MICAH: the Judge

Indeed after looking now at two prophets from the Pre-Assyrian time period, perhaps we have seen the two sides of this narrative coin. While Amos was unabashedly touting a critique right in line with the Chronicler, we also saw a story of adultery (a common theological sister to idolatry) that would fit nicely with the theme of the writer of Samuel and Kings. Both of these two prophets were written to the northern country of Israel and so we now get an opportunity to turn our sights to the message that God chooses to send to their brothers in the south, the countrymen of Judah.

If prophets often had an image, then Micah’s image would be that of the LORD as the Great Judge. If Amos’s image was that of a plumb line (God has hung His plumb line and found you crooked…) and Hosea’s image was that of a harlot (you have prostituted yourselves to other gods…), then Micah’s image would be that of a gavel (pardon the western judicial image, but it communicates well here) poised and ready to come down with the judgment from God.


Let’s take a look at some of the things that God says through Micah.

After some ominous statements about what awaits the people of Judah, we hear these words to open chapter 2:

Woe to those who plan iniquity,
    to those who plot evil on their beds!
At morning’s light they carry it out
    because it is in their power to do it.
They covet fields and seize them,
    and houses, and take them.
They defraud people of their homes,
    they rob them of their inheritance.

It appears as though we may be back on track to see a lot of talk about injustice. The case is being made against this people that they plan wickedness as they fall asleep; they sit on their beds and plan how they might build their own empires bigger and bigger. They covet fields, assets, and property — and they seize them. They desire houses and take them. They are frauds who rob people of their rightful inheritance. Idolatry? Sure, in a sense. Idolatry that lies behind their plans? Absolutely. But that’s what idols promise, isn’t it? Don’t idols sit in all of their grandeur and make promises they can’t deliver?

You see, at the end of the day, idolatry is really about MY KINGDOM and MY NAME. God’s story is the only one that invites you to trust that you already have everything that you need and insists that you are free to lay down your life on behalf of others.

And isn’t the real tragedy of our buying into the wrong story that it ends up hurting other people? The real tragedy is that the idol encourages you to build your own kingdom and building your own kingdom comes at a price. It is too often built on the backs of those you’re having to trample in order to get to the top.

Then I said,

“Listen, you leaders of Jacob,

    you rulers of Israel.

Should you not embrace justice,

    you who hate good and love evil;

who tear the skin from my people

    and the flesh from their bones;

who eat my people’s flesh,
   
 strip off their skin

    and break their bones in pieces;

who chop them up like meat for the pan,
   
 like flesh for the pot?” 

Then they will cry out to the Lord,
   
 but he will not answer them.

At that time he will hide his face from them

    because of the evil they have done. 

And later:

Hear this, you leaders of Jacob,
    you rulers of Israel,
who despise justice
    and distort all that is right;
who build Zion with bloodshed,
    and Jerusalem with wickedness.

But God invites us to trust the story — to live in something better:

Listen to what the Lord says:

“Stand up, plead my case before the mountains;

    let the hills hear what you have to say. 

“Hear, you mountains, the Lord’s accusation;
   
 listen, you everlasting foundations of the earth.

For the Lord has a case against his people;

    he is lodging a charge against Israel.

“My people, what have I done to you?
   
 How have I burdened you? Answer me.

I brought you up out of Egypt

    and redeemed you from the land of slavery.

I sent Moses to lead you,

    also Aaron and Miriam.

My people, remember
   
 what Balak king of Moab plotted

    and what Balaam son of Beor answered.

Remember your journey from Shittim to Gilgal,
   
 that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.” 

With what shall I come before the Lord
   
 and bow down before the exalted God?

Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,

    with calves a year old?

Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,

    with ten thousand rivers of olive oil?

Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression,
   
 the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

    And what does the Lord require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy
   
 and to walk humbly with your God. 

Listen! The Lord is calling to the city—
   
 and to fear your name is wisdom—
   
 “Heed the rod and the One who appointed it.

Am I still to forget your ill-gotten treasures, you wicked house,

    and the short ephah, which is accursed?

Shall I acquit someone with dishonest scales,

    with a bag of false weights?

Your rich people are violent;
   
 your inhabitants are liars
   
 and their tongues speak deceitfully.


It seems as though we’re hearing an awful lot about justice these days. The LORD has pleaded His case and His gavel is poised. The judgment is coming — and yet, we are still not left without hope. In addition to the words of Micah 5, we are also given the epilogue in chapter 7:

Do not gloat over me, my enemy!

    Though I have fallen, I will rise.

Though I sit in darkness,

    the Lord will be my light.

Because I have sinned against him,
   
 I will bear the Lord’s wrath,

until he pleads my case
 and
    upholds my cause.

He will bring me out into the light;

    I will see his righteousness.

Then my enemy will see it
   
 and will be covered with shame,

she who said to me,

    “Where is the Lord your God?”

My eyes will see her downfall;

    even now she will be trampled underfoot

    like mire in the streets. 

