Summer is coming and there will be a few weeks - about three - in late June and July when I will not be able to post daily Bible reading notes. So, in order not to lose my place in the schedule I am following, I will be posting two days of reading each day through June 23rd and then pick up with it again on July 16th.  

2 Kings 4 – The widow of one of the company of prophets comes to Elisha and tells him that a creditor is trying to take her two children…

2 Kings 3 – Joram [or Jehoram in some versions], Ahab’s son, becomes king in Samaria and reigns 12 years [Jerusalem Bible notes says it was really only eight years—849 to 842 BC]. He did what was evil “though not like his father and mother, for he removed the pillar of Baal that his father had made” (3:2). Still, he “clung to the sin of Jeroboam” (3:3). It doesn’t say how – golden calves? high places?  

King Mesha of Moab, a sheep breeder, used to…

2 Kings 2 – The Lord is “about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind” (2:1). They are on their way from Gilgal. Elijah tells Elisha to wait for him, that he has been told to go to Bethel, but Elisha refuses to leave him.  In Bethel, a group of prophets comes out and tells Elisha that Elijah will be taken up.  Elisha says he knows, that they should keep silent.

They go on in the same pattern to Jericho and there they again meet prophets who say the same thing.  Then…

Introduction to 2 Kings: The original scrolls of what we call 1 and 2 Kings did not make any division. Together, they tell the story of the kingdom’s division after Solomon’s death, around 931 BC, and the series of kings who ruled over the northern kingdom (Israel) and the southern kingdom (Judah). 2 Kings picks up the story around 853 BC with the rule of Ahaziah in the north and the continued rule of Jehoshaphat in the south. It will take us to the final…

1 Kings 22 - Israel and Syria (Aram) continue at war. Jehoshaphat of Judah, Asa’s son and another good king, comes to confer with Ahab; he wants their help in reclaiming Ramoth-gilead from the Syrians. JB note says this town was captured by the Syrians (same as Aramaeans) during or before the reign of David and had not been handed back in the Treaty of Aphek (chapter 20).

Jehoshaphat agrees, but wants Ahab first to consult the Lord.  Ahab gathers 400 of the Lord’s…

1 Kings 21 -    Naboth the Jezreelite has a vineyard next to Ahab’s palace.  Ahab wants it for a vegetable garden and tells Naboth he will pay for it; but Naboth does not want to sell it.  It is his family’s ancestral home.  Ahab becomes “resentful and sullen” again over this and will not eat (21:4). Jezebel can’t understand why he doesn’t just take the land. “Do you now govern Israel?” (21:7) So she decides she will handle the matter.  She plans to have Naboth falsely…

1 Kings 20 – It is around 868 BC. Ben-hadad II, is king of Syria (Aram). He gathers 32 kings [Jerusalem Bible note says they were princely vassals] to march against the kingdom of Israel under king Ahab’s rule.

He sends a message to Ahab saying, “Your silver and gold are mine; you may keep your wives and children.” This is the Jerusalem Bible translation. The NRSV version is, “Your silver and gold are mine; your fairest wives and children also are mine”…

1 Kings 19 – When Ahab tells Jezebel what Elijah did to all the prophets of Baal, she sends a threatening note to Elijah, and he becomes afraid.  He flees to Beersheba, goes past there and into the wilderness. He asks God to let him die: “O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors” (19:4). An angel appears and encourages him to eat—leaves him a cake and some water.  A second time the angel comes and tells him to eat again “otherwise the journey will be too much…

1 Kings 18 – Three years after the drought begins, the Lord sends Elijah to Ahab.  Now Ahab’s man in care of the palace is Obadiah, a man who reveres the Lord greatly; he has hidden 100 of the Lord’s prophets in a cave to protect them from Jezebel, who wants to kill them.

