The Bible in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 190: Judah Is Overrun (2023)

Episode Date: July 9, 2023

As we near the end of 2 Kings, Fr. Mike takes us through Babylon's conquest of Judah, under the leadership of King Nebuchadnezzar. He touches on the importance of wisdom in the Book of Proverbs, and revisits the sons of Josiah in order to explain why the people of Israel are so lost. Today's readings are 2 Kings 24, 2 Chronicles 35, and Proverbs 8:22-36. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/bibleinayear. Please note: The Bible contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name is Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Bible in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's voice and live life through the lens of Scripture. The Bible in a Year podcast is brought to you by Ascension. Using the Great Adventure Bible Timeline, we'll read all the way from Genesis to Revelation, discovering how the story of salvation unfolds and how we fit into that story today. It is day 190, and we are reading from 2 Kings chapter 24, 2 Chronicles chapter 35. We're also reading from Proverbs chapter 8, finishing up that chapter with verses 22 through 36. The Bible translation that I'm reading from is the Revised Standard Version, 2nd Catholic Edition.

And I'm using the Great Adventure Bible from Ascension. If you want to download your own Bible in a Year reading plan, you can visit ascensionpress.com slash Bible in a Year. And if you want to subscribe to this podcast, you can by clicking subscribe. As I said, it is day 190. We have, including today, we have two more days left in this narrative. Now, remember, when it comes to the whole overarching way that we've crafted these first 191, ultimately, days, has been that we never, ever want to lose the story. Now, starting on day 192, what we're going to do is we're going to dive deeply into the books of the prophets. And so we already had a few prophets before. We had some prophets who were preaching to the north in Israel, some prophets who were kind of doing double duty there.

But on day 192, we're beginning with Isaiah. Now, we're also going to have some narrative books as well. We have books that tell a story, we'll say, but aren't following necessarily, strictly speaking, the Great Adventure Bible timeline. And so we're not taking a break from that, but what we're doing is we want to situate these prophetic books and other books in the timeline. And so that's what we're going to be doing starting in the day after tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, day 192. But today, as I said, is day 190, and we're reading 2 Kings chapter 24, 2 Chronicles 35, and Proverbs 8, verses 22 to 36.

2 Chronicles 35 and Proverbs 8, verses 22-36. The second book of Kings, chapter 24, Judah overrun by enemies. In his days, Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up, and Jehoiakim became his servant three years. Then he returned and rebelled against him. And the Lord sent against him bands of the Chaldeans, and bands of the Syrians, and bands of the Moabites, and bands of the Ammonites, and sent them against Judah to destroy it, according to the word of the Lord, which he spoke by his servants the prophets. Surely this came upon Judah at the command of the Lord, to remove them out of his sight for the sins of Manasseh, according to all that he had

done, and also for the innocent blood that he had shed. For he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord would not pardon. Now the rest of the deeds of Jehoiakim, and all that he had shed. For he filled Jerusalem with innocent blood, and the Lord would not pardon. Now the rest of the deeds of Jehoiakim, and all that he did, are they not written in the book of the chronicles of the kings of Judah? So Jehoiakim slept with his fathers, and Jehoiakim his son reigned in his stead. And the king of Egypt did not come again out of his land, for the king of Babylon had taken all that belonged to the king of Egypt from the brook of Egypt to the river Euphrates. Reign and captivity of Jehoiakim. Jehoiakim was 18 years old when he became king, and he reigned three months in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Nehushta, the daughter of Elnathan of Jerusalem. He did what was evil in

the sight of the Lord according to all that his father had done. Babylon conquers Jerusalem. At that time, the servants of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came up to Jerusalem, and the city was besieged. And Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, came to the city while his servants were besieging it. And Jehoiakim, the king of Judah, gave himself up to the king of Babylon, himself, his mother, and his servants, and his princes, and his palace officials. The king of Babylon took him prisoner in the eighth year of his reign, and carried off all the treasures of the house of the Lord, and the treasures of the king's house, and cut in pieces all the vessels of gold in the temple of the Lord, which Solomon, king of Israel, had made, as the Lord foretold. He carried away all Jerusalem, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor, ten thousand captives, and all the princes, and all the mighty men of valor,

ten thousand captives, and all the craftsmen, and the smiths, none remained except the poorest people of the land. And he carried away Jehoiakim to Babylon, the king's mother, the king's wives, his officials, and the chief men of the land he took into captivity from Jerusalem to Babylon. And the king of Babylon brought captive to Babylon all the men of valor, 7,000, and the craftsmen and the smiths, 1,000, all of them strong and fit for war. And the king of Babylon made Mattaniah, Jehoiakim's uncle, king in his stead, and changed his name to Zedekiah. Zedekiah reigns over Judah. Zedekiah was 21 years old when he became king, and he reigned 11 years in Jerusalem. His mother's name was Hamutal, the daughter of Jeremiah of Libna.

