40 Minutes In The Old Testament - 1 Kings 14:18-15:10 (Episode 311)

Episode Date: April 6, 2022

We say goodbye (good riddance) to Jeroboam, but his son isn't going to be any better. The king of Egypt flexes his power over Judah. And there was only one time when David acted as an idolator does. Chad and Daniel discuss all of this. Have a listen! HWSS Regional Conference 1517 Podcast Network 1517 YouTube Donate

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. 40 Minutes in the Old Testament is a 1517 Podcast Network podcast. You can go to 1517.org slash podcast. Check out all the other podcasts that are living over there. and while you're over there, you can still sign up for the Here We Still Stand regional event in Northwest Arkansas. That's April 22nd and 23rd. That's probably the last time I'll bring it up. There's a few tickets left, not a lot of tickets left, but if you would like one of the last ones, you can go over there, sign up, grab those tickets, and join us for that event. You can

go to 1517.org and get all the information there or click the link in the show notes. Chad, we are coming up on where we have to say goodbye to Jeroboam. We're starting out with a death here. I don't know if it's a goodbye or a good riddance. One of the two, right? Yeah. Yeah, good old Jeroboam. Yeah, we heard about the death of his son in the last episode,

so we are right at the threshold of his demise. first kings 14 19 is one of these summary statements that we are going to encounter a whole lot in uh in these books it reads this way now the rest of the acts of jeroboam how he warred and how he reigned behold they are written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of israel at and the time that jeroboam reigned was 22 years and he slept with his fathers and nadab his son reigned in his place so that wraps him up and he is no insignificant character of course because He basically establishes the wide road that leads to the northern kingdom's destruction. And down that wide road, every single one of his following kings are going to walk.

I mean, there are, of course, plenty of northern kings that are used by God for his own purposes. But none of them are said to, for instance, walk in the way of David or something like that. Every single one of them, down to a man, receives an F when it comes to their kingship. And Jeroboam starts this. In fact, a recurring refrain that we hear throughout the rest of 1 and 2 Kings is that so-and-so reigned and he walked in the sin of Jeroboam or something like that. So Jeroboam establishes the idolatry in the north, this cancer that really never gets taken away.

It lasts with the rule of the kingdom all the way down to its eventual demise. So anyway, we're going to pick up the story of his son later, later in this chapter. First of all, as is pretty common in first and second Kings, there's a switch. So there's a dance that we go through when we're reading through, through these two books where for a while we're in the South and maybe we'll have two or three Kings. And then for a while when the North and maybe we'll have two or three Kings and then we're back and then we're back. So it kind of shifts in this pattern of north, south, south, and north.

And every time that occurs, say it's a southern kingdom we're talking about, then what is said about him will be then located temporally with what's happening in the north. Or if there's a northern king, they'll be located temporally with what's happening in the south. So there's this kind of back and forth between these two. But anyway, we're leaving behind the north for a minute. We're going to shift back to the south to Jeroboam's contemporary, Rehoboam. Rehoboam, of course, you probably remember from a few episodes ago, if you've been listening for a while, this is the son of Solomon. And as we're about to hear, Rehoboam does not discontinue the idolatrous actions of his father.

Instead, he not only perpetuates them, but even expands them. So we're in 1 Kings 14, 21 now, where we read that Rehoboam, the son of Solomon, reigned in Judah. He was 41 years old when he began to reign, and he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem. And then we have this interesting description of Jerusalem, the city that the Lord had chosen out of all the tribes of Israel to put his name there. Now, of course, the Bible is famously reticent about adding too many details. So anytime something is there that at least might on the surface seem like it doesn't need to be there, it's probably significant. And that's the case here. So why not just say he reigned 17 years in Jerusalem, period?