Ahab goes off with Obadiah in search of grass to sustain his horses and mules; they go off in different directions to look.  Obadiah meets Elijah and recognizes him. and tells him to go and…

1 Kings 16 – For modern readers, the cast of characters in Kings can be very challenging. We have Ahijah the prophet from Shiloh – a good man who prophesies against Jeroboam and his line because of their unfaithfulness to the one God. Then there is the Ahijah from the tribe of Issachar – a different man apparently – whose son Baasha takes over the northern kingdom and has all of Jeroboam’s line killed. It is tempting to think they might have been related Ahijahs but…

1 Kings 15 – In Judah, Abijah (also called Abijam) takes over and reigns for three years. “He committed all the sins that his father did before him; his heart was not true to the Lord his God, like the heart of his father David” (15:3). It is for David’s sake (memory of his devotion) that the monarchy is permitted to continue.  The writer speaks of how David pleased the Lord in everything except the “matter of Uriah the Hittite” (15:5). This last “gloss,” the Jerusalem Bible…

1 Kings 14 – Jeroboam’s son, Abijah, becomes ill and Jeroboam sends the mother to Shiloh to consult with the prophet Ahijah (the one who told him he should be king). Ahijah can’t see but when the woman comes to him, he knows it is she even though she pretends to be someone else. He gives her the following message—the Lord is not pleased with Jeroboam because he has not been like David.  He has made idols and provoked God, so God will bring evil on Jeroboam’s…

1 Kings 14 – Jeroboam’s son, Abijah, becomes ill and Jeroboam sends the mother to Shiloh to consult with the prophet Ahijah (the one who told him he should be king). Ahijah can’t see but when the woman comes to him, he knows it is she even though she pretends to be someone else. He gives her the following message—the Lord is not pleased with Jeroboam because he has not been like David.  He has made idols and provoked God, so God will bring evil on Jeroboam’s…

1 Kings 13 – As Jeroboam begins to offer sacrifices to the gold bull-calves he set up at the Bethel altar, a “man of God” (“prophet” in other versions) from Judah “denounced the altar and predicted that it would fall apart. He also prophesies that someday a child named Josiah will be born to the family of David and will slaughter those “serving at the pagan altars who offer sacrifices” and he “will burn human bones.” There are a few key prophecies in this confusing declaration. Some…

1 Kings 12 – Rehoboam goes to Shechem and all Israel comes there to make him king.  Hearing this, Jeroboam returns from Egypt. The people complain to Rehoboam about the burdens his father had imposed on them and ask him what he will do to lighten the yoke. He asks advice of the older leaders and they tell him, “If you will be a servant to this people today and serve them, and speak good words to them. . .they will be your servants forever” (12:7). But he…

1 Kings 11 – Solomon loved many foreign women in addition to the Pharaoh’s daughter—he had “among his wives” 700 princesses and 300 concubines!! And it is through his love of women that Solomon comes to displease the Lord, for it is through them that he is lured into the worship of foreign gods in his old age—“his heart was not true to the Lord his God, as was the heart of his father David” (11:4). He built a “high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the…

1 Kings 9 – The Lord appears to Solomon a second time (the first having been at Gibeon) and says to him that he has consecrated the Temple “and put my name there forever, my eyes and my heart will be there for all time” (9:3) and promising also to establish his line forever. 

But if he or his children “do not keep my commandments and my statutes that I have set before you, but go and serve other gods and worship them, then I will cut Israel off from the land that I…

1 Kings 8:22-66 – In the presence of all the people, Solomon stands before the altar and prays. He raises his arms to God and asks that God will keep the covenant He has made. He says this: “But can you, O God, really live on earth? Not even all of heaven is large enough to hold you, so how can this Temple that I have built be large enough?” (8:27-30).

There is in this passage much of the same tension that must have come upon the Jewish…

1 Kings 8:1-21 – Solomon assembles the elders and heads of tribes for the bringing up of the ark from the city of David (Zion). Countless sheep and oxen were sacrificed to mark the occasion.  The ark was brought into the inner sanctuary under the wings of the cherubim.  In the ark were only the two tablets of stone Moses had placed there at Horeb.  When the priests came out of the holy place, “a cloud filled the house of the Lord, so that the priests could not stand to…

1 Kings 7 – It takes 13 years for Solomon’s palace to be completed. In it there was a Hall of Pillars, a Hall of the Throne and a Hall of Justice.  The daughter of the Pharaoh, one of his wives, has her own house the size of one of these halls.

Huram, the craftsman who helps Solomon with this palace, is son of a widow from the tribe of Naphtali, who married a man of Tyre.  He knew how to work in bronze and was “full of skill, intelligence, and knowledge…