Reading: 2 Chronicles 13-17, Psalm 74
Today we begin an unfortunate spiral of initial obedience followed by mistrust and disobedience from the kings of Judah. Now the Chronicler sounds a lot more like the author of Kings. There is just no way to really clean up the behavior of the kings of Judah. The son of Rehoboam, Abijah, gets this really great story where he goes to battle against the northern kingdom and wins a big victory when the army cries out to God for help. The upshot of this of course is that this is fellow Israelites they are fighting off. Abijah is not able to reunite the kingdom, even though Jeroboam dies. Abijah only lives three years as king, and Asa takes the throne. He starts off great, cleaning up the country’s idols and such, and he wins a battle against a humongous army of Ethiopians. But then he allies with the Syrians rather than asking God to help protect him from the kingdom of Israel. Not quite the guy we are looking for. He ends up dying from some sort of foot related disease. Finally we get Jehoshaphat, who again starts off well, following the words of the prophets and the books of Moses. But as we will see in tomorrow’s reading, he gets entangled in the family of Ahab, a disastrous move for the kingdom of Judah.
What is the Chronicler up to with these stories? Once again I want to point out that these are not just recounted events. The Chronicler has the book of Kings for that, and I really don’t believe he felt compelled following the return from exile to simple write them again. He is doing something different, something related to the future hope of God’s people. Israel has been dealing with bad, or at least insufficiently good, leaders from the very beginning. The Chronicler has had enough of the family of Aaron as priests. He has had enough of kings who forge international alliance with people who would just as soon destroy them as their enemies when it is politically expedient. He has had enough of God’s people acting like the rest of the world without taking into account their role as witnesses to God’s intention to make all things new.
The returned exiles already had a Messianic hope. They had read the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures and knew that the story of their people was moving towards this one guy, who would bring about a new kind of world, where every nation worships at the Temple of the God of Israel. We know there were a bunch of people who either claimed to be or tried to fulfill the promises of this Messiah figure in the years from the return up to the birth of Jesus. I imagine this had already started by the time the Chronicler sat down to write his scrolls. I imagine him looking around him at the remnant of the people of God getting sucked in to these false messiahs and thinking, “this will never do!” He begins to write out the story of his people as an instruction in who not to follow. Even good kings like Asa and Jehoshaphat were not good enough. Even Solomon in his wisdom was not quite there. Before we follow someone claiming to be the heir of David, lets check him against our own history. He’s got to be better than any of these guys. He can’t be relying on other nations. He can’t be relying on military power, as we will see the lesson in the life of Jehoshaphat.
The Chronicler is warning his people by giving them a tour of their past. Israel at this point in history cannot afford to back the wrong horse. They do not have the luxury of choosing the wrong Messiah. The stories of the kings in the book of Chronicles is a winnowing away of thing that the Messianic king cannot be. The One Shepherd, the Servant of the Lord, the Son of Man, will be more than any of these kings, and the Chronicler wants to make sure his people understand.