Why does it go on to describe Jerusalem this way? Well, the reason it does, at least when you look at the context here, is because you do have this contrast between the northern kingdom and the southern kingdom. and the northern kingdom has gone astray but the southern kingdom has god's imprimatur upon it because god chose jerusalem he chose david to establish that dynasty there and so since jerusalem is located there that's why it says this about the city the city that the lord had chosen out of all the tribes of israel to put his name there so it's this city it's this kingdom it's this dynasty that has god's approval and because of that things in the south are going to be always going to be better than they are in the north in the north you've got just this tumultuous change

of kings you've got coups you got bloodbaths you got a guy reigning we'll see probably in this episode or maybe the next episode one guy reigns like a week before he's assassinated another guy reigned two years and then he's assassinated and then on occasion you'll have uh you know a dynasty Omri will have a dynasty that lasts over a century in the north but most of the time you never know this if this northern kingdom is going to last for a few days or maybe a couple years or 20 or 30 years because there's such upheaval in the north you don't have that much upheaval happening happening in the south now the south will eventually have its terrible problems as well leading to its destruction but at least there is more stability there's more fidelity there's a

whole list of about eight kings who at least for the most part are approved by god so a lot way more than than than you have in the in the north where there are zero so anyway uh now we're in the south and this is where god has chosen to put his put his name his mother's name we're told as is naama the ammonite the ammonites of course are traced all the way back to genesis 19 when And Lot has incest with his two daughters, and the offspring of that incest is the father of the Ammonites. So that's where his mother comes from, which does not bode well, of course, for what kind of king he's going to be. And then we're told, verse 22, this. Judah did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and they provoked him to jealousy with their sins that they committed.

more than all that their fathers had done. I wonder what these sins are. Yeah, I wonder. I wonder what they could be. I wonder if these are new and inventive sins, or if this is just more of the same sin. This is like the same sin compounded. Yeah.

I mean, we'll see this so many times where the predictability of sin is almost humorous because like you say, I wonder what the sin will be. Any chance it might be idolatry? Yeah. Any chance that this might possibly be?

It's going to tell us and that's exactly what it is. The thing that's interesting about this is that it ascribes this sin just to Judah. So this tells you that this has been broadly accepted among the people and the people are sort of willing participants in it you know obviously yes led into this but

at this point the people are willing idolaters god is no longer just pointing to the king and saying oh you uh you're unfaithful now he's looking at the people and saying okay this this is a whole mass of unfaithful people here yeah to use a phrase that we've all come to hate this is the new normal yes this is this is the new normal in the southern kingdom and it is the new normal, because this has been going on for a while. Solomon, at least in his later years, started all this, and now Reb Om is continuing it. So, you know, we know this from our own culture. It doesn't take very long for new things to become what seems like old things, or the way it's been for a long time. You know, new changes are, when they're accepted broadly in a culture,

then pretty much it just kind of accepted as well this is just the normal thing right this is the way things are and it's hard to imagine it being any different and i suspect it was like that in the southern kingdom well you know solomon started building all of these shrines to the gods of his wives and they're still there and they're still being used and now his son is is continuing this and so you know for a lot of people if they grew up with this you know for instance say you live in jerusalem or say you don't but you come to visit jerusalem for the feast and when you're when you're there you look over there across from the temple and you see all over the uh across the kidron valley over the mount of olives these shrines to these false gods and they've always

been there like your whole life say you're 20 or you're 30 whatever it might be this is the only thing that you've ever seen on the mount of olives well then of course it's going to be much more broadly accepted by you plus i mean nobody likes to walk against the tide nobody wants to you know go the opposite direction because you're going to face pushback friction from those who have accepted this idolatry so it's widespread and we're given more descriptions in verse 23 of what this looked like they built for themselves high places these are the bamote doesn't necessarily mean that these were at high elevation some of them no doubt were because we have references to high hills a little bit later in the verse but a bama that's a singular or by moat that's

the plural these could actually be anywhere um a good description i mean a good kind of uh synonym we might say for high places are religious establishments or religious shrines that's that's all we're talking about here it was a a place where you probably had one of three things happening you either had people who were worshiping yahweh at these illegitimate spots so they weren't it wasn't okay to do that but they were still just worshiping yahweh you probably had other people who were worshiping these false gods whatever which we know whatever those were or you had people who were doing both they were had a had a syncretism going on here that toxic combination of Yahweh and Yahweh and Baal or Yahweh and Kamosh or Yahweh and Asherah

