This will be the last book I do for at least a few weeks so back to regular posts after this…
Chapters 1-13: The life of Elisha the prophet
King Ahaziah falls off the roof and sends messengers to ask the god Baal-zebub if he’ll recover. YHWH tells Elijah that Ahaziah will die for spurning YHWH. Ahaziah sends an army against Elijah. Elijah asks YHWH to smite them with a fire from heaven. This happens to another army, the third one begs to be spared. Ahaziah dies. YHWH plans to take Elijah up to heaven but Elisha does’t wish to leave Elijah’s side. As consolation, Elijah makes his spirit settle on Elisha. Elijah is taken up to heaven. Elisha purifies disease-ridden water at a nearby town. On his way out, children make fun of his bald head. He curses them in YHWH’s name. Two she-bears devour 42 children.
Israel joins with Judah against the Moabites but they run out of water. Elisha prophecies that Israel will win. YHWH makes water comes up from the ground. By an optical illusion, the water’s reflection appears as blood to the Moabites in their camp. They charge, thinking the two kings have killed each other, but this only leads to their defeat. The king of Moab sacrifices his son to his god to no avail.
Elisha performs 4 miracles. (1) A widow woman has no livelihood. Noticing she still has a jar of oil, Elisha gets her to borrow as many vessels as she can from neighbours; he makes the oil multiply to fill all the vessels so she can sell it off. (2) A childless couple always feeds Elisha when he comes their way. As reward, he gets YHWH to give them a son. Later, the boy he suddenly collapses with a headache and dies. Elisha resurrects him after rubbing the body and performing a mouth-to-mouth-like procedure. (3) There is a famine. A village’s cooking pot is contaminated with a poisonous plant and there’s no other food. Elisha cleanses it. (4) Elisha makes 24 loaves feed 100 men.
Naaman (commander of the Aram army) has leprocy. An Israelite girl he captures suggests he go to Elisha. The king of Aram writes to the king of Israel asking for Naaman to be cured. The king of Israel is afraid, thinking this is only a pretext for more war. Elisha finds out tells Naaman to bathe 7 times in the Jordan. Naaman is offended, thinking that Elisha could have cured him instantly (and that the Jordan’s not such a great river anyway). His servants retort that if Elisha had told him to undergo some big trial he’d do it, he’s only refusing because it seems too easy. Naaman relents, is cured and accepts YHWH.
Elisha refuses Naaman’s gifts enraging his servant Gehazi. Gehazi runs after Naaman pretending to have a message for Elisha: two men are coming and Naaman should give them some silver. Naaman gives Gehazi the money and leaves him in charge of. Gehazi pockets it but when he returns, Elisha knows what happened. He curses Gehazi and Naaman’s leprocy clings to him.
The war with Aram continues but Elisha predicts all the movements of their army so no Israelites are killed. The king (Ben-hadad) sends a unit to sieze Elisha. Elisha asks YHWH for a blinding light which lets the Israelites encircle them. The king wants to kill the Arameans. Elisha says that since the king didn’t capture them with his wits he should feed them and send them home.
The war causes a famine. A woman complains to the king: she and another made a pact to eat their sons. After they ate hers the other woman had the gall to back out! The king rends his clothes and decides Elisha is responsible. He sends a messenger to cut off Elisha’s head but Elisha tells him YHWH will stop the famine. The messenger disbelieves. Elisha says he’ll see the food but won’t get to eat it.
YHWH makes the Aramean army hear visions of the Hittite army; they abandon camp thinking the Israelites have a new ally. Four lepers from Israel decide to wander to the Aramean camp on the off chance they will be fed and not killed (since they’re about to starve anyway). Finding it abandoned and packed with food they feast and report back. The disbelieving messenger is trampled to death by the crowd rushing to the food.
Elisha tells the woman whose son he revived to leave Israel for 7 years as there will be another famine. When she comes back, her house and farm have been siezed. She complains to the king who restores them only hearing about Elisha’s resurrection miracle. Ben-hadad falls ill and sends Hazael to ask Elisha if he will survive. Elisha weeps, seeing that Hazael will succeed Ben-hadad as king and will perform many atrocities against Israel. He tells Hazael to lie to the king that he will recover. The king dies, Hazael succeeds him.
Elisha has Jehu annointed and tells him YHWH has appointed him to strike down Ahab’s dynasty to avenge Naboth (see 1 Kings). Jehu kills king Joram of Israel as well as king Ahaziah of Judah who is visiting Joram. He has the arrow he used placed on Naboth’s vineyard as a sign of the avenging. He also has Jezebel thrown out of the window to her death. When he orders her buried all they find are the bones since (as Elijah prophecied in 1 Kings) the dogs have eaten her body.
Ahab has 70 descendants. Jehu writes to them asking them to claim the throne. They are afraid. He writes to the elders telling them to “take the heads” of the descendants and come to him. Apparently he means to bring them by force but the elders interpret it as ordering them beheaded. Jehu piles the 70 heads in a heap and proclaims he was misinterpreted — but that still this is part of YHWH’s plan to destroy Ahab’s descendants. Jehu then kills the rest of Ahab’s descendants outright. Jehu proclaims he will serve Baal even more than Ahab and orders all Baal’s priests to come for a public sacrifice. This is only a ruse to get them in one place, he then has them killed thus eradicating Baal-worship from Israel. YHWH is pleased. However Jehu doesn’t follow YHWH’s laws carefully and YHWH has Israel’s territory reduced through conquest.
Meanwhile in Judah, Athaliah (mother of former king Ahaziah) hears that her son is dead and is determined to take power. She exterminates the rest of the family, but the young heir Jehoash is hidden and raised in secret. Finally Jehoiada the High Priest arranges for Jehoash to be annointed at the Temple in Jerusalem. Athaliah cries treason. Jehoiada orders her taken out and killed (not wanting to kill anyone in the house of YHWH). The people also smash up the temple of Baal. Jehoash finances the repair of the Temple. However, Hazael begins a march on Jerusalem and Jehoash is forced to buy him off with all the new utensils he had made.