The day for building your walls will come,

    the day for extending your boundaries.

In that day people will come to you
   
 from Assyria and the cities of Egypt,

even from Egypt to the Euphrates

    and from sea to sea
   
 and from mountain to mountain.

AMOS: the Plumb Line

The first voice to come screaming into the mess that is the divided kingdom will be the voice of Amos. This shepherd is sent to Israel (from Judah, mind you) with a very straightforward message for the people of God. Now this is important, because as I’ve suggested, the prophets will really be the place to dial in and listen to whether we hear an emphasis on the plot of Samuel/Kings and the moral failures of Israel, or whether we will hear the condemnation of empire and an overwhelming concern for justice as we hear from the Chronicler. So a good, clear-cut message from Amos ought to be a great starting place to begin our investigation. I was taught that the prophets come in with guns a-blazing, denouncing the idolatry of Israel. Let’s see if that’s the case.

Amos has what I see as a brilliant bait-and-switch in the first chapter of his prophecy. Amos starts by condemning all of Israel’s neighbors. What is interesting to note is that each of Israel’s neighbors are denounced not for their idolatry, but for the way they treat their neighbor (almost as if the whole Law and the Prophets were to hang on such a command — huh, funny).

Damascus, Gaza, Tyre, Edom, Ammon, Moab — they all are chastised for not looking out for other human beings.

Then, as chapter 2 begins, we move into a denouncement of Israel’s brother Judah. You can almost feel the glee of Israel as they hear that God is indeed on their side and against their neighbors and their way of life.

But then the thunderbolt comes. The prophecy shifts toward Israel and will stay there as the eight other chapters will begin to outline the litany of Israel’s offenses and God’s loss of patience.

So let’s see what it is.

Oh, and please read all of Amos for yourself, just to make sure I’m not cherry-picking verses out of the book; please go and find all of those references to idolatry I was told about and get back to me.

Let’s start at the beginning of Israel’s problems:

This is what the Lord says:

“For three sins of Israel,

    even for four, I will not relent.

They sell the innocent for silver,

    and the needy for a pair of sandals.

They trample on the heads of the poor
    
as on the dust of the ground

    and deny justice to the oppressed.

Father and son use the same girl

    and so profane my holy name.

They lie down beside every altar

    on garments taken in pledge.

In the house of their god
    
they drink wine taken as fines.

Even the few lines that appear to be about idolatry to begin with turn into judgment upon their lack of hospitality to those in need. They “lie down next to every altar on garments taken in pledge” — a direct violation of Deuteronomy’s call to take care of those in need. They drink wine in the house of their god, but it’s the fact that the wine is taken as a fine that becomes the issue. But let’s not make any hasty judgments; let’s just keep reading.

How about chapter 4?

Hear this word, you cows of Bashan on Mount Samaria,
    you women who oppress the poor and crush the needy
    and say to your husbands, “Bring us some drinks!”

Seems like a justice issue to me. But we need to make sure.

You levy a straw tax on the poor
    
and impose a tax on their grain.

Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,

    you will not live in them;

though you have planted lush vineyards,

    you will not drink their wine.

For I know how many are your offenses

    and how great your sins.

There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes

    and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.

Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,

    for the times are evil.

Seek good, not evil,
    
that you may live.

Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,

    just as you say he is.

Hate evil, love good;

    maintain justice in the courts.

Perhaps the Lord God Almighty will have mercy

    on the remnant of Joseph.

Are we preaching yet? One more, just for good measure.

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
    your assemblies are a stench to me.
Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
    I will not accept them.
Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
    I will have no regard for them.
Away with the noise of your songs!
    I will not listen to the music of your harps.
But let justice roll on like a river,
    righteousness like a never-failing stream!

And Amos will travel around with an image that drives his message. In chapter 7, Amos will discuss a vision that God gives him of a plumb line, which is an ancient (and not-so-ancient) architectural instrument. It was used for the same things we use a level for today. A plumb line is essentially a weight on a string, which when held up and assisted by gravity, shows you a straight line — “true to plumb,” they say. It means your wall is straight and not leaning.

God says: I have hung my plumb line against my people and found them to be crooked beyond repair. My only course of action is to tear down the wall and start over.
And God has made it quite clear what’s wrong with his wall. There is a lack of justice for the poor and needy.

But in the midst of this woe is a point that we will make over and over and over again. God does not forsake His people forever. He does not abandon them. There is never a point where God leaves us without a future. Even in the midst of the greatest of disciplinary action, there is always the bright hope of tomorrow.

“In that day

“I will restore David’s fallen shelter—
    
I will repair its broken walls

    and restore its ruins—

    and will rebuild it as it used to be,

so that they may possess the remnant of Edom

    and all the nations that bear my name,”

declares the Lord, who will do these things.

“The days are coming,” declares the Lord,

“when the reaper will be overtaken by the plowman

    and the planter by the one treading grapes.

New wine will drip from the mountains
    
and flow from all the hills,

    and I will bring my people Israel back from exile.
 