or whoever it might be. You probably had a combination of those happening at the high places. And then also mentioned are the pillars and the Asherim. The pillars or the matzevot, these are like stone, standing stones are sometimes translated, which are representatives of the deities. Some people think they were phallic symbols. I don't know about that, but they certainly were standing stones that were found at lots of sites in Israel. And then the Asherim are probably these wooden poles that represent the goddess Asherah, who was the consort of Baal. So Baal and Asherah were the unholy couple in Canaanite religion, the popular couple. And the Biltis were told on every high place and under every green tree,

which first of all tells you they were all over the place and secondly tells you there was probably the risk here of there being in in conjunction with the false worship also this worship of nature which was very common in canaanite religions as well so israel comes along they desacralize they deholy all of these elements of nature so for an israelite there is no spot in nature that is intrinsically holy it's not just holy because it is anything that's holy is holy because of course god has said it is and god is there that's what sanctifies it but in most other ancient religions it was not like that and so this there's a risk here of also thinking these high hills and these green trees are sacred because they are connected with these religious practices

and then finally it says there was 24 there were also male cult prostitutes in the land which i wish we knew more about uh only because you know there's the the information we have is limited in fact even the translation here is up for debate um these are it's more literally the the set apart ones the consecrated ones uh these could be men that could be women so exactly what this looked like we don't know but we do know that of course sex and worship were an integral part of many of these ancient religions so however these male cult prostitutes functions it was in some way in conformity with the the basic theology of canaanite worship yeah that's one of those things where you wish you knew more about it and you're glad you don't know more

about it you're glad you also don't know yeah right yeah yeah so the uh the you know kind of the scholarly side of people who are you know they want to learn things that'd be interesting wonder what this was like the same time you're like ah maybe ignorance is bliss maybe i don't the details yeah maybe we're we should be spared that and then we have this telling statement this is the uh the end of verse 24 uh extremely telling and also uh implicitly prophetic it says they did according to all the abominations of the nations that the lord drove out before the people of Israel. So here, that's kind of a basic summary of a lot of the history here. So while Israel is in Egypt, the sins of the Ammonites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites

and all these other ites is piling up. The stink is rising to heaven. And then finally, when God brings Israel out under Moses and then under the leadership of Joshua, uses Israel to drive out all these Canaanites. It's because their sins have reached that boiling point and they're driven out all these abominations they've been practicing. And then what's supposed to happen? Well, of course, Israel is supposed to settle in this land. They're supposed to practice the faithful worship of Yahweh. Now what's happening? Well, Israel is basically replicating the very abominations of the nations that they drove out, that God used them to drive out. And then kind of woven into that is the understanding that, well, if Israel is basically becoming Canaanized, then eventually

what's going to happen to Israel? The same thing. They too are going to be driven out as a punishment by God, which of course is precisely what eventually is going to happen. It's going to be about 200 more years for the northern kingdom. The Assyrians are going to be the tool used by God to drive out the northern kingdom because of their abominations and then later in 586 the babylonians are going to be the tool that god uses to drive out the southern kingdom because the abominations that that they've that they've practiced the uh the sum of which is that sinners are really stupid people because because we just do not seem to learn from our mistakes yeah it's a weird statement because essentially what it's saying is that this land looked a certain way

in the sense of the practices that were going on in it, and that God had his people drive those people out, and it looked a different way. But now it looks exactly the same way that it did before. I mean, it's not saying that some of the same things that were going on before are now happening, or there's parts of the community that are now engaging in practices that used to happen here. That's not what it is. I mean, it literally says that all the things that were going on before are now going on. So it's almost as though like God is looking at it and

saying, this looks exactly the same as it looked before my people ever arrived here. You couldn't tell the difference. It's a wild thing. I mean, it would be like if the same missionary goes into uh and not even you know right now but say in the past a missionary went into wherever south america or africa or wherever it might be um you know and established a mission and uh the people converted to christianity and then 10 years later they deconverted christianity into the pagan worship that they had before i mean it's kind of it's kind of the same thing that's going on here it's irrational it's destructive it's foolish it's all those things and because it's that it is indicative of this strange cycle that occurs so often in in the old testament and of course

