Tag Archive | good & evil

Journaling through the Bible Chronologically in 2025, Day 214

Aug2

Day 214 – Reading – 2 Kings 20 – 21.

Read today’s Scriptures … ANYWHERE you find yourself this summer. Stay in the WORD!

2 Kings 20.

This chapter is a repeat from Isaiah 38. It retells Hezekiah’s illness and his prayer for recovery. God allows him another 15 years of life, but he “blows it” in several ways.

  1. When visitors from Babylon come with letters and a present for Hezekiah’s good health, the king lavishly welcomes them and shows them all the riches of his kingdom and all the arms of his military.  Isaiah admonishes him and tells the king that the Babylonians will one day come, take all those treasures, destroy Jerusalem, and take his descendants captive.  “Ah, well,’ said Hezekiah. “At least it won’t happen in MY time.”
  2. The other way that Hezekiah “blew it” in those extra 15 years was to have a son, Manasseh.  This son became the king after him (as we’ll see in 2 Kings 21) and was VERY EVIL, worse than Ahab.   Just think….  if Hezekiah had died when the LORD first said … would a more godly son have inherited the throne?  But ALL is according to God’s sovereign will.

Does this mean we shouldn’t pray for healing for ourselves or others?  No.  James 5:13-15 says —

  • “Is anyone among you suffering?  Let him pray.  Is anyone among you sick?  Let him call for the elders of the church and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.  And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick.”

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.2 Kings 21.

Hezekiah’s 12-YEAR-OLD SON, MANASSEH, became king after Hezekiah died. (Did he not have other children??)  Manasseh was born in those last EXTRA 15 years of the king’s life.  Hmmm.

Manasseh reigned a LONG time – 55 years.  

  • “He did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, according to the despicable practices of the nations whom the LORD drove out before the people of Israel (Canaanites).
  • ‘He rebuilt the high places that his father had destroyed.
  • “He erected altars for Baal and made an Asherah, as Ahab, king of Israel, had done.
  • “He worshiped all the host of heaven (moon, sun, stars) and served them.
  • “He built altars in the house of the LORD (the Temple) where the LORD had put His name.
  • “He built altars for all the host of heaven in the two courts of the house of the LORD.
  • He burned his son as an offering.
  • He used fortune-telling and omens, and dealt with mediums and with necromancers.
  • “He did much evil in the sight of the LORD, provoking Him to anger.
  • “The carved image of Asherah that he had made, he set IN the house of the LORD, where God had chosen to put His Name. 
  • “Manasseh led Israel astray to do MORE EVIL than the nations had done whom the LORD destroyed before the people of Israel.”

Whoa!  What a horrible leader!  And the 55 years must have dragged on and on….

How did the LORD respond?  He sent a message through His prophets….

“BECAUSE Manasseh, king of Judah, has committed these abominations and has done things more evil than all that the Amorites did who were before him, and has made Judah also to sin with his idols …..

  • “I am bringing upon Jerusalem and Judah such disaster that the ears of everyone who hears of it will tingle.
  • “I will stretch over Jerusalem the measuring line of Samaria, and the plub like of the house of Ahab, and I will wipe Jerusalem as one wipes a  dish, wiping it and turning it upside down.
  • “I will forsake the remnant of my heritage and give them into the hand of their enemies.
  • “They will become a prey and a spoil to all their enemies…. BECAUSE they have done what is evil in my sight and provoked me to anger … since I brought them out of Egypt.

MORE than all the evil idolatry that Manasseh instigated, he “shed so much innocent blood that Jerusalem was filled from one end to another.”  (The blood of child sacrifice, persecution of the weak, and martyrdom of  God’s prophets.) 

+++++++++++++++ NOTE:  Both Jewish and Christian tradition reports that Manasseh had Isaiah (the great prophet of God, whom we just read) sawn in two inside a hollow log.  WHOA!!!  (See Hebrews 11:37.) ++++++++++++++++++++++++

We’ll be reading more about Manasseh tomorrow in 2 Chronicles – an astonishing fact about him will be revealed – so stay tuned.    Meanwhile, this wicked king died, and his son (ONE THAT ESCAPED SACRIFICE) reigned as king.  

That son, Amon, reigned TWO YEARS.  He did EVIL  (no surprise) in the sight of the LORD, as Manasseh had done.  He walked in all the way his father walked and served the idols his father had served and worshipped. HE ABANDONED THE LORD, THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS.

But his servants conspired against him and killed him in his own house.

Then, the people of the land killed all those conspirators and made his son, Josiah, king in his place.  (YAY!)

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So, until next time, SERVE THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART!  

 

2024GOAL – Reading Through The Bible Chronologically, day 177

Jun25

   Day 177—We are in the 6th month of Bible reading and reading the history of Israel. All the kings in the north were evil in the sight of the LORD, while in the south, a few were pleasing to him, but most also did evil.

 Day 177 – 1 Kings 16, 2 Chronicles 17. (FIVE kings in the northern kingdom; ONE king in the south)

1 Kings 16 describes five kings of Israel in rapid succession, each worse than the former. Baasha became king after killing King Nadab and the entire “house of Jeroboam,” which fulfilled prophecy. Baasha was from the tribe of Issachar and reigned wickedly for 24 years. 

The prophet Jehu came to King Baasha and said that God would wipe him and his entire family off the map because of his sins. Baasha died, and his son Elah reigned for two years. One day, when Elah was drunk, Zimri, the commander of half his army, came in and killed him and became king in his place. As soon as Zimri began to reign, he killed all of Baasha’s family AND all of his friends, fulfilling the word of the LORD via Jehu. 

Zimri must have done a quick job of it because he reigned only seven days. The rest of the troops and all of Israel made Omri king in his place.  When Zimri saw this, he went into the king’s house, set it afire while he was inside, and died.  Suicide. 

King Omri reigned twelve years, fortified a few cities, and made Samaria the capital of Israel. But he did evil in the sight of the LORD even MORE than those before him. When Omri died, his son Ahab became King.  Ahab did more to provoke the LORD than all the kings before him, but his wife, Jezebel, far outdid him in wickedness. 

Side note:  A fulfillment of prophecy is mentioned in 16:34. It says that the city of Jericho was rebuilt during Ahab’s reign but that Hiel, the builder, lost both his oldest and his youngest sons in the construction. This fulfilled the prophecy of Joshua 6:26 to the letter.

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2 Chronicles 17 describes the godly king Jehoshaphat, who reigned 25 years in Judah (the southern kingdom).

After his father Asa (diseased severely in his feet) died and was cremated, Jehoshaphat came to the throne. Verses 3-6 say, “The LORD was with Jehoshaphat because he walked in the earlier ways of his father David. He did not seek Baals but sought the God of his father and walked in His commandments, not according to the practices of Israel. Therefore, the LORD established his kingdom in his hand.”  “His heart was courageous in the ways of the LORD.”

In King Jehoshaphat’s third year of reign, he sent his officials and the Levites around Judah to teach “the book of the Law of the LORD.” “And the fear of the LORD fell upon all the kingdoms of the lands around Judah, and they made no war against Jehoshaphat.”

(This reminds me of Proverbs 16:7. “When a man’s ways please the LORD, He makes even his enemies to be at peace with him.”)