“They will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them.

    They will plant vineyards and drink their wine;

    they will make gardens and eat their fruit.

I will plant Israel in their own land,

    never again to be uprooted

    from the land I have given them,”
        says the Lord your God.

A Mouthpiece from the LORD

Now we’re ready to get back into the narrative. You may remember that we were discussing the two differing perspectives found in the records of Samuel/Kings and Chronicles (you may want to refresh your memory by going back here and here). I made some hefty claims as to what I believe the competing agendas (“competing” may be too harsh, but I chose it intentionally here) might be within the larger “God-breathed” (inspired) story.

I suggested that one view of God’s narrative puts the focus on our obedience. We see stories that hinge upon some great moral failure of the leadership, bad decisions leading to momentum shifts, and whole periods of history defined by the idolatry of God’s people. I also mentioned that this was the predominant view that I was given as a youth, a Bible college student, and a young pastor. But what I also suggested was that the Chronicler, writing his record much later in history, with the benefit of hindsight and the perspective that came with it, was encouraging us not to miss the story that lies behind the story — the real fundamental reason for Israel’s collapse:

The lust for empire. The forgetfulness of God’s great project to bless all nations through them.

This is a major claim to make and so as we resume our walk through God’s story and the history of His people, we want to make sure we are examining the story to find out if there are any other clues as to what the agenda of the story might be. And this is the perfect place to begin such an inquiry into the story because we find ourselves on the brink of the prophets.

This would be a great place to remind ourselves of a point that we have made in passing when referring to prophets: In a biblical sense, the term “prophet” has very little to do with “future predicting” and everything to do with being a messenger for God. We often have been given the idea that a prophet is like a Godly “fortune teller” who speaks of future things to be fulfilled; this is problematic on multiple levels, not the least of them being the belief’s inaccuracy. The prophets serve as God’s mouthpieces. God has a message for the people and the prophet is the mouthpiece that speaks the message. And the term “message” would speak of a present tense exchange of words and ideas for a present moment.

God had a message for the people of Israel for THAT DAY. He was primarily giving them a message for themselves; not a cryptic message for the future that left the readers clueless and waiting for some future people (like us!) to figure it out one day. That message had plenty of purpose for the people to whom it was sent. Any additional layers to these prophetic utterances are simply icing on the cake.

So, before we dive into Amos, let’s make sure that we draw up an outline for the historicity of the prophetic movement. What was going on when these prophets spoke to the people and who were the people they spoke to?

Just a couple quick points: When we talk about time-period, I am certainly not referring to when the prophet was written; there is far too much debate that swirls around about when these messages were heard/created/penned. What interests me is where the “voice” of the prophets is supposed to be “heard” by the reader; at what point in the story should I hear the voice of Hosea? Likewise, I am not concerned with the “who wrote this book?” conversation for the very same reasons. I will not be diving into those discussions. I do believe that the Scripture is God-breathed in the form that it was given and I can hear the voice of God speaking through the story in its many forms. This is my non-negotiable belief. Everything else is pretty fluid in my mind.

PRE-ASSYRIAN PROPHETS: These prophets are the first to show up on the scene to bring God’s message of repentance. Before the enemies begin knocking on the door of Israel and Judah, before the threat of Assyria is realized, prophets like Hosea and Amos appear bringing a message to the northern kingdom of Israel. Prophets like 1 Isaiah (I know that’s confusing, wait on an explanation) and Micah bring messages to Judah.

ASSYRIAN PROPHETS: Once Assyria begins the long, brutal process of conquest throughout the land, the prophets Jonah and Nahum will speak about God’s patience and forthcoming justice. Zephaniah and 2 Isaiah will begin preaching a message of repentance to Judah, where they warn them of the danger that awaits them if they fail to learn the lessons of their brothers to the north.

BABYLONIAN PROPHETS: After Judah’s failure to repent, God will use Babylon to cart His people back to their former days of slavery to remind them of where they come from. Prophets like Jeremiah, Lamentations, Habakkuk, Joel, and Obadiah will speak during these trying times as Babylon sweeps through the land like a locust plague.

EXILIC PROPHETS: Having now been destroyed, Israel/Judah sits in Babylonian captivity, their house left desolate, and begin to wonder if there’s any hope for the future. Prophets like Daniel and Ezekiel enter the scene, encouraging their hearers/readers to understand why they sit in captivity and casting apocalyptic visions of hope. The words of 3 Isaiah contain some of the most beautiful poetry of the ancient world, while Job uses drama to bring perspective into human suffering.

THE REMNANT: Finally, the Jews are allowed to come back home and rebuild. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah tell the story of how this rebuilding period began; prophets like Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi accompany their work, encouraging the people to walk in the ways of God and recapture the mission of God in the world.