not just the old testament the same sort of thing happens happens still today so that's kind of where israel is at they uh they were sent in in order to clear out the abominations the canaanites And now, having been Canaanized themselves, they're practicing the same abominations as their predecessors did. So what's going to happen? Well, we pick up in verse 25 here by hearing about at least one of the things that happens. So five years have gone by in the reign of King Rehoboam when the Pharaoh of Egypt, named here, and I believe I'm correct in saying this, that this is the first time that a Pharaoh of Egypt is named in the Bible. You know, there's a, this is, much is made of this, and I think we talked

about this when we covered Exodus, much is made of the fact that the king in Egypt is never named. The Pharaoh is never named in Exodus, but we do know the names of like the Hebrew midwives, which is just beautiful. You know, we know the name of Moses, of course, we know the name of Moses' parents. We know the name of these Hebrew midwives, which of course never would have been recorded in any kind of Egyptian history. But, you know, the guy whose name everybody knew in Egypt, from the greatest to the least, he's never named. But now, at this point in the story, this king, this pharaoh of Egypt is going to be named, and his name is Shishak, known by Egyptian sources as Shoshenk. That's the typical spelling that you'll find in other

resources that talk about this guy, who was the first king of the 22nd dynasty of Egypt, if you're interested in that. What does he do? Well, he comes up against Jerusalem, and he doesn't just come up against Jerusalem. As I'll explain more in just a second, he actually hits a whole lot of the cities in the north and south. But in Jerusalem itself, here's what he did. He took away the treasures of the temple, and he took away the treasures of the king's palace. He says he took away everything. He also took away all the shields of gold that Solomon had made, and Solomon's son Rehoboam made in their place shields of bronze and committed them to the hands of the officers of the guard who kept the door of the king's house and we're told that as often as

the king went into the temple the guard carried these bronze shields and brought them brought them back to to the guard room so we devolve i mean this is of course more and more evidence of the the devolving that's taking place in the kingdom here you have you have the reign of solomon where uh as we heard more than once silver is basically worthless because it's everywhere it's kind of like you know these days if you walk if you're walking down the sidewalk and see a penny most people don't pick it up they just walk right by it so imagine that happening with silver oh there's a piece of silver in the ground it's not worth anything i'm not even going to pick it up it's kind of the way it was in solomon's in solomon's reign so even as these uh uh these

these golden shields which were just for decoration you know just looking looked really cool to have all these gold shields and the uh the the house of the forest of the cedar of lebanon or whatever that that place was called well those are gone now they're they're now under none they're now in egypt and in their place rehoboam's like well i guess we have to make some shields of bronze instead yeah we go not shields of silver even though no not even silver no so it's been a it's been a big fall because it wasn't like you went from you know oh well we're gonna go gold and well we're not quite at that level anymore so we'll take one step down no no no you went from uh first place to third place in a hurry here you know yeah this was this is a quick

fall i think probably what's happening here thinking about the history is uh so you have You've got, during the reign of Saul and David, who's their main enemy? Well, their main enemy is not Egypt. Their main enemy is the Philistines. Well, the Philistines are sandwiched between Egypt and Israel. So they're a threat to them both. They're a threat, obviously, to Saul and David because they're fighting against them all the time. But they're also a threat to Egypt.

Now, what happens is that, especially David and then Solomon, especially in his reign, the philistines are basically uh neutralized they're no longer a threat but who does become a threat to egypt well israel because israel is so powerful so then you know not surprisingly the king of egypt is ready and willing to make uh an alliance with solomon by letting his daughter marry solomon so you got you know that that whole thing going on between kingdoms but there's still a threat going on here. So what does this king Shishak do? Well, first of all, he takes Jeroboam in and raises him, takes care of him. And then he sends him back to begin to create these fissures in this kingdom that's become so powerful. And then after Solomon is dead and Rehoboam, his son