And he did what was evil in the sight of the Lord according to all that Jehoiakim had done. For because of the anger of the Lord, it came to the point in Jerusalem and Judah that he cast them out from his presence. And Zedekiah rebelled against the king of Babylon. The second book of Chronicles chapter 35, a celebration of the Passover. Josiah kept a Passover to the Lord in Jerusalem, and they killed the Passover lamb on the 14th day of the first month. He appointed the priests to their offices and encouraged them in the service of the house of the Lord. And he said to the Levites who taught all Israel and who were holy to the Lord, Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon, the son of

David, king of Israel, built. You need no longer carry it upon your shoulders. Now serve the Lord your God and his people Israel. Prepare yourselves according to your father's houses by your divisions, following the directions of David king of Israel and the directions of Solomon his son. And stand in the holy place according to the groupings of the father's houses of your brethren the lay people. And let there be for each a part of a father's house of the Levites. And kill the Passover lamb. And sanctify yourselves.

And prepare for your brethren. And do according to the word of the Lord by Moses. Then Josiah contributed to the lay people as Passover offerings for all that were present, lambs and kids from the flock to the number of 30,000 and 3,000 bulls. These were from the king's possessions. And his princes contributed willingly to the people, to the priests, and to the Levites. Hilkiah, Zechariah, and Jehiel, the chief officers of the house of God, gave to the priests for the Passover offerings 2,600 lambs and kids and 300 bulls. Conaniah also, and Shemaiah, and Nethanel his brothers, and Hashabiah, and Jeiel, and Jehozabad, the chiefs of the Levites, gave to the Levites for the Passover offerings five thousand lambs and kids and five hundred bulls. When the service had been prepared for,

the priests stood in their place and the Levites in their divisions according to the king's command. And they killed the Passover lamb, and the priests sprinkled the blood which they received from them while the Levites flayed the victims. And they set aside the burnt offerings that they might distribute them according to the groupings of the father's houses of the lay people to offer to the Lord as it is written in the book of Moses. And so they did with the bulls and they roasted the Passover lamb with fire according to the ordinance. And they boiled the holy offerings in pots, in cauldrons and in pans and carried them quickly to all the lay people. And afterward, they prepared for themselves and for the priests, because the priests, the sons of Aaron, were busied in

offering the burnt offerings and the fat parts until night. So the Levites prepared for themselves and for the priests, the son of Aaron. The singers, the sons of Asaph, were in their place according to the command of David, and Asaph, and Haman, and Jeduthun, the king's seer. And the gatekeepers were at each gate. They did not need to depart from their service for their brethren the Levites prepared for them. So all the service of the Lord was prepared that day to keep the Passover and to offer burnt offerings

on the altar of the Lord according to the command of King Josiah. And the sons of Israel who were present kept the Passover at that time and the Feast of Unleavened Bread seven days. No Passover like it had been kept in Israel since the days of Samuel the prophet. None of the kings of Israel had kept such a Passover as was kept by Josiah, and the priests, and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel who were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah, this Passover was kept. Defeat by Pharaoh Necho and the death of Josiah After all this, when Josiah had prepared the temple, Necho, king of Egypt, went up to fight at Carchemish on the Euphrates, and Josiah went out against him. But he sent envoys to him, saying, What have we to do with each other, king of Judah? I am not coming against you

this day, but against the house with which I am at war. And God has commanded me to make haste. Cease opposing God who is with me, lest he destroy you. Nevertheless, Josiah would not turn away from him, but disguised himself in order to fight with him. He did not listen to the words of Necho from the mouth of God, but joined battle in the plain of Megiddo. And the archers shot King Josiah. And the king said to his servants, Take me away, for I am badly wounded. So his servants took him out of the chariot and carried him in his second chariot and brought him to Jerusalem. And he died and was buried in the tombs of his fathers.

All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. his fathers. All Judah and Jerusalem mourned for Josiah. Jeremiah also uttered a lament for Josiah, and all the singing men and singing women have spoken of Josiah in their laments to this day. They made these an ordinance in Israel. Behold, they are written in the laments. Now the rest of the acts of Josiah and his good deeds according to what is written in the law of the Lord and his acts, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Israel and Judah. The book of Proverbs chapter 8 verse 22 through 36. The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up at the first, before the beginning of the earth. When there was no depths, I was brought forth.

When there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth. Before he had made the earth with its fields, on the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there. When he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world, and delighting in the sons of men. And now, my sons, listen to me. Happy are those who keep my ways. Hear instruction, and be wise, and do not neglect it.

Happy is the man who listens to me, watching daily at my gates, waiting beside my doors. For he who finds me finds life and obtains favor from the Lord. But he who misses me injures himself. All who hate me love death. Father in heaven, we thank you and give you praise. Thank you for your wisdom, your wisdom that goes forth from you, your wisdom which created the world. It is true, Lord God, that when we listen to you and we keep your ways, we are happy, we are blessed. Help us to hear instruction and be wise.