Throughout this survey of biblical prophets, my encouragement is to listen for the underlying message of God’s narrative. If the prophets serve as God’s mouthpiece, it should be very beneficial to notice what God’s message is, straight from His own mouth. I can promise you two things: You will hear talk of idolatry (and adultery, for that matter) that will remind you of the story of Samuel and Kings. I can also promise you that you will hear talk of justice and loving your neighbor as yourself. As we continue to wrestle with these two perspectives, I invite you to listen for which message begins to become dominant and overpower the story that God is inviting us to trust.

NAAMAN: Go in Peace

** This post was heavily influenced by a teaching that was given by Rob Bell at Mars Hill Bible Church in Grand Rapids, MI.

The next few blog posts will frustrate me because I feel caught in the tension of pulling ourselves off track onto a various number of rabbit trails. Yet, it must be done; it would be foolishness to skip so much of the Text. Just know that at some point, we will be pausing to review the larger (as we’ve referred to it before, the “10,000 foot view”) narrative arc of the story God is telling. The guts that we find “in the midst” of this period of history are incredibly important. While they will often feel as if they are disjointed and disconnected tales from the larger narrative, if you look closely, you’ll see they are intricate stories to larger drama that’s unfolding.

Nevertheless, the next one of my favorite stories of this period of history is the story of Naaman, found in 2 Kings 5. The chapter/story begins with the following verse:

Now Naaman was the commander of the army of the king of Aram. He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded, because through him the LORD had given victory to Aram. He was a valiant soldier, but he had leprosy.

Now there is actually a lot we could unpack with that short verse, but the first stop I’d like to make is with this phrase: “He was a great man.”

It’s not a bad translation necessarily, but it somewhat fails to capture what the Hebrew communicates. Naaman is said to be an ish gadowl.  In the Hebrew, the word ish simply means “man”, but the word gadowl is a word that refers to the weight and significance of object (not literal weight). This man, this ish, is incredibly significant. He has a certain cultural “heaviness” about his presence. When he walks into the room, everybody “feels” it. He is a weighty, heavy, important man.

Naaman is an ish gadowl.

And this important, significant man has leprosy.

Now, leprosy doesn’t necessarily mean what we think it means. The word does not refer to the actual disease of leprosy itself. The word is used to describe any contagious skin disease that would make one ceremonially unclean. At different points in history, even a case of severe acne would cause one to be declared “a leper”. However, whatever it is that plagues Naaman is making his job, his position, and his role very difficult. We’re told that he has tried multiple action plans from his home land, to no avail. He is not able to find healing. However, this land of Aram has heard about the “God of Israel” who can heal leprosy, and so Naaman is persuaded to find healing from a foreign God.

So, this foreigner — this ish gadowl — travels to Israel and shows up at the house of the man of God. The prophet happens to be Elijah’s successor, Elisha. Before one reads about Elisha’s response, they have to understand the kind of entourage that would travel with a person like Naaman. Naaman travels into foreign lands with great pomp and circumstance. His armies and calvary and his right-hand men travel with the parade of trumpeters and messengers. The Text will call them “his horses and chariots”.

After all, Naaman is an ish gadowl.

After appearing at Elisha’s door, Naaman isn’t even graced with Elisha’s presence. Elisha is unimpressed by the status and prestige of this ish gadowl at his door. He sends a simple servant to Naaman and his entourage with a simple message: “Go and wash in the Jordan seven times… you will be cleansed.”

Naaman is enraged that he would come all this way and be told to wash in the Jordan. The reader needs to understand that the Jordan, 10 months out of the year, is one of the most unimpressive rivers in the Middle East. It resembles more of a dirty creek than it would a “river” in our North American books. Naaman is from the land of great and majestic rivers like the Tigris and the Euphrates. Great and beautiful rivers that flow from the hands of their gods.

And he is told to go and wash seven times in the dirty creek out back.

Naaman is fit to be tied and decides to head home, disgusted with the treatment he’s received. But again, Naaman is persuaded to at least give the prophet’s instructions a shot — they have traveled all this way. So, Naaman follows instructions and indeed finds healing in the God of Israel. Transformed both externally and internally, he returns to Elisha and has one of the most perplexing conversations in the record of 2 Kings:

Then Naaman and all his attendants went back to the man of God. He stood before him and said, “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel. So please accept a gift from your servant.”

The prophet answered, “As surely as the Lord lives, whom I serve, I will not accept a thing.” And even though Naaman urged him, he refused.

“If you will not,” said Naaman, “please let me, your servant, be given as much earth as a pair of mules can carry, for your servant will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other god but the Lord.

First of all, we often miss the gravity of Naaman’s initial claim. Naaman lives in a world that has never heard of monotheism (belief in one god) outside of the nation of Israel. For them, there is a huge list of acceptable gods, all battling for dominance in the world. This epic, heavenly battle rages on and the positions of gods are constantly changing. This is his reference point of the normal status-quo. For him to claim that there is “no God in all the world except in Israel” is a stunning leap of understanding and faith.