takes over, then the king of Egypt says, now it's time to weaken the kingdom even more. It's already divided between north and south now i'm going to invade and i'm going to make sure that israel knows hey i'm top dog here you're no longer the the solomonic powerful kingdom that you once were now you're weak and i want to make sure that you know you're weak by coming in and attacking you and taking all your golden shields and basically humiliating you as as a nation and this definitely seems just like a power move this is they didn't come and invade it's not like they they took the landover or anything like that they literally i mean as far as we know they march in and they take all your stuff yeah and there's and so it is literally just letting you know that we're more

powerful than you there's nothing you can do about this and so that the hierarchy has changed and they just want you to know and so they're going to give you a real clear example of how the hierarchy has changed. Because it doesn't say that, Ryan Boehm's like, get the chariots together, get the men together, we're going to go march into Egypt and reclaim our honor or something like this. None of that.

He's just like, get the bronze, we'll replace these shields, I guess. You have been subdued, if that's what's going on. That's precisely what happened. Yeah, this is sort of a, it's a monetary move. Of course, you know, it's great for Egypt, because they're no doubt raiding

and pillaging along the way, taking some slaves and and more than more than just the golden shields i'm sure they took a lot of stuff so monetarily yeah it's uh it's the same reason nations do things like this all the time still in our present day uh but also was symbolic in that sort of way it was like they walked in said we're uh we're the powerful ones and you better keep that in mind and just to remind you we're going to take all your golden shields so you have these like you know inferior bronze shields uh left in their place yeah i'm guessing i could be wrong but i'm guessing that the way this works is that acquiring gold and possessions to yourself was the bonus to the message that they

wanted sent not the other way around like hey we really want those shields bonus we get to send a message i think this is the other way around where it's like we're gonna send a message bonus we get stuff yeah yeah because what's worth more in it for for a ruler gold shields or letting this other kingdom know that you're in charge now well for an individual you might be like well gold shields is worth more but for a king that message is worth more yeah yeah definitely so in fact uh i almost forgot to point this out uh i'm looking at a book here it's called archaeology in the in the old testament which is cool because hey it's a book with pictures right which everybody loves so there is a picture here and uh it is a uh it's from the uh the karnak temple in thebes in upper egypt

and it actually depicts the very stuff that we've been reading about so this is this is the pharaoh shishak and uh he's holding a sword in one hand and he's he's got these ropes in the other hand which are attached to bodies that are bound and in the inscription that describes what this is all about it basically talks about how he uh invaded and lists several of the cities that he that he went to so what's happening what's being described and what's pictured in this relief in egypt is not only the king but also the very events at least some of the events that are that are described there in first kings all of which it basically uh underlines the point that you're making this is exactly what the king was after i mean he wanted to do something that was worthy

of being literally carved into stone right a stone that you know all these millennia later we can still see and that we're still still reading about so that's his his place in history if you will. So let's wrap up Rehoboam, just like we did Jeroboam. This is verse 29. Now the rest of the acts of Rehoboam and all he did, are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah? I don't know, Chad, are they? I don't know. Is that a rhetorical question? Do we need to answer that? I love how that's always added. It's as if to say, for more information go to the library and check out chronicles yeah and you can you read all about it and there was war between rehoboam and jeroboam continually not surprising there uh i wish we knew

a little bit more about that too but anyway there was war between north and south and we'll see that this continues throughout the history of the north and south there's there's cooling off periods There's times when they actually will don't battle against each other, but battle with each other against common enemies. But there's plenty of times where there's civil war going on as well. Just imagine in our country that we didn't just have like the civil war. But then, you know, after the civil war ended, there was a, you know, cooling off period. And we united because we had to fight Canada or Mexico, whatever, whatever scenario you want to dream up. And then five years later, there was another civil war.

And that lasted three or four years. Just imagine our current political discourse was, you know, not fought on Twitter and Facebook and that sort of thing. But actually, you know, people got together and settled some disagreements out in the field somewhere. It's kind of how things went back then. You didn't get together and debate these things. You went and fought over these things. I think when you hear war, this is different, obviously, than Israel gathering the troops and going and fighting the Philistines or whatever. By war, it's just letting you know that there's not peace between the kingdoms and that there's conflict there.