Aram keeps fighting Israel too. Elisha tells the king to strike the ground to symbolise. He strikes it thrice. Elisha is angry that he didn’t strike more times, then YHWH would have given him total victory. Elisha dies. A band of Moabites steal his body and another corpse that touches it is resurrected.
Chapters 14-20: The Assyrian exile, Hezekiah
Jehoash is assassinated and succeeded by his son Amaziah. Amaziah kills the assassins but not their families (contradicting long-established custom) in accordance with YHWH’s law that children shouldn’t be killed for their fathers’ sins. He provokes a war with Israel but is captured. Israel’s army breaches Jerusalem’s gates and carries off vessels from the Temple. More kings follow in both Israel and Judah. King Menahem besieges the town of Tiphsah and because it does not surrender massacres everyone and rips open the bellies of all the pregnant women.
Ahaz becomes king in Judah and resumes idol worship, even putting his son through the fire (an idolatrous rite). He bribes the king of Assyria with more Temple vessels to help Judah fight against Aram. He admires the altar the Assyrian king has and orders one built just like it for the Temple in Jerusalem, also messing about with the sacrificial vessels.
Shalmaneser the king of Assyria makes Israel a vassal state. When the next king Hoshea is late paying tribute, Shalmaneser captures Israel, forcibly resettling the Israelites in Assyria. This is because YHWH is angry about them breaking away from Judah and the constant idol worship that has gone on despite all of YHWH’s chastisements and all his prophets telling them to cut it out.Shalmaneser settles Israel with other nationalities he rules over. Because these people don’t worship YHWH, YHWH sends lions to kill them. They complain to Shalmaneser who sends back an Israelite priest to teach them worship of YHWH. However, they continue to worship their old gods too. “To this day”, they [the Samaritans] don’t worship YHWH properly and the [10] tribes of Israel remain exiled.
Hezekiah becomes king of Judah. He abolishes idol worship and smashes the bronze serpent Moses made (see Numbers): it’s become an object of worship. YHWH admires him as the most righteous king of all the kings of Judah and Israel. King Sennacherib of Assyria marches against Judah capturing many towns. Hezekiah pays him off with tribute but he besieges Jerusalem anyway.
His commander taunts Hezekiah’s army that the Assyrians are victorious because YHWH is on their side and that he’ll give them 2000 horses if only they can find people to mount them, so desperate is their situation. Eliakim (the man in charge of Hezekiah’s palace) asks the messenger to speak in Aramaic so that it remains between them only, not in Judean which can be understood by the whole army who are on the city walls. The messenger says that it is for the men that the message is meant for since they will have to eat their own dung and drink their own piss during the siege. He addresses the Judean army directly, saying Hezekiah is lying to them that they have any shot of winning and that they should defect to be rewarded by the Assyrians.
Hezekiah rends his clothes on hearing this. Isaiah the prophet says YHWH will defeat the Assyrians. Hezekiah prays to YHWH and Isaiah makes a long poetic prophecy against Sennacherib: because he blasphemed YHWH (who is so very very great etc) YHWH will send him back the way he came. YHWH’s angel kills 185,000 Assyrian soldiers directly and the siege is averted.
Hezekiah falls ill, Isaiah tells him he won’t recover. Hezekiah repents and YHWH relents. Isaiah tells him he’ll get another 15 years. As a sign, YHWH makes a shadow move backwards in relation to the sun’s movement. The king of Babylon sends gifts which Hezekiah accepts. Isaiah says at a future time the Babylonians will sack Jerusalem. Hezekiah is relieved since it means they’re safe for now.
Chapters 21-25: The Babylonian exile
Hezekiah is succeeded by his son Menasseh. He rebuilds all the idolatrous shrines and puts some in the Temple too. He kills so many innocents that Jerusalem is swimming in blood. YHWH vows to destroy Jerusalem after Menasseh’s death.
Menasseh’s grandson Josiah follows YHWH’s commandments and repairs the Temple. During the repairs, the priests find the Torah of YHWH, which had apparently been forgotten for generations. Josiah realises YHWH must be really mad because they haven’t kept the commandments for so long. He reads from the Torah before the nation and reaffirms the covenant. He then has all the idols suppressed and destroyed again, killing the priests on their altars and keeping all the other commandments. From this, YHWH grants reprieve for another generation, however he is still determined to destroy Israel because of Menasseh.
Josiah is killed by the Pharaoh’s army. The next king (not Josiah’s son) is imprisoned by Pharaoh who appoints Jehoiakim as king over Judah, now a vassal state of Egypt. King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon marches on Judah which becomes his vassal state. Jehoiakim launches a revolt but YHWH sends bands of Arameans, Moabites etc to harrass the people of Judah. The next king Jehoiachin only reigns for 3 months: in that time Nebuchadnezzar captures Jerusalem, once more carrying away all the Temple’s treasures and exiling the wealthy classes to Babylon. He appoints Zedekiah king of Jerusalem.
Zedekiah launches another rebellion causing Jerusalem to be besieged for 2 years, with famine in the city. Finally they burst in capturing Zedekiah, killing his sons in front of him, putting out his eyes and taking him to Babylon in chains. As part of this campaign, they also destroy the Temple in Jerusalem, burning it to the ground, as well as most of the city. Nebuchadnezzar puts Gedaliah in charge of the land. He tries to ease the tensions but is killed, marking the start of the exile of the Jews from Judah and Israel. The next king of Babylon releases Jehoiachin from prison, but the exile remains in force.
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