Second, Naaman asks Elisha for a bunch of dirt? Not only does Naaman have an initial belief of pluralism that is being overturned in his consciousness, but his understanding of these gods is also geographical. Those gods are linked to certain pieces of real estate. If he intends to worship the God of Israel, in his understanding, he has to have a piece of Israelite earth, because YHVH is connected to the ground.

Naaman doesn’t have a proper understanding of basic theology. He’s going to need a little bit of education. Please understand this. Naaman is entering this conversation about a new God completely blind. He knows NOTHING of where to begin. And to make matters worse, the story doesn’t even end there! Watch what Naaman says next:

"But may the Lord forgive your servant for this one thing: When my master enters the temple of Rimmon to bow down and he is leaning on my arm and I have to bow there also—when I bow down in the temple of Rimmon, may the Lord forgive your servant for this.”

Naaman's job requires his worship in the temple of a false god! He is asking Elisha to plead to God to have mercy on him when he does this.

Now, what is Elisha’s proper response here?

I know what I’ve been taught growing up:
Hey, Naaman. If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything.
Turn or burn, heaven or hell, Naaman.
Choose ye this day whom you will serve, Naaman.

At the very least, this poor guy needs some basic education. Maybe we need to pull him aside for a few intensive Bible courses and sign him up for “Biblical Worldview 101” before we send him home. He has no community, no church, no temple to YHVH, no education. He’s armed with nothing but his story and a mess back home.

But isn’t that the way life is? We often like to talk about life as if it’s clear-cut, black and white. But it isn’t that easy. Many of us have family situations and job placements that make simple, daily decisions messy and complicated.

Elisha’s response?
“Go in peace.”

Which is the Middle Eastern equivalent to: “That’s ok. You’ll figure it out. You’ve got a long walk home.”


Unbelievable. If I would have put that “master plan of evangelism” on a Bible college assignment, I would have gotten some special attention before they gave me a degree.

Go in peace?

Apparently, it’s ok for life to be a sticky mess. And apparently, the most important piece of education you could be armed with is a personal experience and story of transformation.

So take your story back home to your job that makes things complicated. Take your story and tell people about the dirty creek that you washed in and the God that doesn’t care about ish gadowl credentials or appearances or mighty rivers — but is in the business of healing. Tell them about the God that puts the world back together and is infusing the sacred into the common.

Tell them your story as you wade through the mess. And invite them to join you in trusting it.

The Fire and Passion of Elijah

The last four posts will really describe the story that will run its course through the rest of the history described in Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles. It’s this painful lust for empire — and everything that comes with it — that will drive the Israelites into captivity. While we’ll need to build more of a case around my argument by using the prophets, it would be unfair to skip through the rest of the history of the divided kingdom without mentioning anything else about it.

We left off as Rehoboam was being petitioned not to be as harsh as his father Solomon had been on the people. Rehoboam will, after rejecting the advice of his elders and accepting the “wisdom” of his peers, respond by telling the people that if they didn’t like the reign of his father, they hadn’t seen anything yet. “My finger is as thick as my father’s waist,” he said. “He scourged you with whips, I will scourge you will scorpions.”

Not a very likable political platform to run on. Not surprisingly, the people rebel against Rehoboam and follow another upstart leader, Jeroboam. Jeroboam returns from Egypt to seize the opportunity to reign and the kingdom is split in two, with the northern kingdom becoming “Israel” and the southern kingdom becoming “Judah.” Jeroboam will not seize the opportunity to reign in righteousness and obedience, however. He immediately sets up an alternate place of worship, a decision that is based on political fear of the southern kingdom influencing his people if they were to continue worshipping in Jerusalem. He sets up some golden calves and leads the people of the northern kingdom into idolatry. Jeroboam is succeeded by his son Nadab, who is followed Baasha, Elah, Zimri, and finally, Omri.

Omri is the most well documented king in extra-biblical history and was known (outside of the Bible) for being shrewd and ruthless. He attempted to reign by demonstrating his power and then establishing treaties with the countries around him. The plan worked for a time and Omri established an intimate relationship with the Phoenicians. After his death, the kingdom was passed into the hands of Ahab and the Israel/Phoenicia partnership was solidified through the marriage of Ahab to Phoenicia’s high priestess (of Asherah worship) named Jezebel. Through this marriage, Jezebel brings into Israel the full force of Phoenician Baal and Asherah worship. (The short version of this would be to go back and review the nature of the Amorite paganism, as the worship of the Phoenicians was simply an evolved version of child sacrifice and shrine prostitution.)

Onto the scene bursts the prophet Elijah, of whom we know very little background other than that he comes from Tishbe in the north. Elijah is known throughout biblical history to have been a prophet filled with fire and passion. Fire just happened to be Elijah’s prop of choice and is always seen popping up in Elijah’s ministry. Obviously, Elijah’s contest with the Baal prophets on Mt. Carmel will be tested with fire. When he is under attack from the army general from Israel, Elijah will call down fire from heaven to consume the advancing attackers. Elijah is a man of the flames!