And this conflict often results in bloodshed. It's not war in the proper sense, like the North and South have declared war on each other and this is just going on forever. but more that throughout their history this thing like you were saying it gets hot it cools down it gets hot it cools down it's not a declared war it just is the state of things that there's conflict between these two things and that they fight yeah so don't don't kind of uh don't translate our modern understanding of war into this it just means that yeah there was not peace and what that looked like was not like full-scale invasions of the north into the south and the south into the north i mean a lot of i'm assuming a lot of what this uh boiled down to is there were skirmishes

at the borderlands especially we're going to hear about one of those uh in fact uh coming up in this next chapter so there were skirmishes no doubt there were raids uh at times maybe there were bigger battles but it was just kind of that it was back and forth back and forth where you know each each kingdom was an irritant to the other kingdom because maybe they perceived they had more power or maybe they thought you know they were becoming an ally of that would be a threat to the south for instance we're also going to see an instance of that so you got political maneuvering going on you got raiding going on you got this irritant between north and south so that's what it's talking about between this war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam it's almost like they didn't

have like I don't know like a common god to unite them it is it certainly seems that way doesn't it It seems like that would have been a good thing if maybe you had, you know, one God that you were all worshiping would have really helped things out. Yeah, would have solved all their problems, but it certainly would have helped a lot. Instead, what you have is a proliferation of all these other deities. So that proliferation then also leads into proliferation of systems between the kingdoms. So Rehoboam dies. Verse 31, he slept with his fathers and was buried with his fathers in the city of David. His mother's name was Naamah the Ammonite. We've already been told that.

It's repeated here, perhaps to accent her non-Israelite pagan origins. And then we're told that Abijam, who's also known as Abijah, his son reigned in his place. So we've gone from Saul the David to Solomon to Rehoboam, and now the fifth in line is going to be this guy named Abijam or Abijah, depending on what texture you're looking at. So now that takes us into first Kings chapter 15. So what are we going to, what are we going to learn about him? Well, one of the first things we learn is that his reign was pretty short. It was the 18th year of King Jeroboam. So in the North, when this guy Abijam

began to reign over the south, over Judah. And he reigned for a whopping three years in Jerusalem. So this is interesting. So Jeroboam is reigning for a significantly longer time. The king turnover is much lower. Yeah, it is funny the way this will go. So yeah, like right now there's these turnover of the kings in the south, but then it'll switch and all of a sudden you'll have stability in the south and you'll have a lot of turnover in the north. So it just kind of goes back and forth between the different long and short reigns of these kings, depending on which chapter you're looking in. So in this case, it's three years in Jerusalem, and we're told his mother's name. Now, pay attention to this name, because this is going to come up again in a second. His mother's name

was Ma'akah, the daughter of Abishalom. So Ma'akah, that's his mom's name. We'll come back to that in just a minute. And he, we're told, walked in all the sins that his father did before him, and his heart was not wholly true to the Lord his God as the heart of David his father. Let me read a little bit more, and then we'll talk about this. Nevertheless, this is verse 4, nevertheless, for David's sake, the Lord his God gave him a lamp in Jerusalem. That's that metaphor we've seen before for this illuminating dynastic reign that's going on in Jerusalem. So for David's sake, the Lord his God gave him this lamp in Jerusalem, setting up his son after him and establishing Jerusalem.

Why? Because David did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and did not turn aside from anything that he commanded him all the days of his life, except in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. First of all, Abijah more Abijah, he's basically a replica of his dad, right? So as was Rehoboam, so is Rehoboam's son, Abijah. All his sins. All the sins.

Same sins. Same sins. Yeah. I mean, there is no creativity here, which is, of course, that's a truism about sin. Sin is boring because it's always basically just a repetition of the same old thing. There is no creativity when it comes to sin. And this is why this is important. So what sin is that?