Help us to watch daily at the gates of wisdom. Help us to find wisdom and therefore find life and obtain favor from you. Thank you. Thank you, Lord. Thank you for this opportunity and thank you for this day. Once again, we pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So, wow, just what a gift. Okay, once again, Proverbs is all about wisdom. So as we continue to journey forward in the book of Proverbs, one of the things that we're going to keep coming back to is the wisdom of God and how, not just, I'm going to say, how important wisdom is.

Yeah, that's kind of an understatement of the year, but how essentially connected to God is wisdom. Because those who are foolish are always disconnected from God and those who are wise. Wisdom, among many things, wisdom is the ability to have right priorities, right? Wisdom is the ability to see correctly and not just to see correctly, to value correctly. And so one of the things that we recognize is with those who have wisdom are able to value the Lord properly, as opposed to the things of this world improperly. And so what we saw in 2 Chronicles is Josiah. Josiah was able to value the Lord properly.

And so what did he do? He reestablished this worship. And we already heard about this in 2 Kings, right? But that first Passover that was celebrated for seven days, and then they said, you know, this is so incredible to be able to give God praise again, to be able to worship him the way he deserves and is asked to be worshiped. We're going to do another seven days. And that is what is described in 2 Chronicles chapter 35. Of course, in 2 Chronicles chapter 35, we also get the death of Josiah, which we had already heard about by the Pharaoh of Egypt, Necho. But we also recognize that the

next steps, Jehoahaz and Zedekiah and the fall of Jerusalem, that's happening tomorrow in 2 Chronicles, but we already heard about it today in 2 Kings chapter 24, because Judah is overrun by its enemies and Nebuchadnezzar. Now, I've also heard Nebuchadnezzar's name pronounced Nebuchadnezzar. Nebuchadnezzar is another pronunciation. I've heard it both ways, but I like saying Nebuchadnezzar. So there we go. Also, we had Jehoiakim and his son Jehoiakim, which once again, thank you, namers of people in the Bible, but they were both, what did they do? They both did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, that they were the successors of Josiah and they turned away from the faith of their father and grandfather. And what happens is Nebuchadnezzar, he had come in and what God had promised that, yes,

because of the sins of Manasseh before, like, and we're going to hear about these crimes of Manasseh as well later on in the prophets because of these sins, Jerusalem is delivered into the hand of the Babylonians. We're also going to see the beginning of the exile, where here's Nebuchadnezzar who comes in to the land of Judah, Benjamin, Jerusalem, and he's going to bring into exile the servants of the king. So he's first going to take away the people who are the strongest, right? So he takes away Jehoiakim, right? He gets brought into Babylon, as well as the princes, the mighty men of valor, 10,000 captives, all the craftsmen and smiths,

none remained except the poor people of the land and as well as Jehoiakim and his entire family, his entire cabinet, all the chief men of the land, all of them are going into Babylon. And when he does that, the king of Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar, he makes Jehoiakim's uncle, Mattaniah, the king. He becomes a puppet king basically there. And his name is Zedekiah. We're gonna hear about Zedekiah more tomorrow. But yeah, we have the beginning of the exile. And the first thing that the king of Babylon does

is exiles those who are most powerful. He takes away the power out of the people of Judah and Jerusalem. And we're going to see tomorrow that he's going to take more people away and he's going to exile even more. And what's going to happen is the people of Israel will find themselves away from their land.

The day after tomorrow, we're going to go into Isaiah and the book of Tobit and we're going to continue to hear from those prophets. And what we're going to do is basically going to go back in time to when Isaiah the prophet was preaching, when Ezekiel, the prophet was preaching, when Jeremiah was preaching and, and all the whole story that we just heard is going to be the time that the prophets are preaching against, right? So, so when we hear about these bad Kings, when we hear about these

people were falling away from faith, and then we'll hear what Isaiah had to say to them. Because if you recall in these last couple of chapters, as they're being brought into exile, one of the claims that the Lord God gets to make is, I sent you the man of God. I sent you my word. I sent you the prophets. And we're going to actually hear from those prophets for the next bunch of days. And so that's going to come up very, very soon. So we are done with this narrative book tomorrow, the narrative books of 2 Kings and 2 Chronicles.

And we're launching into the prophets the day after tomorrow, which is going to be Kings and 2 Chronicles, and we're launching into the prophets the day after tomorrow, which is going to be an incredible journey. It's going to be a challenge because we have to constantly be reminded of what was going on when Isaiah was preaching, when Jeremiah was preaching, when Ezekiel was preaching. We have to be reminded of this whole story. So hopefully up to this point, the story has gotten into your bones. Hopefully up to this point, you get what's going on in the northern kingdom of Israel, the southern kingdom of Judah, and the fact that they're so, so unfaithful, even though God continues to be faithful.

So that's our next steps after tomorrow. Tomorrow when we conclude this book of 2 Kings and this book of 2 Chronicles. Ah, I can't wait because I'm praying for you. Please be praying for me. My name is Father Mike. I will see you tomorrow and I can't wait. God bless.