So, this fiery prophet approaches Ahab about his sin and tells him that it’s not going to rain until he (Elijah) says so. Jewish tradition holds that God did not tell Elijah to tell Ahab this and was not particularly happy about Elijah’s passionate response. This hits many Christians sideways, yet a closer inspection of the Text will show many, many hints that support the Jewish position. God never speaks to Elijah with instructions about holding back the rain. And again, we see Elijah as a man of fiery passion; in the Jewish world, we call this chutzpah.

And what kind of chutzpah does Elijah have? How does he dare make such a bold prediction about the rain?

Because it’s in the Text. Give Deuteronomy 11:16–18 a read.

Elijah knows what God said in His book; Elijah binds God to His word. And God honors the move, but it appears that He may not be too pleased about that. Elijah will have to go and live in a cave and be fed by ravens. Now, any person of the Old Testament will tell you that ravens in the Scripture symbolize the scavenger, meaning that Elijah is being fed with food from somebody else’s table. As if to say, “Elijah, I’m going to honor your prophetic statement, but please realize that innocent people are going hungry because of the lack of rain. I’m going to feed you with those hungry people’s food.”

Elijah will then spend time at a widow’s house (in Phoenicia, by the way) and God will sustain them with a starvation-ration's worth of miraculous biscuits (about two biscuits each day). Could this be another message to Elijah? Finally, God DOES speak to Elijah, and His first words are, “Enough! Go tell Ahab that it’s going to rain!”

But he doesn’t tell Elijah HOW to tell Ahab. And so Elijah stages one of the greatest contests of Israelite history. Many of us are familiar with the context on Mt. Carmel. Elijah says that the Baal prophets are to set up a bull to sacrifice on the mountain and cry out to Baal. Elijah will set up an identical sacrifice and cry out to YHVH. Whichever sacrifice God responds to will indicate the victor. What we often do not realize is that Elijah is stacking the deck in Baal’s favor. He chooses Baal’s animal (the bull) to be sacrificed at Baal’s altar (there’s already an altar to Baal on Carmel) and is crying out for Baal’s weapon (lightning/“fire from heaven”). He’s giving Baal home court advantage.

Of course, Baal is found to be sleeping on the job and the God of Israel will consume the sacrifice, the altar, the water, and the ground under the altar with fire. Elijah seizes and kills the prophets of Baal and then prays for rain. When God finally produces a rain cloud, Elijah sends word to Ahab and then runs a half-marathon ahead of the chariot to Jezreel.

Jezebel isn’t happy to hear about this contest and its results. She tells Elijah that he will be dead within 24 hours and nobody stands up for Elijah.

The whole contest didn’t work.

Nobody changed. Nobody repented.

And so Elijah goes out to the wilderness, lies under a rotem bush, and gives up. But God comes to Elijah and demands that he travel to Mt. Sinai (Horeb) to meet with Him. So Elijah goes to Sinai, and when he gets there God finds Elijah in a cave (have we heard this story before?) and brings fire on the mountain. Fire, but no God. Then an incredible wind, but no God. Then, a terrible earthquake, but no God.

But, then — a still, small voice.

The Jews teach that this gentle whisper is the same whisper exchanged by two lovers in bed with one another. It’s the intimate whisper of love between a husband and wife.

In the opinion of my teacher, God’s point is this: “Elijah, fire and force and power don’t work. It doesn’t change the human heart. Love does. Just go love them and teach them how to love others.”

In fact, it’s the people’s lust for power and force and fire that’s leading them to burn babies in the fires of the Baals. It’s their lust for security that’s causing them to visit the shrine prostitutes of Asherah.

But God invites His prophets to invite His people to trust the story.

And how do you convince an entire nation of adulterous idol-worshippers to trust the story? Not with legislation. Not with clever rules and loud shouts and “winning the culture wars.”

You convince people by showing them a better way. You convince them with love.

Always have. Always will.

And, apparently, God knew this all along. Imagine that.

The Story Behind the Story (part two)

This is the second part to a two-part blog post. To have an understanding of where we are at, you will want to go back and read this post to catch up.

The huge hint that clues us in is not only to notice what the Chronicler leaves out of his story, but what he puts in. There is a huge addition of material about the Temple. For the Chronicler, the story is — on some level — about the Temple of the LORD.

The author rearranges the events of David and Solomon’s life to make some big points. In the first story, David expresses his desire to build God a house in 2 Samuel 7. The plea seems almost insignificant and unnoticeable; this part of the story makes no grand splash in the greater picture. Yet, in the Chronicles version, it is this request that almost seems to serve as the hinge point of the David story. In 1 Chronicles 17, David asks God to build the temple and everything in the story seems to change. David will no longer seem to be concerned about kiddush haShem. Now, David seems to be bent on conquest and plans for building the Temple and supplies for the Temple.

And why did David ask to build the Temple anyway? Because he felt guilty about the kind of life he was living.

“Why should I live in a palace of cedar, while my LORD lives in a tent?”