We already established this. What is the sin that we're talking about specifically here? we're talking about all the sins of his father, all the worship of other gods. This is why it says his heart was not wholly true to the Lord. In other words, this man is not a worshiper of God. He is a worshiper of other gods. Okay, so you got that. Nevertheless, for David's sake, God's going to let him have a son

and have that son reign, all of that, because David wasn't like that. Because David only ever committed one sin his whole life, and that was in the matter of Uriah the Hittite. You might be able to read that that way, but that's not what this is saying. That is saying that in this matter of fidelity to God, there is only one time in David's life where you could point to it and say, has your heart strayed from the Lord at this point? And the point that it gives you is in the matter of Uriah the Hittite.

And the reason for that is, I think, because we know that this is a prolonged period in David's life, long enough for him to have a son, where he is unrepentant. So David has acted in the same way that we've said over and over again. What's the problem with idolatry? The problem with idolatry is you have no place to take your sin, and so you're just left to deal with your sin on your own. David, in the matter of Uriah the Hittite, in the matter of Bathsheba, places himself in that same situation, not by constructing some kind of, you know, golden calf or building some altar in some place, but by straying from the Lord and trying to cover up his own sin as opposed to going to the God whom he believes in

to have his sin forgiven. So what is going on with David, Bathsheba, and Uriah? What is the whole thing? What is the matter of Uriah the Hittite? The matter of Uriah the Hittite, And I think the reason it brings up Uriah specifically is Uriah's death is a direct result of David trying to deal with his own sin, which is something that an idolater does. That's what I think it is. That's perfect. Perfect. That's exactly what's going on here. Yeah.

So we're not downplaying the fact that David committed murder and David committed the sexual sin with Bathsheba. We're not downplaying that. But we're digging deeper. What's the real issue here? Well, their issue is when you do that, when you steal, when you give false testimony, when you murder, when you commit adultery, when you do all these things and you have sin, if you don't have a God to take that sin to, then you're in a hopeless situation. And that's precisely what David—David created this situation by his own kind of self-salvation project. Correct. Yeah, he acted as one who didn't have a God who forgives sins, which is how idolaters act. So there was that one time when David acted in that idolatrous sort of way.

That's what the narrator describing here. So verse six says there was war between Rehoboam and Jeroboam all the days of his life. We've already heard about that and the rest of the acts of Abijam or Abijah and all he did. Again, go see the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah. And there was war, this continuing war between Abijam and Jeroboam. So nothing has changed there. and then we're told he slept with his fathers and they buried him in the city of david and asa his son reigned in his place so we'll wrap up these last couple minutes by introducing

asa and we'll talk more about him in the next episode so it is jeroboam is still in the north the 20th year of jeroboam's reign is when asa begins to reign in judah and he was there for a long time. We're told that he reigned for 41 years in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was, now, I told you to remember the name of his predecessors, of his father's mother. And what was her name? Her name was Ma'akah, the daughter of Avi Shalom. And now Asa, we're told that his mother's name was also Ma'akah, the daughter of Avi Shalom. Now, this has been explained in different sorts of ways uh some people say that the hebrew word there for mother aim can possibly mean grandmother well not really it doesn't it doesn't mean that it means mother

so you you can't like get out of it that way are you suggesting that that's someone trying to soften the text chad yes but yeah possibly possibly i think the best explanation of this is to take it at face value, and to say that Asa's mother was also his grandmother, meaning that his father and his father's mother committed incest together, and he was the result of this incestuous union. Now that would be, now that of course is terrible, is horrible, is not something we like to think about, but that is something that is consistent with other weird things were happening in the biblical narrative other twisted things happening there and you know this sort of thing happened in egypt where you had a lot of incest going on especially among royal families i mean like

approved this was set up this way so i think that's the best way to take this text is that in asa's case uh his mom is also his his grandmother uh he's a product of this incestuous union and and this is the this is the ironic thing the very the god thing about this turns out asa is a great king. I mean, he has his problems. We'll talk about that more in the next episode. But isn't it great that God's like, you know what?

I'm going to use this guy with such a messed up family history to be the guy that is going to do what is right in my eyes. Yeah, he's going to use this dirty little lamp right here. And he's going to get some stuff done. We will have to wait until the next episode

to get into that. we will see uh what this strange character is going to do but uh we'll do that next week chad i'll see you then all right see you then