." Sometimes you see "While King X was ruling in Jerusalem" or "When King Y reigned in Samaria," and it's your responsibility to know that Jerusalem was the capital of Judah and Samaria the capital of Israel. You keep the times straight (MWAHAhaha!) by paying attention to the formula, which is nearly always present, "In the z-th year of King Y, King X began to rule in Jerusalem" or vice versa. Print this decoding ring and use it as your bookmark for Kings and Chronicles.

The young prophet yesterday brought the message that Jehu would kill all the males of Ahab's house. Jehu gets carried away and also assassinates King Ahaziah of Judah, which is beyond his commission. Pay attention to the use of "heads" in Ch. 10. As in English, "head" in Hebrew can mean either a body part or a head man. Jehu says to "take the heads" of Ahab's sons, who live with the chief men of the city, which could mean "arrest the head men they live with," and bring them to him. Of course, the elders interpret it in the former way, but when they bring him the heads, Jehu goes all innocent and says, "Who did this? Not me!" I've always wondered if King Jehu was trying to maintain plausible deniability.

For the story of Naboth's vineyard, see 1 Kings 21.

More of Who Is This Guy?
Introduction
Three guys named Ananias, Two Prophets, and Several Foreign Kings
Foreign gods and goddesses, Caleb, the Sons of Aaron, and Two Jehus
Gehazi, Four or five guys named James, Three Important Wives, Children with Ominous Names, and Ten Simeons and Simons
Biblical guys who are gals, Several queens, and who is this guy really?
Guys, and one Gal, with God in their Name

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