God’s response: “I like my tent, thank you very much. When did I ever ask you (or anyone else) for a house?”

David is wrestling with the kind of person he’s becoming. He’s no longer the poor little shepherd boy, living out in the fields with his father’s sheep. He’s not just a raggedy ol’ kid marching down the hillside with his sling.

He’s a big, mighty king — living in a palace of cedar. And it makes him a little nervous.

And he becomes obsessed (with the best of intentions, I believe) with remedying the situation by building God a glorious house.

But it’s all starting to look a little more like empire and a little less like shalom.

This will get passed on to his son Solomon, who will take his father’s blueprints and exponentially increase the Temple’s grandeur. And Chronicles will waste no time in letting you know exactly where it stands on Solomon. In the very first chapter of 2 Chronicles, the author makes a point of including this paragraph:

Solomon accumulated chariots and horses; he had fourteen hundred chariots and twelve thousand horses, which he kept in the chariot cities and also with him in Jerusalem. The king made silver and gold as common in Jerusalem as stones, and cedar as plentiful as sycamore-fig trees in the foothills. Solomon’s horses were imported from Egypt and from Kue—the royal merchants purchased them from Kue at the current price. They imported a chariot from Egypt for six hundred shekels of silver, and a horse for a hundred and fifty. They also exported them to all the kings of the Hittites and of the Arameans.

And in the course of four verses, Solomon breaks every one of the commands of the king from Deuteronomy 17.

This isn’t looking good for Solomon. And the whole story will show the greatness and grandeur of Solomon that comes at the expense of God’s kingdom project. As the first paragraph after Solomon’s death will have the people of Israel approaching his son, Rehoboam, begging for him to loosen the yoke of Solomon from around their necks. Because building an empire always comes at a price.

You see, the story isn’t just about your morality and obedience. The story that God is telling in this scripture is inviting us to see the story behind the story.

And we’ve seen this story before; it’s the same one God’s been trying to tell from the beginning.

We’ve seen it here.

And here.

And here.

And here.

We’ve seen it a lot. And God continues to invite us to trust that we’re okay and we don’t need more. He invites us to enter His rest and wait on every word. He invites us to sit in the shade and not worry too much about houses made of cedar — whether they are ours or His.

As one final thought, in case anybody continues to wrestle with whether they agree with my take on the story, I would invite you to wrestle with these two mirror passages.

The first one from 2 Samuel 24:

Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, “Go and take a census of Israel and Judah.”
So the king said to Joab and the army commanders with him, “Go throughout the tribes of Israel from Dan to Beersheba and enroll the fighting men, so that I may know how many there are.”
But Joab replied to the king, “May the Lord your God multiply the troops a hundred times over, and may the eyes of my lord the king see it. But why does my lord the king want to do such a thing?”
The king’s word, however, overruled Joab and the army commanders; so they left the presence of the king to enroll the fighting men of Israel.

And the other from 1 Chronicles 21:

Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel. So David said to Joab and the commanders of the troops, “Go and count the Israelites from Beersheba to Dan. Then report back to me so that I may know how many there are.”
But Joab replied, “May the Lord multiply his troops a hundred times over. My lord the king, are they not all my lord’s subjects? Why does my lord want to do this? Why should he bring guilt on Israel?”
The king’s word, however, overruled Joab; so Joab left and went throughout Israel and then came back to Jerusalem.

So was it Satan or the LORD who had David take the census?

And why does the Chronicler add a statement to Joab’s response?

Could it be that from the perspective of the first author, David did something that the LORD was not happy about (again, making this about David’s obedience/morality), but from the perspective of the Chronicler, it was the lust after empire — the lie of the serpent, the temptation not to trust the story — that actually led Israel as a nation (not just David as a man) into the sin that would lead them into captivity? It is clear in these passages that David is struggling with an obsession of empire — strength, might, security. I would also add that in the historical world, a census was almost without exception accompanied with a tax. You don’t suppose David is trying to acquire the recourses for an upcoming building project, do you?

Not that building projects are bad. They are not. David’s house of cedar is amoral. There’s nothing right or wrong about it.

The Temple of the LORD is amoral. Whether it’s a tent or a gold-plated temple doesn’t matter to God.

There’s nothing wrong with church buildings, church budgets, or institutions that have to pay the bills.

But there’s this horrible temptation to start to build empires and forget what it means to kiddush haShem.

And there’s the constant voice and persistent invitation to remember your days in a field, shepherding sheep; to remember the shade of a rotem bush in the desert; and never to forget that you were once slaves in Egypt.

If you don’t remember, you just might become Pharaoh yourself, gathering slaves from every corner of the earth to accomplish your will (1 Kings 5:13, 9:15, 21; 2 Chronicles 8:8).  And if that happened, God just might hear the cry of the oppressed and begin the work of rescuing His kids…

The Story Behind the Story (part one)

In order to fully understand this post, you will want to go back and read the last post, as its content will be essential to following the conversation you’ll find in this post.

So, keeping in mind the two different biblical sources we have for Davidic/Solomonic history, I want to take a look at how the two sources tell their history and what kinds of conclusions we can draw by noticing their differences. So first, let’s do a fly-by summary of what’s seen in the Samuel/Kings account.

SAMUEL/KINGS

After a seven chapter biography of Saul — his selection, his struggle, and his rejection — we are introduced to the shepherd boy David in the chapters that describe his anointing, his service of Saul, and the defeat of Goliath. Immediately following the Goliath story, Saul begins to deal with the jealously and ill-will he feels toward David. The remainder of 1 Samuel (over ten chapters) will outline the long and arduous pursuit of David by Saul, and the story goes to great lengths to display David’s humility, morality, and refusal to do anything that would not kiddush haShem.

1 Samuel ends with Saul hopelessly taking his life and 2 Samuel will begin with David mourning the death of his enemy. The first nine chapters of 2 Samuel record how David solidifies his throne in Israel, yet we cannot move past this without making two points: 1) Everything David does in establishing his throne is completely void of self-indulgence. David’s actions will continue to kiddush haShem, and we’ll even have over three chapters dedicated to David establishing the seat of God in Jerusalem, bringing the Ark of the Covenant to rest in that place, and his subsequent prayers, praise, and celebration. 2) David’s “military approach” is so counter-intuitive, that it continues to throw David’s men off their hinges. David will continue to mourn the death of his enemies and slay HIS OWN MEN when they attempt to murder the king’s enemies on their own. The story reads as a completely wacky tragedy for those trying to learn how to live in an upside-down kingdom that brings shalom to chaos.

At this point, the story turns to David’s defeat of the Ammonites and the famous story of his relationship with Bathsheba. After the story of Bathsheba, David’s life will take a turn for the worse. His family becomes a heaping pile of dysfunction, his own children begin raping and killing each other, and Absalom will chase his father through the kingdom (echoes of Saul?) and David will run from a son who eventually dies at the hands of his leading general, who will pay for that protection with his life. David will count his fighting men — a move that will get him in trouble — and the book of 2 Samuel comes to an end.

The book of 1 Kings begins with the throne of Solomon being established and his many building projects. Queen Sheba visits Solomon in chapter 10, where we are told about Solomon’s incredible splendor. Now, while there are some possible hints that things aren’t as great as they appear in the preceding chapters, the first indication that the author of Kings give us in in the middle of chapter 10 where we are told that Sheba’s gift (probably a treaty tax of good faith) weighs 666 talents — a deliberate attempt by the author to tell us we’ve reached a turning point in the story. In fact, it’s going to be this long list of treaties that gets Solomon in trouble, as each treaty is signed by the marriage of Solomon to a daughter of the opposing king/queen. The very next chapter tells us about Solomon’s 700 wives and how they lead him astray to idolatry; it is at this point where Solomon’s kingdom falls apart.

So, if we were to step back and ask what the author is saying about this story, I think we would see a definite point. The Samuel/Kings agenda is to say that the Kingdom falls because of immorality. The definite, undeniable turning point in the David story is his sin with Bathsheba; it’s David’s immorality that leads to his downfall. In a very similar fashion, it is Solomon’s immorality that leads to his downfall and the definitive shift in his story, as well. His wives will lead him into idolatry. From the perspective of the first source, the problem is clear. These men have a problem holding true to God’s path (we haven’t mentioned “trusting the story” in a while, but it certainly fits here).

CHRONICLES

However, the story of Chronicles tells a completely different story, and it’s not because the author is trying to save space. Let’s look at the differences between the two sources.

After a lengthy section of genealogies, the Chronicler spends his time introducing you to the reign of David. There is no effort spent in trying to put David’s morality on display, only his pedigree. There’s no discussion about his exclusion of Saul or how he goes about his warfare. Even more surprising is the absolute exclusion of the Bathsheba debacle. The telling of Chronicles is void of a morality parade. For the author of Chronicles, David’s kingdom consisted of something other than a high moral ethic and it fell for a far broader reason than the moral failure of a leader.

Likewise, the story of Solomon is completely void of the mention of Solomon’s many wives and his subsequent idolatry. What is so striking about this for me (your experience might be different) is that throughout my life I have been taught about the moral (particularly, sexual) failures of these two men, yet another biblically-inspired author seems to be trying to convince us not to miss the bigger point.

The author of Samuel/Kings is not incorrect in the way he tells the story at all. All the observations he makes about the moral struggle are true and the agenda that drives the story is useful and compelling for the reader to become a particular kind of individual. But remember that the Chronicler is trying to write about history with a sense of hindsight and perspective; I feel as though he is trying to tell us that we may miss the forest for the trees if we aren’t careful. To put it another way, there is a story BEHIND the story.

 

 

And this post became so long, that I've split it into two parts.  Come back on Monday to find wrestle more with the story that may lie behind the history of the Old Testament.